Eater of Souls introduced

Within me, the curse gave a sudden lurch, and I felt something fundamental inside me break. It was as if I were slipping out of myself and drifting away on a stiff breeze. I tried to fight, but there wasn’t anything left for me to hold on to. A strange current was sweeping me away. Lacunae was shouting. Snails was talking about boats. And then I felt something familiar...

Dying.

Again...

Damn it.

***49***

 There’s something distinctly depressing about being able to compare deaths. You’d think once would be enough for anypony. The last time I’d died it was peaceful. Calm. I’d spent the time beforehand feeling full warm sunshine glowing down on me while I listened to the rush of water against the hull. When I finally went, I’d been lying in Glory’s embrace and surrounded by friends who cared for me, and the actual dying had been like drifting away up to a better place without a fear or worry in the world. My only regret had been that I would have liked to have seen the beautiful stars above me before I departed.

This time, it hadn’t been peaceful, I wasn’t drifting upwards, and I had much bigger worries than missing out on a view of the night sky. This time, I was getting ripped through some sort of murkiness like so much rainwater being sluiced through a storm drain. I’d like to think I’m one of the few ponies who knows exactly what that feels like. Enervation’s piercing scream surrounded me on all sides, and every few seconds I passed through a shimmering, more-loudly-shrieking silver ring that sucked me in and spat me out ever faster. I struggled against the current out of sheer obstinacy, but it was no use; there was no way I was going to get away from it.

And as I was yanked through that gray void, flipping and spinning about, I became aware of a great glow in the distance that I was rapidly approaching. And I wasn’t alone in my travels; even though I didn’t have eyes, ears, or even a body, I was still aware of others being swept along with me as wailing motes of light. I brushed against one and instantly had an impression of a mare, earth pony, ganger… but then she was gone before I could feel more. Then I hit another one: colt, earth pony… I was struck by the smell of brahmin, the jingle of a pack harness, and a sensation of a horrible fever and suffocation. And then he was gone too.

Truth be told, I much preferred the first version to the sequel.

The flow increased as I was carried along, and I brushed against more pony… souls? Spirits? Every contact transferred a little information about another pony. I watched others try and break away and saw one strike the edge of one of the screaming rings as it passed; the light seemed to smear out and freeze in place, trapped against the circle as I swooshed by.

The luminescence grew brighter and brighter as we were sucked through that endless hazy gray gloom punctuated by loops of screaming silver that propelled us ever onward. For a moment I soared upward and had a glimpse of an immense disk like a circular saw blade, the motes of light being pulled through gaps in a colossal, jagged tire-like wall of silver that surrounded that glowing donut. I was sent following the rest…

And then the current weakened to a dull tug. Slowly I drifted along in a sea of motes within that immensely large wall. There were strange shadowy shapes around me, things that looked vaguely like walls and tunnels that I passed harmlessly through. From all around me came the wail and babble of untold masses crying out, some calling for Luna or Celestia to save them, others screaming in rage against their imprisonment, and others babbling in Zebra. I brushed against griffins, dragons, zebras, and things I didn’t even have names for. Over it all, though, was one terrible cry… a scream of such anguish and suffering that it dug into me.

Then, green lightning flashed from that immense wall and tore through the sea of motes. Even I screamed as an agony I’d never known flashed across me. It wasn’t a physical pain so much as a sense of profound violation. It felt like being nailed back in the Seahorse again. The green lightning flashed again and again into the center of the sea, and the scream peaked once more.

“Awesome magic, huh?” a familiar stallion said from near me.

“Snips?” I asked. I felt him close, but I couldn’t tell which of the thousands of motes around me he might be. “But you’re… and I’m… shit…”

“Well, I sure am. No doubt about it,” Snips replied, “but I suspect that you still have a ways to go before you’re dead dead.”

Huh? What was I, then? Semi-deceased? Only mostly dead? I was pretty sure this was the point where you turned me upside down and looked for loose bottle caps.

“I’ve fooled around with a lot of necromancy.” Snips went on. “My own soul’s probably been snapped in two more than once. I think that something is tethering your soul to your body. Some anchor. I’d love to know more, but it’s probably too late for that. It’s likely what makes you so resistant to enervation.”

“But what… Snips, what is this place?” I asked as I looked around the sea of floating lights.

“The eye of the storm. The tar pit. The ocean to which eternal rivers flow,” Snips said with an odd hint of merriment. “All poetic names by different ponies. To be honest, we really don’t know. It’s always been here in Hoofington; maybe it’s the product of ancient zebra curses that were beyond even the black book. The writing in the text was particularly fearful of it. I think there’s a much more fitting word for it: Hell.”

Or… if you believed a certain zebra myth about giant star monsters... but that was just crazy… “Guess I wasn’t a good enough pony after all,” I muttered; I’d have gulped if I’d had a throat. It just didn’t seem fair. Sure, I’d done lots of things worthy of damnation, but what about that colt? What could he have possibly done?

“Good and evil have nothing to do with it,” Snips contradicted. “The ancient zebra necromancers were utterly terrified of this sea of souls and its drawing power, but tempted by it as well. They tried to control it with rituals, placate it with sacrifices, and understand it through madness. Their creation of soul jars like the black book was a method to try and escape its pull.” He chuckled darkly. “Seeing it, I can understand their feelings better.” There was a pause, and then he asked quietly, as if terrified of hearing the answer, “Did you get Snails out? Is he okay?”

“Upset, but okay.” I felt a profound sense of relief from nearby and went on. “He told me about what Rarity did… the final step of Eternity.” I felt it was kind of ironic, given that I was looking at spending an eternity here myself. Or... maybe not, apparently? “What did you mean ‘dead dead’?”

“The curse is designed to sever your soul from your mind and body. What it leaves behind is a shell that will eventually perish without help,” Snips said quietly, regretfully. “We saw it several times when we were starting out.” I thought of Rumble in Happyhorn, lying there unaware. “Without the soul, you have no motivation or direction. The most fortunate are like animals. They have intellect but no will to use it and no personality or sense of self. But given you’ve broken so many other rules that it would surprise me if you make it out of this one.”

I would have glowered had I eyes. “I am not Nightmare Moon.”

“Mhmmm,” was the only reply I received.

“But what about you?” I asked with a little frown… or would have if I had lips. The lightning flashed, and that anguished scream rolled out across the sea of souls like a wave.

He gave a light, dry laugh, as if my concern amused him. I guessed it was a little after the fact. “Well, my body was either cremated or vaporized, so...” He sighed. “I’d hoped that splitting my soul might protect me. One tried making my own bones a soul jar as a cheat after the bombs fell. Since I’m here... well... looks like I needed the book after all. Or maybe I just have bits of my soul scattered all over the wasteland, like in that statue and inside my friend, forever trapped at the moment they were severed. Who can say?”

“Well, this is all very educational,” I muttered sarcastically. “I could probably write a manual when I get back. ‘101 ways to die’.”

“Oh, I’d be astonished if you recalled any of this when you got back. This is your soul, not your mind. You are the summation of yourself, but without a mind, how could you remember?” He laughed mirthlessly. “Snails and I… experimented… on a few victims on our own, but none of them really remembered anything when he summoned them back.”

Great… I looked out at the vast sea of motes and murmured softly, “How many are trapped here?”

“Millions. Perhaps hundreds of millions. Who can say how long this place has been catching them?” Snips said quietly.

“Is this place… eating them?” I barely murmured.

“No. I don’t think so. There’d be a lot less if it were,” Snips replied. “I think it’s more that it’s hoarding them, like a dragon hoards gems.” The lightning flashed once more, slicing through the cloud of motes, and that scream rose up from the center of the sea. “I have no idea what that might--

Then I was struck by that emerald lightning again and felt myself torn by its foul magics. This was malicious hate; no reason or purpose. Simply inflicting pain for the sake of inflicting it and nothing more. The motes swirled wildly, and by the time the agony faded, I was left feeling as if I’d been raped and violated all over again. The lightning hurt me on a fundamental level I’d never imagined before, and yet I couldn’t die again. I could only scream. And this time there was no Scotch needing protecting to give me strength; there was only the hope that eventually Snails would be able to get me out of here.

I’d lost contact with Snips with that last attack, and no matter how I tried to call out, I couldn’t get past that terrible scream. The few motes I did bump into were sobbing, raging, or worst of all… resigned. To keep myself from going mad, I tried to move, but in this place space seemed… uncertain. I felt like I was moving, but no matter which direction I took, I was travelling back inside. The very center of the sea had a hollow; if there was something here devouring souls, then I at least wanted a good look at it.

The closer to the center I moved, the more frequent and terrible that lightning became, but I started to suspect it wasn’t as if this place was singling me out. I was just getting caught by stray fire. Whatever the lightning was targeting lay right in the middle of this sea. Slowly, the motes thinned out more and more until…

No…

It couldn’t be!

A dozen bolts of lightning struck the center, and for the first time I realized that the scream Lacunae had been hearing hadn’t been a what. It was a who.

It was her!

A moment later, there was a hooking sensation, and I felt myself being pulled away. I didn’t fight it. I couldn’t think at all. If I’d had eyes I would have wept; a mouth, and I would have cried out. Instead, I simply shut down and let myself be dragged away.

***

“What happened? What did you do?” I asked the luminescent-eyed mustard yellow unicorn. I must have been using the shooty voice, because everyone immediately looked a little nervous.

He blinked. “Oh, ah… well… ya see, I couldn’t stop the curse from popping you out, eh? But I was thinking of what could bring you back, like that thing on boats, ya know?” he said slowly, then rubbed his chin. “Ah… uh…”

“Anchors. He used an anchoring spell,” Lacunae said from my bedside.

“So, when the curse went off, I was able to pull you back and put you in your body,” he said with a nervous smile. “Snips and me used it once to see the other side… but I don’t remember much. But my eyes were all glowy afterwards. Weird, eh?” He leaned uncomfortably close, peering at my own. “Wonder why yours aren’t. I mean, there’s a kinda reddish light in there, but...”

Fallout Equestria Chapters 48 and 49