Stories of the Stars - Satra Special Story

Satra barely managed to stay awake for five minutes in the Kirinaria Mercenary Camp. She fell asleep as soon as the kirin walked out to check what the others were excited about. When she started to awaken, she could hear the trotting of some hooves and the wheels of a wagon over the humps of a road. What woke her up however, were some droplets of water that splashed on her face.

“Oh gee, I’m sorry, if only the road weren’t so bumpy…” She heard the voice of a mare.

Satra opened her eyes. The terrible sickness was still there, along with the noise, which started to resemble whispers. Still, it was not as strong as before. She was in a wagon, on a pile of blankets, next to a… small tank of water, in which there was a pony-like creature, with a fish tail and fins. She was as green as the water from the Everfree swamp, and almost had a glow to herself. She looked uncomfortable, trying to stop the water from splashing around, when she saw that Satra had opened her eyes. Then she suddenly stuck her face to the tank and exclaimed:

“Oh! You’re awake! Did the water wake you up? Gah, I’m sorry! But I am also happy to finally meet you!! I’m Pond Scales! And that right there is Wolfsbane!” She pointed towards the creature pulling the wagon. They were a white deer with multiple robotic prosthetics. They did not seem to pay any attention to what was going on in the wagon, so Satra assumed they did not hear the fish-pony talk.

However, the welcoming nature of the fish-pony didn’t fool Satra. Last time she had been in a wagon, she was taken to be sold somewhere. She trusted not these two, even if they looked so different from the ponies who were going to sell her before.

“Where are you taking me?” She said, making sure the fish knew she didn’t trust it.

“I heard them ask Wolfsbane to take you to the Crystal Empire, but I don’t know where that is… I've only known the Everfree Swamp until Wolfsbane took me with her to show me the world…” The fish responded.

“You aren’t going to sell me?”

“Are you valuable? Ponies are strange, I didn’t know they would purchase others of their own…”

“I hear chatter back there!! So I say time for breakfast!” the deer shouted over her shoulder.

They stopped and the deer layed down a blanket near the wagon. The fish pony walked out of her tank and sat down on the blanket, then called on to Satra to do the same. Their meal consisted of a bunch of herbs Satra had never seen before. She was reluctant at first but then her body reminded her that she hadn’t eaten a thing for over two months, so she dug in.

During the meal she got to know the two of them. Apparently the deer had lived amongst ponies for a long time before she eventually left their settlement. When Pond Scales told Satra her story, Wolfsbane’s eyes darkened, and she kept quiet for a while.

“Why do you need to stay in the tank if you can very well walk and breathe outside?” Satra asked Pond Scales later that day.

“Oh, I have lungs like every pony, so I can breathe outside. But the muscles used for that are not used to function… I’ve been underwater for hundreds of years, so when I breathe outside for too long, my lungs get really tired, because they’re not used to it. Doing so for even just a few minutes starts to hurt. And if I do it for too long I get some really bad muscle fever the next day... So I still need to spend most of my time breathing underwater. But it’s alright, I’m getting much better at it now! In a few months I’m sure I’ll be able to spend days out of water, and one day I won’t need it anymore!”

“You come from the Everfree Swamp, is that right? How is it to spend so much time in that water…? I’ve only been there for a mere second and look where that got me…”

“Oh, that place is scary, but it’s nothing compared to the days right after the Cataclysm… I used to look much different than now. The water used to be clean and full of beautiful fish! They were all such good friends to me… But now I can’t even remember them… I recall that I wasn’t alone in the lake back then. But my memory is foggy… I think there used to be another one like me, living deep underwater. After the Cataclysm I tried to swim there but the place was empty.

The entire lake was empty.

No fish, no living thing, nothing.

But I could still feel their presence in the water, I could feel the presence of many more beings.

The fish, the animals of the forest, the ponies of Ponyville and many more… They all got wiped out and their souls got dragged underwater, forever imprisoned down there…”

The joyful feel of the fish pony was gone. Her green eyes were glowing, terrifyingly. Satra was overwhelmed by feelings of sorrow, sadness, fear and terror radiating from Pond Scales’ eyes.

Then she suddenly turned her head and stared straight into Satra’s eyes.

“One of them tried to set itself free, and has crawled into you, do you know that? I can sense it. You are not alone in this body of yours.”

* * *

For days they walked the road back to the Crystal Empire, and Satra could recognize the same old towns and villages she passed through before. They would often stop to spend the night in those old houses. They were no good to live in, but better than the open sky. And Satra and Pond Scales could enjoy drinking some weird drink they would find around, called “LunaPOP!”. Wolfsbane told them that it was a drink that existed since before the Great Cataclysm. She also refused to drink it. But Satra liked it: it was dark, sweet, and tasted kinda like burnt sugar and cinnamon. Pond Scales, however, was severely addicted to the drink. She would run to look for it. Wolfsbane was worried, but she let her be.

One night, while they were investigating a house to live in, they found the skeleton of a pony lying in some room. That wasn’t unusual for them, those places were full of ponies who got killed by the Cataclysm, fallen on the spot, rotten… They would usually just ignore the skeletons and try to sleep in a different room. And so they did now.

But later that night, Satra woke up to an insistent hissing. It kinda sounded like whispering voices, but it was clearly hissing, like snakes… and on every hiss, the sickening feeling she woke up to in the Everfree would come back. She wasn’t able to hear it back then - from all the noise in her head, she didn’t realize the hissing was there. Ever since she left, every time she would feel sick she could hear it and eventually she realized it was there.

Now, for the first time, she realized it was saying something. The more she tried to understand, the dizzier she got. The hissing whispers got louder, like hundreds of snakes speaking, until they suddenly stopped and she could hear it clear as day:

“Get up.”

“Walk.”

Freaked out, she did so. But the dizziness was so bad she ended up vomiting in a dead plant’s pot.

“Walk. Walk already.”

She tried to walk towards the exit, but the voice spoke again.

“No, not that way. Walk to the room over there. Walk to my corpse.”

“Aha - you couldn’t have said so earlier?” Satra whispered, and stumbled towards that room. Some sort of ghost was probably trying to talk to her. Weird, but to be expected from all the death that lingered around there…

Satra got to the corpse, but at that point she could no longer stand, so she crumbled on the floor, looking at it.

“This is my corpse.” the voice said. “When the cataclysm came, I died right here. Everyone in the village died. But I could not leave my body, my soul was trapped inside. Then the radioactive rain came - pouring acidic water from the sky. My body melted, leaving just the bones, and my soul washed away with the rain. The water took me through the rivers, flowing to where all the water flows to - the Everfree. After I got there, I found many like me in that swamp. That place is full of souls like me, unable to leave, cursed to roam the Everfree waters forever.

When you fell into the water, I clinged to you. And through the burns on your skin, the Everfree water entered your veins, taking me along.

I now live in your body. There is nothing I can do about it, ever since I died I had no control over where I would go, so don’t ask me to leave, it is beyond my abilities. But I can’t complain, being here is much more entertaining than being trapped in that swamp. So I’ll try to do you no harm. But since we’re here, I thought you should know.”

Satra had no words to say - ever since she fell in the swamp she felt like something was inside her, she heard whispers ever since she woke up from her coma. But being faced with it like that was a lot. She didn’t know what to think of it, so she just stayed there, staring at the corpse without a thought on her mind.

“Maybe you’d like to know my story - it’s not much but I feel like you have the right to know of the one who lives in your body.” The voice continued after a short period of silence.

“This village was an off grid community. A bunch of ponies came to live here, free from the busy life of Equestria. We were all part of a cult. We would worship the spirits of nature. It was a rather new settlement, I was part of the first generation, the ones that founded the cult. By the time the great cataclysm came, the adults here had children, whom they had completely brainwashed. I was the great priestess, but I was not the leader of the cult. Supposedly, I was the vessel of the snake god. That was clearly not true, but I liked the way they treated me so I played along with it. My magic allows me to communicate with snakes, and even control them sometimes, but that is purely my talent, it has nothing to do with a god. The leader of the cult was an older stallion. I met him back when I was a homeless mare on the streets of Manehattan. I dated him for a while, before he decided to move off-grid and founded the cult. He was a vile stallion, extremely manipulative. I didn’t trust him, but I enjoyed all the attention, so I played along.

By the time the cataclysm came, I started to grow quite disgusted with the ways those ponies would indoctrinate their children - it was fine till then cause they were all there on their own will, but the children were not. It’s not like I cared though - I just found it disgusting.

It’s a strange feeling, but I am happy the cataclysm came - there were ponies there who should have never been allowed to live, yet alone raise others. At least now they will never know peace again.”

* * *

It was a strange truth to find for Satra. Ever since they got to that village, the spirit in her head spoke clearly to her. That night she fell asleep in front of the corpse, too sick to crawl back to where she was set to sleep. Wolfsbane and Pond Scales found her in the morning and carried her back to the wagon. She continued to be sick for a few days, and it always got worse when the spirit spoke, but eventually she started to feel better, only being a little dizzy when it would speak. She found that the spirit used to be called Stheno by the followers of her cult. She did not tell her her birth name however.

One day, a snake crawled in the wagon - nothing unusual, a lot of critters ended up in there during their journey. But this one was a viper, and Satra got really scared, because it was crawling right at her. It was then that she started hearing Stheno whispering in her head, in words she couldn’t understand, and the snake seemed to stop, hypnotized, then it crawled away, right out of the wagon.

After that incident, Satra fell ill again, and she slept for two days. When she eventually woke up, Pond Scales asked her:

“So what were you saying back then when the snake was crawling at you? It was quite impressive - how you made it walk away just like that.”

Satra was shocked.

“You… you could hear that? I thought… I thought it was all in my head…”

“Nope, your mouth was moving, you were whispering something. It was quite weird if I may say so... you are a really interesting one!”

By then they were a few days away from the Crystal Empire. The climate was getting colder, and Satra could notice small shimmering bushes by the side of the road. Things started to feel familiar again. She never thought she’d feel like she missed that place, and yet she was happy to see the landscape was becoming more familiar.

The last few days of their journey were pretty uneventful. Satra was just getting used to having Stheno in her head and with the fact that, apparently, it could even take control over her body if it wanted to. That was pretty unsettling to know.

When they arrived in the Crystal Empire, Wolfsbane bought a house next to the library. Satra was relieved when she found out she didn’t have to go back to the old orphanage… She was not keen to return to that place.

It seemed like Wolfsbane and Pond Scales had nowhere else to be so they decided to live there with Satra for a while.

“At least until you get settled in.” Wolfsbane said. “I arranged for you to get an internship at the library. The librarian is really sweet, but she’s old, and she’d love to be able to retire one day soon. You might enjoy working there, after all, you don’t really need to work with other ponies in a library.”

Satra smiled, for once she felt like somebody listened to her. Wolfsbane had taken into consideration the stories she told her about her past, and she felt really thankful for that.

Perhaps life could be actually pleasant from then on, she thought.