//------------------------------// // Chapter Eleven: Tapestries Unwoven // Story: Equestrian Concepts // by Achaian //------------------------------// Chapter Eleven Tapestries Unwoven Tick stood, the last dregs of his anger draining, the hopeful illusion long faded. Mouth no longer agape, yet no less speechless at the destruction, the silence of the windblown ashes and the bones of defiled sanctity left him no consolation. He had reached the summit: and, finding it empty, he found he had nothing left to say. There was only death here, the death of knowledge and hope. Ditzy stepped around the corner behind him, staring with wide, concerned eyes. My nightmare isn’t over. “Tick?” No, it’s only just begun. Tick half-turned, gave Ditzy half a glance, and the golden-eyed mare was no less intimidating for all the horror surrounding her. A curious expression crossed Ditzy’s face, and she made as if to step closer, but paused. “Did something happen to your eyes?” She shifted uncomfortably at his lack of response. “They’re still looking for you. At least we didn’t all get separated hopelessly again.” Softer, Ditzy whispered to herself, “We need to get out of this place.” Turning, Ditzy called out “Found him!” and then motioned for Tick. He stood facing an empty shelf, covered in a thick layer of dust and ash, still, incalculable, unreadable. And yet so clearly, so obviously facing great pain. Instantly, Ditzy’s face constricted with regret, the guilt at her hopeful thought that the whole thing would be called off because of this, that there would be no more harrowing adventures, that it would end here and that she would know peace. She remembered the rage and fury as he dove, and saw the same anger and a new desolation in his taut body and immobile eyes, the tongue held silent by a mind too smothered by agony to do anything else. “Here.” Ditzy held out her hoof, eyes soft with respectful compassion, offering him a lifeline out of his miserable ocean. Tick set his glare even sharper against the ancient shelf. Ditzy looked for a moment longer, heart-wrenched by his determination, then she looked away to watch the quick-flying guards cut the distance between them. Yet of all things she did not see his fear. I have to get out. Eris and Aphelion landed at the end of the row, not breaking their momentum until they had reached the two. I have to get away from her. ~~~~~~~~ Tick refused to look at any of them as they moved away to give him room. Eris imagined that it was shame at his petulant actions. Slit eyes under armor glanced up at the holes in the ceiling, revealing a swathe of the tranquil night sky, and then hovered back to Aphelion. He had insisted they search a while longer. “Hurry up,” Eris hissed to herself, poised at the top of a lower, crumbling balcony and watching Aphelion and Ditzy scour yet more empty shelves for signs of life. The tantalizing freedom of the night sky hung only a hundred yards away. Below, Tick began to recover. ~~~~~~~~ After arriving, Aphelion had surveyed the two for the moment and made the decision to search further, which had conveniently separated Ditzy and Tick again. Ditzy had not gone far: the shelves were endless and empty. Fears for Tick and what might be next for her nagged at the edges of her attention, but she kept pace in the fruitless search. A glance here or there was enough to ensure the rows were absent of material. It was a little shiver of coldness every time she saw another scar of ash, and a hot shock of indignity every time she was reminded of how Tick had rejected her efforts to be considerate. If he won’t take my kindness, then I’m not going to waste it on him. Stopping, Ditzy resisted the desire to sink further into irritation. Staring at the depressingly empty shelves as he had done, she reminded herself that it was surely not an easy thing for him to experience. Did he dream of this place? He was having that strange argument with Luna about all these books. Now he doesn’t have anything, I guess, unless there’s more places like this I don’t know about. All this fuss about books… Aphelion walked around the corner, and Ditzy broke out of her contemplations, noting his advance warily. His compact armored mass stopped a respectful distance from Ditzy, and he watched her as if measuring. “Have you found anything?” Aphelion asked, quicker than Ditzy had expected. Her mouth hung open for a moment, and then she replied with a casual shake of her head. The strength of words didn’t feel adequate for Ditzy anymore, not in this place. Aphelion watched her for a moment longer, his eyes searching for something, enough for Ditzy to begin to assume a guarded, questioning demeanor. “It might be better if you leave him alone for a while. He’s on edge around you.” Now Ditzy scrutinized Aphelion: watching for any sign of motive, intent, dead-set on learning his cause. She didn’t find any duplicity in the eyes surrounded by armored helm, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Aphelion replied to her gaze with an even expression, which had remained the same throughout the short encounter. Feeling Ditzy’s sharp stare increase ceaselessly, Aphelion sighed and reluctantly spoke again. “It’s just a piece of advice from an old soldier. Take it or leave it.” ~~~~~~~ Ditzy had gone out of sight—Tick counted the moments necessary—then he let out all of his pent-up breath all at once, exhaling what felt like humid steam, devouring the cold air, mind running thick with cold relief and magmatic anger. Tick knew he was close, so close to erupting as he steadied himself against the shelf… but with what, with what he did not know. And he feared it. Behind him, a clack of hooves landing and the repetitious rolling rattle of armored joints made him turn. Eris was watching him derisively, clear disgust coloring her face at his display. “I’d feel ashamed too if I were you.” Eris advanced, unsympathetic eyes solid on his ratcheting orbs. “Really, you’re almost as bad as her, letting your feelings run all over you and endanger everyone else in the process.” Tick stared right back, body poised like a threatened beast, the open insult and taunt irresistible. Eris leered at his combative stance. “No—you’re worse. She wanted out. She had an end. But not you, crying over something that’s over and done, that can’t be changed, trapped in the useless past.” Eris paused for a moment, tapping an armored hoof against her chin and rolling her eyes in mock-contemplativeness. “At least you had the sense to hold it in and wait until nopony was around to look weak and pathetic. She didn’t. It was disgusting to watch.” Eris started to walk away from him, but then she turned to glimpse the wounds she had opened and the vampiric grin faded. Tick held still in the flood of rage, all but his eyes, and they whirled until they were a solid blur of silver, a maelstrom of wicked deliverance. ~~~~~~~ Something else caught Ditzy’s eye before Aphelion could complete his exit. As he sighed again and shook his head, the small glint of his burnished armor grabbed her attention—and then as Aphelion started to walk away, Ditzy saw an ever-familiar form on a distant shelf behind that glint. Not even noticing Aphelion’s wary and curious gaze as she flew quickly over him, Ditzy reached the shelf and pulled a black metal-bound book off the desolate rack. I found a book! Ditzy thought with a bizarre elated sensation, which turned into a lurchingly uncomfortable feeling as she reminded herself of Twilight. She held it up before her as she floated just off the ground, not entirely sure what to do. It has a metal binding, and I don’t recognize any of these words. “Put it down.” The grave authority in the words turned Ditzy’s head, yet Aphelion’s unnaturally calm face chilled her more. Ditzy let the tome fall to the shelf with a blunt thump, questioning the empathy of fear. “Ask yourself… out of anything here, has any of it helped you?” Aphelion pulled a small bag out of the kit on his back, and handed it to Ditzy. “Don’t read it, and don’t let him see it.” ~~~~~~~~ Eris held Tick against the wall by his throat, in his rage refusing to break the stare even as he suffocated. “You bastard, what did you to me?” The indignant malevolence of her slit eyes mirrored the satisfied anger of his. Eris pushed harder against his windpipe, fury at the freakish incident hiding shameful fear. Not so in control of yourself now, are you? Obscured by black spots, Tick’s vision began to fade, but Eris pulled back and let him fall to the floor. He hardly felt himself hit the ground; the blood rushing back into the brain dizzied him. “You’re disgusting,” Tick heard Eris whisper heavily as his vision exploded into a thousand dots and he rushed another breath, but he could still distinguish a loathing in her voice directed at more than one. I shouldn’t have done that… any of that…why did I do that? She’s made me insane. I can’t live like this, volatile; I have no control anymore; as much as that one is a bat-winged bitch she has a fair point. Eventually, Tick pulled himself up and sat, vision still swimming at the edges. “Come on, get up,” Eris said in a remarkably calm, casual voice, as if Tick had just tripped over something and she hadn’t been choking him moments before. Eris was bizarrely calm: no hint of the former rage or hidden fear and shame, just her usual slightly bored and impatient expression. Recovering, inexplicable confusion mixed with mental pain as his lungs burned. You just tried to choke me to death… and then you act like nothing happened? I guess, as much as value control, you would try to stay honest to it. For a moment, a single moment, she lost control. In that state, there is no difference between thought and action, and deprived of that sole barrier, she shamed herself and her principles. All it took was an instant… Eris looked at him for another second with her slight frown of boredom, and then started to wander off. Or maybe I was all wrong. Either way, I hope I don’t have to deal with her again. His quiet moment of clarity passed, Tick glanced at the forest of books’ bones and felt himself crumbling into nothing like that skeleton of ashes. ~~~~~~~~ They left. Finding nothing more, the four exited through the gaping skyline, and the ruin threw no sudden obstacles against them. Only the whispers in the dark lasted, the memories now fading from minds to be dug up and worried over another day. Ditzy felt home calling, the night fading. Her monomaniacal desire to return to her daughter nagged at her as the as the leading guards dived decidedly away from the town, towards the clearing where Luna had watched them go. No words, no traces of what had been followed them—like a dream, yet the wounds they sustained ached. Luna had waited for them. She was as calm as the night and regal as a star, and for all the world Ditzy felt the most perverse mix of pity and fear and hate seething in her veins, blinding her. For who would shout the truth to Luna’s calm eyes? For who would recall the indignity of the actions she had forced them through? For who could strip away her legitimate pains and the torment of a thousand years? Twisted constraint clamped Ditzy’s mouth shut as Luna surveyed each and all. Decorum forbade them from speaking first, and weary bodies and minds threatened to collapse at last. “Let us reach a more secure location, and then recount your tales.” ~~~~~~~~ Ditzy watched Tick. The battle long behind him, Tick had reached a new plateau of silently shunning the world around him. Care rejected, Ditzy had confined herself to observing him from afar, waiting on their side of the grassy hillock as Luna and the guards spoke. If he won’t let me help him… then let him be miserable. Flashes of the garden in Canterlot returned to Ditzy, where he had suddenly embraced her only to become distant again, of the ecstasy of minds binding, of now-distant moments. Memories of Twilight years ago raced against the current, making Ditzy flinch at the sympathy that had been perfect in the moment, breaking her down and setting her free. Not like he is… Pragmatism overpowered her cooling emotions, so vehement of late. …it would be a waste of my time. Then the two guards appeared over the crest of the hill, and they passed word of Luna’s call for Ditzy. Ditzy looked up over the crest, ascended to the top, and hesitated. No. There’s nothing. Ditzy descended from the backdrop of the night sky and moon. Shallow as a broken vessel, empty as a sieve, the last particle of painful emotion dripped out of Ditzy. There was no spark in her golden eyes; it had all drained away, and Luna’s austere mystery remained silent as she studied the empty mother. “Tell us what hath occurred.” Ditzy spoke, but the words were chunks of ice, a slow hail of dead words sharp-sliding off her tongue. They no longer meant anything to her. As Ditzy continued, she neared the end of her tale and the less-than-explosive discovery of the only tangible thing taken from the crypt-like place of memory. Luna’s eyes turned energetic at the mention of the tome. They hovered, searched, the azure orbs tracking Ditzy and holding still as Ditzy pulled the book from her pack. “This is it,” Ditzy said, flat, resigned. For a long time in the night breeze, nothing was said. Luna—thinking—plainly undecided for the first time in Ditzy’s memory instead opted to look away. I should drop this now and let you and him handle it. I should leave and get on with my life. What did I ever do? Like a fool, I chased some stupid dream of adventure and finding an interesting stranger out. I got my adventure, and more than I ever wanted, and more than I want to believe, more than I can forget, and more than I will ever be comfortable with… “Keep it,” Luna said with a sudden finality. Ditzy stared back at her, incredulous. “No!” Ignoring the reflexive utterance, Luna’s tone returned to her smooth majesty. “The book you now hold is unlikely to be of great worth, and in any case it must remain away from Tick. There is the case that it poses a danger—” “Which is exactly why I shouldn’t have it!” “—upon being read. We trust you that you shall not do anything untoward with it, nor read it yourself or allow any other to do so. We have seen that thy concern for thy companions and thy house’s welfare is great. It is this—” I don’t care about him anymore, Ditzy thought, the whiplash of empathy restrained gritting her teeth. “—care that assures us that you will not fail. We will send an agent to retrieve it for us, and be assured that Tick will be able to look over it at the proper time.” In the painful stifling silence, Luna mulled over something untellable to Ditzy, who waited as her stomach knotted. She glanced back in the direction of her forlorn home, but Luna’s words cut off her longing. “Of all the three that we have spoken to, you have not lied.” Ditzy’s attention returned to find Luna studying her with a new gaze, less regal, deeper, curious. “Yet we think there is something else you would like to say.” The cold pretense Ditzy had assumed wavered. Her mouth dry, Ditzy found she could say nothing. For what else could she tell Luna? Surely, she had said everything that had occurred in that hellish place. There was neither an ounce or an iota of anything important that had occurred, yet—yet Luna still watched with the gaze unfamiliar to the idea that Ditzy had held of her, something that provoked a roar of indignation and wounds hidden. What do you want? What could I have to say to her? “You just,” Ditzy began, the end of the words absent from her mind, the complete uncertainty agitating her into a bizarre anger that coalesced with her pragmatism; for once—for once the two agreed, her wild emotion and her sense of reason, that something must be said, and that by necessity it would be painful. “You took me away from my home! I didn’t want any dangerous adventure—I was just gone, out for a while, to escape, and I get wrapped up in this. WHY? I don’t see how I belong in this at all! I was just chasing him, like the naïve pony I am, thinking that nothing could go wrong. You said I was tainted with the Nightmare, but what has that done to me or Tick? Nothing! Nothing that I can see! I don’t understand any of anything that’s happening. I don’t have a way out of this; back in the jail it was either agree to something that I couldn’t even imagine or rot there. There were the days waiting at home, hoping you wouldn’t come, hoping that my life would go back to whatever semblance of normal I had before this tragedy happened. Then you make us go through that place, more of a nightmare than anything that I’ve seen since I saw that reflection in his mind…” Ditzy choked on her words, the scarred mother blinded by tears. She hadn’t said it all, she knew there were more things, but her anger was burning into misery faster than she could release it. All the while she knew she was twisting the past, twisting her own actions, not even giving herself a fair trial, yet the critical blade of hindsight was merciless to all. “You took me away from her.” Having gasped out the last words, Ditzy turned to leave, her shame a tangible mire that dragged at her limbs as she moved. As Ditzy crawled up towards the blurry sky, Luna walked into her path. She heard through the growing wind and her shadowy tears: “I’m sorry.” I… “It will all be explained at the end. I promise.” ~~~~~~~~~ The rain drizzled on them in quick torrents, leaving Ditzy and Tick to trod through the last quiet residues of night’s cold and humid air. Back through the town they went, and Ditzy spared not her attention for Tick. Almost home now. They shuddered collectively against the frigid wind and seeping wetness, Ditzy staring with glassy eyes and a trancelike step into the peaceful future. For once, she did not question Tick’s muteness and only sought to steal away a few moments of rest before the dawn rose on them in a flurry of action. There it is. The sight of her house rushed in on her: at once her legs desperate to collapse and a burst of final, pent-up energy, which propelled her posthaste to her door. Holding it open as an afterthought for Tick, she noticed him on edge, eyes fixed in the dark, searching for something, but declining to look at her. Maybe I should talk to him. Yet Ditzy remembered her recent creed, and with a long exhalation, slipped the small bag off by the door, rushed up to her room, and let exhaustion take her. Peace. ~~~~~~~~ Tick fought the terror, but he knew it was his savior. It was the only thing that made sense. This fear that had grown into him, he knew, somehow that it was a gift, salvation, his way out. But his body shook and trembled: he knew not why, he knew what he had to do, but could not muster the last desperate strength to break away. I know what I have to do, so why is it so hard to do it? As if to add more fuel to the insanity, now that one wants to kill me. There’s no peace here. There’s no safety here. Why can’t I leave? Why can’t I leave… Breathing heavy, Tick ripped his eyes away from the staircase, twirling around the entryway, anger sparking but never seeming to ignite, panic wracking his mind and wide-shot eyes. It sought—he sought—an exit, a finality, an end, but he could not tear his hooves from the spot nor extend his wings to rocket out in freefall. There was something, something, something, but all it would take was the slightest push to send him out of the maddening place, into the transcendent night, into Pyrrhic victory. Yet the panic that fueled his terrified motions nearly missed the means of his leaving. Tick’s attention fastened at last on the pack casually tossed aside, and for a few moments he stood stock-still, staring. That’s not hers. It has a guard insignia on it. Trembling in hopeful fear, Tick rushed to the pack, held off for an instant, opened it, and recoiled. The whirling-eyed seeker stood, frozen with suspense like a boulder hanging over him. All lies. The words sounded like the sick crunch of bone and flesh snapping. They all lied to me! His thoughts erupted in dizzying fury, and he no longer saw the world around him. She lied to me! As if struck by the merciless fatal blow of a spear, Tick fell back against the door, and relentless shame and deathly fear mixed as he lost all track of the world. One by one, disparate emotions drained from the wound: agony, fear, shame, anger, shock. Tick breathed in at last the air that had escaped him, but his sight remained in the mind. He could feel the wind on his wings calling and the starry chill of isolation, a promised freedom from the living hell. There was only one way… there’s only one way out of here… Tick held the book against him like a shield against the madness.