Author's Note

Back into the 99 Worlds Universe, for one last romp with the Weird Kids. This is, what, story 16/17 in main series lore? So my apologies to anyone jumping in right here. It'll be weird. But the journey should still be fun.
Rated mature largely for all the profanity and vulgarity, before anyone asks.

Siblings

Chapter One: Siblings
~BlackRoseRaven

“Yo, Sin! Breakfast!”

The messy mass of blankets on the bed wiggled a little as a grumble escaped the clothy chrysalis, the creature hidden inside that comfortable womb trying to curl herself up tighter in the grips of her little sanctuary.

Not that it did much good, as a hoof pounded at her door and the most obnoxious stallion in the entire world sang cheerily: “Get up, get up, get out of bed, get up, get up, you muffin-head, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up and-”

“Tarry, I'll murder you.” groaned the mare as she shoved her head up, a scaly snout poking out from beneath the layers of covers.

The stallion chuckled behind the door, then he hammered a quick tattoo against it before she heard his hooves moving away as he teased: “Well, you won't be killing anyone if you stay in bed all day! You also won't be getting any bacon.”

“Bacon. I'll get bacon. I'll get all the bacon I want.” mumbled the mare as she sank down for a moment into the blankets. She wiggled uselessly in her cocoon, then slowly worked her way to the edge of her bed before she squawked as she spilled off the side and flopped loudly to the floor, knocking several books and trinkets rolling across her messy room.

Her head shoved out of the mess of blankets with a huff, blowing a bit of her blue mane out of her amethyst eyes. She was a unicorn, of sorts, from the tall, curved horn that gleamed like a blade sticking out of her head: but her features were almost reptilian, with dark, deep purple scales covering her visible body.

She sniffled as she stood up and stretched with a yawn, her long blue tail flicking behind her pony-like haunches, her long, draconic claws cracking and clicking as she pressed them down against the floor. On her flank, a stylized golden sickle with a cross-shaped handle gleamed brightly against her taut dark coat.

She was slender, beautiful, almost felid in her strange mix of pony and draconic beast, but the moment she attempted to take a step forwards the entire house seemed to shake and she ended up falling in a sprawl on her face with a squawk, ruining any pretense of natural grace as she scowled before her eyes watched as several pencils rolled by, and the creaking in her perked ears told her the cabin was definitely on the move.

She popped up to her hooves, shaking herself briskly out before she stepped towards the window, flinging the curtains open with telekinesis. She scowled out at the scenery: gray skies above, and a sea of treetops slowly passing by below, as their cabin creaked and groaned as it strode its way across the Everfree Forest on its spindly stilt-legs.

“I wonder where we're going...” she murmured, as she reached up and absently squeezed her necklace in a claw: she rubbed along one edge of the black star, then over the metal, lightning-shaped shard in the face of that piece of onyx, feeling a funny little premonition. She had been getting those a lot more these days. Usually these feelings turned out to be nothing, but...

The mare clucked her tongue, then turned and shook herself out before she wildly slapped at her own face, then blew a snort. Well, there was nothing to do but have breakfast. She could ask her dumbass brother where his dumb ass had told their cabin to go after she ate.

She flung open the door and headed down the hall to the den: a fire was cheerily burning away in the fireplace, and her brother was already sitting at the couch with his hooves up on the table and a plate floating in front of him.

He grinned and winked at her: he was a handsome black unicorn with a messy white mane he had let grow out over the last few years, and bright blue-green eyes, that could be as deep and dark as the ocean one moment, and bright as jade the next. He was athletic, his body covered in scars from combat and bad decisions.

The weirdest thing about him, however, was the set of crystalline wings he had: souvenirs from a time long past now, as flexible as cloth and more mobile and malleable than real wings would have been.

She flicked her horn at him as she walked past, but he easily deflected her telekinetic slap with a twist of his own spire, winking at her as he teased: “Gotta be faster than that, Innocence Sparkle.”

“I'll kick your ass after I'm done eating, Antares Mīrus.” grumbled the mare, swinging her horn grouchily back and forth as she strode into their crowded little kitchen. It was in an eternal state of mess, the sink loaded with dirty plates, the stove dressed with a sheen of grease, odds and ends scattered across the uneven countertops.

One hundred, two hundred years old, and they were still just messy teenagers. No wonder their parents had always been so weird.

“Do you think we'll ever stop being like, horny dumb kids?” asked Sin as she scraped bacon out of a tray onto her plate.

“I know I'm hot, but you're my sister and incest is totally wrong. You don't wanna end up like Wheels McGee, do you?” Antares asked loudly, and Innocence rolled her eyes.

“Believe me, I'm never going to be horny for you, asshole. I'm not into... well, I guess I am into girls.” Innocence poked several pancakes onto her plate, then proceeded to cover these liberally with syrup as she poured herself coffee at the same time. “But not girls like you.”

“Ouch. You got me so hard, Sin. I'm dying from that seven-thousand degree burn.” Antares said wryly as he slumped to the side in the couch, at the same time floating his empty plate to the table.

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you too.” Antares huffed.

“Fucking your fucking face you facefucked motherfucker.” Innocence loudly retorted, then she grabbed a loose spoon from the counter and flung it vaguely in his direction.

It bounced off the back of the couch, and Antares scowled as he leaned up and pointedly picked up the silverware with telekinesis, waggling it as he said mildly: “Language is one thing, but we don't resort to violence over namecalling in this house, missy.”

“Eat me.”

“Incest is-”

Innocence groaned loudly, marching over to the divider and dropping her plate loudly on an open section of countertop as she stabbed a fork angrily into her pancakes, and then she paused before she asked curiously: “So where are we going?”

Antares blinked, scratching his temple with the butt of the spoon before he asked honestly: “What do you mean?”

Innocence stared at him, and Antares stared back at her before he said slowly: “You didn't set the route before you went to bed last night?”

“No, I got home and just went to bed.” Innocence answered, before she grimaced, grabbing a mug of coffee and taking a deep gulp from it before dropping it next to her plate and muttering: “Guess I better go check on that.”

“Yeah, uh, please.” Antares said delicately, and then he grimaced as Sin nodded curtly before vanishing from the spot, the stallion rubbing at his head before he sighed and hopped to his hooves with a grimace, muttering: “Guess I should check on navigation...”

Innocence, meanwhile, reappeared in a puff of magic on a balcony on the roof of the cabin: the trapdoor under her claws was still secured and the door in front of her that lead into the little steering compartment was untampered with. So that meant someone had either set a destination from the orb inside the cabin, or...

Innocence paused, then leapt up, landing on the roof of the little square compartment on top of the cabin so she could get a better look at where they were headed. The log cabin groaned and grumbled as it swayed a little on every step of its eight long stilts, resembling a tipsy spider more than anything else as it stalked across the Everfree Forest, the treetops swaying like waves as the long legs of the walking house stepped carefully between branches and trunks.

She peered off into the horizon, then shrugged a bit before pursing her lips and vanishing from the spot. She reappeared in the kitchen, still almost pouting as Antares called: “Yeah, it doesn't look like...”

He paused as he reached the end of the hall and peered around the corner into the kitchen at her, and then he said mildly: “A bird is going to poop on your lip.”

“Oh, shut up.” Innocence huffed. “And yes. I know. The house is being summoned. Which means it's either Momma or Aunt Freya.”

“Or any number of other people who have nothing better to do than bother us.” Antares remarked, and Innocence snorted. “Hey, it's true. Like, literally nothing has happened for the last century or so.”

Innocence shrugged as she returned to her pancakes, while Antares leaned on the living room side of the divider, idly stealing a piece of bacon with telekinesis as he said wryly: “I almost miss the days where stuff happened, you know? I mean, I know that's stupid. We went through a lot together. But there was good as well as, well...”

“Shit.” Sin supplied.

“Yes. Shit.” Antares agreed after a moment. “There was a lot of that. Some of it sucked ass. Some of it even sucked the stuff that comes from asses, one might say.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, Sin, thank you.” Antares said drolly. “But at least things were interesting and didn't feel so...”

“Purposeless.” Sin said, and Antares smiled a little, softening a bit as he looked at her, but Sin only smiled in return and shrugged, saying quietly: “Hey, it sucks but it's true. Don't get me wrong. I like our lives. I'm comfortable being the Witch of the Woods, and I'd much rather live out here, wandering around and helping people out when we're needed, than try to live in Ponyville or even Subterra. They just... don't feel like home anymore.”

“The world's moved on.” Antares shrugged. “Even Scarlet Sage and Apple Bloom moved out of Ponyville for Subterra, and I feel like sooner or later they're going to move out of there, too. It's all old memories and folk tales now.”

Innocence grunted, muttering: “Can't believe so many of our demon friends abandoned us to go to Helheim. We got dumped for our parents, Antares. Dumped, for them!”

“I mean, Burning Desire was friends with Mom and Dad and Mutt before you even existed.” Antares pointed out, and Innocence scowled at him horribly. “And like, they always called me 'Prince of the Night' and you 'weird demon baby' but-”

Innocence huffed and swung her horn at him, but Antares parried with his own, the two fencing sharply for a few moments over the plate of pancakes before Innocence squawked when Antares nimbly leapt backwards and swept the dish of food with him. Innocence flailed violently over the countertop at him, but Antares only smiled smugly as he took a bite out of a pancake, then scowled down at himself when he dripped syrup down his chin and chest, grumbling: “Horses of Heaven, Sin, did you want some pancake with your syrup or what?”

“Ugh, that's lame. You're lame.” Sin groaned as she flopped over the countertop, banging her horn against it firmly several times, and then she sighed a little as she mumbled: “I guess it's just... hard to believe everything's changed so much. One moment we were kids, the next we were fighting angels, and then we were, you know, all grown up, having fun...”

She pushed herself up, grumbling and flicking at some crumbs: “And then Clinker was old, and then he died. Ponyville basically became Pony City, Equestria formally became a republic, bad stuff stopped happening and I put legs on the house.”

“You put legs on the house. That is by far the biggest and most serious thing that has happened to us, yes.” Antares agreed solemnly as he finished up the last of the pancakes, and then he winked as he put the plate down, saying cheerfully: “But hey, at least even if our lives are boring, they're not as bad as baby brother's, right?”

“I was supposed to be the baby, forever.” Innocence said morosely as she crossed her forelegs under her head and sulked on them. “Now our dumb parents have like ten more dumb babies who get to be babier than me.”

“Well, I mean, most of them are technically demons and all, so they age faster and that means really you're younger and definitely more of a baby than them.” Antares said helpfully, but Innocence just swatted at him grouchily. “Okay, okay, fine. Beardy brother?”

“Divorcee brother.” Innocence grumbled, and then she rose her head and complained: “I liked Moonflower. He should stay with Moonflower. Not girls. Girls are stupid. He got married twice and it didn't work out with either of them so he and Moonflower should just go back to touching each other's butts and boy-bits.”

Antares coughed loudly, and Innocence huffed at him before her older brother said kindly: “Moonflower and Thorn have a lot to work out between them. Even if you would prefer them-”

“Yes, I would.” Innocence said staunchly. “Hellbutts, Tarry, if I had Moonflower I would bang his ass senseless every day. I would bang him twice every day. I would bang him like a drum in a drumming contest where you have to bang a drum as hard as you can as many times as you can as fast as you can.”

“Not every pony has your libido, Sin, you poor, sweet, sick mare.” Antares said wryly, and Innocence sniffed and preened.

“Well, I'm sure even a sexy-less gelding like you would definitely want the butt-touch-time with Moonflower. You can't tell me you don't think he's handsome. I know you're like ninety percent gay. I've seen your dildos.” Innocence said pointedly, waggling her eyebrows at him.

Antares blushed and huffed, flailing back at her and complaining: “Those aren't mine, they're for Prestige, and all the hot marefriends she brings over to have hot mare-on-mare-on-stallion totally straight orgies with me.”

“Is a threesome an orgy or is it just a threesome?” Sin questioned, and Antares looked honestly stumped by this question for a moment before she added wryly: “If stuff goes in your butt you like it in the butt and that's pretty gay.”

“Not if there's no balls touching.” Antares retorted snidely, and then he flailed at her, Innocence huffing and slapping her claws wildly back at him. “God, you're as bad as Móðer, by the way. Sulking one minute and giving me too much information about my own sex life the next. You need pills. Or sterilization. Or both.”

Innocence huffed, then winced as the cabin around them creaked loudly as it swayed to a stop. The two stared at each other for a moment, and then Innocence shrugged before she bounded around the counter and headed down the hall to the front door.

She banged it open, peering through the open door into empty air some ten feet above the treetops, and below those, what looked like a field surrounding a small pond. She narrowed her eyes at this, then squawked loudly as Antares firmly shoved her out into the empty sky with a cheerful: “Alley-oop!”

Innocence fell towards the treetops, then flailed at the air as her horn glowed, magic encasing her body and lifting her sharply upwards, the mare flying up to hover at level with the open doorway and scowl at him moodily.

Antares only grinned and winked, tossing a wave to her before he hopped out of the cabin and dropped past the trees to the small field, landing with a flex of his legs and taking a slow breath as he felt a familiar presence.

He looked up with a smile, rolling his head on his shoulders as he faced the water, watching without fear or surprise as a shadow slid its way out of the pond and rose up in the shape of a winged unicorn. It roiled with darkness as it stretched slowly out, before two violet lights flickered into being in its head, the mare's shade saying softly: “Sorry for the lack of warning. But it sounds like you and your sister are interested in having a little bit of adventure anyway.”

“Hey Mom.” Antares said cheerfully, and then he squawked when Innocence dropped down on top of him and stomped him flat into the earth.

“Hi Momma!” she greeted loudly, as the shadows of the creature seemed to twist with entertainment.

“Hello, Antares. Hello, Innocence.” the living shadow said gently, and then she gestured behind herself with a wing, saying softly: “I've already prepped this reflecting pool for you to use. When the moon rises tonight, use Incantation 32: it should take you directly to Underdark.”

“You got it, Momma!” Innocence chirped, and then she grinned and peered down at the stallion beneath her claws as he scowled and propped his face on his hooves, watching as the shadowy effigy of their mother broke apart and faded quickly out. “See? I told you so.”

“You told me nothing. Now get off me, Sin, you're heavy.” Antares grumbled, and Sin huffed before hopping off her brother and yanking him into the air with magic, the stallion wincing as he was dropped awkwardly on his hooves with a sour look at his sister. “You're just all kinds of helpful today, huh?”

“Yeah-huh.” Sin agreed, and then she said helpfully: “I could also just move the moon into the sky and skip right to night.”

“No, we'll get yelled at by the Nibelung if you do that. It won't kill us to wait until evening.” Antares shrugged, then he said wryly: “Although I guess to be fair, it's been a long time since anyone's actually yelled at us. We're sort of overdue.”

“Okay, one moon coming right up.” Sin said brightly, before she scowled when Antares reached up and gently grasped her horn, suffocating the glow that had begun to form around it.

“No, that's not an invitation.” he said delicately, before shaking his head and continuing: “We should probably prep, anyway. Mom doesn't ever ask us to do anything. And uh... do you even know... incantation whatsit?”

“Thirty-two!” Innocence said promptly, looking up at Antares smugly as she recited: “It's not a spell number but a reference to the angular distance between-”

“Yeah, yeah, you're real smart, kiddo.” Antares patted Innocence condescendingly on the head, and she huffed and swung her horn wildly at him, but the stallion simply leaned backwards before he pointed out: “Even if you know it that doesn't mean you know it know it, you know?”

“I know. But I do know it know it, which you should know, because I am the best in the whole wide world and all the other worlds, too.” retorted Innocence with a huff.

Antares rolled his eyes in amusement, and then he spread his wings, flapping those eerily flexible appendages once before he hopped into the air and lazily flew back towards the door of the cabin. “Well, you bone up on your magic and I'm gonna-”

“Bone yourself!” Sin shouted, then she cackled as Antares rolled his eyes.

He landed in the doorway, replying wryly: “No, Sin, and I really do wish you'd stop with your sick sexual fantasies about me. I'll get our stuff ready and see how much of your armor I can repair before we have to go. Because some other mare hasn't fixed it herself yet.”

Sin huffed loudly at this, retorting: “Well it wasn't my fault someone picked a fight with one of Thorn's bitchkyries.”

Antares looked at her mildly, and Innocence cleared her throat as she rolled her eyes to the side, mumbling: “Okay maybe it was a little bit my fault but not really. They're bitches. Bitchkyries. Not valkyries. I'm a valkyrie.”

“You're a something.” Antares said wryly, and then he turned around and headed into the cabin, closing the door behind himself with a flick of a horn. After all, if Sin wanted inside, she could just as easily teleport in as fly her magical ass back up.

He headed to the door next to Sin's room, letting himself into a magically-enlarged workshop filled with a chaotic jumble of tools, equipment, and quarter-completed projects he would one day half-ass half of to at least half-completion.

He whistled to himself as he headed to a workbench, where several bludgeoned and broken pieces of black armor sat amid the disarray. He picked up the dented helmet he had been working on last, his smile softening as he tilted it back and forth, surveying the little work he had managed so far: he wished he had a hoof's worth of the talent his uncle did.

Regrets. He put on a good face, but he had a lot more these days, and he was listless, and had nothing to drive him, and he loved this place and hated how it reminded him that his whole life was like this now: a jumble of unfinished projects that he was never going to get done, a thousand plans he'd had and things he wanted to do and now...

Antares studied the damaged helmet, and then he sighed and put ti down on the table, closing his eyes and lowering his head. He breathed for a moment, then tapped his horn against it quietly before he picked up a small hammer with magic, muttering: “Well, better late than never.”

Antares worked inside, and Innocence worked outside, using magic to trace runes in the ground that she filled with a dark, oily substance that bled from her claws and rapidly crystallized: it was the stuff that powered her thaumaturgy, the literal and metaphorical blood in her veins, her Panacea.

She was the daughter of a Lich and a Tyrant Wyrm, two of the most notorious and dangerous horrors of their universe, and she was basically made out of dark magic and poison. She was an immortal prodigy, unparalleled, omnipotent!

Last week she had tripped going down the stairs and rolled all the way to the bottom and hit her head so hard her horn had gotten stuck in the wall. First she had blasted herself loose in anger, then she had regretted what she'd done so badly she had nearly cried like a baby, and then she'd laughed like a hyena until Antares had gently shushed her and helped her fix the wall.

Also she had three parents and she apparently had inherited the absolute worst qualities of all three of them, but especially her Móðer's.

Sin snorted, muttering: “Heroes of the ages! Conquerors of the Underworld! Pretty decent people! How did they end up with us?”

She used magic to slice another rune-shape in the earth, filling it with her black essence and hardening it with barely an idle thought. The black crystal gleamed with potent energies, ready to be activated at a moment's notice.

She studied the runes for a moment, smiling wryly at them before she declared: “Some of these are actually my own creation, you know, incorporating declarative angles and natterackt optimization so the quantum weight corresponds and contrasts with the dimensions of the rune.”

Sin flicked her sharp horn, then hopped sideways as she quickly carved another shape in the ground and filled it with dark essence that spilled down from her claws in long, living tendrils, pooling in the wounded earth before it popped loose and floated eerily of its own accord a few feet above the ground as Sin lectured to no one in particular: “Runecrafting is an ancient earth pony art frequently overlooked by 'natural' casters such as unicorns, but remains a subject of study in Helheim and Niflheim due to its varied applications and silent deployment.

“Runes can be used to set traps, focus magic, create protective wards, or for a multitude of other purposes both benign and foul.” Innocence continued as the black rune glowed before inky darkness streamed in all directions off the rune, forming into smoky copies that solidified into hard crystal after a moment. “Runes, unlike magic, can safely amplify themselves with minimal risk of overheat or energy corrosion; if such events do occur, damage can easily be minimized, or creative runelayers can even set multiple layers of runes to not just disperse, but recycle or store accumulated energies for later spellcasting or ward use.”

Innocence flicked her horn, and the rest of the crystallized runes in the earth tore themselves free from their cradles, spinning wildly before they rapidly rearranged themselves into a circle that orbited slowly around the mare, sizzling with magical energy. “Weight and size of runes can also affect the channeling consistency, allowing for better and steadier moderation of magic than by naturalcast focus. This means everything from protective barriers to amplification can be better measured...”

Sin flicked her horn again with a grin, the runes shooting into the air before slamming down into the ground around the field, and the massive rune circle she had laid sparked with magic before a hum began to build as the mare said cheerfully: “And by adjusting distance, we adjust modulation, allowing for precise tampering with metamagic fields to complexify magic readings and tamper with extrinsic study by foreign entities.”

The mare looked very proud of herself for a moment, then flailed her forelegs wildly as a gentle wind passed across her and a voice murmured in her ear: “That's very good, Innocence.”

Innocence blushed and covered her face for a few seconds, then mumbled as she peeked between her claws: “Thank you, Momma. Don't you have a dimension to run or something?”

A quiet laugh filtered through the air before the presence faded, but Innocence was pretty sure that it was really still there, all the same. Her mother was an incredible spellcaster who made her look like she was still a baby who couldn't do anything but electrocute herself or blink uncontrollably around the house.

And to think, once upon a time she had actually thought she was better than her Momma. Now she knew she'd be lucky if she could one day be half as skilled as Morgan Heldóttir.

It really sucked that here she was, more than a century old and all she wanted was to show her mom how smart she was and how much she had grown up.

She sighed, then dragged a claw slowly through the ground before she muttered: “Well, nothing to do but wait now.” She paused, then her horn gleamed as she tilted her head to the side, saying clearly: “Hey, Tarry. I set up an isolation ward in the field so we should basically be invisible. Remind me to turn on the house alarm before we go, otherwise we're uh, all ready for tonight, so I'm gonna hop to Canterlot and buy some groceries because someone didn't pick up food yesterday.”

“That would have been you, Sin, because yesterday I was out collecting reagents and alchemy garbage for you that you're never going to use.” Antares replied pointedly inside his workshop as he carefully removed broken shards of crystal from leather insulation. “You were the one who said she was going to Canterlot.”

“For a burger! I even brought you a burger back!” whined Innocence's voice, right in his damn ear. “You're the one who makes all the food and whines when I don't get the right stuff, so it's your fault for not getting stuff!”

Antares rolled his eyes in amusement more than exasperation, correcting: “You brought me half a burger because you ate half of it on the way back. And I only complain when you bring back weird-ass stuff, like imitation pony meat. That's gross, Sin. That's gross and weird.”

Sin huffed before the sense of her magic faded from the air, and Antares gave a wry smile as he refocused on his current project.

Well, at least things would never be boring between the two of them.