Liquid Ice and Other Contradictions: A Tribute
The Sisters were busy. They had a kingdom to run, subjects to subjugate, commanders to command, and cycles to cycle. Taxes to extort and rebellions to quell. Maybe that was how they missed her. All their long days (and nights) where filled with endless tedium, the last Great War having been a few millennia ago. They had grown complacent.
Or maybe she had slipped by herself. One story she loved to tell me was of how one night, as a child, she had crawled out of the burning wreckage of her house, unscathed, while everyone else burned alive inside. She would laugh while she told it, her eyes twinkling as she would relate to me the deaths of all her immediate family. Her father, coat burned almost beyond recognition. Her sisters, foals the both of them, charred skeletons. They never did find her mother. No body, no witnesses saying she made it out. And no apparent cause for the fire.
"You know why?" she would always ask of me. And I would always shake my head, collecting the many empty bottles usually strewn about her by this point. She would lean closer to me, turning my face towards her, the gleam in her eyes now sharp as steel. "It's cause the bitch was a raiser. She could just think and poof!" she would always gesture outwards with her hooves, as if trying to capture a spreading vapor, "She could be anywhere she wanted. But there is only one place she would run to, the one place a raiser like her would be safe after pulling a stunt like that." She would then fall back, looking expectantly at me for the answer I always gave.
"The Sisters." She would nod, then scowl, then drink, then cough. Regular as clockwork.
"The fucking Sisters." This scene was played out before me every time she went on one of her binges, which while not frequent, were often enough. She thought her mother had started the fire after she caught her father cheating on her, and had then run to the Sisters for protection in their gardens. The one place in the kingdom with no laws, a literal safe haven. It made sense. They had done the same before, many times, especially for their raisers. I had my own ideas though, ideas which grew into firm beliefs the more I traveled with this scared unicorn.
I believed it was the Sisters. She was at least partially right in that her mother was to blame, but the Sisters must have been the ones to order it done. It must have been much more obvious who she really was as a child, and her mother, being a raiser, then tipped the Sisters off.
But she survived, somehow. And she vanished. She grew up on the streets, and the streets taught her to evade the law. She became an expert at it. Then I met her. And everything, for the both of us, turned to complete shit.
***
I was a bitch. I still am, but I like to believe I'm slightly less of one now. For starters, I don't swindle people out of all their money anymore. I'd say that's an improvement. Now I just swindle them out of their beliefs and lives, bargaining their souls for my salvation.
But hey, at least they don't die poor.
That was always one of my biggest fears growing up; I didn't want to live on the street. I would always look up at the castle and daydream about living there. About not having to steal or lie or cheat my way through life. Ironically enough, that's how I wound up here, on this throne which occupied so much of my fantasies back then. One day though, I quit looking up for fear of walking into a pit below. I stagnated in the cesspool that is our wonderful city of Canterlot, the highest level I was able to achieve being the crusty scum on top.
The guilds took me in. They observed my skill, and found it to be suitable. I became a thief, a fence, then finally a con. The last one stuck. I could determine an item's worth by looking at it. Not how it functioned, or what it did. I could determine how much a pony, any pony, would pay for it. I learned how to make cheap things expensive, how to turn garbage into gold, sometimes literally. Ponies would come to me for jewelry and charms, blades and tools. They would walk away with polished metal and hollowed tubes. I became rich and respected by the lower scum, yet still not even acknowledged by the lowest flying bugs. I was at the top of the pool and the bottom of the clearing it sat in. Rich limbs branching off of the two trees beside the pool hung far above me, and the life that they supported below them, still too far above to even think of reaching.
So I didn't try to. I lingered atop the pool, accumulating wealth and addictions. Occasionally I would look around myself, see the bottles and syringes, and clean myself up. But I would always find myself being dragged down again, only to once more wake up surrounded by the filth of my existence.
I ran a stall in a hole in the wall, in the Outer Circle. Around the corner from me was a marketplace, set almost right before the entrance to the city. Ponies that knew me then always used to ask why I didn't set up in the market. My answer had two layers; I didn't like the openness of that market, the visible presence of the guards. Not doing what I was doing. The second layer was my own personal belief in the powers of fate and the subconscious. Ponies attracted to a con are of two types, the rich and the desperate. And if those truly willing to pay for my wares, the ones I could feel the most when deciding an items worth, were going to find me, then they would find me regardless of where I set up. And find me they did.
The day that I met him was a slow one. The sun slid painfully across the sky, my eyes bleary from last night's binge. That day was one of those days I had promised to change, and I did. It's up to future generations to decide whether I changed for better or worse.
He looked lost, but most people who came to me did. His nervous eyes darted over my wares, and his wings twitched occasionally, as if he would take flight at any moment. I found myself wondering if he would.
"Good day, sir," I greeted him. "And what is it you are looking for?" His eyes rose to mine, then fell back down to the table. I could feel them being drawn towards the silver watch to his left. I could feel its worth in his mind as I reached for it. Then I felt nothing. When I looked up, the watch levitating towards me, he already held a gold version if the same watch. His nervous twitching was gone, and a smirk sat upon his face.
"This should do. How much?" I set the silver watch back down and set to finding the value of the gold one.
"100 bits." The pegasus nodded, setting a sack of money on the table. Then he left. I looked at the money, then at the silver watch. I had never been wrong like that before. That gold watch had been worth nothing to him, then suddenly it was worth more than most ponies made in a month. He hadn't even tried to lower the price. Just dropped his money and...
I rounded the corner into the market, his bag flying behind me. I spotted him just before he was swallowed by the crowd. Charging in behind him, I locked onto the watch he had stolen. I followed his attraction to it, tackled him to the ground.
"You bastard! These are fake!" I almost kicked his face in, hesitated when I saw the fear in his eyes. Then I was being pulled off of him, watched as he was picked up by an armored stallion.
"What is going on here?" asked a third guard. A sergeant. Fenris. Shit. He looked at the thief, then to me. His eyes hardened as he recognized me. "Ryne, fancy seeing you again. I thought you were still locked up for selling stolen goods." He nodded to the guard behind me, and I was released. "But this is the first disturbance here in over a month. I should have guessed you would be involved." A glare was all I gave in response. The smug bastard smiled his own little victory smile and turned again to the thief. "I don't recognize you though."
"He stole a watch from me." Fenris laughed, gestured for the guard to let go of the pegasus.
"Bit of poetic justice that. That still doesn't warrant a violent assault upon another pony in a crowded market square." Fenris took off his helmet, polished it, looked at his reflection. "Off to the jail for both of you, I'm afraid." He replaced his helmet as the guards grabbed me and the thief again.
"B-but I didn't mean to... I told myself not to I..." the pegasus stammered. The guard holding him smacked the back of his head.
"Quiet! We don't need to here your exc-" and then the guard and the thief were gone. A second later the guard reappeared, splattered across the market square. I felt the guard behind me let go, probably to grab his weapon. Then he too appeared as a smeared red paste. Fenris had already bolted.
Then my vision went black.
***
I still remember that day. A pretty nice one in my opinion. Picked up a watch, met a pretty mare, wasted a few guards. Productive, at least. Well, she was more than just a pretty mare, and it was more than just a good day. It was the culmination of years of searching, and she was the pony I was to use for purposes greater than either of us. I still remember her face when she came to in the alley. She screamed and yelled at me for killing those guards, going on about how I had just made her accomplice to murder and blah blah blah. Something about being a wanted criminal now. I had a bit of a laugh at that. The fact that she had already been through the jails once without being killed on site was a bit of a miracle. Compared to what the sisters already had her for on their list of ponies to kill, murder was nothing.
Lets compare her bounty to some nation's whose name I've forgotten debt. Add a few more trillion dollars to that. As in several million. More money than could be earned if you lived forever giving tours of a giant-ass bullet. Again, a lot.
Wait, but I haven't introduced myself! "Flicker, the notorious Traveler of Reality." Her reaction was similar to yours, basically nothing. That is my curse. Being so famous I am known by none. You think that Pinkie breaks walls? I break whole buildings. Whole city districts. If you read this about a hundred years from now, I will come out of your little hologram box and tell you all this myself.
So what was I doing in Equestria? Why, visiting my old apprentice, my new one, my more middle one, and finding a spirit to latch on to. That's how I get around. I pick the poorest sap I can find, ask them politely if they want to become famous or rich or whatever then use their soul as a doorway.
I also had a bit of a debt to settle with one of the Sisters. And as powerful as I am in reality, I'm not that strong out of it. I see the look of confusion that comment elicited. Allow me to explain.
Reality does not exist. It lies beyond the realms of belief or thought, in that grey area most souls like to call the "End of the Universe." Actually, it's more of a white. No colors, all colors, only one color (pink occasionally). Millions of light years of unpainted drywall. There are only a few of us who stalk that lonely place. We have been known by many different names. Reapers. Auditors. Planeswalkers. I like to think of us as the ultimate hobos, hitching rides on spiritual trains only to find ourselves back where we began. What most souls think of as reality is just thought given shape, created by paradoxical beings risen to power through belief. Otherwise known as gods.
Reality is so powerful, so real, that us spiritual hobos feel drained outside of it. In the falsehoods you occupy we are less than whole. So I needed Ryne. She was... special. I understand that telling you everything now would ruin dramatic tension, so I'll keep quiet. Suffice it to say, this unicorn was immensely powerful, stronger than either of the Sisters and almost strong enough to take them both on at once. But that's just potential strength.
"So you want to train me?" she asked. Of course! Training. Hadn't thought of that.
"Yes," I replied. "Yes. Training. That's a good idea Ryne. And your first lesson will be to kill Luna."
So it began. And so it almost ended. As in Ryne almost walked away. I had to knock her out again. I sighed to myself and slung her over my shoulder.
This was going to be a long life.