Reunion [RedCharge] (Locked)

[Red Charge]

The hum of etheric energy buzzed in Selenia's ears as she slowly worked her spell, carefully, channeling just the right amount of power to get past any barricades Red Charge may have set up but not enough so that her intrusion would become known to the slumbering unicorn. Weaving patterns and calculating formulas in her head slowly, doing it right rather than fast. A soft glow emenated from her horn and wafted slowly towards him, slithering through the air like a tendril of smoke until it reached through his nostrils and his ear ducts, targeting his brain directly.

At first Selenia thought that nothing had occured, she was still standing in the same room, looking down at the unconscious Royal Advisor with great concentration. Only once she had looked up she realized that there were no longer any walls to the room. Instead, there was a pitch black void in all directions. An eerie silence settled in this .... foyer. Surrounding her in a circle were the visages of several ponies of several statures, colors and species. While all were completely different physically, they all had the same intelligent gaze to them and to confirm Selenia's suspicions, there he was, Red Charge himself, standing with his eyes aglow. So this is how you live with centuries of memories...

He organized his memories by lifetimes, easy to access when necessary, but otherwise unburdening to his current one. How much work does it take to organize your mind in such a way? She could tell the real Red Charge was currently inhabiting this life time, as expected, dreaming or looking through his own memories... who knew?

Around Selenia she could see Professor Rainlock, in his typical attire, just like in the picture books. There was surprisingly little resemblance between him and his daughter Gale. Though she obviously inherited his stature and intelligence, there were little traits common to the two of them other than those.

Also among the lifetimes was Ashrider, with his fuzzy, magma colored mane spiking upwards around his neck, giving it the appearance of a wicked flame-like collar. What unique markings he had, fur bright orange as magma with dark red spots, if she didn't know better she could swear it was not a pony but a Magma Golem. It was obvious Red Charge enjoyed fashioning his appearance.

Also among the crowd stood out a unique pony, with an almost monochrome platinum coat and silvery mane, but the exact same golden eyes as Red Charge. She did not recognize it, but it was obvious enough who it was. Red Charge had said his birth name was Silver Dawn. This had to have been his very first life time. All the secrets of the Labyrinth must be within it, how invaluable was the knowledge there? Then again, Ashrider was one of the most powerful unicorn pyromancers of all time, able to create a perpetually burning fire that will never weaken in strength and knowledge of all of the research locked within his tower... the power Selenia could wield with such knowledge...

But she did came here for Rainlock's memories, didn't she? Who knows what Equiterian secrets he had learned during his time, what he had encountered... if he held knowledge of that secret ruin from the world, who's to say he did not master many other equiterian feats which he kept under lock and key as well? If she came into the Labyrinth with the knowledge of an Equiterian... the advantage would be clear.

There were several other interesting lifetimes to look into as well, each unique in their own field, each capable of adding something invaluable to Selenia.

She knew she did not have time for more than one, maybe two if she rushed it, visits to his lifetimes. Even if he didn't wake up, he would probably realize, unconscious though he was, that someone was rifling through his precious memories. But where to go? This was up to Selenia alone...

[Selenia]

Selenia had been on the very intensely visceral receiving end of this spell many times- a flood of sights, sounds, sensations, emotions, all rushing past her mind's eye, as the caster sought out something. So looking up from the completely unchanged picture of still unconscious mentor and coming face-to-face with a catalogue of his past lives was the last thing she had expected. She stifled a yelp and almost stepped backwards in alarm before realizing that the spell had indeed worked, and no, there wasn't suddenly an intruder in the bedroom of Red's Appleloosa bunker, the lack of walls to the bedroom and endless black void extending to infinity in all directions helped tip her off to that.

She regained her only mildly frayed senses and began to examine the pony-er, ponies lined up in front of her. There was Rainlock and Ashrider, a few she could recognize by name, also Silver Dawn if she had to guess- Red's earliest existence. He must have organized his memories by lifetimes, to browse through and access at his necessity, that explained the lack of a torrent at the start. Or perhaps the spell was only experienced that way for the subject, seeing all the memories the caster sifts through as a byproduct of being forced to remember them in detail. Was Red being subjected to that very phenomenon right now, as he slept?

She shook her head. Focus! There was no time to agonize on spell mechanics. She had a choice to make. She turned back to the three lives she knew by name and deeds, regrettably shoving the rest aside. This memory spell would almost assuredly be a one-time deal.

She looked to Silver Dawn, Red's first life, veteran of the Labyrinth. Truth be told, the Labyrinth was a dark shadow looming over Selenia's shoulder. Ever since Red had told her the inevitability of her situation, it had been a crushing existence in the back of her mind, plaguing her dreams and slowly eating away at her security and sanity. She would be taken, sometime in the future, with no warning, instantly transported to an ancient proving ground riddled with traps and dangers and forced to fight for her life against ponies of equal or greater ability and be the only survivor. It was a harrowing thought. All of Red's memories of the Labyrinth would be contained within Silver Dawn. Selenia wanted to choose him, to see what he saw, how it looked and sounded, where he hid, how he fought, what traps or dangers she might face, but skepticism stayed her hoof. What if the layout was different? What if it were built someplace else, with different variables to account for? it had been centuries, and Red even said he had won through cheating. A map is worth nothing if it's inaccurate, and to assume the creator changed nothing over the eons was folly.

She turned from Silver Dawn to Ashrider. This incarnation she knew from the pages of ancient history books, though when she first encountered the name she did not know it was one of Red's incarnations. Ashrider's magical knowledge and research was legendary. Filling towers with his decades of discoveries and forever shattering basic thermodynamics with his eternal flame. Selenia even faintly remembered a footnote mentioning his influence on Equestrian fashion for the era. Selenia frowned. The raw knowledge was tempting, yes, but there was almost too much of it for her to consider manageable. She could sift through memories, but cleaning out a veritable library in short order? On top of that, Ashrider was a mage of incredible power, so the vast majority of his spell knowledge would be unusable even by a reasonably skilled unicorn like Selenia. She scowled again and moved on...

...To the last incarnation she knew, Professor Rainlock. Connoisseur of high-class magic and everything Equiterian. To say his collection and study of the ancient Equiterian civilization and their relics was groundbreaking would be an understatement. Both of the expeditions to Equiterian ruins Selenia had attended were under the Rainlock name, and visiting the Rainlock mansion itself had given her barely a taste of the full extent of his operation. This Red and the knowledge within his memories were those Selenia would be most prepared to understand. It was also the life that held memories of the doomed expedition to that submerged ruin, which still gave Selenia a very bad feeling. Making efforts to uncover something that Red himself had deliberately tried to lock away felt like the first step down a very slippery slope, and she couldn't see the bottom. That little voice in the back of Selenia's head once again conveniently reminded her that curiosity killed the cat. She shied away from the Professor's robust image. Equiterians were bad news, almost every experience with their legacy in the ruins was a bad one, and their entire existence felt like it was cursed. That knowledge, no matter how ancient or powerful, wasn't meant for her. Some of their secrets should be allowed to die with their civilization, Rainlock believed that, and she chose to trust him.

So, that left Silver Dawn and Ashrider. Silver Dawn would have powerful magic she could learn and the memories of the Labyrinth, but she still just wasn't willing to take the risk with those memories and have them end up being a wasted resource. Ashrider on the other hoof was like a magical dictionary. An ancient magical dictionary filled with nigh-unattainably advanced feats performed and perfected by a master mage, yes, but there were bound to be more than a few things Selenia could use buried in that mind of his. Anything she could get her hooves on, anything she could even make half sense of she was prepared to ravenously consume. Spells, abilities, incantations, even advice or ways to augment her current magical arsenal. It was a tall order, but she believed it was the best option available under present circumstances. She trotted over to face Ashrider and began focusing on him in the same way she had done with the sleeping Red to initially cast the spell.

[Red Charge]

Selenia approached the imposing figure of Ashrider, it wasn't surprising that he was every bit as impressive as Red Charge himself. However, his design was far more outlandish. Rather than the signature armor that Red Charge donned, Ashrider wore a harness of metal linked chains, industrial looking, forming an X on his chest. A careful look at the chain revealed that it was some sort of volcanic metal, likely enchanted. What was its purpose? Ashrider's fur was bright orange, so much so that it created the illusion of being an actual light source and was almost blinding when viewed up close. Upon it were darker spots, seeming almost like a red, earthy crust of the kind you'd find covering molten lava.
The unicorn's mane was fuzzy, it spiked up around his neck and with its unique, fire-like, coloration it almost seemed as though a fire was burning around Ashrider's neck in some sort of wicked, almost diabolical looking collar. On his head the mane was more traditional and chesspiece like, though still bearing flame like coloration, with a single strand of hair from the front dangling on his forehead. Quite dashing.

His tail shared the fuzzy and spiky qualities of the mane and occasional strands bunched up at the sides and spiked upwards, giving the impression of flames. On his shoulders were two tufts of fur sticking out, also curving upwards impressively.

He stood towering over Selenia, his eyes staring forwards, like two rings of fire, unyielding against the darkness he was staring at. His horn was slightly curved upwards, which Selenia knew was a mark of genetic descent from a particular pack of ponies formerly residing in the Griffon Desert before the Equiterians took them over. Yet even with this very ... constructed design, Selenia could not find something that she could honestly say was impossible to find naturally on ponies. In theory, there could exist a pony with Ashrider's looks. But Red Charge sure went to town on the design. What an imposing figure.

There was nothing left to do but touch it, then.

Immediately Selenia's brain felt like mush, a rush of memories overcame her as she suddenly floated in a dark void. She could see a tower slowly rising in the desert, constructed by magic, she could see many figures, old unicorns, sorcerers, spellmakers... a mage convention? She knew some of the faces from her books. She also saw explosion after explosion, spell after spell. Experiment after experiment. But also... family meals... Ashrider was married?

Spell formulas hovered around her, complex, incredible... the equations were insane. Way above her level, equiterian level, surely. Even the simpler ones required knowledge of higher mathematics that most unicorns were not even close to understanding. Luckily, Selenia's practiced eagle eye was more than capable of absorbing at least the formulas themselves. Etching them into her own mind lest she forget about them. A powerful memory overcame her, she was standing over a forge burning with magical fires, folding and hammering metal over and over, her fur was sticky with sweat and soot and her eyes burned, the smell of carbon dioxide made it nearly impossible to breathe, but this was too important to stop. She was using her magic to wield three hammers, effectively fashioning the metal... but at the same time she was molding ether into it, more and more with each folding of the metal. She knew this was not ordinary metal, it was extremely pure and seemed to be already magical, the kind of metal you find very deep in the earth, in very inhospitable climates.

Fast forward, Selenia was sharpening the blade, fast forward, it was ready, a great sword, its hilt and crossguard fashioned to resemble flowing magma and flames, the final touches...

Then Selenia's head nearly fried, whatever Ashrider did here, it was not something she could understand. For her it was just a brilliant flash, like watching a magician's trick, she could not even interpret what she saw there. But when it was done, Magmarhyme, the sword, was burning with eternal fire.

The memory of Ashrider's Magnum Opus left her and she was propelled forwards through time, until another, even more powerful memory surfaced... it... it looked like a domestic disturbance gone horribly wrong. She was outside of Ashrider's tower, looking at Ashrider's own wife, her image become blurred... was the memory fuzzy, or was Red Charge trying to forget?

The wife was injured, so was Ashrider... what had gone down? Were they fighting?

"It doesn't matter, don't you see?" The wife spat out, her voice garbled, "I fed it to you, to both of you and myself, in small doses, every day. You already have it whether you like it or not! Now please, I'm begging you, let's do this together... like we planned from the beginning..."

Suddenly Selenia felt sick... no... how could she possibly...? She wanted to vomit, to lay down and never get back up again... what... when, how?

Then the anger came, it boiled slowly over the next few minutes before erupting inside of her, white hot flame of rage... almost blinded.

"How dare you? Do you have any idea what you've done?!" She yelled in a booming deep voice. "Why would you do this? You're insane! Don't you see what you've done? I have... I have to stop you now. I have to... you left me no choice..." Though she was furious, she was also very sad, the melancholy she felt inside like a black, cold void, eating away at her rage.

"No, please, Silver. We've gotten this far together. You don't have to do this, we're a family for Harmony's sake!" The woman pleaded, "Don't stand in my way..."

But she, or rather Ashrider did stand in her way. The battle that took place after that point was beyond incredible. It flashed past Selenia so fast... But Ashrider had the final say and his last attack was so potent... it vaporized his own wife. By the time it was over, there was nothing left but a pillar of smoke and glass where sand once was.

"You killed her..." A teenage voice attracted her, or rather, Ashrider's attention. "You killed mom? You murdered her!"

"No," Ashrider said, calling the boy's name, but it was too garbled for Selenia to catch, "You don't understand... you don't understand..." He panted, horrified at what his son was exposed to, "Please, let me explain!"

"You're a murderer. You're a killer!" The teenager accused, "You... I... you monster, I have... I have to get away from here... I can't... I can't even look at you!" The boy yelled, enraged, as his horn began to glow.

Ashrider recognized the spell, Selenia did not. But she knew one thing, it was using a 4 dimensional shape as part of the formula... his teenage son was already capable of using 4 dimensional formulas... what some of the greatest magicians of the time had problems with...?

Then there was a massively bright flash of light, the deafening roar of an explosion as Ashrider was flung off his feet and thrown some distance away, crashing into the sand and rolling down a dune, swallowing some sand. He coughed and coughed as he tried to straighten up and hurry up the dune again, he was so exhausted... but when he arrived, all he saw was more glass and... chaos. The spell the boy cast disrupted the ether in such a terrible way that it became as chaotic as it was when the Sky Titan destroyed Canterlot. Massive elementals of all elements manifested around the tower, but there was no teenage boy in sight.

Selenia understood now what had happened. The boy teleported away, using a 4 dimensional spell formula... But... something was wrong... there were no coordinates... Without coordinates, he could just appear randomly... With a regular two dimensional spell it would be in the near vicinity, a 3 dimensional spell would probably be powerful enough to carry him across the planet... but a 4 dimensional spell... he could literally reappear anywhere in space, well, not only in space, anywhere in space and time... Much more likely than not, somewhere he would never return from.
Ashrider allowed himself to collapse into the sand. He had lost his wife ... and his only child... How did everything go so wrong...? He began to cry into the soft sand, it wasn't just silent tears, showing his mental fortitude and anguish, it was uncontrollable sobbing, with all of the unpleasantness you could imagine.

Selenia had invaded a moment so personal... so private... so vulnerable...

"I'd like you to stop now." Red Charge's deep voice did not come from Ashrider, horrifyingly, it came from the Royal Advisor himself, now standing a few steps away from Selenia. She found herself no longer in the role of Ashrider, but as herself again.

[Selenia]

While focusing the spell, Selenia took a few moments to appreciate the actual figure of Ashrider himself. Flowery descriptions and ancient portrait plates from books did little justice to the pony himself. He looked like a god, or a demon ponification of Tartarus. Aside from the real fire in his eyes, everything else about him looked to be wreathed in flame, from his coat to his mane to his adornments, even his horn was wickedly curved. Selenia idly wondered how much of it was genetic, and how much was personal preference on Ashrider's part. She felt the spell finish its preparation and reached out to touch him.

The experience was completely different from diving into the sleeping Red's mind in the Appleloosa bunker. Instantly all of her senses were assaulted by a flood of memories. It was almost exactly the same kind of experience as being subjected to the spell, except now she felt the barest hint of control, an ability to carve through the torrent, like sliding through a crowd in the opposite direction instead of being swept up along with it. She extended her mental pressure, making it halfway through the thought 'magic' before a great pressure ragdolled her in another direction. Spells and experiments, research and writing formulas from scratch. What she could see, she committed to memory, even if she couldn't understand it. Most of the spells she had never seen before, not even in the oldest and most advanced magic books that, as the Royal Advisor's apprentice, she now had permission to peruse but could not yet understand.

Then the memories took hold again. She was no longer an outsider looking in, but had taken Ashrider's place in the memories as the rapids gave way to a calmer flow. Selenia recognized the scene almost as soon as it appeared- the forging of Magmarhyme, the legendary sword. But it wasn't Ashrider doing the forging, but Selenia. She swung the hammers, she etched the ether, she felt the magic herself. It was almost like watching the nightmare fight with Red using her body, but much more personal- she was no puppet, every action taken was a conscious choice by Selenia, every individual spell cast and tool moved was with personal intent. She had never touched a blacksmithing book in her life, and yet the innately knew how to forge the sword as the ancient magics came to her.

Well, almost all of them. The final touch added to the sword had a formula that her eyes slid past every time she looked at it, it was blurry to her vision, absurdly complicated and impossible to comprehend, but she felt the magic flow and when it was finished, she was looking at the final form of the blade.

The mental pressure returned, and pulled her away from the forge, the image fading in her mind as it was replaced by a mare, injured, and crying. Selenia felt such anger toward this mare, but also heartache beyond anything she had felt before. It was nearly enough to rend her heart in two... Without even comprehending it, she understood this mare was her wife-er, Ashrider's wife. Her peripheral vision lacked any detail, unlike at the forge, she had tunnel vision focused entirely on this mare, and her voice was garbled. What had happened? She could pick out fragments, some words, an argument? Selenia felt the desire well up to call out, to say something, but as the mare continued, everything was instantly absorbed by a sudden spike of rage so deep, so dark that she lunged forward, magic bared with murderous intent. The battle was incomprehensible, but at the end, with all other options exhausted, she instantly, almost reflexively, reached out with her magic and, just so, made the mare into ash. There was no other choice.

Selenia was stone-faced and exhausted. Somewhere in the back of her head, she knew that she had just killed Ashrider's wife, or at least lived the memory of it first-hoof, but she had no time to dwell on it. "You murdered her," she heard from the side, and turned to face it. It was her son. "No," she felt herself croak out, he had it all wrong, she had to kill the mare, there was no other choice... "You're a murderer. You're a killer!" Guilt assaulted Selenia and she physically recoiled, trying to drag herself up and approach her son as he charged a spell. She had just lost her wife, she couldn't afford to lose her son, too. He was all she had left to live for. Stumbling her way towards the colt, she didn't recognize the spell, but a stake of terror drove itself through her heart and she knew that it would take him somewhere he would never return from. She desperately picked up her pace, she just had to reach him, to make him understand.

An explosion flung her away into a dune, ears ringing and choking on sand. She scrambled up the dune and was greeted with utter desolation. Fragmented ether, rampant elementals, and the cooling, glassy crater left by his teleportation spell. He was gone, whisked away through time with no way to follow him, and there was no bringing him back. Her breath hitched before her tears could even hit the sand. She had lost everything.

The mental grip released her and she fell backwards from the memory, she felt tears running down her face but couldn't remember why they should be there. Seconds of disorientation passed before she started remembering. Not just what she had seen, but what she had felt, what she had experienced. Everything was coming back. She was no longer linked with Ashrider's memories, so it wasn't the emotions themselves, but the memories of them, of feeling them. The spells, the research, having a wife and child, forging Magmarhyme, and then finally killing his wife and losing his son. She held her forehead in her hooves.That memory she had lived, it had broken him beyond any hope of recovery, and Selenia had almost been taken as well merely by selfishly bumbling around Ashrider's mindscape. Was this what Red experienced every time he performed the memory spell? Who was to say he hadn't lived Selenia's memories from being controlled by the nightmare, that plane of non-existence, the eyes, and the void that wanted to eat her. What sort of terrors and despair had he experienced by proxy in any of the other ponies he cast it to?

She was about to lose herself to the memory of his wife, engraved into her memories now too, when a voice pulled her free. She immediately turned to the voice to find the Royal Advisor, tall and proud as ever, exactly as she knew him.

Selenia saw no anger on his face, but also no happiness. She wanted to say he looked sad, but that was a lie. He was entirely neutral, and unsettlingly cold. Only the ether could tell what he was feeling. She slowly got herself up and walked over to Red in a controlled gait, expending every ounce of her strength to keep from falling. Eyes searching desperately but finding no purchase. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing came. She wrapped her legs around his neck and pulled herself close, her body sagging before whispering in a trembling voice, "I am so sorry..." Selenia didn't know who she said that for, but she knew she meant it. She swallowed hard and her eyes fell onto his back, losing focus as tears started to well up in them again. The pang of anger and despair flashed through her as she watched Ashrider's wife turn to dust once more, and her composure shattered. She squeezed tighter and sobbed into Red's shoulder.