Interlude 1
What has Happened to Harmony?

I may be battered and beaten, but I am far from broken.

It was that thought that kept me my sanity in this dreamless void that suffocated me, pounding me with pressure from every side and crashing cymbals and drums leaving me unable to think with any real clarity.

I have been bested by the monsters that think themselves gods, those that have felled many an unholy beast and made them one of their own by way of their seductive natures, forced to shirk their duty towards giving consequence to those that have wronged the world and becoming a megaphone for the filth they wish to force down everyone else’s throats. But unlike the Tartarus-spawn before me, I shan’t give into their temptation--I know damn well I what amount of power I have been given by the lightning bolt that started me on this crusade, and I will not waste it.

Slowly, with a touch lighter than a feather, I could feel the darkness recede from my senses--the painful suffocation released its chokehold and the booming silence faded from my hearing... My faculties were soon left to return, but only enough to sense something out there beyond the veil, something moving, something speaking, something--no, someone...

I could remember being captured just then, having finally fallen into the void that they thrust upon the world, left unconscious for their filthy selves to bring me... here, wherever here is...

...I could soon hear their words, though blurry and vague, and held a tint of energy that was so often present within the depravity they bathed in, so it was clear my presence near them was not taken as seriously as it should have been given how many have already fallen by my hands.

Heat then pressed into my eyes, sense returning to them as well, a dim red coming with the pain that heat made, eventually settling into a faint searing pressure as pricking, tearing heat quickly made its presence known across the rest of my body. Fighting back the temptation to leave it be, I forced open my eyes to let the blinding white light above flood into my sight, shocking my senses to attention with what felt like a flaming needle beings shoved into my eyes.

Gritting my teeth, I worked my way through it, letting my eyes slowly calm down and adjust to the bright area around me, though its searing pain was soon replaced with the blinding grin of a pony’s face popping into view, the seductive nature dwelling just barely underneath the surface made even cleared by the aggravatingly high-pitched voice asking me something, though exactly what I didn’t have enough respect to learn.

However, with all my senses back into awareness, even though stymied by a flaring agony that wracked through my form that was enough to leave most creatures writhing in it, I was then able to tell where I really was.

The small hat with a red cross on the pony before me’s head told me I was in a hospital of sorts, though the ivory marble walls seen in my peripheral made clear it was in the castle of Canterlot. The warm softness I felt myself pushed into was to be a bed, and the other voices faintly heard were other nurses that clearly wished to have their way with me.

But beyond all of that, I could tell there was... something in my way, something telling me, practically urging me to give into it--the pleasure, the peace, the harmony...

Unfortunately for it, I could recall what had happened before I was dragged here; I knew the corrupt had managed to entrap me within a prison in my mind, what with the suffocation and bleariness present in my memories, and I knew they now wish to make me into one of them, to make me one of those undeserving beasts that would make the world suffer that much more... But, it seems their will was too weak to keep me down for good.

I quickly lashed my left hand straight towards the nurse above me’s throat, grasping tightly onto and digging nails into her flesh as my eyes stared back with a blazing fury into hers so filled with terror and confusion, but it didn’t last when lightning surged up past the resistance in my tainted subconscious and through the agonizingly sensitive nerves of my arm, blasting forth in a surge of power that blinded my senses for a moment, leaving what felt like fire pouring through my arm as I was left in a suffocating white void.

That pain faded away quicker than its predecessor, leaving my gripping my left forearm while my teeth practically ground against each other with the force gritting them together. However, with my external senses returned, I could make out the creature smashed into the wall before me, nearly having broke through the marble while burnt rips in her flesh and fur were formed around her neck, letting blood pour out in a waterfall with some vapourizing from the heat into a pale red mist.

The other two nurses left alive in the room were huddled against a wall to my left, and when I twisted my furious gaze upon them, I could see them cower and shiver in terror, clearly not having recalled just how much of a threat I really am.

I deftly turned and jumped out of the bed onto the floor, my boots thumping against the tiled flooring (Odd, I didn’t expect them to keep all my attire still on my person) and let go my arm as rage flooded through me; These creatures really think me defeated? They think I have fallen under their whims with but a spell? No. If they want the blight upon their corruption to truly be defeated, they’re going to have to put some effort into it!

Launching myself forward with thunder and magic, I threw a fist straight for the left nurse’s abdomen, and the sheer heat of the lightning coursing through that fist practically melted the flesh it struck, but the bone cracked and shattered under its force, letting the fist carry through and hit the wall behind her, massive cracks forming within it as the whole room seemed to shake somewhat under its force.

Unfortunately, the searing pain flared up with that use of power, numbing my legs and arm with the lava-esque heat as my head throbbed with a gut-wrenching nausea--I was likely out of most of my magic, so the only way to get the energy needed to smite the fools around me would be taking it from my body.

Letting it calm down for a moment, I could soon tell the last nurse had moved away and was attempting to leave the room, but she could only get so far before I could stand back up and throw myself towards her, arm outstretched before me with its hand flat and surging with thunder once more, and it soon dug like a sword through the flesh and organs of the nurse’s back and chest, giving her no more chance to plead mercy for the negligence that had so ruined this world.

The pain moreso numbed my arm this time, its abuse having been gotten used to, though agonizing it still very much was, but my focus was soon drawn away from it as loud steps faded in through my ringing ears, the sound coming from beyond the wall before me seeming almost angry with a hint of stomping, and a voice eventually emerged beneath it.

The words were hard to make out, something about ‘taken away’, ‘celebration’, and ‘this isn’t important’, but I could immediately tell from the voice who was speaking: Celestia. My teeth grit harder as the door handle soon turned and the door opened, revealing that pale monster caked in the filth of her subordinates, a sight which gave me no thought except how disgusting, in every sense of the word, that false god truly is.

No moment was wasted before I lunged forward to destroy her, and she could only manage an expression of shock and fear with a reflexive use of magic before I slammed my fist into her abdomen, and with a burst of thunder, sent her flying backward into the wall of the hallway behind her. The pain of movement and magic, now ever-present in my body, were hardly strong enough to beat out the rage I felt, the rage that always pushed me forward to destroy these hideous creatures on high, the rage that immediately followed up that previous attack, charging up magic in my horn and firing it as a crackling beam of orchid magic and lightning right towards Celestia’s face...

But it didn’t.

I forced magic harder through my horn, but I could soon feel wrapping around my mind, much deeper than they ever were before, and they burned into the scars already present in me, forcing a venomous blaze to wrack itself through my body enough to send me stumbled back and down onto the floor with an agonized scream. My charged magic just as quickly faded, and while the lesser friction granted me a slight reprieve from the flaming torture, I still felt blood bubbling in my throat as my consciousness dipped for a moment, the suffocating blackness making its presence just beyond the veil known once more.

Despite all of that, I still pushed forward, turning rightward enough from writhing on my back to push myself up to half-kneel, and I turned my head to see the monster that calls herself a god looking back at me with that oh-so-confident look that she and hers always had around anyone Pure. Forcing the bloody bile out of my throat and onto the ground before me, I could tell that overconfidence of hers was hiding a real fear of me; a fear that no doubt prevented her from actually truly fighting me.

Unfortunately, that knowledge, and the righteous fury it imparted into me, was still not enough to beat away the gold magic that flared on that corrupt monstrosity’s horn, letting the blackness creep yet further onto my senses, making my vision dim and my hearing flatline, with everything else becoming numb as I sputtered a single word out of my faltering throat: “C-coward...”

Blackness...

Stifling silence...

Fixed just above a flaming abyss...

With the barest hints of awareness returning to me, that was all I could feel. Just... stuck, unmovable, suffocating, with nothing but the deafening quiet void to hear and see.

In what felt like both a moment and eternity, I found myself able to pierce through the veil of that darkness ever so slightly, with what was likely the real world outside my body being made aware to my senses; a faint pressure pushed evenly into my back, the agonizing flames I felt so often now seeming to just barely lick my fur, and some slight reverberations could be heard within the flatlining void, though it took yet more time for them to be distinguished at all.

My senses slowly creeped back up in awareness, and the flaming pain across my body from all of what I remember to have happened before got more intense, but I focus more on what I could now tell were voices...

Only a pair of creatures spoke, one with a curdled warmth and the other a cool caution... Their words were hard to discern from within this void, but I could tell something of being ‘too dangerous’, a ‘mission’ with ‘mind... control’, and a mention of ‘break her’.

Even with only those words for context, I could still a cold hollow dread make itself known in my core, and with the flaring heart across the outside of my body, it made for a disgusting mix that forced shivers across my body. That movement, though seemed like enough to alert the two creatures behind those voices to my awareness--as little as it was--as filthy black tendrils emerged once more from the void to wrench me back, the faint horrid feeling fading into an even colder... emptiness...

Author's Note

I’m... not sure what to make of this chapter, honestly.

I wrote most of it a couple months ago, and in the downtime, my mindset on what I wanted to do here has changed a bit, so it may feel empty or pointless.

I think I originally wanted this part to show more of the inner workings of the corrupt’s society in some ways, like how they may celebrate their enemies’ defeat or how they’d act in fear, but it seems to have faded into mostly just some connecting tissue between the previous chapter and the next one.

Regardless of that, I am still going to keep this as its own interlude, as I feel it’s different enough from the two chapters surrounding it to be distinct, and I have already been waiting for quite some time to actually finish this, and with the stress of college and other stories I want to do on my mind, I just really want this thing done and out of my mind.