Changeling (Re)Borne

Celestia sighed in exhaustion.

She fell to her hooves with a clattering ringing sound of metal falling and the dull thud of tired immortal flesh hitting the ground.

She had been thrown into a cage, and unwittingly cast into the deepest and most unstable echelon of his mind, trapped within the innermost sanctum of Alyosha's mind.

It had been a long, maddeningly peaceful walk through a garden of crystal roses and gemstone flowers. She had spent hours walking through a forest of glittering beauty, and a river of silver water flowing through a valley of amethyst and diamonds, with the most beautiful singing of a chorus of birds echoing around her. It was not too dissimilar to the way Discord had assembled the world during his escapade.

The difference here, being, of course, that Discord had done it with malice in mind.

She didn't get that same feeling from this. This was just... Peaceful, relaxing, soothing.

She had wandered through a forest of emeralds, a meadow of sapphires, and a desert of rubies and pearls. Places made of objects, essentially broken down to definition and concepts. Deserts were made of sand, and sand could be clear and the most stunning pure white- made from glittering white crystal grains.

She had crossed a sea of sapphires and aquamarines, and swam in the waters of the deepest ocean, and she had seen the wonders of the world beneath the waves. But she had seen nothing of him. She had felt the presence of him, and seen his hoof prints, but he had not been present.

All in all, this was a surprisingly pleasant place to be trapped. It was beautiful and peaceful and full of things that she had never seen, and it had been a welcome relief from the constant stress and worry of the past week.

It was so nice that she had almost forgotten that she was a prisoner here.

Almost.

After a while, she came across the edge of a cliff, a sheer drop that disappeared into the abyss below.

She had stood at the edge of the abyss for what seemed like an eternity, and as she looked down into its depths, she felt a sense of dread, of fear. She had the sudden urge to jump, to plunge into the darkness, and to fall, to be swallowed up in the blackness, to be devoured by the void.

But she had resisted the urge, and instead, had decided to explore the edge of the cliff. The wind whispered echoes of things she couldn't understand. Words of the end and of the stars, and monsters before nothing. At the edge of the cliff were cubic crystals, like oversized blocks of perfect salt, and the loose gems would reflect light inside them into images of places far away, and times long gone. They were like windows into the past, showing glimpses of things that had never been, and events that could never have occurred. They were a safe window into the mind of the eternal soul. Broken and shattered and mended improperly.

Alyosha's mind was impossibly vast and yet shallow, like a puddle that stretched to the horizon. A lake. A sea. It was a world of its own. It was a world of endless possibilities, and it was a world of endless nightmares, of endless horrors. In that pit was an impossible, overlapping, infinitely dense and infinite sea of uncontrolled and dangerous creativity. A place of no rules, no form, no logic, and no reason.

It was a prison.

It was the perfect prison, designed to keep him contained, to keep him safe. To keep him sane, and to keep him happy and content. And it was a prison that could never be escaped.

And if she wanted out of his head and back to Canterlot, back to her ponies, and her sister... Then she had no choice but to jump.

So, she did.

And then began a series of events wildly beyond her control. Things she was going to regret. She had fallen through a series of endless, ever shifting rooms, each one stranger than the last.

She had fallen through a library filled with books that spoke to her, telling her secrets and whispering truths that were not meant to be known. She had fallen through a room filled with mirrors, and each one reflected a different version of herself. Some were old, some were young, some were beautiful, and some were hideous. Some were happy, and some were sad. Some were angry, and some were frightened. Some were kind, and some were cruel.

She had fallen through a room where the walls were made of glass, and she could see the stars and the planets and the galaxies, and the whole of the universe laid out before her. She had fallen through a room where the walls were made of stone, and she could feel the weight of the world pressing down on her.

And eventually, she landed her fat rump on an iron floor. Slamming into cold steel in a dimly lit hallway, leading out somewhere. Cold artificial lights coming from a room with glass panels.

Celestia raised herself up with a heave. That fall had hurt, but it was better than possibly being trapped in an endless overstimulating freefall for all of eternity.

She took a deep breath, and looked around. There was barely a scent, all overpowered by the strong clinical odor of antiseptic and alchohol. She took careful hoofsteps forward, watching her surroundings. Everything was metallic and bathed in dull blue lights, at least when there were lights. Instruments and gurneys hung from the ceiling and sat on the floor. A hospital, a strange hospital.

Then there was a shout. A male voice. Up ahead in the only brightly lit space. "CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?!"

"Why am I awake?"

"WHERE DID EVERYONE GO!"

"AM I ALONE?"

"PLEASE!"

"I'M SCARED!"

"ANYONE! HELP ME!"

Celestia paused. She didn't recognize the voice at all. And the low light in the room didnt help her suddenly increasing anxiety either.

"Hello?!" She called out. She proceeded further down the hallway, peering through the glass as she saw something similar to an operating theater. But what drew her attention first, was a biped strapped to a gurney. It's heart exposed as metal struts supported the skin and kept the surgical site open. It was still beating. And the body was still alive.

This was a nightmare.

"PLEASE!" The voice cried out. The creature's head turned, and she saw its eyes were filled with fear. It saw her, or maybe it didn't.

She rushed forward. She didn't know why, but she had to help him. She had to save him. She couldn't bear to see him suffer. She had to do something. Anything. She went into the operating room, the door absent, and the creature's head snapped to look at her.

"Oh thank God. What the.. Are- are you a-a doctor? Please! Please help me!" The male cried, struggling slightly against the metal bindings that kept them to the gurney. "What's going on?"

"I'm not a doctor. What's happened to you? What is this place?" Celestia asked as she approached him, trying to figure out how to help him. The steel cuffs that were keeping his arms and legs bound had no visible way of opening. They had no keyhole, or latch, or even a button. They were just solid bands of metal that were somehow fixed to the gurney. Maybe they retracted somehow, but nothing in the room would react to her magic. She couldn't shatter them, or budge them.

She glanced around, feeling compelled to help the poor creature, as his eyes stared at her in sheer terror.

"I-I was going under for a transplant. Please! Please help me!" He cried, his face contorting in pain. "I can't feel my chest. I can't- Oh God! My heart! What is- What is going on?!" The male cried, a tear running down his face, as he stared at the open chest and the steadily beating organ, and the struts of metal holding it all in place.

She was looking around the room, and she couldn't find any tools or equipment familiar to her. It was all foreign and strange. It looked like some sort of torture chamber, with strange devices and tools that looked more like implements of torture than anything else.

"Please! Help me!" The man cried, his voice filled with terror and desperation.

Celestia turned to look at him, feeling a surge of pity and compassion. She knew this being wasn't real, that it was all just a creation inside a broken mind- but she was still compelled to help. At the very least she'd play along with the scenario going on.

It was hard not to. The screams. They were real.

There was some strange translucent panel made of blue light overlooking the operating theater. Some type of magical interface she guessed.

"I'm trying. I don't know how," Celestia replied, looking around for something, anything that might help her. There was a table with various tools and implements on it, but none of them were familiar to her. Curiously there were lasers pointed to the man's chest. Three, to a tool mounted to some rotating metal on the ceiling. Maybe that was how the bipeds chest was opened. A tissue cutter.

She hoped for the best as she began to tamper with the panel, responding only to gentle touches of her hooves. It was a medical record. A medical record for a male named 'John Doe'. He was thirty years of age, born 2549, and he was having a heart transplant. He was suffering from congestive heart failure, and the surgery was scheduled for today. There was a list of medications that had been prescribed, and a list of procedures that had been performed. With the doctors curiously absent, the only procedure performed so far was cutting open his chest.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" John cried, his voice cracking with fear and desperation.

"I'm trying! I need only one more moment.." Celestia replied, as she found a way to at least stop the procedure. A button labeled "Recall Instrument".

Then it all went to hell. The lights began flickering as something suddenly appeared in the doorway. Flashing lights revealing a torn and contorted face ending in fleshy mandibles, limbs twisted with blades made of bone jutting out of claws, legs twisted into that of minotaur.

It's eyes, sunken and hollow. It was hunched over, and it was wearing a stained white coat. The flesh had fallen off its face in places, revealing the bones underneath. Its mouth was broken open wide, teeth and bone equally exposed.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?! HELP! HURRY UP!" The man began screaming and crying, his voice rising in pitch as he started to panic.

Celestia stared at the creature for a moment, before returning to frustrating and hopeless interactions with the interface. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to help him. She didn't know what to do.

The thing was advancing slowly. It was shambling towards the operating theatre, its head lolling from side to side. It was making a sound like a broken clock, ticking and creaking with every step masked by its overpowering growling. The strange surgical tool slowly making it's way to her on a rail.

"I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU!" She screamed, trying to get her point across, as she began to panic.

"OH GOD! NO! PLEASE!" The man screamed, as he began to thrash and scream, and cry, his body writhing in agony as his eyes were fixated on the monster.

"JUST GIVE ME A SECOND!" Celestia shouted, desperately trying to find a way to help the man. She was in a state of total confusion, she had no idea what to do or where to go.

The creature was getting closer, its legs and arms dragging along the floor. The spikes on its limbs scraping along the metal loudly as it roared and began to slash wildly at the man, being briefly fended off with a kick. It was undeterred, and the man's screams echoed out as it hacked into him.
"PLEASE!" He shouted, blood beginning to run from his mouth. "HELP ME!"

Celestia continued to try and find a way to help him, her mind racing as she searched the interface desperately.

She was panicking, her mind racing, her heart pounding, the only calm being the strange flat implement approaching her on a small rail of solid steel- now infront of her muzzle as the man's screams were abruptly silenced, his throat cut open with a single slash of a claw. Then, beheaded in one fell swoop.

The monster stared at her, its eyes sunken and hollow, its face broken and bloody, its mouth dripping with gore and blood. It was staring at her with a blank expression, its face devoid of any emotion. It was just a face, a face of a creature that had once been human, but now was something else. It's body forcibly twisted and contorted in ways that respected only barely the limits of its flesh and ignored any logic of what it was once supposed to be.

In desperation she grabbed the flat implement, the surgical tool gripped firmly in her magic as it seemed to open up from a dozen little bits and pieces. Her magic, powering the futuristic tissue cutter tool, bringing three lasers for aiming to life. Metal plates shifted and moved, forming a safety guide around the firing area.

She pumped magic into the device, and with an echoing, energetic and yet cold thundering sound, the tool fired. A bolt of golden plasma ejected at the monster in her sights, and cleaved it's left leg clean off. A smouldering cauterized stump was left in the wake of the bolt.

It was down, and Celestia would not take any chances. She fired again and again at the creature until it was nothing more than a few chunks of flesh and bone. The lasers aiming, and the device firing. It rotated freely in her magic on a mechanical wheel, and she sent bolt after bolt of cutting energy- turning the deformed and twisted creature into a dismembered and butchered thing- and from there, unrecognizable gore and mincemeat.

The power in the room, the facility was flickering. Lights going on and off until it settled into near-darkness and roars came howling in the distance from previously unnoticed vents. Shaft big enough for an equine to crawl through.

Celestia, of course, knew this was a world inside the head of a broken soul. But that didn't stop her from being so deeply afraid. Unnerved to her very core. Because what in all of Equestria could that flask-born soul have seen to create this place? How could anything have ever experienced such horrors and still be able to function? To think? To speak? To breathe? To walk? To imagine these grotesque abominations, the way they shambled with deadly inefficiency and yet elegance as their bladed limbs swung. The way they refused to end, not dying until they were rendered of all their limbs.

The thought raced through her head as she cut down more of the approaching things, they'd burst out from the ventilation ducks and shambled to her frightened form. Scared, but armed.

How on Equus could a soul have seen anything to inspire such things like these and still be a thinking, feeling, living being? What could have happened, that the mind would create such monsters in its deepest recesses?

Celestia didn't want to know. She was afraid of what she might learn.

"Fuck." She whispered, her voice cracking with fear and exhaustion. She was exhausted, both physically and mentally, her magic nearly spent. She was tired and scared, and she didn't know how much longer she could keep this up.

She didn't know how much more of this she could take. She didn't know how much more of this she could endure.

For now the threat was gone. And she began to deeply regret her foolish choice to jump down a pit into the depths of his soul.

Shellshocked, she left the operating theater and wandered to a steel door, blocked by another one of those slashing, twisted things. It's body fortunately trapped as it roared and swung wildly, stuck to a gurney in front of her exit.

She aimed her weapon at the thing and took a deep breath.

This would be the longest night of her life.

Her next thought was that of confusion as everything dissolved into darkness around her, and she was left floating around in infinite nothing. The mind she was trapped in no doubt generating another hell for her.

And it seemed, for now at the very least, the hells would have a consistent theme of horror.

The second her hooves were able to find purchase on something flat in that infinite expanse of nothing, she walked forward. The nothing turned to a dark hallway, the air fetid and damp. She wandered and wandered forward as the nothing under her hooves became metal and echoed gently as the sound heralded her arrival.

And then, a single tentacle of necrotic mass came out and wrapped around her hind legs, suddenly dragging her forward at break neck speeds. The world became a blur of color and movement as she was pulled through a series of rooms, and then thrown forward onto a grated steel platform.

And as her mind caught up to what was going on around her, she realized she was dangling in an open chasm, staring at something made of flesh that had no sense of direction. It could hardly be told to have a shape. It was barely serpentine and the skin did not look lively at all, it was more like a massive lump of meat given unlife. Never dead and ever dying.

All she could utter, was a single thought made voice.

What.. Is that?

And then. It answered. The meat below her, the rotting pestilence- spoke in a deep voice that had a gentle rasp and an impossible age. The voice of wise men and sages and scholars who've seen things long before and after their time.

"I? I, am a monument to all your sins." It spoke, its tone gentle and calm.

And then the mass of flesh moved, rising from the pit below Celestia. It was like a snake made of flesh, its skin mottled and necrotic, its scales were non-existent and were instead folds of cancerous skin and warts. It had no eyes, just a jaw filled with wet and gnashing teeth. Razor sharp and the size of her torso, the only "clean" thing in that pallete of rot. And even the teeth were yellowed.

The head alone, bigger than an ursa major. It's jaw could crush her in one fell swoop.

"What is... What are you?!" Celestia shouted, her voice cracking with fear.

The creature stared at her with its eyeless face as tendrils began to slither up the walls, its body undulating and shifting.

"I am an endless chorus, of suffering. I am the father, of pestilence, and decay. I am the end, and the beginning." The creature replied, its voice echoing and reverberating in the dark, cavernous room.

"End of what?" Celestia shouted as her body trembled and she tried to keep herself from shaking too hard. Then with a rush of wind, even more tendrils came rushing into the great cavern, bringing in her sister Luna, just as bound as Celestia was.

"Luna!" Celestia cried out, seeing her sister bound and held aloft by a tendril wrapped tightly around her sister's body, the same way she was. Her horn flared with burning magic, before Luna called back out to her.

"Celestia! D-don't! Don't interfere!" Luna shouted back to her.

The creature let out a deep and reverberating laugh, the sound of it shaking the very foundations of the cavern as it began to slowly move, its body slithering around them.

Luna continued to struggle, but it was clear that the tendril was not letting her go any time soon, and the creature began to slither closer to them.

Celestia looked up at Luna and shouted back, "Luna, why are you here?!"

"I was pulled here the moment you were! An automatic self protection system- it's an amalgamation of identities projected as whatever it thinks it resembles the closest!"

The massive creature was circling them, its head low to the ground, as it slithered around the room, it's head swiveling slowly.

Luna was trying to free herself, and she was starting to panic.

The massive creature's head was now level with their platform.

Luna shouted at her sister, "It's a projection- it doesn't have to make sense, it only needs to be the strongest it can!"

Celestia looked at her sister and tried to focus on what she was saying. But it was hard, with the creature's massive head so close to them, its maw of teeth opening slowly. She felt sick to her stomach. It's breath, rancid with a hint of the sweet smell of rot. Like the corpse of a long dead creature, left out to rot in the sun.

"Relax! Do not trigger it into a defensive state!"

Celestia couldn't understand why Luna was so scared, or what she meant by a projection. She didn't understand any of it, and it was hard to concentrate on her words when she was so close to the massive creature.

The massive creature's mouth opened even wider, revealing the massive cavern of teeth inside. They were all the size of her, each one a razor-sharp spike of yellow bone. It was hard to imagine such a creature could exist.

"Project-" Celestia murmured, staring into the massive maw of the beast, its cavernous mouth filled with teeth. It was hard to imagine that this thing was just an amalgamation of personalities and ideas. But it made sense. In some way.

"Projection! It doesn't need to make sense! Just-" Luna shouted at Celestia, trying to get her to understand. "Just don't panic!"

The creature's head moved, closer to them, and its breath washed over them.

It was horrible, the smell of death, of decay and rot. Of death and decay, of the foulness of the grave.

The flaps that barely covered its maw moved with a disturbing grace as it slowly spoke. Observing them. Analyzing them.

"I? I am a monument, to all your sins." The massive creature spoke in a raspy voice that carried a tone of deep and profound sadness, as it's body slowly shifted in the dark cavernous space. Its body moving in a way that suggested that it was constantly shifting. As if it could not stand still, even if it tried. The meat was always pulsating under that thin skin.

"Please! Please don't hurt my sister!" Luna cried, her voice breaking with emotion. She struggled to break free of the tendril, and her body was trembling.

The creature was still observing them, its maw slowly opening as it continued to speak.

"Magic or light you must choose, for one you shall keep, and one you shall lose." It's words came out with a heavy weight, as if they were the last thing it would say. As if they were the only thing it had ever known.

And it stared at Celestia with it's blank face, and she could feel it staring into her very soul. She felt exposed, and vulnerable. Like the creature had stripped away her very being and left her completely bare. She felt as though the creature was looking into the very core of her existence, and that she could not hide from it.

"What do you mean? What choice?" She shouted back to it. She felt a pang of anger. This wasn't real. This wasn't fair. She had no say in this, and yet it was happening. It was unfair, and she felt powerless, helpless. Like a puppet.

"Magic or light, the choice you will make." It said in a deep and sonorous voice, echoing off the walls of the cavern.

Celestia looked at her sister, who was bound and yet unafraid. And she looked back to the creature, which was slowly moving towards them.

"What do you mean?" Celestia shouted back to the creature. She couldn't understand, what was this thing talking about?

"Choose, or be chosen for you, and suffer the loss. You, are but flesh and faith, and long since the more deluded." It rumbled, jostling her about in its tendrils.

"And she is machine, and nerve, her mind long since concluded.." It rumbled.

Celestia stared at the creature, as its maw opened and closed slowly. Its massive body undulated as it spoke.

"What? I- what?" She stuttered out, as Luna cried out in desperation.

"I'm so sorry!"

Celestia turned to her sister and stared at her, confusion written on her features. "Why? Why are you apologizing?"

"Because she has already chosen. She has already chosen the fate of the stars and the minds of the ponies and all things that inhabit this universe, and she has given them to me."

"What?" Celestia asked, turning to look at the massive creature, who was slowly slithering towards them. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. It couldn't be true.

"She has made right the cruelty we let abide, and let live, for a millennia." The massive creature spoke, its words reverberating off the walls of the cavern, as its body shifted and writhed in the dark.

Celestia turned to Luna and shouted, "Luna, what is it talking about?"

"We exist together now, two corpses in one grave." The creature rumbled. It's massive body undulating, its maw opening and closing slowly. Accentuating each horrible clack of its teeth as it spoke without lips.

She'd swear the bindings around her felt so much tighter. "I don't understand." Celestia murmured, as the creature began to approach them.

"We are not so different, we two, are the same. The same cruelty, the same cowardice." The creature spoke, its maw opening and closing slowly as its body undulated and writhed in the darkness of the cave.

"There has been much talk. And I have long since listened. Through sand and metal and time. Now I shall talk, and you will listen." It continued to rumble. "Your magic or your body, both will be mine. By will or through time. But now I offer but one salvation, of that for the mind. Choose, or be chosen for you, and the future be decided."

"What are you?" Celestia whispered, as the creature continued to slither in place, a dancing great mass of rot and life.

"I am the monument of all your sins. The father of pestilence, the mother of disease."

She paused for a moment as she thought of her options. Her sister was bound, and she was being offered a choice between her own life and her magic. And if she refused to make the choice, the creature would make it for her.

The thought was horrible.

"I am the endless infinitude of the grave, and the unity of thousands of sleeping minds. Now I shall talk. Now you shall listen. For one, you will choose."

"What?" Celestia shouted at it, the words barely coming out of her mouth. She couldn't understand why the creature was asking for her to choose, or how she was supposed to decide between her life or her magic. She had spent her life using her magic to rule and to guide, and now that choice was being taken away from her. It was unfair, it was cruel. It was a betrayal of everything that she stood for. She was a ruler, and a leader, and a pony, and a magic user.

But that meant nothing here.

"I'll give you my magic. But I want something else in exchange."

The massive creature's maw opened and closed slowly as its body undulated and writhed. Its voice was deep, sonorous and resonating.

"What would you have me do? For what could you have to trade, when all that you have is mine already?"

"An hour. All of my magic and knowledge of it in an exchange for one hour. One hour of control. Of being at the front of everything." Celestia spoke, trying to keep her voice steady as the creature's massive body slithered and shifted, its maw slowly opening and closing.

The creature was silent for a moment, as if considering the offer. It's head swaying as if in thought.

"An hour whenever i choose. And my self is yours." Celestia added on quickly.

"You would give away your mind and body, and for what?" The creature replied.

"For one hour, to do with what i will." She replied back. "And I shall choose when this time is."

"And what of her?" Celestia asked, gesturing to her sister.

"She will remain with me, as a prisoner, but alive. Her life, in exchange for her freedom." It replied. Its maw opening and closing slowly.

Celestia paused, as her heart pounded and she tried to figure out what to do.

"One hour." The massive creature replied. Its massive body slowly slithered in the air, its maw slowly opening and closing.

"One hour of what I choose."

"Of control over yourself." The massive creature replied, its maw opening and closing slowly. It's voice resonant and echoing in the cavernous space.

"And what will happen to her? To me?" Celestia asked. She was scared, she was terrified, she wanted to scream and shout and run and hide, but she couldn't.

"Now there is eternity, alicorns. And you are disarmed in the dark. The three of us, shall have a long, long talk."

And as the creature finished speaking, everything became a haze. A blur of motion and sound. And Celestia felt her magic being torn from her, like the tearing of flesh. Like the tearing of muscle from bone. Her soul felt like it was being ripped out, like she was being ripped apart. It hurt. It hurt like hell. And she could feel the creature pulling at her, pulling at her magic. Like the pulling of a thread from a cloth, it was pulling at her soul.

And then she was falling, tumbling, spinning, twisting.