A wild autumn wind whipped past the dusk-shadowed Canterhorn, flowing swift and cold around the rough bluestone ridges of the megalith. Deep below, Bon Bon was still wandering through the caverns searching for Lyra, far above Queen Chrysalis was still dancing and flitting through wedding preparations that were not her own, and Lyra and two other ponies still ambled after the changeling queen, puppets playing the part of perfect bridesmaids. One of the others was a dentist who had had the misfortune to comment to “Princess Cadence” on the peculiar appearance of her teeth, and another a hapless citizen of Canterlot, one Twinkleshine by name, who Bon Bon had impersonated some nights before when she had given her warning to Princess Luna and Captain Shining Armor. In the depths of the Canterhorn a shaggy thing of shadows and hunger slumbered in its pit, surrounded by the bones of smaller fae that it had overtaken and devoured. And high above it all Princess Luna stood and looked over the shining lights of the royal city, waiting and worrying as the cold winds swirled around her.
It was a moment of stillness and expectation. Soon, very soon, things would begin to happen, beginning slowly and subtly but gradually picking up speed and importance as each event triggered other events. Terror and awe, the breaking and mending of hearts, and the downfall and salvation of kingdoms—they all stood in the balance, poised on the brink between potential and reality and waiting for the coming of the pebble that would start the avalanche. Or, perhaps, not even a pebble. A snowflake would do just as well.
A small white thing rose in front of the dark bulk of the Canterhorn, dipping and weaving like a bubble rising through rough water as it struggled up through the whirling winds. It was a male pegasus, or at least bore a vague resemblance to one, absurdly overmuscled and ill-proportioned as it was. Its comically tiny wings whirred against the air and the muscles in its thick neck bulged with effort, and as it gained altitude a peculiar clinking and clattering could occasionally be heard from its body, as if, somewhere beneath the ridiculous layers of muscle and sinew, loose pieces of metal or stone were waving around and bumping into one another. Its eyes were unusually glossy, glinting so brilliantly with reflected light that an observer would have been hard-pressed to say what, exactly, they looked like. Every so often, though, its flailing ascent would bring it close enough to the spires of the Canterhorn to cast it in deeper shadow, and in those moments its eyes took on a strange appearance unlike the eyes of any pony that had ever lived.
Aldrovanda had had some trouble with this transformation. Apart from everything else, kelpies normally didn’t mess around with any other appearance than that of an earth pony; wings and horns were complications best left to changelings, and besides, flight meant venturing far away from the soothing moisture of bog and river. Making matters worse were the pebbles, sticks, shells, wooden bits, and other detritus glued to the kelpie’s body, which prevented her from adopting any of the trim, svelte forms she usually took when attempting to seduce her prey to their deaths. She had toyed with the idea of appearing as a morbidly obese pegasus, hiding the doorknob, saddlebag, and other junk under a cloak of Glamour-crafted fat, but the idea repelled her. It lacked elegance. Ultimately, she had settled on her current hypertrophied shape, bulging with false muscles thick enough to cloak the refuse clinging to her real body. Ungainly as it was, it did amuse her. Aldrovanda was lazy even by the standards of a sit-and-wait ambush predator, and she had found it hilarious when she had first learned, years ago, that some ponies actually went out of their way to exercise. Why not take this chance to poke a little fun at them? She had a job to do in Canterlot, granted, but there was no reason she couldn’t amuse herself while doing it. She had always felt that life was made for mocking those stupider than herself. And then maybe eating them. The mockery was the main thing, though, and imitation was the highest form of mockery.
As the overhanging spires of the great royal city drew nearer, though, gleaming red in the light of the setting sun, the kelpie had to acknowledge to herself that she was no longer exactly sure what the job that she had to do was. It had seemed clear enough when she had set out; she would report Bon Bon’s shenanigans to Chrysalis, doing her duty as a vassal of the Unseelie Court, and she’d finally be back in the black with Queen Xubidu and would be able to put all that nasty business with the crown prince and the cannibalism and the dereliction of duty behind her. Then she could get back to her swamp and start noshing on rotting turtle carcasses and frogs again, unbothered by anyone. It had seemed such a nice, simple, satisfying plan.
Now, though, her path didn’t seem quite so clear. All the denial and repression at her command were still not quite enough to keep her from dwelling uncomfortably on her recent meeting with the Bugul Noz, the disturbing—patently untrue, of course, and downright blasphemous, but still disturbing—things that Bon Bon had said to her, and the absolutely terrifying things that Bon Bon had implied. The kelpie hissed irritably. She was immortal, of course; that was true. It had always been true, and it would always be true, no matter what. She was absolutely almost sure of that.
But…well. Aldrovanda reflected ruefully that the changeling had been right about one thing; the immortality question aside, she did look far more like a shellycoat, now, than she did a kelpie. She didn’t really have anyone to vouch for her back in the Court; she had never been one for making friends. What would Chrysalis do when confronted with something that looked like a shellycoat and claimed it was a kelpie? Worse yet—Aldrovanda shuddered, and nearly crashed into the face of the Canterhorn as her looping flight path zigged when it should have zagged—what would Xubidu do? She had to admit to herself that, all in all, the whole thing tasted more like the heretical ramblings of a shellycoat than anything else. Perhaps her original plans would need to be altered somewhat. Perhaps she needed to review the situation.
A few bars of an old song, the lyrics altered somewhat to suit her own distressing situation, flitted through her mind before being mercilessly swatted down. She didn’t do singing. That was for ponies. Aldrovanda’s tiny wings continued to beat, propelling her outrageous bulk upwards towards Chrysalis, Canterlot, and the interwoven destinies of Equestria and the Unseelie Court.
------
Time passed.
Mistakes were made.
Spells were broken.
Songs were sung.
Monsters were awoken.
Bon Bon galloped for her life past crystal spires and chasms, the torch clenched in her mouth guttering in the wind as she threw herself down great sloping mounds of rubble and squirmed through sharp-edged crevices. The rope bound around her midsection, wrapped around the iron poker that it held in place, had grown frayed and tattered.
Shaaa ah hou hou Hou HOU!
Blast it, the thing was getting closer. Thank Celestia, it hadn’t touched Lyra; when it had first burst upon the two of them, tearing its way out of what had looked like a perfectly solid wall of stone, it had completely ignored her marefriend and lunged after Bon Bon. For whatever reason, now that it had finished with Chrysalis, the magic-eater seemed to be only interested in her. Bon Bon supposed this might possibly be because she had been the one who had jabbed an iron poker into its eye in the first place. She didn’t know where Lyra was now; when the buggane had first attacked and sent Bon Bon careening off at a dead run, her marefriend had started to head after her, but then had skidded to a halt, eyes wide, and galloped off in the opposite direction shouting something about a machine. Considering how horribly everything else had been going lately, this probably just meant that the unicorn had gone insane, but Bon Bon decided that it might be fun, just for the chuckles, to pretend that Lyra had some plan in mind. What the hay, a little stupid optimism couldn’t hurt.
Which was all well and good, except that at this point Bon Bon was very nearly running blind, dashing through parts of the caves that she wasn’t familiar with and throwing herself down scree slopes because the only way she could hope to outpace the buggane was by falling. She started to look back over her shoulder, and then whipped her head forward again, cursing herself for her stupidity. It wasn’t as if she could do anything about it, even if it was right behind her. Had to keep moving. Maybe it would grow bored, or would bumble into a nest of knockers, or spontaneously combust, or something. Something would be nice. She could really do with a nice, alicorn ex machina of a something any moment now.
SHRAA ah HAAAA!
Too close. Much, much too close. The little changeling leapt down another slope of loose rock, and then, in a flailing whirl of limbs, tried to leap back up again. The slope ended not in a flat stone floor but in a gulf, yawning hungrily below her. She slid down to the rim, rocks bouncing around her as she tried to scramble back up, managed to pause for a moment at the edge, and then overbalanced. The torch flew from her mouth as she tumbled down into the pit, letting loose one desperate cry as she fell.
—And then cried again as she hit rock, hard enough to bruise her body but, thank Celestia, not hard enough to break it. A moment later she heard the clatter of the torch skidding across the stone floor some ways away from her. She saw, or thought she saw, the red glimmer of smoldering wood, and then the light faded. The plummeting rush down into the pit had been too much for the little flame, and it had gone out, leaving Bon Bon in total darkness.
Unfortunately, the silence was less than total. The buggane was no longer howling, but as Bon Bon lay in the dark, her eyes open but unseeing, she could hear the beast making its way towards her. Worse, she could feel the buggane approaching, moving step by monstrous step out of the nightmares of the Shee. The magic-eater didn’t burn with Unseelie light, warping reality around it and filling the air with chittering whispers, but neither did it feel like the Bugul Noz’s swamp, solid and real with not a trace of magic to be felt. It was a hole in existence, an absence of both reality and unreality, and Bon Bon could sense ambient wisps of Faerie flowing past her, sinking up and rising down into the living nothingness that was the buggane. The magic-eaters were Shee, but they lacked the normal ability of the Shee to fabricate their own web of Faerie. They lived only by hunting magical beings, and against them all but the most powerful spells were less than useless.
Pebbles rattled down from above as the buggane made its cautious way down the slope of the pit, careful not to lose its footing as Bon Bon had. It was taking its time; it must have realized that she was trapped. Bon Bon craned her head back, and tugged at the length of rope bound around her midsection, pulling it loose and letting the iron poker fall to the cave floor with a metallic clank. It wasn’t much of a defense against the monstrosity stalking towards her, but maybe…maybe she’d be lucky, and scare it off. Maybe, just once, the universe wouldn’t be paying attention at the crucial moment, and it wouldn’t swat her down. Maybe something would work, for once. She bit down on the poker’s wooden guard and angled her head up into the darkness, listening for the sound of the buggane’s movements and trying to gauge its position. Just once. She only had to be lucky once.
Above, closer than she had thought, loose rock flakes cracked beneath the weight of an enormous paw. Bon Bon bent down and then whipped her neck up, sending the poker whirling off towards the buggane. It just had to hit its eye, or nose, or mouth—anywhere with exposed skin. That was all she needed.
There was the sound of metal clattering against stone, somewhere above and beyond the buggane. The beast itself hooted briefly, but it was a sound of confusion, not of pain. She had missed. Bon Bon slumped down to the cave floor, defeated. It had never been a real chance, anyway. Just one last, defiant gesture, flung out against an unfriendly universe that had, seemingly, set itself against her and everything she held dear. Everything she had ever done, both good and bad, was pointless, wasted, worthle—
“Bon Bon! Bon Bon, was that you? I’m coming, hold on!”
Lyra’s voice. The little changeling raised her head. “Lyra, stay away! You can’t fight this thing! Run while you still—“
“Like hay I’m running!” To Bon Bon’s dismay, the faint golden light of Lyra’s magic had begun to illuminate the cave, gleaming off crystal facets and outlining the crawling shape of the buggane in dim silhouette. The monster paused, and half-twisted its body up, looking back up towards the source of the light. Bon Bon could hear a strange thudding and clicking somewhere off beyond the rim of the pit, out of her view; she couldn’t think why, but there was an oddly familiar rhythm to it. Lyra’s voice rang out again. “Yikes. I think it sees me. Bon Bon, do you know anything about this thing? Any Achilles’ fetlocks that I should know about?”
No. Lyra had to escape. Bon Bon no longer really cared what her own fate was, but Lyra had to get out of this alive. “Run! Just—that thing is a buggane! Just run! There’s no point in fighting!”
“Nothing doing!” The buggane hoisted itself up over the rim of the pit, its great black body limned with golden light. Bon Bon bit her lip, and then yelled, “Iron! Iron burns it! There’s a poker up there; grab it!”
The shadow of the buggane disappeared as it leapt forward, claws raised and tusked jaw gaping wide. There was a sound like a hardware store having a panic attack, and the buggane howled in what might have been frustration. The apparent hardware store continued its spirited high-step, Lyra gave a brief yelp, and there was a screech of metal against stone.
The buggane screamed!
For one long, horrible moment Bon Bon thought that it was bellowing its victory. Then she heard it draw a long, choking breath, and it continued hooting, its voice weak and warbling.
Hou hou hou hou houuu... A hou HOU Hou hooouuu…
It was…it was whimpering. Whimpering! “Yeah, you better leave Bon Bon alone, ya dumb buggin!” crowed Lyra. Bon Bon didn’t think that she had ever heard anything more beautiful than her marefriend’s voice right at that moment. The metallic clanking and clattering from earlier resumed, and there was a dull whack and the hiss of iron against Fae skin. The buggane’s whimpers rose into an almost-howl. “G’wan! Get the hay out of here! Go on, ugly, scoot!”
Bon Bon winced. “Lyra, don’t antagonize it!”
“It antagonized me!” The shaggy black monster growled, and then hooted in pain once more. “I said GO!” snapped Lyra. There was another grating snarl from the buggane, and then, incredibly, Bon Bon heard the sound of claws scraping against stone as the beast slowly and reluctantly withdrew. It was leaving. It was gone. Neither of them had been eaten.
As Bon Bon was struggling with the idea that something she had been involved in might have turned out well, the strange metallic clattering and clunking she had heard earlier resumed, and the light of Lyra’s horn began to grow brighter over the rim of the pit. The mare looked up. “Lyra! Be careful! There’s a hole here! Just a second, I’ve got a rope. I can tie one end around a rock and throw it up to you, and then you can pull me out. Just stay up there.“
“Not fast enough. I can’t stay away from that prison long, I need to get back, have to make sure they don’t—Hold on, I’ll come down and get you.”
Ah, yes. There was the misfortune Bon Bon had been waiting for. For a second she had almost thought nothing would go wrong. “No, seriously! I really don’t think either of us can climb out of here, it’s four or five yards deep at least, you’d betteaaAUGH!”
Bon Bon scrambled back, mouth agape. Instead of the slender unicorn she had been expecting to see, a great spider-like mass of bars and shafts had risen over the edge of the pit, filled with small spinning flecks of light and glinting in the glow of her marefriend’s horn. A long iron and wood leg that looked like it had been built from a length of minecart track raised itself up and plunged down into the slope of the rubble mound, anchoring itself firmly in place with a thick crunch. The angular, creaking contrivance shifted forward, moving its entire bulk into view and revealing Lyra. The poker floated beside her in the grasp of her magic as she sat grinning in the very midst of the bird’s nest of machinery, regal as a Saddle Arabian sultan lounging on his throne.
“Awp,” said Bon Bon.
Lyra flashed a smile so wide it was a wonder the top of her head didn’t fall off. “Meet the Fing-er Mark 2.0! Bon Bon, Fing-er Mark 2.0. Fing-er Mark 2.0, Bon Bon.” She sent a bolt of magic streaking out of her horn into a huge blue-black crystal mounted at her side, each of its facets connected to a different shaft or pulley, and twiddled several knobs in front of her. The massive machine lurched forward, crawling sideways down the slope of the rubble mound like a giant, friendly crab. Lyra paused the Fing-er at the lower rim that Bon Bon had tumbled off of, sent it creeping along the edge for a bit, and then let it drop itself down once she had found a portion of the pit wall that she was reasonably sure it could climb back out by. Another flip of a lever, and the ramshackle collection of gears, cogs, and repurposed mining equipment settled creakily down to the cave floor. Lyra slouched back in the old wooden mine cart she had converted into a cockpit, and beckoned to Bon Bon. “All aboard, me hearty!”
-----
“—And then when you told me that there were piezothaumic crystals here in the cave, I figured that I might just be able to make the thing work. The frame and a lot of the works I put together while you were knocked out, and once I had the crystals to provide power, all I needed was to finish the inner workings. Luckily, I found an old clockwork hoist system earlier, and that gave me a lot of the parts I needed. Lucky break, really; it was mostly buried, and I only found it ‘cause I dinged a hoof on a piece of it sticking out from under—”
Bon Bon let Lyra chatter happily on without saying much, interposing comments just enough to keep the unicorn from worrying. She was feeling a bit dazed, both by the speed and bumpiness of their ride and by the fact that—well, that she wasn’t dead. That Lyra wasn’t dead. That her insane gambit with the buggane might have actually worked. If the beast had done away with Chrysalis before coming after her, then maybe the invasion itself would be called off, and if that was the case…well. She raised a hoof to her forehead and massaged it. The concept of a happy ending was one that she was having a little trouble wrapping her mind around.
She glanced over at Lyra, working the controls with practiced skill and describing the details of something called an epicyclic differential, and sighed. No, she was forgetting. That wasn’t how their story could end. The innocent got happy endings, but she, Mendax—she wasn’t so innocent. This was still all her fault, and Lyra deserved somepony so much better than her. It would hurt both of them, but she couldn’t stay in Lyra’s life. It wasn’t safe for the unicorn, and she deserved somepony better than Bon Bon.
“—So in the end, what I could find wasn’t quite enough, and I had use some mockup spells to fill in the gaps. Honestly, I’m amazed it’s still holding up; half of these gears aren’t even completely real, and there are a few that are spinning two different ways at once or only exist every four seconds or stuff like that. I give it a few more hours at most before it starts falling apart, so I guess we’d better make the most of it while we’ve got it, eh?” Lyra glanced back, and her ears drooped in concern. “Bon Bon, are you okay?” She guided the Fing-er Mark 2.0 to a standstill and reached out a hoof to her marefriend, gently nudging Bon Bon’s chin up. “Hay now, what’s wrong? Are you crying?”
Bon Bon pulled her head away. “No, it’s—no, I’m fine. Really, it’s just—a lot has happened today,” she finished lamely. She swallowed hard, and then forced a smile. “Just a little stress, I guess.”
“You can tell me, Bon Bon. It doesn’t matter what it is, you can always tell me. Don’t shut me out.”
“Not this. Not yet. Soon, I promise you, but not yet.” She drew a deep breath that was only a little ragged around the edges. Lyra held Bon Bon’s gaze for a long, long moment, and then turned her back to the changeling and started the machine up again. Bon Bon laid a hoof on Lyra’s back.
“I’m sorry, Lyra, believe me I am, and I promise I’ll tell you everything soon, just as soon as I know you’re—we’re safe. I wish I could tell you now, but I…but you…” The mare trailed off. But you might leave, you might panic, you run away into the dark and lose yourself there. I have to get you to the surface, where you don’t need a Shee by your side to keep you safe. Where you’ll be free to run from me, if that’s what you end up doing.
The pale green unicorn’s shoulders slumped. “It’s just hard, you know? You can’t tell me some things; I guess I’m used to that. It’s the way it’s always been. But it’s just so hard for me when I can see that the things you can’t tell me are hurting you so badly. I just feel so helpless.”
“But it’s almost over.”
Lyra gave a humorless chuckle. “Yeah. You said that a few days ago too, didn’t you? And then next thing I knew I was wrapped up in this ridiculous dress, that thing had messed around with my brain and made me think I was her recently-discovered great-niece three times removed, and was going to be her bridesmaid. I wonder what’ll happen this time?” She paused, and looked over her shoulder at the cream-colored mare. “Oh, that reminds me. Chrysalis said you were a ‘traitor.’ What did she mean by…” Lyra’s voice faltered at the pinched look on Bon Bon’s face. “…Ah. Won’t tell me that either, then.”
Bon Bon bowed her head, ears drooping. “I’m so sorry, Lyra, so, so sorry.”
“Yeah.” The green unicorn turned back to the controls. The machine plodded on.
Some minutes passed during which neither of them said anything—Lyra because she’d said everything she had to say, and Bon Bon because she couldn’t stand to hear herself talk. Eventually, though, the silence began to become too oppressive, and the changeling broke it with a nervous “So, the Fing-er Mark 2.0. It’s amazing, and I can’t believe you put it together so quickly, but it doesn’t really look like the Fing-er; it’s more of a giant…spider-y thing. Why did you call it that?”
Over the whirring and clicking of the works, Lyra said, “Check the number of legs.”
Bon Bon looked over the rim of the wooden mine cart at the interlocking web of iron and wood surrounding her, counted, and then exclaimed, “Oh!”
Lyra nodded. “Yup.”
“Is there any particular reason you decided to…?”
“Well, since I’ve spent ages working the bugs out of that pattern, I figured I might as well make use of it. It made more sense to go with a design that I was familiar with.”
“Ah, right.”
They trundled onward, the Fing-er Mark 2.0 crawling back through the caves towards the site of Princess Cadence’s prison on its five long, spindly legs, arranged around the central chassis like a dragon’s claws around its palm.
-----
Navigating back was easier than Bon Bon would have predicted—but then, she hadn’t quite comprehended the extent of the damage that the buggane had done while it was chasing her. After the first few minutes, she gave up trying to remember if she had seen this flowstone deposit or that crystal-encrusted ceiling before, and began just acting as a spotter for Lyra, pointing out fresh gashes in the cave floor or recently-shattered walls. Their pace was good, and despite the fact that much of the path was uphill, scarcely twenty minutes had passed before Lyra was easing the giant mechanical claw down to the ground on a crystal surface scored with fractures and littered with mechanical detritus. She hopped out, helped Bon Bon to the ground, and then trotted up a gentle incline towards a narrow opening framed between two great slanted gypsum shafts, Bon Bon following. Just before she reached the opening Lyra crouched and motioned for her marefriend to do the same. She whispered, “I have to go. Can’t leave ‘em unguarded. They can’t escape, they aren’t allowed to—sorry. I can’t help it. Be careful, and if Chrysalis is in there…well, you’ll probably know whether she’s there just from what you hear. I guess you should probably stay here and lay low for now. Be safe, Bonnie.”
Bon Bon nodded mutely. Lyra gave a small smile, stood, and trotted through the opening into the cave beyond.
For a few moments, all was quiet aside from the sound of Lyra working her way down the scree slope on the other side of the hole. Then there was the ctok pok of hooves on stone, a faint gasp—and the stillness of the caves was broken by an angry scream, ringing with frustration and fear. The little changeling’s head shot up and she galloped after Lyra, sharp-edged crystal flakes crunching under her hooves.
Lyra stood, swaying with shock, staring at the ruins of the cell Chrysalis had created for the princess. Devastation surrounded her. Jagged craters had been blasted into the floor and walls, scattering half-melted rock shards and dust across the cave, and there was a strange smell in the air like the sharp, fierce scent before a thunderstorm. The remnants of the oubliette were lying broken and scorched on the cave floor. Both the alicorn and unicorn were gone, and there was a double trail of hoofprints in the rock dust leading away from the chamber and towards the distant, glimmering spot of light that Bon Bon and Lyra had tried to reach earlier.
After scrambled down the scree slope as fast as she dared, Bon Bon hurried to Lyra’s side. “What happened? Are you all right? Is there—“
The unicorn staggered around to face Bon Bon, her ears flattened and the whites of her eyes showing. The green light of Chrysalis’ Glamour in Lyra’s eyes was not a flicker now but a full-blown blaze, churning and swirling like the hungry sucking flames of a firestorm, and Bon Bon involuntarily took a half-step back before she caught herself. Lyra howled, “They’re gone! They’re both gone, but they can’t be, but they are! Bon Bon, I need to find them! I need to find them!” As she spoke she scurried back and forth across the cavern, moving like a mouse trapped in a corner by an approaching cat. “Where did they go? Hoofprints. I can follow the hoofprints, I can find the light before they do. I’ll stop them and—Hnnph!”
Lyra sprawled on to the cave floor, knocked sideways in mid-gallop by Bon Bon, who had thrown herself against the unicorn with all the force she could muster. The changeling propped herself up and crawled over to her marefriend, who was lying on her back and staring up into space, breathing shallowly. “Lyra, are you okay? I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to, but you were about to go galloping off and I couldn’t think of any other way to stop you.”
The unicorn gasped up at the cave ceiling for another second or two, and then shifted her head slightly, looking up at her worried marefriend. “No, no, it’s fine, I’m great—but I can’t let them go, Bon Bon, I can’t! You don’t understand; it’s like—like them being free is breaking the world, breaking my mind, and I just can’t be if they’re not locked up. I can’t do it, I can’t just run away. Every step of the way I’d be dragging my hooves, I’d try to run off, I might even hurt you.”
Bon Bon nuzzled the shivering unicorn. “What else can we do, though?”
“I don’t know.” Lyra’s voice quavered. Bon Bon could tell it was taking every last scrap of her willpower to stay here, lying still while the two prisoners got further and further away. “Maybe—maybe I could go after them, and you could follow me. Yes! They’ll be at the hole to the surface, I can get there and stop them, and then I can—you can—we’ll be near the exit, but I have to take them back, but I can’t, but I have to…” She shut her eyes tightly, drew a deep breath, and then said as quickly as possible, “WhenWeGetThereYouCouldKnockMeOutAndThenMaybeTheAlicornCouldFixMeAndWeCouldAllGetOut—NO!”
Lyra jumped to her hooves, eyes burning green. “I can’t—Stop me! Sorry, Bonnie, I can’t let you stop—“ Bon Bon rose, and Lyra leapt back, shouting, “DON’T! Stay away, but don’t—don’t let me out of your sight. Don’t let me lose you!” She continued to back away from the changeling, moving in odd juddering backwards leaps, and then swung around and rocketed off towards the distant light, Bon Bon in hot pursuit.
She tried to match Lyra’s speed. Sun and Moon, she tried so hard. But Bon Bon had not been galloping for more than a few minutes before she realized that it was a lost cause. Even had nothing else been working against her, she would have been hard put to it to keep pace; Lyra had always been slender and strong, and although the unicorn wasn’t athletic, per se, she had at least kept herself active. Bon Bon, on the other hand, had been living a long life of quiet domesticity that was deeply unusual for her kind. Changelings needed the regular exercise and excitement of being driven out of villages by angry mobs after their latest victim had been drained of life, and months upon months spent wandering through the wilds in search of another suitable host kept one fit. Bon Bon had had none of that, and it told.
Even so, she might have had a chance if that had been all that she was against; Lyra was struggling against herself, while Bon Bon had all of her own will at her command. As Lyra galloped ahead of her, though, the light shining from the mare’s horn began to spark erratically, flaring out in sudden bursts of light and sending abrupt trails of sparks streaking down her mane to glint and vanish like sparks from a fire striker. Then there was a great, blinding flash, and Lyra vanished—and reappeared instantly, still in full gallop and not much more than several body lengths further on. Of course. She was trying to teleport, and at the same time trying desperately not to teleport. Another burst of light, another reappearance—she was far ahead now, and the darkness behind Bon Bon was creeping closer as Lyra’s light receded. The pale mare forced her aching limbs forward, speeding after a rapidly dwindling hope.
“Lyra!”
But the distant light flared and vanished for a third time—and didn’t reappear. The darkness of the cave slammed down around her. Far away and far above she could still see the faint gleam of the distant cave exit, too dim and too distant to illuminate her surroundings, and she thought for a moment that she had seen the light brighten minutely, glittering with an infinitesimal spark of gold—but perhaps not. Her tired limbs slowed, and she cantered to a halt. With Lyra’s love, she had enough strength left to create a horn for herself, and maybe to teleport across that distance—but once there, she would be next to useless, if not actually dead. She could save her strength, but she’d never get there in time. The Fing-er might be able to handle rough terrain better than she could, but it needed magic to run, and she didn’t know how to control it. She could run forward in the dark, guiding herself by the distant light—but there were ravines, there were pitfalls, there were sinkholes and acidic pools and hungry shapes crawling in the deep places.
Bon Bon wearily turned, setting her back to the light. Perhaps Lyra and the other two enchanted bridesmaids would succeed, and would bring back the princess and the unicorn. Perhaps. And perhaps, if they did, she would see the light of their arrival, and would be able to pick her way back to the oubliette that Chrysalis had prepared. If they were all to be forgotten, well…the least that she could do would be to make sure that she and Lyra were forgotten together. For a moment Bon Bon stood, staring dully into the darkness, and then slumped to the ground in defeat.
It was over.
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