SILMOR: переводы

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→Chapter 7 – Catalyst

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→by Varanus

→Composure

→The creature had a coat as white as bones left to bleach under the unforgiving desert sun. Her mane trailed like fire around her, an incandescent blue tangled in the thorns, seeming to set them ablaze. Its face was the worst of it, because it was perfect, a perfect mask identical to Celestia’s save for the eyes, which were sunken and etched with deep and weary fury.

→The curiosity and faint nostalgia of finding herself there faded as she turned to look into the hall. White briars filled the ancient audience chamber, thick and dense where the thrones should have stood. There, in the centre of it all was a vision of horror.

→The dirt beneath them became hard, cold slabs of limestone. Walls rose out of the ground and broken glass fell down around them, and Luna turned to see the world far below her. They were on the balcony leading to a vast hall, one she recognised well as her once home, the old Castle of the Royal Sisters.

→“I…” Celestia began, her voice flat.

→Luna nodded, desperate to try anything. Picking out where one of the binding vines reached the ground, she reared up and brought her forehooves down on it with all of her strength. The vine crumpled as if it were charcoal and, emboldened, Luna quickly repeated the process, crushing and scattering the briars as quickly as she could manage. “What does this mean, Celestia?” she asked as she worked, slowly easing a vicious thorn out of her sister’s flesh, before grinding it to powder under a merciless hoof. Through it all, Celestia remained silent, without even a gasp of pain escaping her. “Sister, please…” Pausing in her work, she turned to look at her sister, her eyes roaming her crumbling porcelain face.

→Composure, Chapter 6, end

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→“Magic won’t work,” Celestia said, hushed, after a moment. “Horns are for sweeping them away. Hooves crush them.”

→“Of course I am!” was Luna’s incredulous reply. Her horn shone, and she tried to impose her will on the dream, but the briars resisted her, their thorns shredding her magic before it could find purchase there.

→The thorns tightened as Luna approached, and Celestia’s mask continued to crack, the sound of breaking porcelain cutting through all other sound and thought in the dream. “Luna,” she said softly, her voice impossibly calm. “Luna, are you trying to save me?”

→Celestia let out another pained cry, and Luna rushed to her side. “Sister! Stay calm! This isn’t real!” she said, trying to reassure her.

→Luna rushed forward to save her, but stumbled as the ground shook, and suddenly the garden’s rich foliage withered around her, turning to dust before her eyes in mere seconds. Great chunks of the land gave way, sinking into the earth and reducing the world to a barren desert, as far as the eye could see. Even the red-leafed tree was gone, along with the Twilight Celestia had dreamed.

→Her warning came too late. Bone-white vines as thick as her foreleg sprung up, looping around her sister, their dagger-like thorns drawing out a terrible scream from the masked alicorn as they cut into her skin.