Romance and the Fate of Equestria

So, let's talk about Vorpal Blade's riches and the process of deciding just how much he had. For the longest time, in my plans, it was 18 billion bits. Assuming a bit equals a US dollar, I eventually realized that was indeed a massive amount of money, but didn't really sound like "wealthiest creature in the world" wealth. So I changed the 18 billion to 108 billion, and even published the previous chapter with that amount. But after a day or two, I realized that was a ludicrously huge sum and that I needed to find a compromise. I decided to halve the amount I had, leaving it at 54 billion.

But I still wasn't sure I was satisfied with that. Then I had an idea: the financial magazine Forbes keeps a list of the wealthiest fictional characters of all time. The list is usually topped by Scrooge McDuck, but recently the Forbes people realized that there was one character who might actually have Scrooge beat: Smaug, from The Hobbit. Possibly the richest fictional character of all time, and he keeps it in a hoard—just like Vorpal Blade. So I decided to take a look at how much Forbes thinks Smaug is worth, and work from there… and get this: they estimate his hoard at a value of 54 billion dollars. Yeah. Really. It's fate, people.

Vorpal Blade's kind of been sitting out Part Two, so my challenge here is to spill all of his remaining secrets in a single chapter. I'm not sure if I remembered everything. If not, hopefully I can find an organic way to fill it in later, but bear with me.

Chapter One Hundred and One

Twilight walked across a wet, sandy surface. On every side, she was surrounded by walls of clear blue water, taller than the sky and completely empty.

She beheld the walls curiously. "I'm dreaming," she realized. She paused, contemplating. "How did I figure that out?" she muttered. "Walls of water, that's nothing unusual to a dreaming mind. And why did figuring out I'm dreaming not wake me up immediately? This is peculiar…"

A figure stepped out of the murky sea surrounding her, a black stallion with empty white eyes, seven wings and seven horns, his entire body lined with Golden Thread. "Hey, Smiley," he said gently.

Twilight scowled at Vorpal Blade. "I'm not dreaming," she realized.

"You are dreaming, but you're also really speaking with me," he said solemnly.

Skippmud and Crazyface emerged from the water as well, flanking Vorpal Blade, armed with their own Mecha and Thread.

"What do you want?" Twilight hissed.

"I thought I'd step into your mind while it was vulnerable so we could talk," he said casually.

"I don't want to talk to you, Vorpal Blade," Twilight retorted.

"That's because you don't know me," said Vorpal Blade, pacing back and forth. "I'm just another guy trying to go through every day without losing purpose, you know? I keep the ponies I love the most near me, we do the things we're good at and the things we like to do, we just try to make the most out of the lives we've been given, just like everypony else."

"What about the lives you took from those griffons who guarded the prison?" Twilight said coldly. "After I got your letter, I heard more about what happened. You could easily have escaped from them without any deaths at all. You killed because you could. You're despicable."

"Well, that was as much for Skippmud as it was for the 'power of hate' thing," Vorpal Blade said. "I thought she'd appreciate the extra touch. She doesn't really care for griffons, you see."

"No, I hate them," Skippmud sneered.

Vorpal Blade grinned. "Tell her why."

The one visible half of Skippmud's one visible eye glared at Twilight from behind her curtains of dirty-blond hair. "When I was a child, all the griffon slaves in my town staged an uprising," she said. "They slaughtered a whole lot of ponies, including my entire family. I survived the massacre, and the griffons took me and the other survivors to this… prison. A prison ruled by horrible unnatural creatures, where we were exhibited and marched around and forced to work. Legions of ponies. Me. Crazyface. Blade. All locked up, unjustly."

"What prison is this?" Twilight demanded. "And where in the world are griffons kept as slaves? Where is anything in this world kept as a slave?"

"Not really the point of the story, Little Miss Two-Date-Rule," Skippmud shot back.

"So, what, a group of griffons did a traumatic thing to you and you're getting your revenge on the entire griffon species?" said Twilight. "Oh, that's real classy."

"Rant and rave all you like. We ooze class, babe. Thanks to this guy." Skippmud threw an arm around Vorpal Blade's shoulders and embraced him.

"Veeb does lend a certain amount of sophistication to any event," Crazyface agreed.

"Aw, my buddies," Vorpal Blade said sweetly. "As I was saying, we are survivors. The crown jewels are just the tiny sprinkles atop our massive cake of making it in the world."

"Your hoard of art and treasure worth fifty-four billion bits," Twilight said, nodding.

He looked surprised. "Well, I've never gotten it appraised, but that sounds exactly right. And, you see, that treasure gained us a benefactor, who, from within the depths of the earth, saw our promise and bestowed divine favor upon us."

"Sørmur dï Mitgaeard," Twilight said promptly. "You're the latest in her long line of 'chosen ones'."

He blinked slowly. "Why, yes," he said calmly. "How did you know?"

"Discord's been living with me for over a month now," Twilight said proudly. "He told me everything he knows. He protects and advises me."

"Wowza," Crazyface breathed, awestruck. "That's new information…"

"Well, so you know how she's going to help us rise up," said Vorpal Blade. "She's a great patron to our cause. Which is something in itself; we have never had a 'cause' before. I find her very inspiring. You know what her species is called? The 'tiny serpent'. But after millions of years of dedication… heh. You can still see flocks of that species flying around in some tropical regions. They worship her as the mightiest of their kind… actually, most serpents do, even the ancient and enormous ones who live in seas and rivers. And yep, I'm her chosen one. I'll be honest, I never wanted to be a chosen anything, but she managed to make me see the light, give me an idea of what I could truly accomplish. The idea has grown on me, and I'd like to thank her for being my benefactor… you know, when I see her, that is. I truly thought there would never be a payoff to my life. I thought we'd just wander around the world for the rest of eternity taking things that don't belong to us. Artwork, jewelry, weaponry…"

"Young ponies' virginity…" Skippmud mused.

Vorpal Blade nodded. "That as well."

"Yes, that's right, you know that feeling now," Crazyface said thoughtfully, inspecting Vorpal Blade. He eyed Twilight. "She's a bit old for my tastes, of course, but by using her as a tool in our plan you now know how it feels to defile somepony… a welcome diversion, to be sure. Leaving them behind more damaged than you found them, it leaves a sweet taste in the mouth."

Vorpal Blade smirked at Twilight. "That's true, isn't it? I was your first. Hehe… that can never be taken away from me. It's part of who you are now. That does feel pretty good."

Twilight ignored him, as she had given her whole focus to glaring at Crazyface. "I don't understand this, Vorpal Blade," she said tightly. "You are… well, not a good pony, but a pony with standards, who doesn't want to embrace pure evil. Why do you tolerate his vileness? If you're so good at altering minds, why don't you eliminate his… his disgusting desires?"

Vorpal Blade threw his head back and laughed uproariously.

"Oh, what?" Twilight snarled.

He brought a winged hoof to his eye and brushed away a tear that had formed during his raucous guffaws. "I just think it's funny how times change," he said innocently. "If you go back to three hundred, four hundred years ago… Crazyface's attraction to fillies in their early teens wouldn't be considered anything out of the ordinary. But if he was gay, then, then they'd talk about getting him 'cured'. It's kind of funny how it completely flipped around, don't you think?"

Twilight snorted. "Sure, it's flipped around. We know what's right and wrong now. It's a more civilized time."

"Is it, though?" Vorpal Blade said in amusement. "Because I think if you transplanted a pony from that time to today with no cool-down time, they'd call it barbaric. They'd say that there's nothing more natural and innocent than enjoying the touch of the younger kind, and squirm at the way it's treated as a sin while the real aberration can walk around in public with no problems. Really, Twilight, think about it: there's nothing you can say about Crazyface's sexual preference that hasn't already been said about gays."

"First of all, 'gays'?" said Twilight. "You're using 'gay' as a noun? I never realized you were so… primitive. How old are you?"

"My point still stands," Vorpal Blade said seriously. "Criticize Crazyface all you like, just keep in mind that in the past, your beliefs about him would have been viewed as ludicrous. Times change. I'm not saying it will be acceptable in the future, but maybe, maaaaaybe, the political climate will change yet again and the world will feel bad for what it did to ponies like him."

"That'll never happen," Twilight growled.

"Again: there's nothing you can say—"

"I heard you the first time, but you're wrong! It's unnatur—" She paused. "I mean, he's stealing the innocence of… I mean, um, corrupting… and, um, there's no way someone of his condition could find…" She went pale. "Oh, wow."

"Wow, you were right, she's got nothing," Skippmud observed. "You really can't say anything about it without getting the tables turned on you."

"Hey, I'm asleep!" Twilight said defensively. "If I was awake, my mind would be sharp and I'd be all over countering your ridiculous claims. Anyway, I don't have to debate the ethics of pedophilia with you three. You're the bad guys!"

"NO, YOU ARE!" Skippmud bellowed gleefully. "And you don't even realize it! That's what makes this whole thing SO FUNNY! Excellent use of ad hominem, by the way. 'I don't agree with your philosophy in general, so any argument you make against me is invalid!' Moron…"

"All right, take it easy," Vorpal Blade chuckled. "We're getting far off track. Let's not forget the reason we came to Twilight in the first place. Twilight, I want to explain to you where I'm coming from, why I do the things I do… so you'll understand me, and maybe not be so quick to name me as your enemy."

Twilight sneered. "No," she said. "No, that's a lie. You need me to hate you. Everything you've said to me so far has been to make me hate you more… and you think telling me your background and motivations will do the same."

Vorpal Blade shrugged. "Perhaps. Either way, you have no choice but to listen to me. You ever have a nervous breakdown, Twilight? You know, where you feel like the life path you're destined for isn't going to work out?"

"Of course I have," Twilight retorted. "Hasn't everypony?"

Vorpal Blade nodded. "Yeah. The psychology profession has oh-so-sensitively dubbed such a thing 'Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome'. As something of a professional in that field myself, I hate that name. It makes a mockery of a very serious problem. See, that's what brought me and Skipp and Crazyface together, back in that prison in Nara. They were just children, but I knew that they had everything in common with me, because we all lived in a constant state of Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome."

"So, wait, you're from Nara?" Twilight said in surprise. "Not Equestria?"

"Not really the point right now," he said brightly.

Twilight scowled. "You know, I'm getting pretty tired of remarks like that. I get enough of that from Discord."

"Explain yourselves to her, guys," Vorpal Blade commanded. Skippmud and Crazyface stepped forward, and Twilight responded by backing away.

"I've explained this before," Skippmud said darkly, displaying her cutie mark. "Catfish," she sneered, as if it was a vulgarity. "My special talent is, and always shall be, useless. I didn't want to be useless. I rejected the joy of my life and sought to become something with value." She grinned wildly, her eye twitching. "And it drove me mad, but it was worth it."

Crazyface bowed his head. "When my family found out my special talent was destroying things," he muttered, "they were devastated. They tried to suppress it. No longer was I allowed to burn ants with a magnifying glass, or throw rocks at windows, or even step on twigs. Anything remotely destructive was off the table. I became a rather jittery child, had a tough time paying attention in school. But their preventative measures just meant that when I did get a chance to destroy, I destroyed everything. Eventually, that led to me being tied up in my basement whenever I was at home. You can imagine how much that helped. Just more suppression and more wild release.

"All the other kids made fun of me, which is rather odd, don't you think? Young ponies always make fun of the kid with strange powers, and then everypony is surprised when they end up paying for it. Remember a few years back, there was a filly who had uncontrollable pyrokinetic abilities? All the kids teased her, and she broke down in stress and incinerated an entire city block. And a decade or two before that, there was a little colt who could kill with his mind. His peers bullied him and, surprise surprise, he killed them with his mind. I mean, duh, right? Then there's me. They made fun of me for having the power to destroy and then had the gall to act surprised when I destroyed them."

Crazyface paused for a second, then smiled. "My apologies, 'destroy' is a bit of a weasel word, so just to clarify: the ponies at school who made fun of me? I killed them all. At the tender age of twelve, I murdered my peers." He grinned wider. "All of them."

"And there's no way to cure CMFIS," Vorpal Blade went on, as if Crazyface had simply interjected a small and innocuous piece of information. "It's not really a mental ailment, it's an ailment of the cutie mark, and cutie marks are completely immutable. I did eventually manage to convince Skippmud to stop repressing the urge to follow her passion. Her mental health has improved dramatically since she started giving herself time to catch some fish whenever she gets the chance. And Crazyface… well, I let him move independently, I don't keep a leash on him like everypony else always has. And he's made amazing progress.

"As for me… at a young age, I showed talent for understanding the mind, and I got my cutie mark in mental alteration. But… it's an exceedingly rare talent. Rare, and in my native land, completely unprecedented. Remember when I told you it took 'forever' to find spells I could actually cast? Well, it's sort of true. Aside from common levitation and a few small and random bursts when I was truly inspired or agitated, I didn't learn a single real spell until I was in my late forties. And that was just the one spell. I didn't have a workable repertoire until I was in my sixties. And by then, it was too late: after all those decades, my 'cutie mark failure' was stuck with me, permanently. I've done my best… I've never completely recovered my sanity, but I'm at least sane enough to know that."

Twilight's jaw was hanging open, and she squirmed uneasily. "In your sixties?" she breathed. "How old are you? I've asked that question plenty of times, to plenty of ponies, over the course of our… 'association'… and I'd like an answer this time!"

"Oh, I don't keep track of that sort of thing," Vorpal Blade said lazily. "You'll have to ask my lawyer. Skippmud, how old am I?"

Skippmud grinned; evidently, the two of them had been rehearsing this. "When the next Summer Sun Celebration comes," she said cordially, "you will be six hundred."

"Six hundred," Vorpal Blade agreed. He turned to Skippmud in mock surprise, as if this information that he clearly knew was a revelation to him. "Really? I'll be six hundred years old exactly? Wow, we should probably do something special. Oh wait! We already are." He laughed and smirked at Twilight. "This Summer Sun Celebration is going to be an immensely festive time. Can't wait for you to see what I've got planned."

"How…" Twilight exclaimed. "How is that possible?"

"Oh, well, that'd be my leg," Vorpal Blade stated, as if it was obvious.

"…What?"

Vorpal Blade's horn lit up with his midnight-blue aura, which also surrounded his right front leg. With a flicker of his horn, he ripped the leg clean off.

Twilight stifled a scream at the sight of the removed leg, and her terror only increased at the realization that the leg was changing shape. It became darker in color, longer and thinner, multi-jointed and archway-shaped like a spider's, and ended in a blunt hook instead of a hoof.

"A… a l-l-leg of the Beast!" Twilight forced out in a squeaky voice.

Vorpal Blade scowled at her. "You know everything," he accused.

Skippmud stood on her hind legs, and used her two front hooves to pull off her lower jaw. The detached jaw became huge, furry and gray, with yellowing teeth and a pair of tusks. Crazyface stuck a hoof underneath his left eye and plucked the eye clean out of its socket. The red eye grew larger, its iris turning acid-green and its sclera yellow, and black lines in the shape of a pentagram forming its pupil.

"Five and a half centuries ago, I stole this leg from Web City," Vorpal Blade explained. "Queen Okapiopteryx found the legs in the four corners of her country and put them under heavy guard in the center of her fortress city. That was the day I realized I could steal anything… and it was also the theft that allowed me to live long enough for all my other thefts to be possible. By severing my own leg and replacing it with this, I gained immortality and a massive increase in my natural talents. The leg eventually led me to the eye and the jaw, but I didn't take them for my own. All I needed was one spare part, thank you very much. Then I met Skippmud and Crazyface."

Vorpal Blade pressed the Beast's leg against the stump of his own. The jawless Skippmud waggled her eyebrows at Twilight before setting the jaw back in, and Crazyface laughed as he stuck the hellish eye back into his eye socket. The body parts morphed back into the shape of normal pony parts, regaining the form and coloration of the three ponies they were attached to.

"Twenty years ago, I busted out of prison with them," Vorpal Blade went on. "And I finally had companions I could spend the rest of my life with. Once they became adults, I asked them to join me in immortality."

"Immortality," Twilight choked. "This… this is profane and unnatural."

"Well, let's agree to disagree yet again," Vorpal Blade said pleasantly. "You've got an extended lifespan too, you know. You're a spirit of the Elements of Harmony. You and all your friends are going to live four times as long as everypony else. So… why don't I have the right to live forever?"

"That wasn't my decision," said Twilight, "and the Elements of Harmony are—"

"Are what?" Vorpal Blade taunted. "Elemental and harmonious? So is Mitgaeard, and yet there's an indisputable moral difference. So are the Elements of Harmony inherently better than extending my life with a bit of primordial havoc?"

"Say, wasn't there a Gathering of the Goddesses recently?" Skippmud said thoughtfully. "I wonder why I didn't get an invite."

"I guess it doesn't count if your immortality is conditional on having your detachable jawbone on," Crazyface said wryly.

"Yeah, can't argue with that, immortality probably doesn't really count if you can put it on or take it off like a jacket," Vorpal Blade mused. "Sure, it may be damn hard to remove, but it's still removal, you know—"

"ARE YOU ALL COMPLETELY INSANE?" Twilight roared. "That many pieces of the Beast in one place—he'll rule over your minds and force you to reassemble him! He'll stop at nothing to get himself put back together! And when you've done his work for him, he'll kill you, make no mistake about that."

"We have no intention of reassembling anypony," Crazyface scoffed. "Not my thing. I'm more into disassembly."

"'Pieces of the Beast' nothing, these are pieces of us now," Skippmud added.

Vorpal Blade tilted his head and smirked. "Is that concern for our safety and well-being I hear in your voice, Smiley?"

"Well, since the Beast would lay waste the world, and the world includes you three, sure, why not?" Twilight retorted. "You must separate those pieces! The kingdom you hope to rule won't exist anymore if the Beast returns."

Vorpal Blade frowned deeply and stepped forward, glaring at her. "Are you asking me," he whispered, "to separate myself from the two ponies I can't live without? Or are you asking us to live without certain semi-vital body parts? That's not very nice, you know." He stood up straight and smiled again. "We know the Beast attacks our willpower every second of the day, tries to make us do things, but we don't let him. If there's one thing the three of us know how to do, it's resist irresistible urges."

"Yeah, you guys are the model of self-restraint," Twilight sneered. "You can definitely trust a trio of ranting and raving lunatics—who destroy property, murder innocent creatures, and molest children—to keep their baser instincts in check!"

"I don't molest children, I seduce children," Crazyface said matter-of-factly. "I make them want me. Apple Bloom was a rare exception due to time constraints."

"Oh, well, THAT MAKES IT ALL BETTER!" Twilight cried out viciously.

Vorpal Blade shrugged. "So… now you know me," he said. "I implore you, try not to hate me so much. I don't hate you."

Twilight closed her eyes and shook her head. "You know the answer to that, Vorpal Blade. You knew what direction this would take us. As much as it pains me that it feeds the power that you were given by Sørmur dï Mitgaeard, I hate you more now than ever. And that was your plan all along."

Vorpal Blade sighed in resignation and looked at the ground. When he looked back up at Twilight, his pupil-less eyes were blue instead of white, and a pair of curving fangs extended from his mouth.

"Perhapssssssss…" he said in a voice that was not his own, and his face took on the full countenance of Mitgaeard's as it lunged at Twilight.

A moment later, Twilight was in her own bed, her eyes wide open, drenched in sweat. Breathing heavily, she sat up and glanced around. The only thing moving was Spike, curled up in his own bed, asleep and oblivious.

Twilight got out of her bed and lit a tiny candle. By the light of a candle, she levitated a quill and parchment to herself and began writing. Dear Princess… She considered for a moment. "Luna," she decided, returning to the letter.

Dear Princess Luna,

Vorpal Blade has visited me in a dream and held me as a captive audience in my own mind as he tormented me. I feel very exposed and vulnerable right now. I understand that you have some power over the dreaming realm. If you could please, as soon as possible, teach me how to prevent such a thing from ever happening again, I would be most grateful.

Your friend and faithful subject, Twilight Sparkle

She rolled up the letter, sealed it, and immediately produced another sheet of parchment.

Dear Princess Celestia,

I have further intelligence to give you, to add on to what Discord gave us the other day. Vorpal Blade has visited me in a dream and told me his secrets. The authenticity of any claim he makes is, of course, shaky, but I take him at his word nonetheless: he and his companions are immortal, because they possess a leg, eye, and jaw of the Beast, the ancient enemy of the Old Gods. Such a thing has little bearing on his plot with Mitgaeard, and yet I fear the worst should the Beast influence their actions and start to reassemble himself even slightly.

I have the Beast's ears in my possession, given to me by a friend at the Bazaar, and have been researching ways to destroy them. Progress on that subject has been admittedly slow, but I shall redouble my efforts now that I know there is genuine risk of the Beast taking action. I hope this information is of use to you.

Your faithful…

Twilight hesitated again. Her relationship with the princess had changed in the past few months, and it occurred to her that her usual salutation of "your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle" now seemed to be a remnant of a former time. She shrugged, and magically erased the last two words she had written, and instead wrote, "Love, Twilight".

She sealed that letter and set it on her desk next to the one addressed to Luna. She stared out her window at the night sky, her expression blank and her mind largely empty, still fogged by sleep. She frowned deeply as something occurred to her. "I wonder…" she whispered.

She bent down toward the bottom drawer on her desk. She touched the tip of her horn to the drawer's keyhole, performing an immensely complex magic spell to unlock it. The drawer clicked open, and Twilight produced the ears of the Beast.

"Right," she muttered to herself. "Just as I remember them: fossilized. And yet what those three had looked so… alive and whole. Maybe that's just because it was a dream. Yes, surely that's it."

She was suddenly overcome by the desire to press the huge gray stone ears up against her own ears. She slowly did so, and as they came closer to her head, the stone started flaking off and falling to the ground, revealing gray fur.

Soon, all the stone was gone, and the ears were warm with body heat. They slowly twitched as if listening, and their veins pulsed as if blood was pumping through them.

Twilight tried and failed to suppress her scream of horror and shoved the now-living ears back into her desk drawer, slamming the drawer shut as quickly as she could and locking it with the same complex spell as she had used to open it.

She breathed raggedly, her eyes wide and even more sweat dripping down her brow. She checked on Spike, and he was still fast asleep.

"Well, I'm not gonna sleep tonight," she said gravely. "I may never sleep again…"

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Endnotes

Sometimes, writers, no matter how professional they are, find themselves wanting to express a belief they have about the world, and do so by putting those beliefs in the form of a monologue from one of their characters. This is common enough that I feel the need to state for the record that this is NOT what happened in this chapter.

I look over certain passages of this chapter, and I feel dirty for being the person who wrote them. It was incredibly painful for me to write characters in any way equating pedophilia and homosexuality, and speaking out in defense of the former. Obviously, there's a reason I put it in the mouths of villains: 'cause it's totally wrong. Yes, Vorpal Blade threw a bit of logic in our faces, and the things he said are things I wonder about sometimes, but he leaves out the important parts, the parts that prove what's right and wrong.

I didn't want to get too heavy or make any unfortunate implications, but in case I did, I'm sorry. All I wanted was to make the point that Vorpal Blade is from another time, and unlike the goddesses, who are on board with modern social norms, was not among civilization as the centuries went by. As for why Skippmud agrees with his stance, well, she's just plain hateful. And anyway, that's just a small facet to a very layered and overall pretty classy character. Hey, revolting political incorrectness is a classic ingredient for a classy villain.