Chapter Seven
Tainted
At the edge of the figurative abyss, Silver Skies stood silent. Standing behind, Tick did not know his gaze. Skies’ gaze was a mask of grief: Skies’ gaze was a forefront to calculation. The ruins scattered before them by the iron hand of time offered neither solace nor clue to the expression.
“Meet me at the northern pass.”
There was no sound for a while. Skies did not move, and eventually Tick lost his impassivity and turned back to the makeshift inn.
And how do I take this? If this goes without any strings attached I will have been lucky, absurdly lucky. With his appeals to decency, he’s either honest or thinks I’m naïve.
Tick pushed through the solid door on rickety foundations, giving the few other patrons the usual respectful distance as he sought the stairs. If he thinks I’m naïve, I’ll have the advantage over him. Up the stairs and into a small room, Tick seized the relative comfort of obscure isolation and settled down on what passed for a bed, looking up at the roughshod ceiling and thinking.
He’ll want something. They always do, even if they believe they don’t. The question is what and how badly he wants it. The good thing is that I can always leave him behind once I get into the empire.
Halfheartedly throwing the few things he had left into his pack, Tick paused on the metal-bound book. At least the useless piece of junk isn’t heavy. There was nothing to see him grimace, but the thought occurred to him: Skies might know something. And out of all the assorted travelers he had come across, would not one incomparably familiar with the world of centuries ago be the most equipped to tell him what it was, let alone what it contained?
Tick’s eyes followed the book as he slid it into the pack last, leaving it at the top. I’ll give him a look at it. It’s not like the consequences could be too damaging. I’m leaving here anyways; I have no money left (not like I had much to begin with); if the book is monstrously dangerous and I’ve somehow missed it then I’d be best throwing it away.
Tick didn’t see the reflection in the one small mirror. He didn’t see how his eyes glinted gold whenever they passed over the book.
Outside, the lone grey thinker soured as the cold bit him, but Tick knew he’d had no chance to get adequate gear. Short of going to those few farms I passed and begging, there’s nothing I could have done.
The clouds grouped in between the mountains, a nocturne assault lending the falling snow a look of ashes and smoke. The transcendent mountains cut out the sun, leaving only little glances of light in the valley. That self-same snow twisted down amidst the two, setting a pallor across the valley in what seemed not to be morning. Yet it was, and before Tick could speak Silver Skies launched forth.
“I thought you had good in you, but perhaps I am not so sure now. You have done what is easy and waited until the last moment. Good is not easy, and if it is it is because of past goodness. Now what do I say to you? I will not take you with me? You must go alone? Condemn you like a criminal?”
Deep creases lined Skies’ pained forehead as he looked away, closed his eyes, and set his jaw. With a deep, excessively long rattling sigh that turned into unintelligible hissed words, he turned away towards the northern pass and rummaged in his pack. Tick’s dancing eyes mirrored his curious caution, darting back and forth as Skies tossed a rapidly-unfolding small cloth towards him.
“You can have this. Wear it or you’ll die from cold. If you want to come with me, then I will require…”
Tick managed to catch the projectile now resembling a parka. Forced to take his eyes off Skies for a moment, they darted back instantly to meet Skies’ narrow, measuring glance.
“… A favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
“The kind where you don’t bore me to death before the ice takes us!”
Tick didn’t share Skies’ sudden burst of laughter, but that only made him laugh more.
~~~~~~~~
The sun cracked like a flaming spear over the horizon, the dawn-line hurtling from the farthest sight to the tents nearly instantaneously. Yet Ditzy was already up and prowling, if only in her thoughts, as she lay in her tent with her daughter protectively snoozing across her chest.
Quirk first: then Eris. I’ll find out what I haven’t been told through them, and then I’ll find out how to end my involvement in this.
With a delicate deliberate shift of years’ practice, Ditzy edged her daughter off her enough to get up. Feeling her daughter beside her had put a coal of warmth in Ditzy, but it was incongruous with the low current of watchfulness, the edge of tension directed at all things around, near, far, and absent. Absent was the worst. Tick was not a subject that Ditzy wanted to hear any more about, especially then as she poked out into the sapping-cold air, but the fact of his existence was a niggling reminder, an aggravation that lurked behind the snowing clouds every time she asked herself what or why she was here. In most circumstances Ditzy could have moved on. But there was more, always more with Tick, and those details prompted a deep loathing.
Ditzy zipped up the tent with minimal noise, oblivious to the eye-searing dawn on snow, and she stilled with a deep exhalation the desire to tirade against him. The aches, pains, and blisters of relentless travel Ditzy also took no heed of; they had faded into the rhythm of the past few days. Little razors of the distant sun poked through the pine boughs and made Ditzy blink, although it might have been the sight of Quirk and Eris already up and talking.
Or at least, that was how it seemed. Having spotted Ditzy long before she spotted her, Eris was walking away, though Quirk hadn’t yet noticed their observer. It was clear to Ditzy there was something she was being kept out of. Another thing I’ll have to fight to find out.
“Hey, Quirk!”
~~~~~~~~~
If I hadn’t gotten his assistance, then I would have had to turn back and find another way through. Trusting a road like this on the eve of winter? I know there were other trade routes back when the empire wasn’t caught in a curse. This must not have been one of them.
The pass that narrowly sprawled before them was as if a struggling titan had hacked it out with a gigantic knife; it was rough, pointed, jagged, and black with tips of snow. Frost rimmed the crevices and lined the one discernable path, which would have looked treacherous enough without it. And despite all the cold threats of the road, Tick’s thoughts wandered to the oddly pleased relic guiding him.
He looks older—but not very old, and who could tell? The last of them not in the empire must have passed centuries ago. What did he say he was doing outside of the empire? Did he say?
Silver Skies watched Tick’s concerned, measuring gaze with amusement, then started down the slope, humming something under his breath.
“Hey! Will I leave you behind?”
In this place? No, I don’t think I want to die today.
With careful eyes and a sharp breath Tick took the step, committing to the road again.
~~~~~~~~~
“What were you two talking about?”
Quirk looked up and saw Ditzy. The interruption was complete; in that moment Quirk discarded all that he had been thinking about, because he saw her indefatigable hunger and knew better than to fight it.
Some of my run-ins with the city guard, which were really not unlike hers with a few long-term differences.
“Just casual stuff,” Quirk replied moderately, and he made to slip away.
“Wait,” Quirk heard her implore, and her voice was a tone and tenor of a color that dragged up curiosity from the depths against his long-standing “Do not talk to Ditzy” policy.
No, I think I’ll avoid breaking that rule today. Things have been going too well for me recently. And since I’ve broken the ice with Eris now, this is the best time to continue. Preferably without Ditzy interrupting.
And Eris, unlike Ditzy, was still very much in his mind.
For Quirk, after letting the obstacle rest for some time in his mind, had come up with his solution. He would not mention the first encounter once; he would entirely avoid its existence if it was not directly relevant. Rather, he would talk about anything that came to his mind. It wasn’t often in his existence in lower Canterlot that he would resort to common friendly tactics, but usually that was not what was needed. Among the clubs and more quiet stone avenues he ventured between, Quirk was only another bargaining chip, a piece whose behavior was accustomed. Why disavow himself of those oddities? They kept his experience regular and ensured he had what he wanted. And some of those experiences had granted him a point of common experience with him and Eris, a lathe to smooth out the splinters for that craftsman of conversation.
Although she’s still pretty damn prickly.
“Did it have anything to do with where we’re going?” Ditzy asked, in a voice so courteous it must have hurt.
“Uh, no,” Quirk replied after several moments: a few to recover his attention and a few more to wonder what Ditzy was getting at.
“I need to ask about something—but what were you talking about then?”
The hints of incredulity were there, but they were a distraction, a secondary thing. What else would she want? Something sensitive, judging by the way she’s going about it. About Tick, perhaps? No, she’s angry at him and would only think about him if there wasn’t another option.
“If you want to know you should ask Eris.”
Quirk knew it was misleading; it would lead Ditzy to a road she did not wish to travel and his deflection would be complete. Ditzy, however, showed no signs of stopping. One leg crossed in front of the other and looking off to think, her feelings were inscrutable. That she was off-kilter was all Quirk knew, and without another moment Ditzy looked at him and spoke.
“I need to know everything you told Luna or anypony else that would tell Luna about what happened when Tick did that eyes thing to me.”
“‘That eyes thing,’” Quirk repeated, but Ditzy was burning with more than embarrassment, and he thought better than to linger on it. “Um… that could be a few things. Few is an uncountable term, you know?”
Celestia, I wish I never had gotten caught up in this shit. At least I didn’t tell her it was Tick that told me that and shove her further towards instability. Not like I—
“You need to tell me everything.” Ditzy started on demand and ended in desperation.
Quirk looked at her, halting, looking around for any clue. “Can I know why you need to know?”
“If you want to know you should ask Eris,” Ditzy deadpanned, remarkably chill and smooth for being distraught. “What did you tell Luna?”
And now I need to go lay in the snow.
“I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been interrogated a lot recently, and by a similar number of demanding mares, to which I can now add you to the list. That’s a lot of things to get jumbled around in my head. If and when I remember what I said on that subject, I’ll tell you. If you’re calm, so that might be a while.”
Quirk spread his wings, his grimace worsened by the pain of doing so, and instead limped away in the midst of triple pains.
Oh, to be rid of the road, the wounds, and the healer.
~~~~~~~~~
Frustrated, Ditzy threw out her tension in a sharp exhalation as the voice in the back of her mind returned, aghast and mildly interested at the thought that Quirk and Eris could have a conversation that remotely approached friendliness. It bothered her, more than bothered her, for Ditzy was realizing the cage she was weaving for herself. I’m not doing enough. I can’t leave myself alone all this time and I’m not giving Dinky enough attention. I’m not fond of either of them, but if I want to make the best of a poor situation…
Looking around and realizing she had naught else to do, Ditzy walked off towards a small clearing near the camp, feeling as if the world was unreal because Quirk and Eris were talking about “casual things” and not blows. Ditzy poked into the clearing, and she thought it was unreal, because there was a chest-high column with a scroll on it that hadn’t been there before. Ditzy thought it wasn’t real as she took a few steps in, because everything had gone quiet like the depths of perfect loneliness. And Ditzy knew it wasn’t real, because there was Discord standing before her.
~~~~~~~~~
“Tell me! Do you always become prickly when asked for favors?”
The wind whipped above them without much snow, although there was already a foot of it on the ground. Picking his way behind skies, wings trapped yet warm under the parka, Tick let out an impertinent question made less so by the hours of constant cheer of his companion.
“Do you always get so happy when the rest of the world skips forward a thousand years without you?”
Skies slowed and gave Tick a particularly sharp look. “No, and though I do not like it, it is over. Those that I lost did not have much time left, and some I did not mind leaving. Besides that thing, there…”
The essence behind the words dented Tick’s esteem, but the small remorse he felt for the snappish comment was forgotten as Skies went on.
“There is a real favor,” Skies resumed, working his way cautiously down a slippery section of the slope, “that you can do, once we get into the empire. Favor? Ha! I should have said payment, just to see you stiffen! Now I really only mean for you to keep the trip interesting. I am past the age where I want my life to be interesting. You could escape my old and boring grasp easily once you get into the empire, easier than you escaped whatever you are running from, so I make no false demands on you. Watch your step!”
And true to his words the ice under Tick turned slick. Without his wings, Tick fought harder than he anticipated righting himself, catching a glimpse of what crashing down the mountain would be like as he skidded down past his bearded compatriot.
“than you escaped whatever you are running from”
“There’s not a lot of mountain left to fall down, at least,” Tick muttered to himself.
“Heh. We’ll stop when we reach the bottom.”
~~~~~~~~
Utterly without words, shaking, and staring at the casual monster in front of her, Ditzy stood. Discord floated in front of her, and paw and claw crossed over each other, his gaze observant and dissatisfied.
I’m hallucinating, this is just one of his tricks, there’s no way he could ever get out of there again—
“My dear Ditzy Doo, I must admit I’m disappointed to see you in such a state at the sight of me. Really! I thought you were ‘beyond me’; I believe those were the words you used. Since I’m here, though, there is some unfinished business between us.” Discord pulled out a pocket watch and glanced at it resignedly, tapping it with his claw as it unfolded repeatedly to reveal yet more watches, some three-dimensional, all of which would have utterly confused Ditzy had she had a single thought that was not oozing rage and terror. “Quite a bit of it, actually…”
Suddenly Ditzy felt every drop of blood in her body, every cell and limb responded to her again. Wings had flared without realizing, muscles poised on the brink, a thousand shouting impulses full of rage and pain all prepared to scream at once. Deep red, she could not see, and neither could Ditzy decide to fight or hold still.
“There really is so much you miss when you spend most of your time locked up in Celestia’s glorified stone motel,” Discord sighed, lazily watching as he spun the whole contraption around on its chain. “I’m afraid I’m out of practice. Really, it would be hard to overstate—and you know how terribly melodramatic I am—how dreadfully, agonizingly, unendingly boring it is in there.”
“How did you get out!? What do you have to say to me!?”
Discord laughed for a moment and swung his watch into the air, his eyes on Ditzy as it disappeared without a blink.
“Surely my good friend Ditzy can predict while I’m here! Now, don’t shudder at that word: you may yet appreciate some of the things I have to say! But why beat around the bush when I can tell you?”
It was then Ditzy realized she was sitting in a chair. She half-leapt out of it as she looked down, blonde mane whipping in front of her eyes, but the look back up gave her pause. Discord was sitting in a tall chair behind a large desk, suit and tie trimmed to a flawless fit with thin reading glasses that somehow did not fall of the end of his very long face. With a quaint bureaucratic brush of paw and claw he straightened the papers he was holding, lay them down, and spoke directly to Ditzy.
“You see, my dear Ditzy, there’s something Tick has that our good friend Luna wants very badly. He also has something that both sisters want very badly, despite them not knowing it.”
Snowflakes started to form a light coat on the desk between them, and in that moment Ditzy noticed it to the exclusion of all other detail and fought the overwhelming, dizzying push to laugh and cry and fly over the desk and release it all at once, to eviscerate such enduring, malicious pain into Discord that his debt would be paid ten times over.
Ditzy did not look him in the eyes.
With a practiced flick, Discord put the tip of his claw to his tongue and flipped to his next page.
“While trapped in that loathsome place, I made some mental notes of the goings-on—”
Dinky! Is she—
Submerged below a thousand thoughts, one surged to take the forefront. Ditzy caught the words in her throat, unsure if asking would achieve relief or prompt the monster into more malice. The mess of adrenaline rushed around her body, but inside her hammering ribcage there was a suspicion that there was another purpose for this devil’s visit, that she should listen cautiously. Nerve-wracked in her seat, Ditzy knew it was a cage to hold her close. Just listen, what is he saying? And then why, but hear it first!
“My deepest apologies,” Discord intoned as Ditzy looked up to see him with the top of his head popped off like a bottle, papers stuffed into brain matter ad hoc. “In my haste I’ve mistaken the cookbook I’m writing for my notes! Do grab that scroll off the pedestal for me while I sort this out; it’s relevant.”
Ditzy’s stomach lurched and spots flew in front of her eyes, but she looked away and kept from fainting. “What is it? Why should I get it and not you?”
With a simpering beam, Discord shut the top of his head with a clack like hardwood. “I was merely preoccupied, Ditzy. If it assuages your worrisome self, then I’ll get it.”
And then Discord, chair and all, pivoted upside down and rolled on thin air to the pedestal. Ditzy closed her eyes, her tolerance for phantasmal sights already far exceeded. It’ll be over soon, he’ll leave or run, there’s no way he can be out and not be hunted…
“Now, where was I?”
Eyes swept through air to the source of the words, and, held still by the sight of him, Ditzy waited. Discord slipped a few pages aside disinterestedly until he alighted on the right one.
“Ah yes, my notes on the first encounter between our friends Tick and Luna, in the palace at Canterlot, near the end of summer.”
Discord took a moment to eye her, ensuring Ditzy was paying attention. If I could call them friends.
“The long and short of it is that Luna recognized Tick’s ability for what it is: psionics. Fresh off the figurative boat from her vacation on the moon (oh, how I envied her; at least she could move), she was more apt to recognize it, while Celestia had a thousand years of rebuilding and governing to forget all about that painful little detail.”
“Psionics,” the Draconequus started, heading off the question they both knew Ditzy would ask, “is not magic. It is something else entirely, the interaction of emotion and thought of multiple minds through the most direct medium. It is exceedingly rare and without much practical use. Even fewer of those who do have potential ever realize it. The weakest psionist is, in absolute terms, incomparably closer to the strongest as compared to, say, a magic-user. On the whole, it was never an important art, never one that could be used to gain much power, and so it was lost in the unholy, fiendishly lovely mess that existed around a thousand years ago. But I digress…”
Discord turned a few pages, humming-muttering something to himself as he did.
“Celestia and Luna, fitting their pattern of having great powers of magic, flight, intellect, being killjoys, etc. and so on, at one time had an affinity with that art. They existed in constant communion with the other: what Luna would know, Celestia would know that instant, and what one would feel would be echoed in the other.”
Discord paused—and Ditzy felt her heart skip—she saw the smile creep across his face, that smile so familiar, and she felt the rage take hold inside her like a torch on an oil well. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about what happened.
“I watched them for centuries. The desperate attempts to hide dissent from the other, the jealousy, the glory… you know how that delicious tale ends. When Celestia gave Luna the glorified boot, the touch of their minds finally became too much to bear and they severed their sense of psionics separated entirely. What was left collected in the place that they split it. Given a thousand years, it had more than enough time to warp and mutate, interact with whatever magic they were using in that fabled fight. By this day it must have collected into something tangible, which brings us to what Luna wants so badly.”
Every breath and touch of a snowflake was the birth and death of an age. Discord had Ditzy’s absolute attention, and he did not rush through the tremulous silence.
“I do hope you took care of whatever you found in the ruins.”
~~~~~~~~
Quirk watched everything. He did not see the appearance of wherever the monster had emerged from. It was always hard for him to miss a voice he had not heard before. Watching from the tree’s boughs, Ditzy now hidden in front of the chair, Quirk waited atop his tenuous perch for the creature he had only heard about before to pass. So smart. Get in the tree so you can see what the hell is going on. Now you can’t get out without it being obvious.
“Oh, enough with the look! Let me say it plain. Luna longs to hold to hold the hatred they once nurtured: not to use it, but to crush it, to see it out of existence. You, Ditzy, so carelessly left the book, just as carelessly as you had let the one who carried it off fall away from you.”
Then the desk and chairs were gone, the suit disappeared, and Discord stepped in closer.
~~~~~~~~
“The desk was borrowed,” Discord mentioned offhandedly. The snow which had accumulated on it dropped to the ground in a sheet and he raised an eyebrow, bringing his paw to his mouth momentarily in contemplation. Ditzy was ablaze with thinking, a fireball in the snow steaming heady and terrible thoughts about what was said and unsaid and unremembered.
“What about the thing that they both want?” Ditzy queried, almost demanded, but for that moment caution overtook her boiling blood. Why is he doing this? What does he want to trick me into doing? If he so much as touches me, I’m not even afraid anymore, I hate him I hate him I hate him, but I am afraid of him, I don’t know what he’s doing, he only wants my pain—
Discord leaned in close and every muscle froze, every muscle tensed, and that tension raged in such a small place, blinded her until Ditzy knew she would flare and burn like the sun. And not die like a phoenix but go into nova, a final eruption to obliterate the thing that stood in front of her, the thing that was inches away, the thing that dared not touch her. Reeling through memory, Ditzy was closer and closer, she saw it again and she knew what was coming.
“I’m afraid I have to run soon, but it might interest you to know that while Celestia and Luna have lost their sense of minds, I retained it entirely. In fact, it’s how I twisted your memories of your mother to always lead to her death! As vivid as the day it happened. Do you remember, Ditzy?..”
~~~~~~~~~
The scream rose all at once and shook the great trees like twigs. The scream rose and it proclaimed murder and rage, shaking to the primal core. Quirk heard the noise like death and knew terror, and he saw Ditzy’s mortal lunge at Discord. It could not have missed; there was not enough space to evade it. So sure was he that one of them would reach the ill grave in that embrace of destruction that he thought Ditzy had swallowed the Draconequus up completely. Yet he was gone, and the scream that wrought a bloody mess out of the nature around them collapsed into pain, into sorrow, into violent sobbing.
“It really is a droll thing to get reformed,” a voice very close to Quirk intoned.
Quirk looked over before his mind could accelerate into panic, seeing the Draconequus on the branch next to him, observing the show. Quirk launched his body into futile motion, seeking to scramble away, but Discord only laughed quietly as the branches held Quirk in place. Holding up a claw to his mouth in a shushing motion, the vehement grin in his eyes only served to heighten the sick rigidity in the air.
“Let it be known that a good friend always keeps his promises. Do give Fluttershy my regards,” Discord whispered, and then he was gone.
~~~~~~~~~
Eris heard the unearthly sound and came flying, jack-knifing through the trees. She was too late. She saw Quirk slip out of the tree and land roughshod on the ground, dazed like he had seen every one of his ancestors staring right at him. Careening to a halt in front of him, she demanded:
“What happened?”
“It’s over,” Quirk whispered, barely there. “I don’t know. Ditzy…”
Eris was on the brink of the world, looking down at the wreck below her, and she knew that whatever had been wrought, she would be long in unmaking it. She took in a sharp breath at the sight, and the sound became the low howling of the wind. The wind rolled over them all into the south, over hills and through endless plains, and pain was felt in the mountain…
In the clearing, Eris said many words to Ditzy, but they were all lost.