I'll be Mithrarin No More [Open]

[mithrarin]

Who: Dust and OPEN
What: Dust finally cracks after everything that has happened.
Where: Between Ponyville and the Everfree.
When: Morning.
Warnings: Angst.
Prose or Commentspam: I'll match.


The Blade of Ahrah hit the ground with a dull thump, clattering into the grass and, for the moment, briefly vanishing beneath it.

Dust had thrown it as hard as he could, which, considering he was a pony and had no way to grip the weapon, wasn't very far at all. Maybe a dozen feet at best. And he knew it wasn't anything final in the slightest -- a moment after the blade came to a rest, it floated up into the air, then drifted back towards him. The runes on its blade flickered with each syllable as it spoke. "You are being irrational about this, Dust."

The pegasus turned his back on the sword, though why bother trying to leave? Ahrah would just follow him, and he didn't really want to rid himself of the weapon, but... "This whole situation is irrational, Ahrah" He didn't speak above a normal tone, but every word was so charged with intensity and emotion it felt like his voice ought to set the grass on fire. "I've been telling myself all this time that I had a purpose here! I came back for a reason! Isn't that what you told me?! The Sen-Mithrarin will return so long as there is still more for him to do?"

The sword hesitated, caught by its own words. "That is what I said, yes. But, Dust--"

"And when we faced the Pale Pony, what happened? You, we, were completely useless! We might as well have been gnats! What kind of purpose could it be for me to deal with a creature I can't even touch?!"

"Perhaps --"

"Face it, Ahrah -- however you want to twist this around, the fact is I don't have a purpose here. Everyone who said I was just brought back on a whim, they were right. This entire time my presence here, my being alive, has just been a sick joke. A cheap laugh. I should be dead still. I should be lying at the bottom of that volcano where I ended up when I completed my one, my only, purpose!" Dust stomped one hoof on the ground, hard, as if he could vent his frustrations just through violence. He couldn't. He had no way to vent his frustrations at all.

"There is more you can do than simply using a sword," Ahrah ventured.

"You sound like Flare now, and you're both wrong." Perhaps because no one was there, perhaps because he was so very frustrated and upset, Dust lifted his head and tipped back his hat with one hoof, the better to glare directly at the sword.

"I was made for a purpose. I was made to fight. The Moonbloods specifically designed me so I would have the strength to use a blade and the conscience to use it for justice and righteousness! That is what Dust, the Sen-Mithrarin, exists for. Isn't it, Ahrah?!"

The blade had no answer, no response. Dust dropped his foreleg and his head, turning his back on it once again.

"It's just all a sick joke, on me."

Comments

[noxequus]

"Life is but a sick joke. Not merely on you, but on all of us." Luna had decided to step away from the market now that ponies had returned to the town, and had managed to catch... well, at least from the point where Dust was yelling at an enchanted piece of metal on the ground. She stands out, slightly, being as dark as night even in the harshness of the morning sun.

"That you exist is likely not the intention of your creators, at this point. You served your purpose and yet you continue to remain - something they did not foresee."

[mithrarin]

"I don't think they foresaw anything past my victory, but at least if I had remained alive in Falana, I'd still have things to do."

Technically Ahrah wasn't on the ground any more, since the blade had an obnoxious habit of floating. At least Dust wouldn't be leaving it behind.

"But here, it's not even that I remain. It's that I came back."

[noxequus]

"And you think that this was not to some degree the machinations of the Pale Pony? Those at the games witnessed first-hoof the power she holds over souls, and those who have been researching her speak powerfully for her willingness to treat life and death as little more than an experiment."

Slowly, Luna approaches, looking to be on the defensive. She's not sure how Dust will react to the things she's saying, but she feels them necessary to say.

"Perhaps it was the Pale Pony that brought you back to life as well as trapping you here. To see how you overcome this crisis of faith."

[mithrarin]

She was saying everything he had just said, except for one important little fact.

"Faith has nothing to do with it. I wasn't made for this -- plain and simple. I'm a warrior, not a person. This... this is a sick joke. There's nothing to see except someone trying to be what he's not and failing."

[noxequus]

"You suggest that none who are bred for the battlefield can ever be anywhere but the battlefield simply because you yourself are uncertain of how to cope in peace." Luna's tone turns harsher, and that defensive stance opens up in faint indignation.

"That is the faith of which I speak. Simply because it has a benign name such as 'faith' does not mean it is not a poisoned blade which you seek to plunge into your heart. It is the belief that weighs you down like a shackle upon your legs, which places pitfalls in your path when you attempt to walk on your own two feet."

[mithrarin]

"What about 'literally created'?" Dust said, turning to face Luna. (Still, as ever, without eye contact. "If you want an analogy, how about an earth pony in that cloud city here? Or what about any pony, a thousand feet underwater? Does 'belief' have anything to do with the fact that they just can't live there? That they don't possess the basic, fundamental things they need to live there?"

[noxequus]

"You have not yet died. You have neither drowned from lack of air nor fallen several miles onto hard, uncaring stone. Created as a living weapon or not, you were brought here. Brought back to life, judging by your own statements. That implies that there is more within you than simply the weapon. After all, weapons have no need for pain, no reason to feel anger at their own powerlessness." While her tone gets harsher, Luna does not raise her voice in the slightest, now standing firm.

"And if you want to discuss what belief can and cannot achieve, I would suggest you contemplate the one known as Pinkie Pie, who could easily walk on clouds or on the floor of the deepest ocean for no reason past 'she felt it was a good idea at the time'."

[mithrarin]

"And that doesn't scare you?" Because when she put it like that, it probably ought to, shouldn't it?

Dust looked down and away, his hat an absurd barrier to emotional contact given the way his lower-set equine form amplified its ability to block his expression. "They do if anger and powerlessness would drive them to succeed in their task, in the end. But anger and powerlessness, and determination, don't make someone any more able to live a normal life when they were never made for that."

[noxequus]

"Even if it did, it fascinates me all the same." Because, really. If she could tap into what makes Pinkie actually Pinkie, she could make ponies the world over happy. A mildly unpleasant, Discordian utopia, but a utopia nonetheless.

"A sword cares not if it is used in utter folly. A blade exists only to cut, whether it is cutting the flesh of the enemy or a bushel of carrots for stew. All of the emotion that you feel, the protest you make at being used for such mundane tasks... that is what allows you to persevere. You believe it is wrong, and fight that with every fiber of your being... and yet, you have landed in a land with no shortage of fighting, and find yourself unable to understand how you can assist." With a quiet sigh, Luna shakes her head.

[mithrarin]

"I am afraid your metaphor is imperfect, Princess Luna," Ahrah said from its position to Dust's side. "Though I allow Dust the choice of where I am used, I trust in his conscience and sense of what is right. I do, in fact, care about the purposes I am used for."

"Besides," Dust said, "the point is that I'm not a normal person. I wasn't born, or raised. I never had a family, and the one friend I have is long gone. I have memories of all those things, twice over, but both of them are wrong, and definitely not mine. I was created."

[noxequus]

The alicorn lifts her head in surprise for a moment, before shaking it. Souls empowering weaponry... if such magicks were performed in Equestria, the smith would have been tried for wielding forbidden arts. "I concur that I was speaking purely about unsouled weaponry. Your case is indeed unique."

Afterwards, she slips back into her normal tone, almost as if lecturing the sen-mithrarin. "You say you have the knowledge of two lives that are not your own - I take it, if you are a created being as you say, that those two lives were who were used to form yourself." High-level necromancy, from the sounds of it, and yet... no, she didn't detect any dark magic coming from Dust or Ahrah. "You refuse to walk the path of your precursors, and in doing so, believe you deserve no path at all but that of a living weapon. I would wish to know why those who created you would stoop to such deplorable means, if to better assist."

[mithrarin]

"To stop the genocide of their entire race," Dust said, looking evenly in Luna's direction. He couldn't blame the Moonbloods for doing it -- because he was made to be that way. Certainly, he felt undirected resentment and anger, but one of his souls, at least, understood exactly what they had done and couldn't blame them for making a Sen-Mithrarin to save their people.

[rafflesia_neighponi]

"Dust-san..."

The familiar voice was uncharacteristically quiet as Reimi slowly stepped forward, worry etching her face. The unicorn wasn't sure at all what to say.

Finally, she thought of something. "It is one on all of us. She is so powerful..."

[mithrarin]

"Powerful enough to bring the dead back to life. When they should have stayed dead." He bit off each word bitterly, neither turning to face her nor looking her direction.

[magicalrealist]

"Just because you're made for one purpose doesn't mean you can't fulfill others." Twilight caught the ending part of the argument with Dust and his sword, but even that part's been hard to listen to. This is a person struggling with their life's purpose and that rings one too many bells for the lavender unicorn.

[mithrarin]

A slight twitch of his tail was the only emotion Dust betrayed when she interjected.

"...That's like saying just because you have hooves and no wings, doesn't mean you don't have to walk on the ground."

[magicalrealist]

"Well, maybe you don't. You won't know until you try, right?" Twilight's horn glows and she takes a step upward like climbing a stair. She approaches him while walking a few inches above the ground.

[mithrarin]

What was with these ponies and their refusal to handle simple metaphors! "All right, then stop being a pony!"

[magicalrealist]

"I...still need to work on that. I have a lot to research, but the changelings have been a great he--"

The unicorn cuts herself off as she gets further off topic. She shakes her head.

"Anyway, it's not as if you have to limit yourself to your original purpose. It's not an easy transition, but it pays off in the end."

[mithrarin]

"A sword is made to cut, so it has an edge," Dust said, sighing. None of them ever understood. "Which makes it useless for anything that requires not having an edge."

[magicalrealist]

"Except you're not a sword. Swords don't usually have a conscience." She turned to Ahrah with an apologetic smile. "No offense."

Back to Dust. "All I'm saying is if you were truly made to live only as a weapon, would you have the freedom to think for yourself?"

[mithrarin]

"They do if they were specifically forged to have one." Which was literally what had happened (within the context of the metaphor).

"Where's the line between being able to think for yourself, and being locked into what you think? What's the difference between being forced to stop an act of evil, and being unable to not let yourself stop it?"

[magicalrealist]

"I think it all comes down to you, in the end. Sure, they can program you into a particular way of thinking, but the ability to think is also the ability to learn and grow. It lets you become other things, even when you start as something else."

[mithrarin]

"And suppose you don't know how to learn and grow. After all, isn't that why people have childhoods?"

[magicalrealist]

"You learn and grow all throughout life, not just childhood. It may not always be blatant, but it happens every day.

I know you can do it, Dust...it's Dust, right? I'm Twilight Sparkle, the Mayfieldian one. And I believe in you."