"Hey Ivan... You might want to wake up..."

I shook my head and kept my eyes shut. It helped me deal with the pounding migraine I had developed. And the migraine was horrible, like some tap dancing six legged freak of nature had taken up residence above pure pain and was shoveling it up with a stylized cereal spoon.

"Ignore the pain. Seriously, you need to wake up."

I cracked my eyes open, then shut them just as quickly as I had opened them. Sure, I was being redundant in my narrative and description bu- where the heck did that come from?

"What the hell...?"

I forced my eyes open and tried to take in my surroundings from beyond the multi colored phantasmic blurs and the intense agony eating my face.

The air tasted faintly of cherry soup and everything was on fire. I could see the sun clearly.

"Ivan?" I distantly heard a voice calling. It was echoed and warped like passing through a medium different from air. I turned my head to see Boss.

Except, Boss was supposed to have all four of her limbs intact. This Boss was certainly missing her left front paw and quite a bit of the arm connected to it.

"Boss?" I croaked. My throat felt like liquid glass coated the inside of it.

She looked down at me sadly. "We've lost. Do you remember anything? What's the last thing you remember?"

"We were singing..." I mumbled, pulling myself up to my hooves. Her left paw looked to have been cauterized shut as it wasn't bleeding and there was the distinctly unappetizing smell of burning flesh and fur in the air.

She shut her eyes like she was forcing something back. "Terror betrayed us. While we were having... 'Fun' with alcohol. He contacted the nearest slaver port. He slipped poison in the booze." Her speech was disjointed.

I looked around. I was in the rubble of the guard building, flaming wreckage strew all about. Slowly, my senses returned to normal. The air stank like burning tar and pitch.

And I could distantly hear a roar on the horizon. And an eerie hissing noise.

"What did he do?" I swayed on my feet. I was hurt somewhere, but the pain was in a place that was far and away from me.

"They called down a favor from a dragon. A red dragon attacked while we were sleeping."

I couldn't see the sky for the smoke. I looked down at what remained of the floor. Bits and pieces of gore were strewn about and I tried not to vomit. "And?"

"The dragon got about half of us, we didn't take you with us, we thought you had died when the roof fell in." She was missing one of her swords.

"Where did you go?" I choked back a sob. I couldn't see an intact building.

"We went into the mines." She shook her head.

"How many are left?" I cut straight to the point.

"Counting you and I, we have three left." Canary trudged over from out of my vision.

"The dragon is engaging... that Thing." He looked even shakier than I felt.

I could hear the capital letter in that word.

"That Thing?" The entire island shook with a distant explosion.

Boss looked at me. "The Thing that Terror wanted you to deal with? Yeah. He took matters in his own talons."

"What is... the Thing?" I asked, more than a little confused.

"It's big. It eats things. And it has eyes." Canary said, leaning against rubble.

It suddenly hit me: We had lost. There was no point in fighting. "When do the slavers attack?"

Boss bowed her head. "They are waiting for the dragon to finish off the thing from the mines."

I straightened my back. "I prefer death over slavery." I drew Disconsolate out from my satchel. "Anybody else have the same thought?

Boss smirked. "I'm thinking we go try and take down a dragon." There was a brief gleam in her eyes that signified determination.

Canary shook his head. "We are all going to die... but it's better than being a drooling vegetable." Canary looked younger still. It was no longer seemingly impossible for him to be only twenty years old. He nodded at me.

"And we avoid that Thing at all costs." Boss finished, shivering.

The building shook, and what little remained of the walls collapsed.

"For Rej?" I started, taking a few testing steps. My balance was off, not that it would do me much good against a dragon.

Boss nodded. "Let's go die in glory!" She looked almost excited, a sword in her one working paw.

Canary had a short sword in his mouth. "Let's go."

-----

On the tattered battlefield that the west side of Rej had become, not a single soul moved apart from the ever present mass of flesh that spread out over the better part of several buildings. Parts of it were scorched, but as time went on the burnt bits were slowly sucked in through the mass and replaced with fresh skin. The skin, was less like skin, but more like tar, very much similar to the river of tar and ooze that had been set aflame previously.

And above it floated a massive dragon which was about the same size as it. If you didn't count the wings and tail, that is. It had three legs and the remnants of a fourth leg were sizzling down below in the ooze. It maintained it's position above the much with a flap of it's wings. As the dragon waited for more of it's fire to return to it, the leg vanished into the blob.

A single seemingly sightless eye floated up to observe the outside world from the blob. It blinked once, and then erupted upward in a blur of rapidly forming muscle tissue and sinew. The entire mass drew up into the appendage which resembled nothing more than an organic blade.

The dragon swiped its almost diamond sharp claws through the pseudoblade and severed it from the main portion. Tar like blood spewed out from the severed portion and the Thing's blade went the rest of the trajectory of its ark into nearby rubble. With a sound that echoed like nails on a chalkboard, it hissed and faded into ashen waste.

The mass and the behavior of the blob remained unchanged: Despite its wounds and burns, it still spawned an eye at irregular periods and it still remained a seemingly out of place thing on the ruined isle.

The red dragon roared out his defiance to the creature and blasted it with a corona of heat and visible flame. It might as well have been the very incarnation of wrath at that moment; if it had been a god it probably would have done the same to the thing. Its red scales shimmered dimly in the bright light of the setting sun.

For a long moment, the other monster in the ruins did nothing but smolder in a sea of embers and ashes. And then the skin swelled around the wound and drew it into itself, leaving only a few half formed eyes to stare up blankly at the scaled behemoth.

Sadly, my gaze was not fixed on this titanic clash of gargantuan proportions, Instead, I was struck almost dumb by the large battle zeppelin craft that was flying above the dragon.

"Air... ship..." I mumbled, struck dumb.

If I took an air ship under my command... I could do anything I wanted...

I was torn from my contemplation by Canary nudging my side. He smiled, and dropped an amethyst on the ground. A tiny purple spark jumped from corner to corner of the gem. "You know more songs than I do."

The Air ship fired its cannons off and the floating red flame serpent shook with unveiled pain. It flew out of the way as the explosive charges in the balls detonated. And as it detonated, the dragon shook again as the shock wave hit it.

Spouts of organic tar goo splattered the area and faded to ash. The eye strewn paste slowly reformed again. The name hit me for it. Shoggoth.

Seeing the dragon shake gave me a desperate idiotic delusion that I dared to cling to and insult the rational mind by calling it an idea.

I burst into a half manic grin. "We haven't lost quite yet. Do you have any stones that amplify sounds?"

Canary forced his ears against his head. "I don't like the way you are looking..." He handed me a simple corundum stone, clear and colorless.

I took both in my mouth and then concentrated on a song. I ran crazily ahead over to the clashing foes.

"Hey dragon, I fucked your mom and had you!" I shouted through the amplification spell. "That's right, call me your daddy."

The dragon jerked like he had been struck and looked over at me. I could almost feel his death glare lasers melt the fur and skin off of my form.

One thing I had liked about the so called friend I had. He exposed me to all of his songs...

And I was now risking my life based off the fleeting hints of a few seconds ago.

And then I thought of the music I wanted to play through the tiny engraved gem and the opening them from September burst out.

And the bomb fell and I cranked more magic than I had ever channeled through anything into the rock.

I channeled my outrage against the world into it.

I channeled my ambitions into it.

I channeled my hopes into it.

I CHANNELED MY BLOODY SOUL INTO IT.

And the bomb dropped and the world erupted into a physical display of the ALMIGHTY POWER OF MAGIC BASS. A massive spectrum of every single fucking color in the universe erupted out in one massive display of how I hated the word.

A shockwave of my soul flew through the air faster than I could see and passed through the dragon.

And then...

it stopped flying. Its face screwed up in an exquisite expression of what could only be described as the most satisfying expression I could imagine on it.

I hurt it.

Distantly, the song kicked in. I ignored it, but the lyrics shot through my mind.

"I can't remember..."

I turned to look back at the two beings left on my side. Boss was down on her back and clawing at her ears. Canary was racing towards me at a breakneck pace.

"What happened in September..."

The almost hidden bass line continued blasting forward. I smiled at Canary. "We got this."

Canary pushed me forward. He opened his mouth and not a single sound was heard. The song swallowed everything.

"When everything is gone..."

Everything was slow and fading out. My blood felt like it was surging with pure power and my soul blade pulsed beside me. The feeling of magic exhaustion filled my brain.

"And it's dark and I'm alone..."

I pushed forward with a fore hoof, and then another forehoof.

"It's been forever..."

And then I was racing towards the downed dragon, wind rushing by my body.

"Since I could've remembered..."

And the otherworldly blob rose up to consume the dragon and I blasted it with a magic shockwave to give it pause. It slowly crawled away in search of easier prey.

"Where the hell is everypony?"

And I was in front of the dragon when the air ship let off another explosive cannon bombardment. The shells landed around me and I jumped through a cloud of explosion shrapnel and debris. The death and carnage was distant.

"I just want to know the story..."

And the dragon had landed on its side, a large wing mangled from how hard it had landed. Broken bones and hatred poured out of its body like malignant waves. And I was in front of the face of the beast. I drew Disconsolate

"Of what happened right before..."

It begged me with its eyes to kill it. I stared back at it and saw a myriad of different things reflected back at me.

A picture of what I was back on Earth, happy, and with my family.

A picture of the head of a massive army completely covered in who knows what.

"I became so alone." I drove the blade into its golden eye and kept pushing.

The lyrics faded into the distance and the synth picked up. I could hear the shouts of horror from the air ship. I withdrew my blade from the horrible eye and jumped across to its neck. I slashed it and it let out a whimper of pain. Blood sprayed out of its neck like a high pressure hose.

And I screamed in the grips of whatever magic I had conjured to fell it. I could feel the dragon as it was blinded. I could hear its agony at the world.

Its agony towards me.

Its agony towards the ship.

Something we both had in common.

I shut my eyes and tried to focus on the sensations. I felt myself push against something inside of the drake. It was hard... and scaly and brittle.

I pushed further against it by reflex and it shattered.

And suddenly the dragon was I.

And memories poured over me that I didn't have. Memories of hordes untouched, of dogs thrown into slavery, of roasted meat and flesh and zebras untold all put to work to please its undying greed.

Scorch.

His name was Scorch. And I owned him.

And my magic exploded out into the visible spectrum and I could feel it stream out of every pore.

I was on fire.

I was fire.

I was Scorch.

And in my mind's eye Scorch turned towards the ship. "Destroy?" His gravelly voice spoke of age and of coal and deep metals.

And my magic streamed into Scorch like we were both arcing lightning back and forth from each other. His throat knit and I felt the briefest amount of resistance from his mind. "Capture." He managed to stand up straight as his eyes healed and his wings straightened out. With a snap of bone and sinew and muscle, it healed.

And then his eyes snapped open and we could see the world as the dragon did.

And then he took off towards the ship.

And the blackberry dragon blood stained my coat and I smiled.

I focused harder and then I was in the dragon, in its mind and controlling.

Always controlling.

A dog crawled out from the sip like fleas out of hair. "A-are they gone?" We wanted to eat him. He looked so delicious.

"Land." We spoke in the dragon tongue.

And on command, the ship descended.

The music got softer as I released my hold on the amplifying spell. "Still can't remember..."

And the ship landed. The dogs looked around as the balloon deflated.

"What happened in September."

We watched the dogs watch us. "Get out of the ship." We both growled.

"Back when everypony died."

And they rushed out. They knew we could kill them.

"Trails of blood during my stride..."

And we killed them mercilessly with our claws. Their flesh rended pleasantly, quite unlike the texture of the blob we had been fighting.

"I just discovered..."

And ate them, the dogs and griffons grinding and mashed down our throat to sate our hunger.

"The ponies were defeated by..."

A few struggled to beat us but they were no match. They died and disappeared down our throat.

"Something very strong..."

And the blob hissed from a far and we killed the last of the ants and stared at it, reflexes going on overload.

"It seemed very weird and wrong..."

And then a massive gout of flame erupted out of us and struck down the shoggoth on the spot.

"It just doesn't belong..."

And it didn't work. The shoggoth simply regenerated. The eyes stared at us.

We barely caught a blur out of the corner of our eyes.

"Like it came out of this world..."

And then we were no more.

There was only I and him and Scorch and Ivan both burned for that moment when they were one and everything was clear and everything was perfect.

I dropped the last of the gems from my mouth. The song stopped.

Canary and Boss were both at my side. I could only look at them and watch their mouths move. There was no sound... There was no feeling anywhere.

"It's so cold..." I mumbled, then sank lower and lower.

And then... there was nothing.