The Cursed Guardian

by SFaccountant

Rating: everyone
Tags: Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Adventure
Length: 4834

An unfortunately normal day in the life, and then death, and then life again of the mothling warrior Dust

In the far-flung lands around Equestria there are countless bizarre monsters, uncatalogued species, and unknown magics. Across the wastelands, hidden in the uncharted stretches of desert, rumors speak of a tribe of strange creatures, perhaps related to the changelings, but with features derived from an unusually specific insect lineage.

This is the tale of one such creature. Perhaps the only one remaining. His name is Dust, and he stalks the mountains in service to his long quest.

He just wishes he could remember what it was.

Published 2021-07-16 03:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2021-07-16 03:30:01 UTC

Dust to Dust

Author's Note

On a whim I decided to make an original character based on the mothling species created by Red Flux. Since I got a sketch of him and everything obviously he needed a story, so here it is :twilightblush:

Unsure if I'll use him again for anything, but since I wrote it I figured I might as well post it.

Dust to Dust

Pain.

The spear jabbed high, but it was just a feint. The real attack came from the talons. Long, curved hooks that punched through carapace with ease and sunk deep.

The glaive came back from the parry, but it was little help. There was no room. The enemy was above, its massive avian wings spread and its gleaming golden eyes sensing victory. Rich brown feathers drifted to the ground in slow motion alongside shredded moth fluff. A huge hooked beak, with an armor sheath on the point, dove in for the killing strike.

Pain.

Then darkness.

A small black orb sat in the battle-scarred clearing. The signs of furious combat were everywhere; tree branches had been sliced off, gouges from hoof and claw crossed the dirt, and one tree had been reduced to a charred spire. For now, though, it was still and empty.

The orb quivered.

It was about the size of a cantaloupe, with a shell of gleaming ebony. Its surface was marred; clearly something had tried to break it open or eat it, but then given up after testing its hardness. Mothling eggs were usually soft and supple things, and would be a staple of numerous beasts’ diets were they not carefully guarded. This egg was… different.

The orb cracked.

Shards of black plating came apart and tumbled to the ground as the creature within the egg emerged. The hatching didn’t look to be so much an act of conscious effort on the part of the infant; rather it seemed like it had rapidly grown too big for the egg and the shell had simply given way. It remained in the fetal position for several seconds, lying among the pieces of eggshell and blinking eyes that were solid black, with tiny points of white for pupils.

The young mothling uncurled itself. Thick and muscular (for a newborn, at any rate) equine legs pushed him upright. Four wings, moth-like with a powdery texture, spread from his back for a few experimental flaps. Sitting on the reborn mothling’s chest was a patch of fluffy white fur that matched his tail. His hair, however, was oily black. An emergent yawn revealed rows of sharp teeth, as well as a long tongue that snaked out and curled upward before slipping back into his mouth.

The newborn mothling stood in place sleepily for a while, staring at his surroundings. Aside from the damage to the terrain, he could see the remains of the duel’s loser. A large mothling skull sat in a pile of bloodstained ground. Other bones were scattered about, along with dark brown feathers. A glaive was stuck in the ground in the middle of the clearing, some ways away from his hatch site.

The mothling stared at the glaive. He remembered what happened. A falcon guarded this place. He had intruded. There had been a battle. A rather decisive battle. He had lost. He had died.

Why did he come here? What was “here?” Was he here to fight the guard, or was the guard protecting something more than its nesting place? What might be on this mountain, other than a swift and brutal death?

Who WAS he?

“……… Dust,” croaked the mothling.

Dust. His name was Dust. He was a warrior. A warrior for… somewhere. Or maybe somebody? He was a mothling. What are mothlings? Creatures that looked like Dust, presumably. Maybe he was a warrior for other mothlings, then. That sounded right. Were there other mothlings? Where?

“…… Thirsty,” Dust hissed. All questions and worries seemed to evaporate from his mind. WATER.

Dust broke into a trot, running toward the edge of the battlefield. The glaive – Dust’s polearm weapon that mounted four blades arranged like moths’ wings – lay in the middle of the clearing, ignored but not forgotten. The infant mothling was too small to wield it now anyway. Weapons later, water NOW.

“Water… Thirsty…” Dust’s breath heaved as his eyes darted back and forth, searching for relief. His legs, short but strong, scrambled over rocks and roots along the side of the mountain. He didn’t fly; his wings were still fragile after hatching, and he always felt more comfortable on the ground, anyway.

Or did he? Was he a good flyer once? Dust didn’t remember.

“Pond!” Dust shouted in excitement when he spotted a pool of water. It was rather small and surrounded by tall reeds. There was a tiny stream that trickled down from higher up the mountain, which apparently fed the water. There was no similar stream running further down, so the excess water was either absorbed entirely by the soil and the vegetation that grew from it, or leaked into a subterranean source within the mountain.

These facts came unbidden. Dust couldn’t say where he learned it. He couldn’t conjure any images of similar places in his head.

Dust reached the pond. A frog that was sitting near the edge quickly dove in to hide. The young mothling paid it no mind and stuck his muzzle in the water.

Dust’s jaw opened, sucking in water as fast as possible. His long, worm-like tongue extended into the pond, swishing back and forth just to soak itself thoroughly.

Minutes passed while he drank.

Dust felt a growing sense of alarm as he slurped up more and more water. The pond’s water level was sinking visibly now. It tasted divine, and Dust felt the sense of dogged urgency he felt before slowly ebb away. But he was still thirsty.

Dust kept drinking. The water level drained near the pond’s bottom, exposing the frog that had leapt into the water to hide from him. The amphibian watched the mothling helplessly, seemingly mesmerized at the sight of its home being rapidly swallowed up.

Dust panted as he finally drew his muzzle from the damp gravel at the bottom of the pond. His tongue grazed the rocks, leeching a few more precious drops from the stone, but it was inadequate. He lifted himself up from the damp hole in the ground.

He was still thirsty. The feeling wasn’t quite as urgent as before, but he had drunk at least three times his volume in water and he was still thirsty. How could that be?

“… The curse,” he hissed, his ghastly black eyes narrowing. The frog that had been staring at him suddenly jumped away, fleeing for its life.

Right. Magic. He had been cursed by magic. It was from… well, he didn’t remember. But it was definitely the reason he was so thirsty. He could drink and drink and drink until he fell unconscious from exhaustion, and he would never be satisfied. The craving would never go away.

Did the curse do something else, too?

Dust sat back on his haunches, staring down at his hooves. The curse DID have other effects, didn’t it? Like memory loss. The curse took his memories!

“… Also the dying and hatching again,” Dust decided after a few seconds of intense thought.

Yes. Sometimes he died. When that happened he was reborn. This was surprisingly generous for a curse, but it seemed that his memory was damaged during the process. He couldn’t remember where the curse came from. He couldn’t remember what the curse was called. He couldn’t remember if this is all it did. He couldn’t even remember if it really was a curse, or maybe some questionable bargain for immortality. Dust couldn’t remember where he was from, why he was here, or if he had someone waiting for him back wherever he had come from.

“… I’m tired,” the mothling warrior grumbled to himself. Celestia’s sun was sinking behind the mountain, and dusk was almost upon him. He was still thirsty, but the tiny trickle of water from the stream wasn’t worth trying to slurp up.

“… Celestia’s sun?” Dust mumbled. That thought had popped up so suddenly and automatically. Why was it called that? Was Celestia a person? Did he know her?

“I can’t remember anything… dying is so troublesome,” Dust groaned, walking away from the former watering hole.

His gait was heavier now. His body was starting to swell, and he could feel his carapace start to split around him. He would molt soon. Probably tomorrow morning. Then he would be restored entirely. Or nearly? Did the water restore him to his adult body, or was his thirst just a meaningless craving compelled by magical trickery?

With a groan, Dust laid down next to a tree and put his head down on a root.

When Dust awoke, he found himself lying on a bed of his own sheddings. Ruined skin, cottony fur, and a powdery film lay all around the mothling, and he slowly stood up to stretch his new body.

He was much bigger now; larger than most ponies. His wings were strong, his carapace had hardened into a layer of light armor, and his front hooves had cleft and developed a pair of sharp claws. His black hair had grown long and ran down the back of his neck. His jaw had also developed substantially, and a brief yawn revealed at least two dozen curved, razor-edged teeth.

“…… Thirsty,” Dust hissed. He turned around and walked back to the pond he had drained the previous day.

It was barely more than a puddle at this point, having replenished only slightly overnight, but he slurped it up anyway. Dust’s tongue emerged like an eel slipping out of a rock crevice and rolled along the pond’s bottom. The water vanished in seconds and Dust reeled his tongue back in.

“Still… thirsty…” he grumbled. Of course he was still thirsty. He would never stop being thirsty. That was the point of the curse, wasn’t it?

Dust pressed a hoof to his head, massaging it. True, he didn’t expect drinking more would help, but he had nothing better to do except serve the endless craving, did he? If there was anything more important he didn’t remember it.

He looked up at the tiny stream that fed the pond. It was barely more than a trickle. He could simply slurp up the droplets here, for as long as he desired, but that seemed like it would be more frustrating than refreshing. Besides, the water had to come from a much greater source.

With his tongue sliding greedily across his lips, Dust began running up the mountainside.

The path had been difficult, but hardly insurmountable. Mothlings had excellent climbing legs, could adhere to sufficiently rough surfaces, and – when all means of contact locomotion proved too cumbersome – could just fly. Dust flew as little as possible as he ascended the mountainside, crawling over crags and occasionally stopping to drink from the stream running beside him in the opposite direction.

In part, it was simple energy conservation. Dust was heavy for a mothling and his wings were best for hovering rather than building altitude. But there was a more crucial reason.

A predatory shriek came from high above, echoing down the mountain.

Dust dove for a tree, pressing his body up against the trunk. His ears twitched, and his ghastly eyes scanned back and forth.

A shadow sped across the ground, shaped vaguely like an arrowhead.

Dust didn’t move for several minutes even after the shadow had vanished, concentrating fully on listening. Falcons had excellent eyesight. They were not, however, exceptionally stealthy creatures. If he had been spotted he would probably hear it in time to dodge; if he left the cover of the tree to search the sky, he would probably just get spotted.

When Dust dared move again, he crawled closer to the crags. His horn glimmered softly, and the powder over his wings changed color. They now matched the weather-worn granite, along with a few veins of moss. It was a rather crude illusion, and the bulk of the mothling was still highly visible against the stone, but it might be enough to get an attacker from above to hesitate.

Dust checked the stream again. It was moving quite a lot of water at this point, splashing across the rocks and curving down the mountain. It was nearly as wide as he was long and deep enough to submerge one leg up to the knee.

Dust felt his thirst rise at the sight of the crystal-clear water splashing across the rocks beside him, but he resisted. This space was too exposed. Besides, the source was close. The air was already starting to chill, and it wasn’t much higher until ice and snow clung to the stone.

Dust scrambled up the rocks next to the stream, his wings spread protectively. Then he saw it: a crevasse in the stone where the stream emerged from. It was fairly small, but large enough for him to squeeze through. Not big enough for a certain avian hunter to get through.

Dust leapt into the stream, slurping up water as he pushed up into the breach leading into the mountain. Soon his body had plugged up enough of the space that the water rose to fill up the path completely and cut off his air, but the mothling warrior was undeterred. He pushed and he squirmed and he drank, gulping down water until his lungs began to burn.

Finally, Dust squeezed through the other side and surfaced. He gasped painfully, flapping and flailing while he filled his lungs with air.

Then, once he could breath again, he sunk his head under the water and started drinking again.

It took almost twenty minutes of greedy drinking before Dust finally thought to check his surroundings more carefully. He was in some kind of mountain oasis, it looked like. Snowmelt trickled down from several points on the wall, feeding the pool he was in as well as several ivy growths along the rocks. There was a wide opening in the stone above, and sunlight poured into the center of the oasis to provide light.

In the middle of that light, sticking up out of the water, was a willow tree.

Aside from its rather curious location, the only thing that seemed unusual about the tree was a gleaming object sitting in the middle of a large, twisted knot on its trunk. The glint of sunlight on its surface immediately entranced Dust, and he spent only five more minutes drinking the oasis waters before he finally moved to investigate.

Dust climbed up onto a rock and then jumped, hovering over the water and over to the tree. He landed on an arching root, and then peered closely at the shiny object.

It was an amber gem. Nearly the size of an apple and with an egg shape, it looked to have been exquisitely carved rather than being a natural growth that had come from the tree. There was something trapped inside, at its core, with an irregular shape and a dark color, but Dust couldn’t make out what it was. The object had a distinct whiff of magic about it; he couldn’t literally smell magic, of course, but this arrangement summoned distant, disjointed fragments of memory to the fore of his thoughts. Numerous glittering treasures were hidden away in serene spaces…

And guarded by ferocious protectors.

Dust moved as soon as he heard the rush of air above him. He slammed a hoof into the tree’s trunk and jumped away, his wings carrying him clear just before a spear lanced through the space his head had been.

The guardian of this mountain spring was a huge falcon. With talons like scythes and a wingspan perhaps five times as wide as Dust was long, the bird of prey was a natural killer. Nonetheless, it also carried a spear in its talons, and used it with an efficiency that suggested strict martial training.

Dust landed on a rock, facing the raptor. The falcon recovered from its lunge and whirled about. Its eyes narrowed, shifting from intense concentration to startled recognition to suspicion in rapid sequence.

“Wait, aren’t you-“ the falcon mumbled. Dust found its voice distinctly feminine, something he didn’t recall from his previous unsuccessful challenge.

He didn’t give it much more thought, launching forward with his front claws aimed for the guardian’s head.

The falcon recoiled, pushing her wings forward to blast the mothling with a rush of air. Dust caught the full rush of wind in his wings, immediately lurching backward and flying over the surface of the spring. He twisted about, spotted the crevice he had entered from, and then dove into the water.

The guardian screeched, her battle cry booming across the spring and echoing up to the mountaintop. She launched herself after Dust as he dove into the breach in the rock wall, and she tilted her spear to chase the intruder. Its point struck something within the crevasse, and she pulled back.

She raised one leg to observe her weapon, its wooden shaft riddled with cuts and grooves from her talons. The spearhead was gleaming, silvery metal, and the polished diamond-shaped point was only barely painted with fresh blood. A grazing wound. Useless.

The falcon twitched her head toward the tree. The amber gem was still there, glittering in the sunlight filtering down through the hole above. The thief had not taken it. Not yet.

“… He’s the same as before. The same type, maybe? Did they send another one?” she growled to herself, taking to the air. “… No. It’s the same. The exact same creature. How?”

She flew upwards, her mighty wings carrying her out of the mountain and into the open sky.

Dust sprinted across the ground, his wings held tight against his back. He had been discovered now. There was no more time to recover his strength or memories. Now came the duel once again.

He leapt from a rock crag, and his wings fluttered briefly to carry him to another. He raced down the rock face on the other side, down toward a familiar ring of trees.

So few familiar places to someone with his memory. But the places where he died always had a way of sticking with him in a way other thoughts did not. A cruel reminder of his failures, perhaps, while his victories blurred into a fog.

The falcon’s scream came from above. He’d been spotted again. Dust risked a glance behind him and saw the raptor had already caught up with him. She was descending, but not diving. Wasn’t she going to attack?

He got his answer when she suddenly rolled in the air with a keening shriek. Waves of pressurized air sliced down after the mothling warrior, chasing him across the ground. They slashed branches from trees, carved divots into the earth, and even rock shuddered where they landed. One such wave crossed Dust’s path, and he reared up as the ground exploded in front of him. Then he was off again, racing through the clearing toward the thing he had left behind.

Dust’s glaive still stood here, its blades wedged into the ground next to his scattered remains. He trampled his own skull before seizing it; the bones crumbled from the impact, as if they were made from packed sand. Dust paid it no mind, taking the glaive’s haft with the claws on his front hooves.

A few flickers of memory came when he took up the polearm again. Images of another mothling, rust-red, with the livery of a king. A leader? An associate? A victim?

Dust brushed the thought aside and swung around. The falcon roosted on the branch of a tree across the clearing, her spear held loosely in one wing. She stared at Dust, and then her gaze lowered ever-so-slightly to the detritus that remained of Dust’s corpse.

“I’ve never had to kill someone twice before,” she said solemnly. “I feel like we should make introductions before we continue. Who knows; I may have to kill you a third time, and it would be nice to know why.”

The falcon’s back and wings were a rich brown with stripes of black. Her chest was a much lighter cream shade. Around her neck she wore a necklace decorated with fangs, beads, and other such charms, and she also had leather bracers on her lower legs. A sheathe of iron was secured to the upper hook of her beak, with a point that looked sharp and sturdy enough to cleave rock.

“I am Nikkita, guardian of Altos. Who are you, changeling?” the raptor demanded.

“I am a mothling,” Dust corrected, “my name is Dust.”

Nikkita waited briefly for him to elaborate, but he did not. “Dust. Okay, Dust: who sent you?”

“I don’t remember,” Dust said.

“Oh? Then why are you here?”

“I don’t remember,” Dust said.

Nikkita’s eyes narrowed. “Why did you come back to life? How did you do that?”

“Curse,” Dust replied. “I don’t remember anything else about it, but there is a curse. Kill me and I am reborn. Memories vanish, but the body grows back.”

“What a tiresome existence,” Nikkita said, grimacing. “You don’t even know why you’re here? You could be here to seize the Dawnstone, or you may have just gotten lost on a hike?”

Dust groaned and held a hoof to his head. “Maybe… I don’t remember where I’m from. I don’t remember what I was doing. Everything is… stray images and whispers. Disjointed and foggy. I don’t remember my home, or my family, or if I have those things. But…”

Dust reared up onto his hind legs and adopted a bipedal stance. An arc of electricity curled around his horn and crackled briefly.

“… But I remember YOU.”

Dust screamed. It was a high-pitched, monstrous shriek, totally unlike Nikkita’s predatory screech and much more unnerving for it. A lightning bolt speared down from above, lancing through the clear skies and striking the mothling’s glaive at the head.

Nikkita spread her wings, wary but unmoved. This wasn’t the first time she had seen this technique, after all.

Dust leapt into the air, his wings beating furiously while ribbons of plasma lashed around his horn, body, and weapon. The falcon lifted off, soaring out of range right before he swung his glaive forward.

Lightning arced under the guardian raptor, and it crashed into the ground with an explosion of light and thunder. Nikkita flinched away, her senses briefly overwhelmed but too far up for Dust to take advantage. The mothling warrior landed and faced her, still in his bipedal pose.

“Loud, creepy, and poor aim, too,” Nikkita spat, her talons swinging her spear about for a lunge. “I’ve never seen a ‘mothling’ before, but aside from the resurrection thing you don’t impress. Though I imagine perhaps not all of your kind do that…”

She dove, her spear angled to pierce Dust from head to tail and her speed too great for it to be a feint. Dust jumped forward, dashing under the falcon while her spear stabbed behind him. He landed on his front hooves and then bunched up his rear ones, bucking at his opponent like an equine. Nikkita swung around fast enough to avoid the kick, and beat her wings a few times to gain some space.

“Hm. You seem faster than before, I think,” the falcon grumbled.

“And you’re a lot more chatty,” Dust retorted, bolting forward.

His glaive slashed high, and Nikkita smacked it away with her spear. Her talons reached forward, but Dust bounced out of the way before their polearms clashed again. Dust’s beady, ghoulish eyes carefully tracked the raptor’s every move to guess her next attack vector, and the mothling hopped, blocked, or slashed to keep out of her reach.

It was a losing battle, however. Nikkita was not a subtle fighter, but her attacks had great strength behind them and she could fly much more easily and swiftly than he could, which gave her an advantageous position. Dust’s lightning attack, besides being somewhat difficult to aim, required a few precious seconds to charge, and his foe didn’t seem inclined to give any more space. Dust was being worn down. He would need to land a decisive blow to win, and quickly.

Dust jumped into a vertical chop, swinging the glaive in an arc over him. Rather than blocking, Nikkita flapped her wings powerfully, launching her up out of range and blowing a gust of wind and loose feathers into Dust’s face. She flapped her wings again, much faster this time, and a pair of wind blades sliced through the air beneath her.

Dust brought up his glaive to block, but the pressurized air whipped by him on both sides, cutting into the ground and throwing up a wave of dirt. It kept him stuck in one place long enough for Nikkita to begin another descent though, her spear aimed high.

She was going much slower this time, with her spear held in one claw rather than both. A feint.

Dust suddenly lunged for Nikkita’s spear, dropping his own weapon in the process. Nikkita squawked in surprise, and her talons slashed clumsily across the mothling’s side and wings rather than inflicting a deep wound. Dust opened his mouth and sunk his sharp, curved teeth into the vulnerable toes of the falcon, and then tore away her weapon entirely when she flinched.

Dust retreated immediately, barely ducking under a furious beak aimed to stab into his shoulder. Nikkita screeched angrily, but hesitated to follow as the mothling took his polearm stance again, this time pointing at her with her own weapon.

Her neck feathers rising in frustration, Nikkita’s talons scooped up Dust’s dropped glaive from the dirt. “So you like my spear, do you?! Well, I can’t say I blame you! It’s a much more elegant, dignified weapon than your silly halberd.”

“Glaive,” Dust corrected, his horn crackling with electricity. “Halberds have a spike or spearhead on top. Glaives only have blades.”

Nikkita launched into the air again, getting clear of any potential blast zone for the lightning attack. “Maybe you can tell me more about it when I kill you a third time! Unless you don’t remember anymore!” she mocked, steeling herself for the light and thunder to come.

“I should tell you now, though,” Dust replied, the charge around his head building to a brilliant peak, “the spark seeks the blade, not the horn.”

Despite this timely explanation, Nikkita was entirely unprepared for the lightning surging from the sky to race straight for Dust’s glaive, rather than Dust himself. Worse still, she carried the weapon underneath her, with the blade head at the lowest point. The lightning bolt struck her directly to reach the weapon, and a screech of pain and confusion echoed over the mountain.

Nikkita shook, her muscles locking up and her vision turning white. She began to fall, her wings twisting the descent into a deadly and unwitting spiral. Dust’s glaive slipped free from numb talons, still thrumming with the power of the storm.

It struck the ground with an underwhelming pop, its charge fizzling and its blade once again sinking into the dirt.

Nikkita struck the ground with a sickening crash, bouncing off of her shoulder and sliding to a stop on her side. One wing was crushed tightly under her body, while the other was spread open, still twitching in pain. Burnt feathers fluttered down around her, smelling of ashes.

Then her own spear plunged into her torso from above. Nikkita gasped, her vision crystalizing with jarring suddenness.

Dust stood over her, her spear’s haft gripped tightly between the claws on his forelegs. He stared down at the falcon through pupils of bright white set in orbs of inky black. Intense and unblinking, yet… not exultant in victory.

“Farewell, guardian Nikkita. I’ll remember you for as long as I can,” the mothling said. Then he drove the spear deeper, piercing her heart.

Dust walked away from the fallen protector, staggering slightly on the way to his fallen glaive once more. He had taken more than one grazing blow from razor talons during the desperate melee and – thankfully – just one decent stabbing from the weapon currently lodged in its owner. The blood loss wasn’t too bad, but with the adrenaline frenzy of battle receding, he felt his minor wounds more urgently.

Dust reached his glaive, and then yanked it out of the dirt.

He had won. The guardian of this place was dead. Its treasure his, should he manage to recall what the blasted thing was and what he should do with it. A troubled victory, but a victory nonetheless.

“…… Thirsty,” he hissed, plodding off to the oasis spring.