Bastard Sun

The room is empty, night swallowing it whole where the empty socket of the Mare on the Moon cannot see. The door creaks, long and ghastly. The only breath it has taken in months rushing through its un-oiled lungs.

I ease forward, testing the air like you test water’s temperature. One step. Another. Again. Another still.

Then, like recognizing an old friend I saw it. Regardless of the dark I could feel it. The physical presence, the crackle of air around my horn sending pimpling gooseflesh across my hide. Emanating a hidden magical glow no pony else could witness. It was only for me.

Then, I heard the door slam shut.

I was too late. I could feel it in my mortal bones. A storm that had been brewing but that I had so uselessly tried to stifle.

I could hear the crooning laughter of the Moon curl itself around my ear, ‘you are all but a memory of everyone you drive away.’

Letting the flames of the sun nip and singe at my bed-ruffled pelt, I let my foolish heart guide me to my student.

I had to stop her before it was too late.

She was already coming. The castle shifted, responding, reacting to its master and I could taste it. The air was tightening like a sucked in breath, the temperature rising up to a prickling uncomfortable degree, even the magic was brought up to a buzz in my ears.

I had to move quickly. Faster than even my heart rate could reach.

I had tried to be soft for her once. I swallowed my ambitions until it boiled under my tongue. Until I sparked forest fires of rage in her once pristine courtyard with my vitriol.

I wasn’t her sword. A fine tooth blade with careful words and hidden gestures. No, I was her hammer. Something to be smashed upon everything that stood between her and I.

But I was still drenched in her hatred. No matter how much I destroyed her for it. Every supposed kindness she has paid me, was only a testament to her pity rather than her love. A passing note penciled in the margins of her immortal life, not even worthy of a footnote.

I would prove her wrong. Starting from tonight.

The anti-teleportation wards I had laced within the stone walls would only hold her back for so long. I may be her daughter in all but blood and ink, but even I cannot stop the rage of a god.

Not yet at least. Not without the mirror.

I did not regret what I chose to do next.

Though perhaps I should have.

The guards would only slow me down. Their clashing armor would alert her before I could even reach the handle and the wards she has placed would hinder my progress. No, I had to be smarter. Smarter than even my own daughter.

I let my mortal shell melt, burning away in self-immolation as I reshaped myself into only my bare soul. Malleable like gold, I duck and glide over the weaves of her magic.

The intertwined braids of time and space tangle well together. Fraying like the hidden patterns fireflies make together. Her magic is so beautiful this way. Ever-turning hidden suns woven into the fabric of her very being. If only others could see this side of her.

I have been cruel to deny her. I see it now.

Mothers and daughters have to carry the weight of each other, and mine has destroyed her. It has turned her into a wretched fun house mirror of everything I despise in that damned wretched mirror. Even now, she carries more pride in my hatred of the reflection than my love could puncture through.

Letting my fallible, imperfect, immortal soul eclipse itself back into my impenetrable mortal armor, I let my hooves fall against the floor like anchors.

The stone melts under me, white hot imprints of my shoes sliding and melting into slag as burnt fabric and carpet picked up sparks behind me.

I reach the door and-

Miss by a humiliating margin.

But I didn’t have time to gloat. I didn’t have a mouth or tongue to speak at all.

The once cool ripples of my destiny, flowing through my soul, immediately shift into the hunger of monsters parents warn their foals about.

My body shifts, burns, twists and tears onto itself. Colors I can scarcely have the words to describe knead my insides as ivory white bones crack and mold like rigor mortis had started eating me alive.

My once lacquered hooves stretch, my shoes melting and dripping into newly formed callouses. My fur, curled and sepia toned, sheds itself, receding under my hide.

My vision blurred. Turning the shifting colors into blotted spheres like lights in early morning fog. I felt both upside down and right side up. Somehow floating in nothing, yet being stretched through tar.

I squeeze my eyes shut, unable to look anymore than I feel. Trying to keep the sour bile from spilling over myself, I begin to repeat what I told myself in the mirror.

This is what I wanted. This is what I needed. What I had given up everything for. Why I had left her for.

Soon, after restitching itself into a mockery of what I used to be, I am thrown face first into-

Darkness.

Darkness surrounds her. It chews her up and spits her out only to land back inside its mouth.

There was no fanfare. No heartbeat still in my chest. The damned ichor of my immortality is still beating against my head.

I have known failure, I have lived through wars and death only one other could possibly imagine, and still the loss of her echoes throughout the castle. Like a heartbeat missing its other.

And when the guards find me by what should have been morning, hunched over the old down-turn reflection inside the mirror, I will turn, give them the sad whisper of a would-be smile and trot back to the throne. My crown a little heavier.

I have played this part before, even after one thousand years the costume still fits. I know this script, I know how to fill my role.

My body as heavy as unspilt rain, I lurched forward towards the throne room doors and,

My eyes fell upon a sight that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

A whole new world. Mine for the taking.

A horn slashed throne room. Traitor carved into the center.

Rising,

Falling,

To my knees, I screamed.