I liked to sit down with a good book every now and then. Maybe a wild fantasy story about another world. If I enjoyed it, I could watch afternoon change to evening, then watch evening change to night. Watching the time of day change was nice. I was comparatively less experienced with being a part of activities that quite literally brought morning from night.

Luna, trying to help me, gave an explanation about alignment, alicorns (which was apparently the name for the unicorn-pegasi things that herself and her sister were), and ‘cutie-marks’. I confess, it all flew over my head. The raw, visceral shock of seeing a planetary body being carried was a bit too much for me. Luna might have asked me a question at the end of her speech, because she was staring back at me expectantly.

For once, I felt my warped body and my human mind were in perfect alignment. Because, rather than try to parse through what I’d seen with Luna, I heard a bubbling ‘gurgle’ from my waistline. It seemed that my stomach was making its intentions to the world clear.

“Thou art hungry, yes? Shall we-” Luna froze. Absentmindedly, she scraped a forehoof over the ground, a sign of anxiousness in horses. She took a glance at my jagged teeth, as if having forgotten that I was an- to be honest, I wasn’t even sure what I was. Was I an obligate carnivore now? Could I still eat plants? “Right, thou shalt require bodies in thine diet. This is”–Luna touched her jaw, nodding after a second–“something that the royal chefs should be able to do. We believe that a bit of offal is kept frozen within the palace for visiting gryphon dignitaries.” Seemingly remembering something, I felt the blue glow of Luna’s magic over my face. “Thou shan’t be needing this, we don’t think.” Oh thank god, the muzzle was gone.

While Luna led me away, I put a mental pin to ask about gryphons later. There was no way that this place shared even more mythological parallels to Earth. I would almost rather them be snail people, or some political breakaway region of ponies. The bizarre parallels were too grating. Right now though, the more feral part of me was salivating at the thought of eating food. I was feeling gluttonous and really wanted to deal with this at the dinner table, instead of around the next corpse I smelled. Terrifying though it might have been, I wasn’t sure what I might do if I saw a rat-cadaver right now. Or, worse still, if I might enjoy eating it.

Luckily, instead of prowling around for corpses to feast on, Luna brought me to a tiny dining hall and briefly summoned a member of the palace staff to her side. I was pleasantly surprised when, not ten minutes later, half a dozen ponies came pushing carts of food out into the room. It looked like the kitchens were always bustling in a castle full of people. Unveiling platters, a vast array of dishes were at hand. There were hors d’oeuvre, grilled cheese sandwiches, cheese on crackers, some kind of pasta, a whole bale of hay, scrambled eggs, and a particularly fragrant saucer of offal in some kind of sauce. Luna, for her part, was wheeled a small salad of hay, leafy greens, and tomatoes. She began nibbling on the salad appreciatively, before shooting an inquisitive look. Needing no more prodding, I reached for a grilled cheese sandwich.

It was all so good! I couldn’t help myself, jumping from dish to dish in a mad fervour. The grilled cheese had had tomatoes inside and was browned perfectly. It was delicious. The scrambled eggs felt like they were filling a void that had been dug in my soul. The cheese and crackers were a delight to the senses. Any fear that I’d had over only being able to eat meat or bodies was dispelled immediately. Even the bale of hay got shovelled into my mouth. Hell, I wasn’t even sure that I could digest it, but my body loved every second of shovelling it into my mouth. More than the food, it was almost like the expression of excess and gluttony was what fueled me. I was halfway through demolishing the delicious saucer of entrails when I noticed Luna watching me closely. With some force of will, I paused eating, slurping up my last organ. Nodding appreciatively, Luna pointed to the meat.

“The pegasi of yore once jubilantly caught fish from rivers, competing over who could do so at the greatest of speed. The odd bit of protein to supplement their diets is not the strangest of things to us.” Luna surveyed the mess of scoured plates. “But thine hunger is for far more than entrails and carrion, we see. Even at the peak of the Gryphonic-Kingdoms era, gryphonfolk rarely hunted larger sport than hare or fish. For all their warmongering, they preferred cleaning up kills left by the more numerous monsters of that period.” Luna eyed me intensely. “Thine body wert made for hunting, for battles. Brian Porter,”–Luna paused, shifting uncomfortably as she tried to voice her question–“willt thou do us the honour of sparring against us?”

My eyes shot wide, looking at Luna as my food was forgotten. She wanted to fight me again?

“Of course, we intend to place no pressure on thee.” Luna assured, wilting as she tried to backtrack. “If thou dost not wish, we-”

“Noh magic beams.”

Though I felt a sort of certainty that this was going to get messy, seeing Luna’s genuine joy made it all worthwhile in my eyes. Calming herself after a moment, she coughed into a hoof and looked deep into my eyes.

“No combat magic it is.”

---

Luna had assured me that the guards wouldn’t have any problems with us sparring on their training yard, when we’d walked onto it. In any case, the place was empty. All we really needed, after all, was the wide grassy field in its centre. The grass was fairly well trimmed. I wasn’t sure if they cut it or if the ponies just nibbled at it every now and then. Whichever it was, the field would do just fine. In the distance, sand pits, obstacle courses, and running tracks laid. But I was here. Lifting my claws, I counted the two of them there. And Luna was standing in front of me. Win or lose, this setup was all I needed for showing her how I fought.

“Thoust no idea how starved we are of fighting partners.” Luna beamed, lifting her spear, “There are scarce few elder-drakes awake that could give us a good fight these days, and half of them want nothing more than to settle on top of a mountain and discuss bygone days with us.” She started trotting towards me, twirling her metal spear all the while. “Our sister could offer us a true challenge, though she insists we not be seen fighting one another! ‘Tis wholly unfair!”

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Luna stalked closer, her head lung low. Her muscles looked taunt. Primed, just like her spear. She seemed more like a cat hunting a mouse than an equine. I wasn’t sure if it was supreme overconfidence in my body’s fighting ability, the belief that Luna wouldn’t hurt me too badly, or whether this warped form had wholly corrupted my sense of self-preservation, but I didn’t balk at the challenge. Instead, spreading my claws wide, I invited the attack.

“Our sister’s guards are eager to assist us, thou dost understand. But we need more, a challenge. A battle, like we remember from our youth.” She paused for a moment, looking wistful. “We thank thee again, young Brian, for agreeing to spar with us.”

“Happy to helph, Phrincess” I rasped

“Luna” She corrected with a smile.

“Luna”

With that, her fighting stance reaffirmed itself and I ducked my body low. We were each waiting for the other to move. A second passed, then two. On the third, I sprang. Gaunt though I might have looked, these legs packed quite a punch. As I shot towards Luna, she brought her weapon in front of her, pointing upwards to the sky. My intended slash towards her midsection fell flat as I discovered that whatever metal the shaft of her spear was made of could stand more than space-armour. With a pathetic ‘cling’, the hand scraped against the impenetrable wall that was the spear held in Luna’s magic. Snarling like only a monstrosity could, I kicked out against the dark blue pony. Blocking with a forehoof, Luna caught the full force of my foot against her own hoof’s armour. She was strong too. Striking out, she threw a punch against my foot, pounding into my leg like a train and unbalancing me. Shoot. Before she could capitalise and bring this first round to a wholly unsatisfying conclusion, I threw myself away from her and levelled my body on two feet again. She had four legs and a prehensile spear. That was surprisingly difficult to work around in the mindset of a biped.

Making use of the distance I had created between the two of us, Luna’s spear burst towards my direction. In a rapid flurry, it gave a dozen slight, rapid thrusts at my face. I felt Luna was holding back with these, but each one still got closer to my head. I didn’t think that there was any point in trying to block, as my previous experience had highlighted that the spear was held in such powerful telekinetic grip as to make it the oft-referenced “immovable object”. Instead, I was forced back, step by step, away from Luna. She was in complete control of this situation. Limiting herself to not blasting me in the face with magic clearly wasn’t enough to make this a fair fight. But, with each step further from Luna I got, I was starting to think that that didn’t mean I couldn’t win.

With a twist of magic, Luna’s spear flipped upside down. Seemingly, it was intended for use as a cudgel against me in Luna’s apparent victory. Instead of staying on the backfoot and letting it bash me blue, I reached out for the spear. Grabbing on to it, I pushed off of it like a swimmer kicking off of the wall of a pool, using the extra momentum of the kick to rush away from the spear and directly towards its unprotected wielder, Luna.

Caught off guard by my rush, Luna tried bringing her spear back to her side. I could hear the air whistle at the metal’s flight, like a bullet bound for me. But she was too late, I reveled. I was already upon her. Raising a claw high in the air, Luna’s eyes shot wide as I bounded the last step between us. ‘Thip’ was the sound I heard as a blooming pain shot through my left shoulder. My charge stalled as my body found itself skewered onto the end of a spear-tip. Huh, it looked like she had had enough time to call back her spear. Luna, below me, was lowering an armoured hoof that she’d used to try and shield her face. A look of relief blossomed across her face, mixed in with some concern she seemed to be showing for my impaled shoulder.

In a moment of senselessness that I wasn’t sure I could entirely call my own, I felt a part of me reason that the battle wasn’t over yet. She hadn’t said that we were to duel to first-blood, after all. A burst of energy coursing through me, I pushed forwards, impaling myself deeper on Luna’s spear. Luna, wide eyes and mouth opening to shout out something, was exposed. A lackluster claw-swipe was a swipe nonetheless. Striking across her peytral, my claws found no purchase in the mysterious black metal. But, shearing across the metal with a whining scrape, the claws caught a glancing cut across the flesh of her breast. Huffing as Luna shot back with a yelp, I hazily examined my right hand, droplets of blood trickling off the tips of the claws. Alright, I had actually scored blood against her this time. Sure, she hadn’t been using her battle magic, but she had been treating me like a real opponent from the get-go. And all this trade of blood had cost me was, I looked at my left shoulder, impaling myself on a spear. My fangs gnashed in delight.

Luna wasn’t immune to the awe of blood dripping down my claws, ears folded back and shrinking away.

“A-alright creature, you have-” Luna was cut off by an explosion of light and sound behind me, bathing the dark pony in fiery orange light.

"MONSTER!"

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Soaring high in the heavens, led by a duo of guardsponies, a shining golden chariot was left abandoned in the sky. Its enraged once-occupant was currently hurtling in my direction in a blinding fireball. Her voice, loud enough to deafen the gods, must have been enhanced by magic.

“You would dare attack my sister?!”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I tried moving, wresting myself off of the spear that her sister had used to defend herself from me with, my claws still damp with Luna’s blood.

“I granted you leniency, trust. Let me show you what you deserve.” Her horn grew an ever-brighter inferno.

Oh god, I’d seen that before. Grabbing the spear’s shaft, I shimmied and lifted myself up off of the tip. The howl of the equine comet above kept a slurry of adrenaline pumping through my bloodstream. Falling to the ground, I made a mad dash away from Luna, trying to dodge whatever Princess Celestia was going to try hitting me with. One step, I pushed through grasses and laid my foot on a stone. Two steps, I sank a foot into the muddy water of a puddle. Three steps, I was consumed by orange light.

I had become more familiar with the sensation of disintegration than I would have liked. In a way, it was serene. I could see so much of my surroundings still. I could hear without the pounding of my heart in my ears. Luna screaming my name, rushing at Celestia. Guards swarming out of the palace and to the field, frenzied by the call of their sun-princess. The cloud of my essence, pooling once again. I felt the call once again, to slip away into nothingness. And, once again, fighting and conflict grounded me to this world. The chaos of scrambling soldiers, the burning rage of Celestia subsiding to confusion when met with Luna’s tears, the memory of pain flashing across my body in the moment before it burnt away, I was grounded by the chaos of the world. It was a strange thing, but when I reached out to feel the roiling hot blood of so many frenetic souls, I felt a great chill in the cloud I called a soul. It felt good. I pooled my consciousness into it, remembering shape, remembering mind, remembering being. I opened my eyes. I was whole again.

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To Celestia’s surprise, and to the shouts of a few dozen guardsponies, I’d rejoined the world of the living. As I whinnied in anger, heavy clouds formed on the wind and snow fluttered through the air. As Celestia’s horn began lighting up once more, and ponies began closing in, Luna jumped in front of me, putting a barrier between Celestia’s horn and myself. My mind felt hazy, but I was cognizant enough to appreciate the gesture. Celestia was lucky, I could freeze her. Freeze her in a block of ice. Instead, I walked to Luna’s side, standing as her icy companion.

“Tartarus below, listen to us, sister! We brought him out here ourselves to spar with us! Thou shall not hurt him!” Luna

“Sister, that is a windigo!” Celestia’s horn dimmed, possibly only out of shock at hearing her sister’s defence of the monster by her side. I whinnied an icy breath.

"Thou shall not hurt him!" Luna brokered no compromise. Celestia, in turn, seemed shocked by Luna’s defiant stance on this.

The ghostly horse inside me, the windigo wanted to rampage. It wanted to dance and bring frost to these tumultuous, unharmonious beings before me. The snow had begun to gather on the ground, while the breaths of the dozens of guardsponies clouded and fogged before them. Even now, I could see the soldiers struggle to maintain a grip on their metal weapons as they absorbed the chill. At their forefront, a cautious Princess Celestia stood, no longer the incarnation of rage she had once been.

“Brian, it is okay. Thou art safe now.” Luna had sidled up close to me, fixing me a reassuring smile. It was relaxing, however fake the certainty it tried to convey might have been. I could barely believe her. She’d really looked at a ghost and tried to say “Everything will be alright!”. Unconsciously, my wispy body nickered, which might have been some approximation of a laugh. She was ridiculous….

Sinking into the snow below, my body reformed once more.

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