“Sunset?”

A warm hand settles on my arm and shakes me gently, and I take a half-hearted swat at it as I roll over under the covers. The sun is streaming in from the windows, and it’s warming me up enough that I have no desire whatsoever to excavate my lazy ass from the fortress of comfort I’ve nestled into over the cold night. Maybe it’s early, maybe it’s late, what I do know is that I’m not done sleeping.

“Sunset, come on, you have work in a couple of hours and you need to eat something.”

I take a deep breath, and the scent of storm rain fills my nostrils, along with something undefinably floral.

“Mmm… no.”

A soft huff comes from beside me that turns into a gentle chuckle. I know that voice. Don’t I? I should. Every bone in my body tells me that I know that voice and that its owner is achingly dear to me, but I don’t know why.

Why? Why don’t I know?

I frown into my pillows, then shift and turn in bed as I push myself up on my elbows and shake my head. Something is wrong. My mind is foggy.

A hand settles on over mine and traces across my fingers. Pale, amber fingers. Not silver. Right? Why would they be silver? Who has silver fingers? The hand is a delicate shade of green, and I follow the hand up to its owner.

“Good morning,” Wallflower says quietly.

I rub at my eyes and look around. Our apartment is just how I remember it. Or at least I think so. The bed is situated in a raised loft, and the apartment below is small but cozy, with a den and kitchenette adjoining one another. We’ve been living here for… how long?

A while, I think.

Wallflower is wearing a sweater to ward off the perpetual cold of Canterlot that seeps into most apartments where the heating isn’t good, and the heating isn’t great in this place. I shiver. It smells like snow… snow, and woodsmoke.

“Did I fall asleep?” I ask groggily.

“For a little while.”

I furrow my brow as I look up at her. At her soft, oak-brown eyes, and those chaotic little curls of morning-glory green hair. There’s something about her that feels so nostalgic that it hurts. Something in the tilt of her smile, and how it dimples her cheeks, making the scatter of pretty freckles more prominent.

Wallflower cards her fingers through my hair and I shudder at the way her touch feels against my skin; cool and careful, like she’s afraid of hurting me. How long has it been since someone’s been worried about hurting me? How long since anyone has been gentle?

A sob wracks my chest as I curl up on the bed, pain shooting through my limbs as the noise escapes with tears on its heels, and I put my back to the beautiful girl beside me. Wallflower’s hand settles on my shoulder and I can feel the worry in the tension of her palm.

“Sunset?!”

“S’not real,” I sob. “It’s not… none of this is real.”

Wallflower relaxes her grip slowly, but she doesn’t let go.

“It could be,” she says quietly. “What are dreams but the reality we want most?”

A bitter laugh bubbles out of me like tar up from an open pit, and it burns in my throat like bile as I curl in on myself. Dreams? Reality? No, I don’t have any more dreams left.

“I don’t get to have dreams after the things I’ve done,” I hiss, still staring away from her, away from the source of that painfully nostalgic voice. “I’m a monster, and all monsters have left are nightmares.”

This isn’t real. It’s just a dream. It has to be. I don’t know how I got here or when or why, but it’s not real. I remember cold snow and smoke. I remember Ormond. I remember blood and thunder and screams. I remember…

Warmth presses against my back as Wallflower lies down beside me, wraps her arms around my middle, and hugs me close.

“Even monsters dream of sunshine sometimes,” she whispers.

“No…” I mumble around a mouthful of sobs and salty tears. It takes a titanic force of will not to lay my hands over hers where they’re resting on my abdomen.

She hugs me all the tighter, undeterred by my refusal.

“Stay here,” she whispers. “Stay with m—”

The rest of her voice cuts off like a faulty recording, and the world around me shudders violently. The small apartment shakes and heaves, and pain spikes through my gut, choking my breath out of my lungs and filling my veins with ice.

I look down at myself, and at the slowly spreading pool of red spilling out from me to stain my shirt and the mattress.

I’m bleeding.

I’ve been… stabbed? Is that what happened?

What’s going on?

Something jerks painfully in my gut, and I double over with a pitiful moan, hacking and coughing as someone twists an invisible knife. I’m bleeding. I’m dying. I’m going to—

Black, ichorous blood spills from between my sharp teeth and thin, chapped lips as I spasm back to consciousness. A powerful grip anchors me to the ground, pinning me to the floor as I jerk like a stuck pig, make soundless wheezes as I try to drag breath into my abused lungs.

“Stay still,” a familiar, crackling voice says.

My vision resolves on a shadowed figure looming over me with a face like a screaming ghost. One hand is gripping my shoulder and keeping me in place, while the other… I look down in time to see them pulling the tip of their knife from my gut. It couldn’t have been more than a knick, but I feel like I just got run through with a fire poker.

“W-What happened?” I gasp out as I look around.

And I take in the devastation of Ormond.

Whole sections of the Lodge are ripped free of the bonds of gravity, floating here and there with Fog wrapping around them like chains. My friends; Aria, Sour, Starlight, and Adagio… they’re all lying unconscious, sprawled out with dull, glassy expressions, and the barest effort of my power tells me they’re all locked in their own separate dream. There’s no sign of the Legion, but where they had been is a collapsed section of the Lodge.

Hopefully, they’re under there somewhere.

“Your power went haywire,” Ghostface says pointedly as they stand and extend a hand. I accept the proffered limb and let them pull me up—

—just in time for stars to explode across my vision as something heavy cracks across my face and sends me back onto the cold, filthy concrete.

“You bitch!” Rainbow Dash’s face is contorted with rage. “What the fuck did you do?!”

I spit a single, shark-like tooth out as I rub my jaw and sit up. Cradled in one of Rainbow’s arms is the grievously wounded Fluttershy, clinging to life only by dint of her newly-enhanced Survivor biology. Rainbow’s other hand has her cane in a white-knuckled grip as she advances on me with murder in her eyes.

“Enough.”

There’s no movement, just the sound of fabric shifting and an impression of shadows, and suddenly Ghostface is between us with their knife pressed to Rainbow’s jugular, the tip barely depressing her skin.

Rainbow’s eyes are lambent with gold fury, and she’s breathing hard as I stand, taking advantage of Ghostface’s intervention.

Instantly, my vision swims, and I stumble as I try to get to grips with my own head.

“I… I did what I had to,” I slur as I try to focus, but my vision keeps doubling over on itself. “I saved as much of her as I could.”

“If she dies,” Rainbow snarls, “I’m going to kill you.”

I scoff as I plant my feet and try not to revisit my last two meals. “Once all this is done with, you’re welcome to give it your best shot.”

“Go,” Ghostface says, “get her out of here.”

Rainbow’s left eye develops an alarming twitch, but she nods. Before she can get out, though, I put out a hand.

“Wait!” I say, then point to my huddled friends. “Take Aria with you!”

“Why should I?!” Rainbow snaps.

“Because, dumbass,” I retort, “she’s the best ED trauma surgeon in Canterlot, grab her and get to Canterlot General, now!”

To Rainbow’s credit, she looks a little abashed as she pulls away from Ghostface’s blade and runs to Aria’s side. I reach out and into Aria’s sleeping mind at the same time, and I pull the ripcord on her consciousness. Aria jerks awake, blinking away what I swear are tears for a brief moment before her gaze sharpens as she gets back to the present.

“C’mon, Doc, we’re outta here,” Rainbow says before Aria can protest, scooping her up with her other arm.

Aria squawks in alarm as she’s thrown bodily over Rainbow’s shoulder, and she kicks and thrashes.

“Let her take you!” I snap, and Aria zeroes in on me as Rainbow adjusts her grip. “We’ll be right behind you, Ari’, I promise.”

Aria opens and closes her mouth twice before finally biting her lip, nodding, and relaxing into Rainbow’s grasp.

“You’d better be, Red,” she says, as Rainbow settles her heels against the concrete in a sprinter’s start, drags in a ragged breath, then shifts and twists.

Rainbow’s body bulges and malforms grotesquely, the muscles in her arms and legs warping as the inborn serums of the Entity course through her veins, mutating her already powerful body into the form of a true, Fogborn Killer.

The Blight lets out a ragged shriek and pushes off, moving faster even than the Legion, albeit with far less control and grace. The Legion has something of the predator to them, while Blight is more like an out-of-control mack truck barrelling down the highway going eighty.

“Well, that’s two,” I say as I walk leadenly to my other friends.

Even Adagio is slumped over in repose, her Killer’s mind wrapped in the squall of the dreamstorm I unleashed when I blew through the Thief’s tethers on this Trial.

“What did you do to this place?” Ghostface asks as I move past them. “You broke whatever was keeping us out, but this is…”

I chuckle quietly as, all around us, Ormond heaves and shifts, with whole sections of the Lodge ripping torturously free from the earth only to sink back and rebind to it moments later. The snow falls only to reverse course back to the heavens, and above us, the sky roils with chaotic black clouds as Fog bleeds from the air itself.

Shooting Ghostface my best Discord-may-care smirk, I flourish my bladed fingers towards the chaos above us. “I took the holiest power in the known multiverse and used it to give the Thief the mother of all right hooks… now my turn, what did you do to me?”

I look pointedly at the knife in Ghostface’s hand, they follow the line of my gaze and raise the weapon, spinning it deftly on their palm before flipping it across the back of their hand and flicking it back into the sheathe hidden somewhere in the volume of their layered black clothing.

“You were saturated in your own power,” Ghostface explains with a shrug. “So, I used the Lesser Knife to bleed some of it out, that’s all.”

I reach into the minds of my three friends, pulling them from the precipice of the Dreamtime and back to the Real as I consider Ghostface’s words. Sour Sweet is the first to wake, looking sullen as she sits up and rubs at her face, Starlight follows a moment later, with Adagio stirring fitfully before finally pushing herself up from the concrete.

“Why’s it called the Lesser Knife if it can do something like that?” I ask, raising an eyebrow at them.

Ghostface’s blank expression betrays nothing for the moment it takes them to answer, and when they do it’s cryptic.

“Because it’s a reflection… a shadow of a greater knife.” Ghostface’s tone tells me that’s the end of that conversation.

Well, I’ll let it be the end for now. I’m not quite done, but this is neither the time nor the place.

“You two okay?” I ask as Sour stumbles over to her girlfriend and drops down beside Starlight, pulling her into her arms and burying her face in Starlight’s hair.

“Y-Yeah,” Starlight mumbles as she pats Sour’s shoulder. “Thanks for the save, Sunset.”

“Anything for you girls,” I say softly before turning back to Adagio.

Frankly speaking, she looks like shit. Her face is pallid and drawn beneath the half-mask, and the darkness of her Huntress’s eyes are clouded with flashes of berry red like she’s flickering between her two sides. That’s not good.

“You with me, ‘Dagi?” I ask cautiously.

“More or less,” she rasps. “If you’re taking requests, by the by… I’d appreciate it if you never do that again.”

“I’ll take your request under consideration,” I say with a faint smirk that falls away a moment later as Adagio sags. “Seriously, though… are you okay?”

She shakes her head wordlessly. I’m not surprised, but it’s still a kick in the shins. I never wanted to hurt my friends or family, and I knew what I was doing was a gamble; wielding pure hope like that isn’t something a being like me was ever meant to be able to do. That’s the purview of my maker. Sure, I stole a few sips of hope to power a couple of spells back in the Trials, but comparing this to that is like comparing drowning in a flash flood to taking a drink of water. There was bound to be some blowback and, per usual, the people I care about most got caught in it.

“Can you get Sour and Starlight out of the Trial?" I ask.

“Will the Thief let us?” Adagio asks, fixing me with a look that’s disturbingly disjointed. One of her eyes is the pure black of her Huntress aspect, while the other is the bright shadow of raspberry I recognise as my sister’s eye.

I ignore it. No time to dwell on that for now.

“They don’t get a say,” I reply, then gesture around us. “This is no-man’s land now, the Thief can’t control it anymore, that’s why Ghosty here—” I jerk a thumb back at Ghostface “—can get inside now. The downside is, I can’t control it either.”

“Someone is keeping it together,” Adagio says, nodding at a bit of wall that just tore off and which is now pulling back into place.

My smirk fades as the pile of rubble behind us shifts, then shudders, then rocks violently as half a ton of lumber and concrete lift weightlessly into the air. Parts of them dissolve into pure Fog which starts to disperse as three figures stand shakily from under the shadow of the ruined material.

The Fog sieves into the three fledgling Killers, and their presence swells with untapped power. I can almost feel their frenzy and need for violence from here.

Damn it all. I fucked up.

None of them should be strong enough to seize control of their Trial yet! They’re not even finished! Despite that, the Legion is holding the Ormond Trial together by sheer force of will.

And that’s when it hits me.

They’re a gestalt consciousness.

It didn’t default to one of them like it would with a normal Killer. Like it had with me when I severed the Old Stain’s anchors that served as its conduit to controlling my Trial. It defaulted to all three of them. They’re holding this frozen hell together by balancing it between their three minds, rebuilding pieces of the Trial as it falls apart by sharing the workload.

“Adagio, take Sour and Starlight and run,” I say quietly.

A shudder runs collectively through the Legion like a ripple across a lake. In a moment they’ll have shrugged off the last of my dreamstorm, and then we’ll really be in the shit.

“Sunset I’m not—” Adagio starts, but I cut her off.

“We both knew this might happen!” I snarl, shooting a venomous glare at her. “We knew this might be a sacrifice play! Survivors can’t navigate the Fog if it’s controlled by a Killer, so you need to take them and go!”

“Bullshit!” Sour Sweet snarls, but I cut her off with a glare before she can get going on a tirade.

Beside her, Adagio grits her teeth hard enough that I hear her jaw creak as she turns to look at the Legion who are jerking spasmodically as they hammer their way through my curse. Just being this close to them is like taking a deep breath of a toxic miasma. It feels like if we make a single move forward we’ll set them off.

“You had better survive,” Adagio snaps.

“Come back to us, Sunset,” Starlight says quietly. “Please.”

I try to give her a confident smirk over my shoulder, but it’s not in me. I can feel this whole marble of reality jerking and snapping as the Legion yokes it to their will.

“Sorry, Star,” I say, finally. “No promises.”

Adagio moves in, lunging forward to scoop both Sour and Starlight into her arms, the former going with the opposite of grace as she kicks and spits like an angry cat as Adagio drags them out of Ormond. Sour Sweet, always belligerent, always the first to jump to any of our defenses the moment someone looks at us crosswise. Starlight Glimmer, sharp, incisive; a prodigy that rivals me at my brightest if only she’d let herself believe it.

“You should go, too,” I say as I turn to face the Legion, claws out.

Ghostface moves to my side and palms their blade, the so-called ‘Lesser Knife’, and shakes their head.

I turn my head enough to get a good look at them, and not for the first time I wish they weren’t wearing that mask. It’s so hard to tell what they’re thinking, and I hate not being able to read people.

“You’ll die if I do,” Ghostface says in that toneless, modulated crackle.

“And?” I ask with a huffing laugh. “Who cares?”

At that, Ghostface makes a strange sound, almost like a sigh, and some tiny part of my mind wants to say it sounds familiar.

“I do,” Ghostface says finally.

The Legion has stopped twitching and are now standing in eerie silence, and I can feel how their bodies and minds have linked up fully now. Drenched in the Fog as they are, with full control of their Trial in their hands; if they aren’t fully-fledged Killers yet, they’re damn close.

Close enough as makes no difference.

“Why?” I ask quietly.

Ghostface doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, they run a finger across the flat of the Lesser Knife’s blade, and an odd flicker of green magic sparks across their gloved fingertip.

“I don’t know,” they say so softly that it barely comes out through the voice modulator.

“Well, time’s up anyhow,” I say, clashing my fingers as the Legion straightens with that unsettling synchronicity, “If we go down, tell the Old Stain I said ‘hello’.”

Ghostface flicks their knife over their hand in a stunning display of manual dexterity, and when they speak—even with their voice distorted by a modulator and their face hidden by a mask—I swear they’re smirking.

“Tell him yourself.”

I snort as the Legion steadies themselves and fixes their trifold gaze on the pair of us, and I swallow thickly as the cold wash of adrenaline rolls through me. I don’t know how much of Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle is really left in those three, but now…

“If we get out of this remind me to buy you a drink,” I say with a laugh.

“I don’t drink.”

“Dinner and a movie?”

Ghostface turns slowly to regard me with something very much like disbelief and I give them a shameless grin along with a waggle of my eyebrows.

“Guess you’ll flirt with everything,” they mutter.

I shrug. “Only if they’re cute or dangerous.”

Any other banter left to us is drowned out by three shrieks of rage as Legion bolts forward. Bloom, with her hunting knife, takes the lead, pulling ahead of her little pack while Sweetie and Scootaloo peel off on either side, circling us like starving wolves. Apple Bloom lunges, her blade flashing in the thin light of the Fog-stained ruin of Ormond.

For a moment, time slows, and I know it’s just the adrenaline. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a fight like this. Since I’ve bet it all on a single roll of the dice. The difference here is that last time, I did it alone. Everyone else; Adagio, Sonata, Starlight, Tempest, and Sour Sweet, even Rainbow and the brats… they were all pieces on the chessboard—cards in my hand that I was using to bluff the Old Stain into going all in.

Ghostface isn’t a piece or a card.

I have no control over them and honestly? It’s kind of refreshing.

They cut in front of me, moving like a metal shadow, flicking their blade out to catch and spoil Apple Bloom’s slash, turning the strike down and to the side. Bloom lets out a snarl of rage that’s cut off with the sound of snapping cartilage as Ghostface drives their knee hard up into the fledgling Killer’s diaphragm.

Behind them, Scootaloo and Sweetie wheel about, snapping their own makeshift weapons out as they try to circle and bolt in to take Ghostface in the back while Apple Bloom keeps their attention.

“Not likely!”

I spin around and press my back to Ghostface, weaving snapping jaws of Fog-forged silver with my claws, taking shallow cuts on my arms that refuse to seal up properly, but avoiding anything like a solid blow, and keeping them off Ghostface so I can let them deal with the Legion’s main conduit.

A strained grunt from Ghostface is my only warning, but it’s enough, and I brace myself as Apple Bloom leverages her enhanced strength to force Ghostface backward.

My ally collides hard with my back and I widen my stance, taking the force of the hit as I spit “up and over!” and drop down, bending at the waist and twisting, letting Ghostface roll over my back with the liquid motion of a practiced movement. Dragging my silver claws across the filthy concrete, we switch places. Ghostface swings over me boots first, landing two heels hard in Scootaloo’s chest, center mass, and sending her flying back as I face Apple Bloom with a hard upward slash.

Legion tries to catch my attack but the angle is bad, and they’re still wrong-footed from losing their first target. Bloom lets out a feral bark as she takes the force of my claws across the length of her knife, but without time to plant her feet the force of my blow picks her up, bodily heaving her off of her feet and into the air.

“Welcome back to school!” I snarl as I expend a few drops of precious magic, flickering myself straight up in front of the Legion.

Staggered and rattled, it’s all Apple Bloom can do to bring her arms up and take five claws to the meat of her forearms. Blood splashes across the floor, turning the dirty snow and concrete crimson as I hammer Bloom to the ground.

She bounces like a dodgeball full of meat, with a wet smack, and I land as Ghostface is advancing on Sweetie Belle, slashing their blade in short, sharp strokes in front of the frenetic Killer’s face before snapping the blade back, twisting their body and landing the heel of their boot against Sweetie’s skull in a spinning heel kick, sending her almost flying, punch-drunk and reeling, backward to impact the far wall bonelessly.

“In front!” Ghostface snaps as they charge Sweetie, who’s scrambling to get to her feet.

I don’t know why, but I don’t hesitate. It’s never been like this before. Not with Aria, or Adagio, or anyone. It’s like Ghostface is in my head and I’m in theirs, and while normally that would bother me, with them it feels… natural.

So I don’t think. I just surge forward on Ghostface’s heels, paying out a little more of my dwindling reserves to flicker in front of them and drop to a skid on my knees just as Sweetie gets her feet under her and pulls her metal stake up and out.

I slash wide, not aiming for her but her weapon, and hiss when the needles and ragged edges cut the palm of my hand as I knock the ruler-stake wide just as I feel boots hit my back, then my shoulders. Ghostface mantles over me, shining knife raised high above their head with the point down in a vertical stab.

Their shadow falls over Sweetie Belle who looks up in mute shock for a moment—just a moment—just long enough for Ghostface to hit Sweetie hard, bearing her to the ground and driving the Lesser Knife hard into the center-point where all three pieces of her cracked mask meet, hammering through mask, meat, and bone, with a wooden thunk and nailing Sweetie to the ground.

Apple Bloom screams from across the room, her voice a shredded, ragged howl of hatred.

“Your memories are mine,” Ghostface hisses, and then pulls the blade out with visible effort, straining as they wrench the blade out.

Along with the unearthly metal come sparks and crackles of green light interspersed with concentrated streams of Fog as Ghostface drags the blade from Sweetie’s skull. It comes free with a snap of pressure and a dolorous peal of thunder, and the moment the last sliver of the blade is out, Sweetie spasms violently, every muscle in her body going rigid and tense, and a strangled cry comes keening straight from the depths of the half-breed Killer’s soul as a pillar of Fog and green lightning briefly arcs out of the puncture in her mask, striking Ghostface’s blade which they hold raised above their head in a conquerer’s fist.

“NO!”

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo charge us from opposite sides of the Lodge, weapons out and flashing in front of them as they barrel forward. In front of me, Apple Bloom closes the distance faster than I process, and it’s all I can do to fend off her feral frenzy of slashes. My back collides with Ghostface’s and we hold each other up as they weave a net of practiced knifework, keeping Scootaloo at bay while Apple Bloom cuts notches in my fingers.

“AH’M GONNA KILL YA!” Bloom shrieks.

“Get in line!”

I plant a heel straight back, past Ghostface’s legs, and let Apple Bloom knock one of my hands wide. I let her commit, and then overcommit, as I twist bodily against Ghostface’s back, looping my flailing arm around their torso, and slipping my leg between theirs.

“Cha~nge places!” I bellow, cackling gleefully as I wrench Ghostface tight against my back.

They go slack, letting me control them before tensing as I twist around in a full hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, avoiding the killing thrust of Apple Bloom’s knife, and delivering Ghostface straight at her from her blind side.

I hear the Lesser Knife land hard but I don’t get to see it as I let go and leg it forward at Scootaloo who scores a brutal cut across my face, drawing a straight, ragged line from my left cheek, over my nose, and out across my right cheek, narrowly missing ripping my eyes out as I lunge forward and drive my fingerblades hard into Scootaloo’s chest, staggering her back.

“Let’s try this dance again!” I hiss, and she jerks violently as I rip her waking mind into my dream world.

It’s harder this time but it staggers her and sends her reeling backward, clutching her head and screaming. Rather than follow through, I twist around, to face Apple Bloom.

“Hold her down!” Ghostface snarls.

They’ve got Apple Bloom, pinned, pissed, and thrashing beneath them, but barely, and with the Lesser Knife driven deep into Bloom’s shoulder, nailing her to the ground. I don’t question why they need the help, I just move, swapping places with Ghostface and sweeping my blades around to dig them deep into Apple Bloom’s flesh.

She convulses as I pour myself into her mind, digging claws and teeth into her fears and terrors and dragging her into the depths of my power as Ghostface rips their blade out.

“Hold her still,” Ghostface says as they stare straight down at Legion for a moment, holding stock still as they do.

“Uh, couldja hurry it up?” I say as I shoot a glance over my shoulder at Scootaloo who’s torn half a stone pillar to shreds in a manic fit of violence, but is clearly getting her faculties back.

Ghostface lets out a soft huff, almost like a laugh, and says: “found you.”

They reach past Apple Bloom’s hood and grip her by her scalp, wrench her head back, and ram their knife into the soft spot between the throat and the sternum.

“Give me everything!” Ghostface hisses.

Fog and emerald lightning arc out Apple Bloom as Ghostface digs the knife deep, twists it like they’re turning the tumblers in a padlock, then rips the blade free with a grunt of effort, dragging Fog, light, and emerald lightning from Apple Bloom on a peal of thunder that rocks the skies above us.

The fight goes out of Apple Bloom, and she goes slack in my arms a moment later. I lower her carefully to the ground. I don’t know what Ghostface did, and I’m not sure I like it, but I can feel Bloom’s heartbeat, thready but present in her chest, and despite what Ghostface did to Sweetie I can feel the faint flickers of her living mind present too.

They’re both alive and, frankly, that’s better than I’d hoped for.

Ragged breathing sounds from behind us, and I look up sharply at Scootaloo who’s standing, keyhole saw out at her side, and staring at the both of us with eerie stillness.

“Take her together?” Ghostface says as they turn to face the last of the Legion.

“Hold on,” I say softly as I stand and hold out a placating hand. “Scoots? Help me out here… is there anything left of you in there?”

She gave Rainbow Dash a hint. That’s the stand-out for me. It tells me she’s not on the same page as her patron, so I hope… but that was before I ripped Ormond apart and drowned these three in the Fog.

For a long, painful moment, I’m certain that the answer I’m going to get will just be another inchoate shriek and a blind charge.

I’m not gonna lie, if I can avoid that then I will because I’m not doing great. My face is bleeding freely, as are about two dozen shallow cuts across my arms and chest that refuse to clot. Ghostface is holding up a little more gracefully but isn’t in much better shape; their black robes and leathers do a good job of hiding it, but they’ve got some ragged cuts and broad stains across their body that speak of equally deep damage.

“Come on…” I say under my breath, “come on!”

Slowly, Scootaloo raises her free hand and presses it to the face of her mask. It’s like watching someone try to rip their own face off. She grips the mask tight and pulls, and a low, miserable moan spills out of her that turns into a roar of agony as she gives a hard yank, then another, and another, and on the final pull there’s a sound like a whole sheaf of paper being ripping in half as Scootaloo tears the mask from her face and throws it to the ground with a wooden clatter.

She looks like death.

“I knew it,” I say as I step past Ghostface.

Scootaloo meets my gaze with a glassy expression that flicks between us, then down to her friends, and a brief, achingly painful flicker of emotion crosses her features.

“Are they…?” She rasps, her voice raw from her howls and shrieks.

“Alive,” Ghostface says, their voice crackling, “and free of the Fog.”

They raise the Lesser Knife, and I can’t say why but somehow the blade seems more… more real than it did when I saw it before. I don’t like that, but at the same time, there isn’t much I can do about it. Ghostface is here to retrieve the Old Stain’s Fog, and if this is how Ghosty is going about collecting it, then so much the better.

Let them take as much of the damn stuff back where it belongs as they can.

“Good,” Scootaloo says after a moment, a smile ghosting across thin, chapped lips. “That’s… that’s good, y’know?”

“I’m not done,” Ghostface says.

“Hey!” I snarl, turning on them. “She’s—!”

“—a slave to the Thief,” Ghostface cuts me off. “Besides, her power belongs to Father.”

“It’s okay, Sunset, I knew it would be like this, or, y’know, something like this,” Scootaloo says, gesturing around her. “But I’m just… I’m so tired.”

The last words come out as a sob, and Scootaloo wraps her arms around herself as she slowly collapses to her knees like a mannequin losing its strings in slow motion. She takes several shuddering breaths as she looks up at us, her expression is twitchy and unsteady, and I can see her losing the fight with the Killer inside of her.

“Please,” Scootaloo begs, “just let me rest.”

My throat closes up at the sheer exhaustion and despair in Scootaloo’s voice, and I look over to Ghostface, silently asking the question I don’t quite have the stomach to put into words.

“Yeah,” Ghostface replies quietly, their modulator barely crackling. “The Lesser Knife will rip out the Fog, and she’ll die for good, there won’t be enough left to fuel her Survivor biology with all the punishment she took before she was ascended.”

“Please, Sunset,” Scootaloo cries. “Everything hurts all the time. Breathing hurts. Living hurts. Just… just fucking ‘being’ hurts! I can’t even remember what it was like when it didn’t hurt. I’m so tired, I just… I just wanna sleep… I just want to stop hurting.”

I swallow thickly. This shouldn’t be this hard. I hate them. Or I did. I should! Except… the way Scootaloo is begging. She didn’t deserve this. None of them did. I didn’t deserve to die like I did, just like none of them deserved any of this. It’s all shit, every last bit of it, and it’s my fault. Now, all I can do is let a little girl die so she can have a breath of peace.

Killer’s aren’t supposed to be able to cry. What a rip-off.

“Yeah,” I say finally. “Yeah, okay, just come here.”

I hold out my arms and Scootaloo stands and stumbles forward, her limbs only barely obeying her commands, until she collapses into my embrace. I wrap my arms around her, cradling her as I pull her hood back, letting her short, ragged, purple hair fall loose.

“It’ll be quiet soon,” I promise as I slowly kneel, and pull Scootaloo against me, letting her bury her face in my chest as I look up at Ghostface. “Just give me a second, okay?”

To my surprise, Ghostface just kneels beside the both of us and nods.

Dying again would be so much easier than this. So much easier than holding on to Scootaloo while she clutches at my collar and the edges of my jacket like a child trying to hold on to her mother. With as much care as I can with my hideous hands, I pull her into my lap, thread my bladed fingers through her hair, and start to sing.

“One, two, Sunny’s coming for you~”

I stroke her hair, rocking her back and forth as I hum and sing as gently as I can manage with my broken voice.

“Three, four, better lock your door~”

Scootaloo sobs in my arms as I pet her hair, and as my hand reaches the end of a long stroke, I press the tip of one finger to the base of her skull and puncture through with a single, smooth press.

“Five, six, grab your crucifix~”

She goes slack, relaxing in a wash of dreams as I force the fevered rage of the Legion into the rearmost quarters of her mind before looking up to Ghostface and nodding.

“Seven, eight, better stay up late~”

I sing the song as steadily as I can while Ghostface moves around us, wrapping a dark-clad arm around the both of us as they stare down across Scootaloo’s shivering frame. There’s a faint sensation of pressure being released, and this time I get a glimpse of something in the well of Ghostface’s dark eyes.

The barest glimmer of crimson light.

“Found you.”

They don’t hesitate, and I’m grateful for that. In the space of a breath, Ghostface positions the Lesser Knife just under Scootaloo’s heart and drives it home.

Scootaloo jerks violently. I grip tight, refusing to let her go out the way I did: cold, bitter, and so fucking alone. I hold her as she spasms—as Fog and emerald lightning spit and spark from her body. This time, Ghostface pulls the blade out carefully, tensing so hard that blood spills from the cuts on their body so they can remove the blade gently, until every inch of the Lesser Knife comes free.

Thunder bellows overhead.

“Nine… t-ten… never sleep again~”

Scootaloo goes fully slack this time. There’s nothing left inside of her. No flicker of a mind. No heartbeat. She’s so quiet.

“D-Damn it,” I mumble, pulling Scootaloo close and burying my face against her bloody chest.

A hand settles on my shoulder, and I look up, blinking away tears that fall like pitch to find Ghostface staring down at me. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it’s almost like they feel sorry for me.

“Let’s go,” they say quietly. “We can come back for the other two, but we need to leave her here. The body is toxic.”

My shoulders shake as a violent shudder runs through me. Even though I know, logically, that there’s nothing of Scootaloo left in the body I’m holding, abandoning her corpse up here just feels obscene.

“I’ll come back to bury her,” I say quietly as I lower her to the ground.

“Okay,” Ghostface says, surprising me again with their lack of argument. “I’ll come help.”

Despite myself, I smile as Ghostface gets an arm under me and pulls me to my feet. I hate that I actually kind of like them. I wish I knew who they used to be. I feel like, once upon a time, they might’ve been really kind.

Maybe we could have even been friends.

“Thank yo—”

The last syllable dies with the metallic rack of a lever-action rifle chambering a round, and I spin about, trying to find the source before they can fire. I spot them—the Deathslinger, crouched in the shadow of the eaves near the ruined entrance with their rifle raised—and the moment I lay eyes on the deadly Killer, I know I’m too late.

They have me dead to rights, and I’m too tired and too worn to summon enough magic to flicker on the fly.

Shit. I was so close.

“SUNSET!”

Ghostface’s modulated voice sparks and cracks with their scream as the Deathslinger pulls the trigger. The gunshot is deafening, a thunderous report that launches their brutal harpoon.

A hard impact crashes against my chest, and suddenly my vision is filled with black as something wet and viscous sprays me across the face.

“Got… you…” Ghostface breathes raggedly, gripping my shoulders where they’d found leverage to push me out of the way.

“W-What?” I mutter.

I look down a little, just below their mask, at the thick, heavy, barbed harpoon sticking a full hand’s-length out of their shoulder, right through where their heart would be if they were still human.

Author's Note

Success so clearly in view... or is it merely a trick of the light?

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