You must follow in her footsteps. We could find no alternative then, and I see none now. Find the Well, Luna. There is no other way to oppose Typhus.
You must do this quickly. If He reaches the Well before you, if this last sliver of hope dies, there will be nothing left for the world, nothing but a tortured existence, and a slow death.
Forty-One
BOUNDLESS SLAMMED the door shut behind him. Droplets of water flecked off his fur as he strode into the room. Despite the fire, around which five ponies, three of them with crystal fur sparkling, huddled, the chill remained, being only slightly warmer here than outside.
“Gentleponies,” he said, nodding. “And how are we this fine morn?”
“Cold,” one of the southern ponies said. “We just had to pull this in winter, didn’t we.”
“Actually, it’s late-spring.”
“Buck it.”
“Now, now,” a third, crystal, interjecting, verbally and physically, he reached a hoof in to clasp a shoulder, placing his body between the two, “we mustn’t get too heated . . .”
Three ponies laughed, one held a straight face for an instant before a smug grin forcibly took control of his face, a fifth narrowed his eyes, and shrugged off the hoof on his shoulder.
“Best you watch your tongue, Winter,” the fifth said. “A ’fore you lose it.”
“What you want with it?” Winter shot back. “Reckon you need a little help pleasing the mares?”
“Ha! That’s not what your mother said, last night!”
“Really, Charger?” Winter whispered, leaning closer. “Cause, y’know, if you were in want o’ something . . . I don’t think it’s a tongue you should be looking for.” He glanced meaningfully at Charger’s flank.
A pause. A moment of silence while eyes widened, cheeks bulged. Then, the deluge. Laughter bursting from all four, while a hoof went flying, striking Winter in the back of the head.
All of a sudden, it devolved into a miniature brawl, full of heaving gasps and loud cracks. The crystal pony next to Winter joined in instantly, leaping at Charger and pushing him back. Winter shook his head groggily, tight grin still plastered over his muzzle. Charger brought his chin down, cracking across the skull of the crystal pony, who promptly dropped to the ground.
“Damn southerners,” Winter growled, fixing his eyes on the second earth pony, already moving at him. His hooves lashed out, one two, only to strike empty air as the earth pony rolled underneath, coming up with a great heave that tossed Winter across the room. “Oof!”
Boundless made to move forward, only to find a hoof held firmly against his chest. It sparkled a pale red in the firelight.
“Jus’ watch,” she said, giving him a gentle push back.
“They no friends of yours?” Boundless asked.
“Naww, that ain’t it,” she said, with a small smile. ”But we wouldn’t want an uneven fight, now would we?”
“Hmph.”
“They’re just warmin’ up,” she said. “An’ . . .” leaning closer to him, “between you an’ me, I aim to enjoy the show.”
Boundless smirked, and sat down where he was. He watched the brawl continue for a few minutes, until eventually the earth ponies lay side-by-side, sucking in great gasps of air, and nursing bruises and scrapes, some lined with crystalline fibres, while their joints started to swell. The crystal ponies hadn’t fared any better, though their injuries came in the form of cracks and splinters, under which Boundless could see a nebulous energy, whirling around and around.
He sighed, and stood. “Feeling better?” he said, moving into the room proper.
“Yeah,” came the reply, from Charger, “got the blood pumpin’ jus’ fine.”
“Good. Charger, I presume . . .?”
“Yeah. Call me Charge’.”
Boundless gave himself a little shake. Swivelling, he stared at Charger’s friend. It still took him a few seconds to get the message.
“Stone Shard, lil’ buddy.”
Boundless took a deep breath. “I am not your buddy.”
“Friend,” Charger was grinning now.
“What?”
“It’s ‘I ain’t your buddy, friend.’”
Stone Shard rolled over onto his stomach. “I ain’t your friend, buddy.”
Boundless practically hissed. “And you three? Spit it out.”
“Ruby Rose,” said the mare who’d held him back. She was now leaning over her two companions, inspecting their wounds.
“An’ we’re,” groaning from the ground, “Wintersong, an’ Cobalt.”
“Boundless, right?” Charger asked, sitting up and holding his hooves to the fire with a frown. “Plain Sight said you’d be coming up here.”
“We picked him up last night,” Cobalt said. “You, of course, were too busy snoring to notice . . .”
“Hey, somepony’s gotta do it. Guard’s happy to leave us alone so long as they think somepony’s still using this old wreck. Why anypony’d want to put up with such a shitheap is beyond me.”
“Enough!” Boundless thundered. Everypony in the room stiffened, turning to look at him.
“Believe it or not, I haven’t crossed half of Equestria just to listen to your prattle! We’ve work to do, and it doesn’t involve making lame puns.”
“Yeesh. Tone it down a notch, would ya?”
“Mmm,” Stone Shard said. “We still answer to Plain Sight. He’s told us to aid you in any way we can. Just,”—yawning—“don’t be a dick, yeah?”
Boundless sank to his haunches, put his face in his hooves, and took a deep breath.
The ponies gathered together, Charger slinging a hoof over Cobalt’s shoulders. “Did ya break him?”
“Naww, kid’s just young. Give him a sec, you’ll see.”
“Okay,” Boundless said, standing. He faced the group front on, face carefully blank. “Tell me about the Crystal Heart.”
***
Brash? Cumulus? Are you there?
“How can she be so blind?”
I could really use somepony to talk to . . .
“I mean, all the allusions to past wars are one thing. But I thought she was wiser than this!”
Guys?
“It invalidates all the good she’s done. None of it can mean anything.”
Twilight Sparkle was fuming. She paced back and forth, inner monologue spewing forth as her hoofsteps slammed into the ground. Her face was scrunched up, brow furrowed and jaw clenched, and her eyes stared at blank nothingness, impassive, absent.
Trixie Lulamoon was barely listening. She was lost in her own world, the world on the inside of her mind. A world she was just beginning to explore. Her friends had been in here the whole time, she was realising. Not just with her, but a part of her, by definition. They’d never really lived past the accident. They were ghosts, haunting her every waking moment. A sentiment she could think, trembling on the precipice, but never feel, never find herself plunging forward in gutteral realisation . . .
“I mean, I’ve tried,” Twilight said, tossing her head back abruptly and throwing her front hooves into the air, “and there’s just no way she can justify her stance. Not without spitting in my face—in everypony’s face! Either side of the coin is an insult. It demeans us.”
Trixie heard nothing in the vault of her mind. No response to her calls. Brash and Cumulus had said very little after they manifested most strongly, defending her from Twilight. But she was sure she’d heard them, sure that they were still here.
Sighing, she blinked thrice, blearily looking up to regard Twilight’s pacing.
“What’s this about?”
Twilight exploded. “Everything!”
Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Specific.”
“Celestia . . . agrees with you,” Twilight said. “And I keep running her arguments around in circles. And they just won’t make sense!”
Trixie was smiling, now. To hear reassurance, such as it was, from a Princess of Equestria . . . she wasn’t star struck, as she might have been once, a long time ago, but nevertheless felt warm, a toasty comfort spreading throughout her body. “Well, what did she say?”
“That it’s for our own good. That without this stupid spell we’d all be running around lopping each other’s heads off! I mean, that’s insane. You haven’t gone on a psychotic spree!”
“I might have,” Trixie said. Memories of that day came to her readily. “I think I was close, Twilight. Not apathetic, not yet, not like him. But close.”
Twilight rounded on her, flinging out a hoof as if to accuse. “What changed?”
“You showed me.”
“Yes,” Twilight said. She swallowed. “Setting aside the nature of that intervention,” a shudder, “I showed you. We’ve already established that you haven’t become a carbon copy of me, of my thought patterns. Then . . . then the only explanation is-“
“You taught me,” Trixie said, slowly. Twilight’s energy had caught her interest, almost despite herself. “Like, say, a parent, teaching a child who doesn’t know any better.”
“Exactly! Now, think with me. Follow the logic, the hypothesis. Where does it lead?”
“Equate morality with a forbidden location,” Trixie said. “The Everfree Forest. And everypony lives in Ponyville. We all know—know—not to venture in there. All of us: save for the children. Celestia, even I know that much, and I’ve never spent longer than a few days in Ponyville.”
“So we teach them,” Twilight said. “We warn them and we lecture them and we instruct them. And so they grow up secure in the knowledge never to go into the Forest.”
“But now suppose the Veil is a giant wall, surrounding the Forest,” Trixie continued. Her mind was racing ahead, constructing the analogy as she spoke. “What happens to the lessons? They disappear, of course, because they serve no purpose. Why teach foals to beware the Forest when, for all intents and purposes, the Forest might as well not exist.”
Twilight was nodding, her lips pressed tightly together. “Now Boundless. Born in Ponyville, except for him there is no great wall. There is nothing stopping him from exploring the Forest. And so, like a child, he does.”
“Is that your answer,” Trixie said, turning her gaze on Twilight. “That we’re responsible for that monster? That locking murder away only made it easier for him?”
“Celestia insists that this wall keeps us safe. Well, I say that it keeps us vulnerable.”
“And what of the foals who, no matter how you lecture, no matter how you punish, will always feel the drive to explore? Isn’t this, above all else, something that should be prohibited?”
Twilight grimaced, pawing at the ground. “It can’t be that simple. You point to those curious foals who ignore all warnings and call them inevitable. Well, I say that ponies like Boundless are inevitable, too.”
Inevitable. The word washed over Trixie, sending shivers down her legs. Luna has used that word, too, in the hospital, in her dream.
“What am I, to you, Twilight?” Trixie murmured. “Just another caught up in his wake? A victim? An inevitability?!” Her voice grew in volume until she was shouting.
Twilight didn’t flinch. “Trixie Lulamoon. Showmare, criminal. Rival turned friend. My brother’s murderer. A Sage, a student. A pony that, in the extreme, caught her friends’ departing minds and held them close. You—“now striding closer, poking Trixie in the chest—“are a contradiction. You are one of the worst ponies I have ever met, and as a result you can become one of the best. A pony capable of murder that chooses to preserve life. No, I am not sure what you are to me. Not yet.”
Trixie’s heart was hammering in her chest. She was not an idiot: she knew what Twilight referred to. She had been set on that path, too, and damn everypony’s opinions—Boundless had to be stopped, and permanently, before he could wreak further havoc on the world. Now she reconsidered. Would that act remove even these tendrils of acceptance? Would it burn Twilight’s friendship behind her, to cast this last grace in her face?
“Twilight,” Trixie said, “my . . . my friends. Brash, a-and Cumulus.” She could feel the familiar lump in her throat.
Twilight was at her side in a second. “What’s happened?”
“They aren’t talking to me. I think they’re . . . that they’re . . .”
“We’re going to have to deal with this,” Twilight said. She bit her lip. “You know they’re dead, right?”
“Yes! But . . .”
“Letting go . . . Trixie, it’s probably the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do.”
“I thought you said I was going to be a princess,” Trixie said, forcing out a chuckle. It flopped to the floor, sad, and pathetic.
“Incomplete,” Twilight whispered. “Cumulus used Spiritual Coromancy, when we fought. He caught and redirected my energy. But . . . but it was your soul, not his. And you’ve no wings to manifest that power in reality. I . . . I think what you did . . . it was one-third. If they had been Coromancers, if they had met you with the same intent, at the same moment . . . but they didn’t. They died, and you took only what you could reach: their minds. Their minds, Trixie! Ghosts, inside your head. Learning only through your experiences. Incapable of agency, of choice. You . . . Celestia, help me; you have to let them go. I can help you, help you understand it, but you have to be the one to do it. And when you do, I-I think you’ll absorb them. All their memories, their lives, becoming yours.”
“I . . .“ Trixie sniffled. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“You aren’t,” Twilight insisted, sweeping her into a hug. “And you never will be.”
“I-I know, Twilight! But it’s not enough, it’s never enough, there’ll always be that silence, waiting for me.”
“What’s this?”
“E-Every song ends, every sentence stops, every pony dies. Can you imagine what it’s like, to have voices in your mind? It’s not . . . it’s not a scary thing, it’s not bad. A-And now they’re gone and all I can hear is echoes.”
But Twilight’s face had frozen. She didn’t know, she couldn’t understand. She’d never known anything else, this mare, this Sage, Celestia’s personal student, this Paragon of forgiveness, her mentor and victim and friend, she’d learnt to embrace the silence. She’d gotten past the death of somepony arguably closer to her than anypony in Trixie’s life had ever been, if only so much as to be functional. That’s what Trixie needed to learn.
She reached forward, grasping Twilight’s face between her hooves, and brought her head down, pressed her brow against Twilight’s.
“Ah, Trixie . . .” Twilight’s voice trailed off as their eyes met, and the world faded.
Trixie’s mind. Always before, it had been her entering another’s, in search of something. This time, she had pulled Twilight in, not pushed. This time, she wasn’t searching.
The vast plain appeared around them. Reminiscent of the mindscape she’d perceived the last time Twilight had entered her mind, wrapped in lavender armour and ethereal hatred. That Twilight had vanished completely, as if she had never existed, though Trixie’s memories persisted.
Briefly, the self-same lavender fire flickered on the ground around Twilight, and blackened patches of scarred earth dotted the arena. Trixie winced, casting such thoughts from her mind, and the detailing vanished. “Sorry,” she muttered.
Twilight blinked. “What for?” Twilight asked.
“Never mind,” Trixie said.
Here, she should have been able to see her friends: to perceive them, even if they would not make themselves known to her. And, truth be told, she thought she could. At a great distance, faint, weak, but still there, hiding somewhere in the distance.
“Can you feel them,” Trixie whispered. “Are they there?”
Twilight hummed to herself, her eyes closed. “Hmm, yes.”
Trixie exhaled. “I don’t want them gone, Twilight.”
“Yes, I got that.” Twilight gave Trixie a stern look. “But it’s not something we can ignore.” She had the grace to blush, ever so faintly. “I mean, we have been. I have been. But with everything else, and I’ve been trying not to let my mind dwell on you, a-and I can’t imagine how you’ve been coping with your recovery, and . . .” Twilight shook herself. “It’s important, Trixie, is what I’m trying to say. It’s part of,” waving her hooves in the air, gesturing, “everything else. The guilt over my brother, the anger at him, and the loneliness—it echoes, in here, you know? Can you hear it?—it’s all wrapped up together with their deaths, Trixie, with the fire, and you can’t move on while they’re here . . .”
“I-I don’t want . . .”
Twilight frowned. “I don’t know if I feel inclined to give you much of a choice.”
Trixie took a shuddering breath. “I brought you here to help me,” she said. It was true, after all, if not what she’d had in mind—if she’d been thinking at all. All the pent-up emotion, drained session after session in Twilight’s training rooms, was it finally catching up with her? Spiralling, down and down, each circle eating away at her self-control, until all she could do was clutch at the unicorn before her, grasp futilely at some form of stability. She’d drown, eventually lose her mind . . . this was the price, wasn’t it? For the power Twilight offered her, tried to teach her to control. The price for being a Sage. It wasn’t just a magnification of her magical power, it was an intensification of emotion, all her weaknesses and failings and flaws brought to a glaring light.
The environment morphed. Buildings appeared, single-storied, with roofs of thatch and walls of stone. Ponyville, at night, a deep twilight casting long shadows across the cobblestone square. Trixie stood tall, necklace flashing a blood-red. Twilight glanced around, saw her own flickering shade, and that of the other Elements.
“The past, Trixie,” Twilight said. “The Alicorn Amulet can’t control you anymore. It’s over.”
A gigantic paw, made of stars and a never-ending blackness, crashed into the ground, spraying stone everywhere. Twilight jumped, twisted, leaped aside. Trixie lifted her head, peering up into the Ursa’s gaping maw.
A flick of Twilight’s horn, and the scene was dispelled. “It can’t hurt you, Trixie. But this,” gesturing around herself, as the empty space refilled itself, no longer at her command, not really, Trixie taking a back seat even in her own mind—skyscrapers, the sounds of carts and drivers yelling at each other, Manehattan—“this is you, this is your pain!”
They watched as Trixie and Boundless tore down the street, slipping around the traffic like born locals while the police floundered behind them. Large sacks spilt a trail of gold in their wake.
“It’s not who you are anymore!”
The scene shifted again, now a vast plain at the base of the Canterlot Mountain. Twilight stood over Trixie, lavender armour dripping molten power into the earth. Trixie made a small whimper, eyes fixated on the figure before them, while Twilight faltered.
“Is that . . . is that what I did to you?”—watching as she pinned Trixie, forced her way past the mare’s defences—“Is that what the Nightmare did to me?”
Trixie nodded. “It wasn’t you,” she said, her voice thick. “I know that. And yet . . .”
And yet she flinched along with her shade.
Twilight grimaced, bit her lip, stamped the ground twice, and the aura around her horn doubled in power. The air before them rippled and shifted. A gilded gate blurred into view, arch rising high overhead.
Noble Deed’s Orphanage
“All your life,” Twilight began, “has been spent running away. You ran from your orphanage as soon as you could because you were afraid of your parents. You knew they weren’t coming, knew no other couple would adopt you. You ran from your friends, declining even the simple matter of a letter, because you were afraid of your peers. You knew they would see you for who you really were, behind the act. Great and Powerful, indeed.” She made no attempt to hide the contempt in her voice, and Trixie shied away from it.
“You ran from me, not once, but twice, because you knew I was your match. You ran from Boundless because you knew he would break you. Never at the forefront of your mind. Never staying still for long enough to let the knowledge sink into your bones, Trixie!”
Trixie blinked. Twilight was looking away, but she felt no such compunction. Before her, she lifted the azure blade, beat it through a lavender grip, brought it down with desperate force. Shining Armour shuddered underneath her hooves.
“You killed my brother because you were still running away!”
Trixie gasped. She opened her mouth but had nothing to say. She clenched her teeth shut, sucked in air, stared the ground between her hooves.
“You saved them because you knew they would die,” Twilight said. A hoof lifted Trixie’s chin, a gentle smile—how in Equestria what where why who are you—eased the swell in her chest. “It’s time to stop running, Trixie. They’re waiting for you.”
Fire crackled in her ears. Wooden beams crashed down before her face, heat blistered her skin, carbon and ash filled her nose. She knew where she was. In one sense, she’d never left. Across the room, a spectre crawled with terrible, scrabbling motions. Azure light heralded its path, touched the heads of two others occupying the room.
Trixie.
Cumulus! Trixie cried. You’re here!
Of course we are, Brash grumbled. Where else would we be?
“You’re in a position nopony has been ever since the Veil was erected,” Twilight said. “You can see the Forest, and the fork in the road. That is a freedom born of potential.”
We weren’t ignoring you, Cumulus said. He moved up beside her, watching his past self struggle on the floor. Fire continued to eat into the building. There wasn’t anything to say.
He means we’re dead, Brash said. That’s the real price.
And then Trixie understood. The chain of causality that lead her inexorably to this moment. Was it really inevitable? What was the result of all her fighting? All her running? Coromancy provided the agency to effect the change she desired most in the world, to reject the cruelest twists of fate. But it was an illusion, only, a temporary measure. For Trixie’s own awareness of her power, her tutelage, her nascent knowledge: the science of its inner workings, that denied to her the pretense she’d lived under her entire life.
The more she learned, the more she grew, the less she could ignore this, this pivotal moment. They had been dead for a long time.
And you draw strength from us.
Trixie started crying. Could she really stand to lose them, once again? Could she even forestall this, take back the last few days, remain as just Trixie? The silence opened its infinite maw, looming and dark as night, and it sent a shiver down her spine.
“You’ve already broken through one Veil,” Twilight said. “Even with Boundless, that’s not something everypony could have done.”
Trixie wiped her eyes, nodding. She could see the elegance of the construction, appreciate the beauty of the trap Twilight had erected for her. Even as she cried, she stood. With regret snaking trails down her cheeks, she gestured, found Cumulus and Brash by the hooves.
“I’ll miss you guys,” she said, trembling voice about to crack.
Hey, now. We’ll always be right here.
She nodded again, and pulled her hooves to her chest. There was no spark, no cataclysmic event to mark the transition. Just a sigh, and a slow fade. When she opened her eyes, they were no more. The silence threatened to overwhelm her.
Twilight made a gesture, and they were abruptly back in the Agency. Trixie started, fell onto her rump.
“I- I-“
“You see my thoughts, then,” Twilight said.
“Yes,” Trixie said. “I- I need to think about it.”
“Of course,” Twilight said. “But no more running away.”
“No,” Trixie said, and the word resonated in her mind.
***
“What’d you even want with it, anyways?”
The Crystal Heart hovered in mid-air, faintly humming. The air around it shimmered, rippling, as if suspended in a heat wave on the horizon of a desert. Boundless reached out a hoof and stroked it, feeling the hard surface, smooth as glass, against his hoof. He glanced all around, worried despite himself, but they were still alone. Exposed, out in the open, yes, right under their noses, but alone.
He was surprised, though perhaps he shouldn’t have been. He’d thought the Heart would have been somewhere safe, under lock and key. Experimentally, he gave it a light push. As expected, it resisted the force, and the humming increased ever so slightly. A light wave of light played out from the contact. Ah. Still, to display it so openly . . . they were proud, these Crystal ponies, and naïve, begot of the same innocence that had plagued his childhood. Well.
“Hey, buddy,” Cobalt said. “Asked you a question.”
“Hmm?”
“Well? I’s reckon it’s getting to be a bit weird we ain’t heard anything else ‘bout this, no?”
Boundless blinked, turned to stare at him. “What?”
Stone Shard rubbed his face. “He’s wondering why we’re helping you.”
“Oh.” Boundless smiled. “Your boss owes me.” He lowered his hoof. “And as for what I want . . . well, I’m not entirely sure, yet.”
“Whad’ya mean, yet?”
“Depends on what I can do with it.” Boundless said. He sighed. “Look, it’s a lot to ask. I understand that, really.”
“Oh, good. Lookit, Ruby, kid knows what it means to go asking a bunch of patriots to nick that ol’ relic what they just got back some few years back.”
“Could you please,” seeing the grin plastered all over their faces, “. . . unhh, just—just stop.”
“Ah, it’s alright,” Charger said, slinging a hoof around his shoulders. “They’re right, though. It is a hell of a lot. I think if we’s expected to help you out with this, we deserve a little recompense, you feel me?”
“I don’t have any money-“
“Naww, partner, t’ ain’t money we’re after. Information. Tell us what’s going on here.”
Boundless eyed him, shrugged the hoof off his shoulders.
“Here’s what we know,” Wintersong said, stepping forward. “The Prince-Consort’s murdered in Canterlot,” he paused, “now that took some getting used to. Still,” shaking his head, “Princess went ahead and locked up the Empire tighter’n a crystal flower.” Ruby swatted him across the back of his head. “Then, we get missive from Plain Sight. We was all geared up for an impromptu holiday—out of respect n’ all, you understand?—but oh, no, here, help out this poor little kid, just a lonely lil’ unicorn whose gone and lost ‘is Mommy and Daddy.”
“Get to the point.”
“Well. We’re thinking, is all. An’ we’re thinking that being smuggling’s off the table right now, how’s he gonna get this kid up here in the first place. We’re thinking the job’s getting you here. So you can imagine our surprise when we hear a few days after that: that he’s on a flippin’ train. And now he wants us to nick the Crystal Heart. We been plenty patient with you, kid,” shoving a hoof at Boundless; face, “done gave you the grand tour and all. It’s all a little too suspicious to be unrelated. So: fill in the gaps.”
Boundless turned away, stared into the Heart. “What was Sombra like?”
“Aww, hell no.”
“But-“
“No dramatic monologues with your face in the wind. This isn’t a bucking movie.”
Boundless started grinding his teeth.
“Also, that one's a touchy subject around here. I wouldn’t go mentioning that name too lightly.”
“Hey,” Ruby now, at his side. “Take it easy, yeah? Face the group, there’s a good lad. Now,” gesturing with her hoof, drawing a wide arc in the air before them, “what did you bring to Show and Tell.”
“I swear, I am going to kill somepony,” Boundless said. The Crystal Heart sparkled behind him.
“Aww, dang it,” Charger said, and hoofed a small handful of bits over to Cobalt. “Last buckin’ time, I swear on me mother’s grave . . .” Cobalt patted him a few times.
“So it was you,” Stone Shard said. “The Prince-Consort, I mean. Shining Armour.”
Boundless blinked. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Why the train?”
“Uhh—speed. This here’s a hit and run,” Boundless said. He paused, scrunched his muzzle, and then spat to the side. “I mean, this job’s going to be a hit and run.”
“Being chased, then,” Charger said. Cobalt scowled, and passed the bits back.
“It’s only three or four days between here and Hornwall by hoof,” Wintersong said. “Then again, the city’s still in chaos. Guard hasn’t really figured out how to operate without the Prince-Consort yet.”
“Isn’t that ideal?” Boundless asked.
“Naww, not really,” Charger said. “Sure, you might get a few things through, but by-n-large predictable is better. There’s jus’ no knowing where they’re gonna be anymore.”
Boundless exhaled, hard. “Right. Okay. So-“
“How’d you know Plain Sight?”
“Eh? We met in . . .”
“No, no. I mean, what’s he owe you?”
“Ol’ boss-man ain’t one to give something away for free, you feel me,” Charger said.
“Ah. I taught him,” Boundless lowered his voice slightly, “how to kill.”
“Mmm. Pony always was a psycho.”
“Nutjob.”
“Wanker.”
“In exchange, he helped me get here!” Boundless yelled. “And apparently, he kept all the competent help in Hornwall, though those idiots down there wouldn’t know a spine if I ripped it out of them and held it in front of their faces! Are any of you actually going to help me, or are you just going to mouth off here for the rest of the evening?!”
“Kid’s got a temper,” Charger said, nodding sagely.
“Good,” Cobalt said. “Keep him warm.”
“Bucking winter. Late bucking spring, I swear . . .”
“Not the best way to ask for help, though,” Ruby said. “Could ditch him.”
“Eh. And sit around the house listening to your singing? Cadence, spare me.”
Boundless screamed. The noise reverberated off the four curved pillars supporting the castle around them, off the ceiling suspended above them, off the Crystal Heart hovering before them. It echoed in that cavernous space, bouncing back at them over and over. Splashes of colour touched the crystal all around, washing through the stone in undulating waves of brilliant amber, the setting sun touching everything with gold.
Before the sound had faded away, the crew was moving. Two—Charger and Cobalt—grabbed Boundless, hoisted him between them. Ruby had scampered ahead, galloping full tilt, her head on a swivel. Stone Shard and Wintersong remained behind, leaning in towards each other, even resting their heads, now intertwined, in a tender embrace. Together, they stared into the Crystal Heart.
In minutes, they were back in that small room he’d found them in, early today. The fire was just embers, now, the chill outside permeating the walls. Boundless was dumped unceremoniously near the far wall, and confronted with three angry faces.
“Always were gonna help you, kid,” Charger said.
“Course, there ain’t much to be done, helping an idiot,” Cobalt continued.
“So you can sit there an’ think about today,” Ruby said. “And when we decide how the job’s gonna go down,” she leaned in close, whispering, “we’ll let you know.”