//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2 
// Story: Frost from Fire 
// by The Calm and the Quiet 
//------------------------------//

	When Bluebell came to the room the next morning, so early that mist was gathered around his window, Ghostwriter was in a full panic. Random objects, cloaked in his pale green magic, floated across the room, bumping into each other and pushing other things away. A teacup so aggressively ground into a quill that it snapped it in half, leaking ink to the ground in thick droplets.
Bluebell paused. “Do you need any help?” she asked wryly, her purple eyes following the path of a spinning book with flapping pages.
“No,” Ghost said. His mane was ruffled around his horn. It felt hot to touch. It made his head feel too warm. “I’ve got this.”
He’d been up all night. He didn’t think he slept more than ten minutes. Tossing and turning, covered in sweat, he eventually gave up some time before dawn. For the rest of the few hours of night, he stared out his window at the moon with its slice missing, the Mare in the Moon staring back.
Ghost didn’t want to believe it. The Elements of Harmony had the power to do anything. Their banishment of Nightmare Moon had to have been permanent. Alicorn magic did not fail.
But if it were true, and Nightmare Moon somehow did kill Lord Frosthoof, then the entire Castle renovation project was in trouble. He had to tell Valiant himself. A letter wouldn’t do in the face of imminent death.
It was dangerous, but Valiant was all he had. Their parents had died some time ago. They had no other family but each other. And as much as he hated it, Ghostwriter had to leave Canterlot to go to his brother.
Bluebell didn’t buy Ghost’s answer. “So I see. Well, when you’re done, I have your knight in the lobby. Sir Cypress Stalwart?”
Ghost jerked his head up to stare. The broken quill bumped into his snout. “He’s here? What’s he like?”
“You’re unusually animated today, sir,” she noted.
“Bluebell.”
She sighed in exasperation. “An earthpony. Dark green coat. Brown mane, blue eyes. Very pretty blue eyes, if I’m being honest.” She floated a mirror up to him. “Fix your mane, sir. It looks dreadful.”
Ghost looked in the mirror. His white mane was usually useless. It did little more than fall into his glasses at inopportune moments. His green eyes looked wide and wild, and he hated it. He forced himself to sigh, to relax his tense face, then sent a telekinetic wave through his mane, brushing it evenly across his forehead.
“I meant personality-wise.” Valiant had recommended him. Did that mean this Sir Cypress Stalwart was as big an airhead as Ghost’s brother?
Shaking her head, Bluebell said, “I hardly spoke to him. I told him I’d fetch you and then come back. Do you need any help or not? A real answer this time.”
Ghost called all the floating objects to him, tucking them securely in his bag. He’d enchanted it to hold many more things than they’d normally be able to. The excess mass he stored in a pocket dimension, invisible to the naked eye. The weight of it tugged him backwards a little bit, but it wasn’t unbearable.
“I’m fine,” he said, flipping the pack closed. He lifted it onto his back and pulled the straps tight. “I’m ready. Take me to him.”
The lobby of the Tower of the Scribes was as round as any of the rooms. There were a few tables and chairs, tapestries hanging on the wall depicting the fall of Discord and the banishment of Nightmare Moon, and a huge dark green stallion in Solar Guard plates with a dark red cloak falling over one shoulder.
He stepped up as soon as he saw Ghost. Across his back was a massive sword so long it overhung his haunches. A helmet was attached on his right shoulder. Two packs full of supplies were on either side of his spine. The leather was scarred from age. “Sir Cypress Stalwart,” he said. His voice was like thunder. His mane was clipped as Cadet Maple’s had been, short on the sides and longer on the top. 
Ghostwriter took him all in for a moment, lingering on the details. There was a three-pronged scar along one cheek. It stood out starkly from his dark coat. His hooves were covered in shaggy green hair. His eyes were unusual, pale blue, what Ghost thought was a unicorn color, full of prospective magic. On an earthpony, they were simply that: unusual. 
Already Ghost itched for his quill and parchment. He fixed his glasses with a hoof. “Ghostwriter.”
Cypress gave him a terse nod. His mouth did not look made for smiling. “You’re small. Not like Valiant.”
“There are many things about my brother and I that do not match,” Ghostwriter said. “He tells me you can take me to him.”
He bent his head.
Ghost waited for a moment for him to say something more. He stared at Cypress. Cypress stared back. Finally, Ghost gave up. “All right then.” He turned to Bluebell. “You’ll explain to Quickquill, won’t you?”
Bluebell pulled herself away from where she was transparently admiring Cypress’s muscles. She didn’t even have the nerve to look embarrassed. “She won’t be happy.”
“That’s why you can explain.” He turned to Cypress. “I’d like to leave.”
Cypress bent his head. He looked to Bluebell. “Pleasure.”
Bluebell looked quite pleased indeed. “A pleasure to meet you, too, Sir Cypress.”
The two trotted down the spiraling steps of the Tower in silence. Cypress walked just ahead. He had strong, wide hooves that looked like they could crush a timberwolf’s skull with one kick.  
“Sir Cypress,” Ghost started, because the knight did not seem keen to. “What are your credentials?”
“I am a Knight of the Solar Guard for some twenty years now. Princess Celestia hoof-picked me for my squadron. I operate under General Counterstrike in the Twenty-Second Sun Brigade.”
Very prompt. It sounded like a rehearsed answer. That many words coming out of the terse stallion’s mouth was impressive. Ghost fixed his glasses. “And how do you know my brother?”
They were outside. Celestia’s sun sent warm rays down on their backs. The carriage was at the base of the stairs, the pegasi the usual white-coated, blue-maned Guard members. They didn’t flinch as Sir Cypress loaded his bulk onto the carriage. Ghost sat beside him and they were off, shuddering from the ground and into the clear blue sky.
Carriage rides were uncommon to Ghost. He liked to use his own four hooves to get around. Being separate from the ground felt like something only a pegasus would like.
“At the reconstruction site. I was a member of the Guard there when it first got underway. Valiant is very sociable. He found my silence to be a challenge.” Cypress gave Ghost an expressionless look. “Since then I have become quite friendly.”
Ghost took in the knight’s blank face, his stern jaw, his unsmiling mouth, and thought, Friendly’s not how I’d put it. “Valiant could make friends with a chimera.”
“Yes.”
That seemed it for the small talk. Cypress fell into a temperate silence and Ghost drew out his notes from his satchel.
Before he’d gone to bed for his measly two hours, he’d gone to the Tower’s library for everything he could find on Nightmare Moon—firsthoof accounts of the attack, of Luna’s personality before becoming warped, of the Elements that had sealed her away. What he’d really wanted was Princess Celestia’s journals on the event but those were sealed away in her private apartments for her eyes only.
The wind was irritating, so he created a simple shield spell to block it. He spread the papers around his hooves, filtering through them by his notations at the top. The first page he selected was the crime listings for Canterlot and the surrounding cities—Saddlebrooke, Balkwood, Sunfall City. 
There had been three assassinations this year, but not all of whom were important generals of the Guard. There was a baker named Flour Dust who had been found dead in his shop. Another, Periwinkle, was from Canterlot: a unicorn of the Royal Court of the Sun. The last was the strangest: an orphanage manager named Juniper Shine. She’d been in charge of Happy Homes, seated at Umbertown: the tiny town that bordered the Castle of the Two Sisters. Happy Homes had precious little in the Tower’s way of information, but he’d created copies of it all. A list of the orphans, mealtimes, scheduled vacations, and of course, adopters. He had a corresponding list of their addresses. Some of them were even in Umbertown. It would be easy to break away from Valiant and go investigate, maybe get some firsthoof accounts of Juniper’s personality, why somepony would want to kill an old mare in charge of little ones…
“I knew Periwinkle,” Sir Cypress said, startling Ghost out of his notes. 
Ghostwriter blinked up at him, fixing his glasses with a hoof. “Is that so? How would you describe her?”
Cypress seemed to think a moment. The wind had continued ruffling his short mane. Ghost had only blocked himself from the slipstream. “A unicorn.”
“Yes,” Ghost said slowly. “I’d figured as much.” He floated the portrait of her up to Cypress. She’d been buff, muscled, scarred. Like any soldier. Pale blue with a dark purple mane. A six-pointed star for a cutie mark. A magical prodigy. A rarity in such peaceful days. A magically-talented war unicorn could take out legions of earthponies and pegasi alone.
Cypress looked at the picture. “Nopony could sneak up on her.”
“Somepony did.” Ghost supplied the next sketching, drawn out from her death scene. She was prone, like Frosthoof had been, soaking in a puddle of her own blood. The image had been drawn from the front.
At this, Cypress looked away. His frown grew more prominent. 
The silence resumed. Ghost slid the sketches back into his satchel and dug out a text on Nightmare Moon. He’d never been good at just sitting still, and judging from the swell of grasslands below, they were still far from the Everfree.
He wondered briefly why Cypress had looked away from the sketches. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen a dead body before. He was a Solar Guard. They always took care of criminal activity in Canterlot.
Then he shrugged it away. Ghostwriter knew he didn’t fully understand most ponies. He just didn’t care an awful lot.
He was only halfway through the text of The Fall of Nightmare Moon when the carriage bumped to a halt. He glanced up, fixing his glasses. 
The pegasi turned around. One said, “We’re here.”
Cypress strode off the carriage and onto the sky-dock. It was a piece of boardwalk jutting up from the edge of the Everfree and into the air. The placement meant that the pegasi didn’t have to fly into the dense forest. No fear of tangling their wings or maybe even breaking one.
After sliding the book back into his pocket dimension, Ghost followed.
The pegasi didn’t wait long. As soon as Ghost was on solid ground, they flared their wings and took to the sky once more. Ghost noted they moved much more quickly without Sir Cypress Stalwart weighing them down.
“So now what?” Ghost asked, trotting up next to Cypress. Side-by-side, he was tall as a mountain. Ghost’s head barely reached his elbow. It wasn’t often that Ghost was so aware of his slight stature, but he certainly was now.
“Valiant,” Cypress said.
Ghost had to hurry to keep up with the stallion’s broad steps. His satchel bumped between his shoulders. “How long?”
“Soon.”
“How soon is ‘soon?’”
Cypress glanced down at him. “Soon.”
Ghost sighed.
The Everfree reached out with dark green wings. The shadow of the forest lay upon Ghost’s back like a cool blanket. Everything was green here—green ground, green rocks, green tree trunks. Even the air seemed green, and tinged with a weird vegetation smell. 
It felt like anything could be hiding in those trees. Ghost, starting to feel a little nervous, looked between the spare spaces and expected to see eyes watching him, tongues licking, noses sampling the air. He knew about the things that lived in these woods since the Princess had moved to Canterlot—timberwolves and cockatrices and dragons more ancient than cities, hydras that could swallow him up, manticores that could poison him, chimeras that could chase him across the ground on unmatched paws.
He kept close to Cypress and went through the process of creating a transport spell, just to keep his mind off of it all. But when he was thinking about side dimensions and quanta, he kept imagining blood-scented breath and hungry mouths.
After a while, he noticed that the trees had grown denser. Ghost frowned. The trees should be thinning as they approached the chasm first, then the gates, then the Castle of the Two Sisters. Fifty years of disuse would not have gotten rid of those old roads so easily.
“Sir Cypress,” he said. The green knight’s ear quirked back to listen. “Where are we going?”
Cypress kept moving, kept his eyes on the path in front of them. “The Castle,” he said.
Now Ghost was sure he was lying. He tipped his head back. The sun was visible, coasting through the sky over his right shoulder. “We’re heading south,” he said. “The Castle is to the east.”
Cypress’s shoulders tensed beneath his plates. 
Ghostwriter stopped. Cypress trotted a few more steps before he stopped, too, keeping his back to Ghost.
“Valiant was right.” He turned around, his head beneath his shoulders. “You are very smart.”
He lunged forward, quicker than Ghost would expect, but he ran through empty air.
Ghost coalesced about ten feet behind the knight in a burst of green light. It taxed him almost immediately. A wave of exhaustion rolled through him as he bent his head, horn heating up, preparing a lightning bolt of energy.
“Wait,” Cypress said, eyes wide.
The spell struck the ground in front of him, scorching a hole in the ground. Cypress looked up, shocked, but Ghostwriter was already running away, trying to remember the maps he’d memorized.
Umbertown is nearby. His breath was sharp as a knife in his throat. The ground beneath his hooves was wet and squishy, terrible for grip. There was a spell for that, but in his panic and fear, he’d forgotten. If I can get there, I can get help.
“Ghostwriter!” The call came from behind him—entirely too close.
Ghost redoubled his efforts, but there was no way he could outrun Cypress. He had no choice: he had to hide.
Moving enough earth to cover him would be extraordinarily difficult. Unicorns could move more with magic than they could with their bodies, true, but that came with practice. Ghost was a Scribe. The most he had to lift was a quill and a roll of parchment. He couldn’t even lift his own weight, let alone rocks and gravel and dirt.
He burst through the trees into a small glade of vine-wrapped trees. Craning his head back, he saw a place where the branches came together into a low V-shape. It was about twenty-five feet up.
Ghost braced himself. There was sweat beaded on his forehead, fogging up his glasses. Twenty-five feet was a stretch. He’d barely been able to move half that without feeling like he was going to pass out.
From behind him came the sound of thundering hooves.
No choice. Ghost screwed up his face, closing his eyes. A rush of heat traveled up to his horn.
“Stop!”
It was a strange sensation, hearing Cypress’s order. He heard half of it on the ground, and half from his new position at the trees. They weren’t as close as they’d looked from the ground. Braced like this, one hoof on each branch, Ghost saw entirely too much ground for comfort.
And right in the middle of the glade, looking directly at him, was Sir Cypress Stalwart.
Even under all that metal and gear, he looked hardly tired. No sweat ran down his forehead, even as it stung Ghostwriter’s eyes.
“Leave me alone!” Magic flared up in Ghost’s horn. He felt it start to drain what little energy he had left. “Don’t make me hurt you, Cypress!”
Cypress blinked. “Let me explain.”
“Explain why you just tried to murder me? Or is that a misunderstanding?”
He meant it mockingly, but Cypress took it seriously. “A misunderstanding,” he said calmly. “Please come down.”
“I’d rather get eaten by parasprites.”
Cypress stamped a hoof. It made the ground quake. “I’ll knock the tree down,” he threatened.
Sure you will, Ghost thought. His legs were trembling with the effort of keeping balanced. 
Cypress’s brow furrowed. He walked over to the base of Ghost’s tree and paused there.
Then he braced his shoulders against the trunk.
A quiver went all the way up the tree. Ghost started. “What are you doing?”
“Come down, Ghostwriter,” Cypress said levelly. He looked up through the cropped top of his mane. 
Ghost paused for a moment. This tree went on for another thirty feet. There was no way one earthpony could bring it down, even one so large as Cypress. 
Cypress took his silence as a challenge. Once more, he put his shoulders against the trunk. But this time, he heaved.
At once, the trunk shifted. Ghost was almost dislodged in the first shove. 
“Stop!” he shouted, panicking.
Inexorably, Cypress pushed again. Tracks of dirt were pushed up under his front hooves. Ghost’s tree began to tip.
Ghost wrapped his forehooves around one branch as the tree came over, tilting further and further. Impossible, he thought as the ground grew closer. No earthpony he knew could do this. Nopony could come even close.
One more shove and it was done. Cypress stood in front of him, no change in his expression. Ghostwriter hung upside-down from the branch, legs wrapped around it. His mane brushed the ground and his glasses were askew, barely hanging on.
“Ready to talk?” Cypress asked. Even upside-down, he looked patient.
“You’re not going to murder me?” Ghost asked, trying to mimic Cypress’s calmness. It didn’t work. To his shame, his voice shook.
“Murdering you wouldn’t do me any good.”
"Why did you attack me?"
"You looked like you'd run. It's dangerous to run here. You'd get eaten."
Eaten! Ghost swallowed. 
Cypress held out a hoof. 
Ghost stared at it resentfully. “You tricked me.”
He offered no excuse. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not taking me to the Castle, are you?”
A looked passed across Cypress’s face, too quick for Ghost to judge. “Not yet.”
Ghost sighed. Accepting Cypress’s hoof, he said, “Then you’d better explain.”





Night fell quickly in the Everfree. By six o’clock, when Celestia’s sun would be fading into beautiful orange and purple, the forest was already cloaked in shadow. All the crawly, awful things he’d imagined earlier were beginning to appear in the dusky underbrush, though they didn’t dare come near Sir Cypress.
The knight had stopped them back up against a high cliff wall. He’d offered no explanations on the way here. When Ghostwriter asked, he’d only replied with his infuriating “Soon.”
Now Ghost was huddled up against a rock, watching Cypress try to set a fire out of some dry branches he’d found. Try was the key word. It had been over fifteen minutes of twig-rubbing and tiny wisps of smoke, and there was still no lick of fire.
Ghost watched Cypress’s face. He looked faintly annoyed, his brows pulled together, but not once did he verbalize his frustration.
Valiant knows him. He wrote about him in the letter. It had been Valiant’s pen that had written the letter. Ghost would know it anywhere. If he’d been threatened or pressed to write, he could have hidden something in the touch of his magic. But there had been nothing.
Valiant wouldn’t send a psychotic knight to his only brother. Ghost trusted Valiant. That meant—at least for now—he had to trust Cypress too.
With a sigh, Ghost reached for his magic.
The air around the tiny clearing plummeted as Ghost balled it up, forcing the air particles to vibrate against each other in the nest of twigs Cypress had created. Smoke started immediately pouring up. A split-second later, fire bloomed. The entire process had taken less time than a blink.
Cypress leaned back quickly, his ears quirked up. “Magic,” he said.
“I am a unicorn.” Ghost unfolded his forehooves from his chest and glared at him. “Now an explanation would be welcome. Did my brother actually send you to kidnap me? Or did you change your plan halfway through?”
Slowly, Cypress sat back on his haunches. He hadn’t divested himself of his armor. “Valiant spoke of you. How you’re good at finding out things.”
“I’m a Scribe of the Tower. Finding out things, as you so quaintly put it, is not only my job, it’s my talent. It’s what I was born for.”
Cypress nodded. If he was insulted, he did not show it. His face was impassive as stone. “I need your help.”
“Me specifically?” Ghost laughed meanly. “Maybe next time, you can tell somepony that upfront. Before you kidnap them in the middle of the forest.”
Cypress turned and met his eyes for the first time. All the resentment tensed up in Ghost at the look in the knight’s eyes. “My daughter is missing. I need you to find her.”
It wasn’t often that Ghostwriter was caught by surprise, but he was now. He blinked. “Your daughter?”
It seemed odd. Sir Cypress Stalwart hardly seemed the doting father. It seemed impossible to equate this massive stallion in a loving home with a daughter. Did he play filly games with her? Did he read bedtime stories with his thunderous voice? Ridiculous.
“Fillies have been going missing. For weeks now. My Eglantine was one.”
Ghost tilted his head. “Where was she?”
At this, Cypress looked down at his hooves. In the flickering firelight, his coat looked nearly black. The dancing flames winked off his plates. “Umbertown. Her mother, my wife, fell ill when I was away. She died suddenly. My Eglantine was put into the orphanage.”
“Happy Homes.” The same one from my notes. He pulled them from his satchel and started peeling the pages apart. Even that slight magic drained him. His muscles started to tremble.
Ghost scanned the pages. “I don’t see an Eglantine.”
“I know. Because she’s not there.”
He looked up over the papers. “Then where is she?”
Cypress just shook his head.
Interesting. Ghost tucked the pages back into his satchel and withdrew his quill. The tip shone with ink. He set it to parchment and began to take notes. “Your wife. What did she die of?”
“Cough. Doctor said it got in her lungs. She died in the night.” He looked down at his hooves once more, his face hidden in shadow. “I wasn’t there,” he added quietly.
Ghost’s pen danced across the parchment, a scratchy waltz. “Where were you?”
“Solar Guard. Patrolling the far side of the Everfree. I got the notice she’d died. I didn’t even know she was sick.”
More scratching. “The doctor. Who was it?”
“Somnus of Umbertown.”
“Then we can start there.” The parchment rolled up. It slid back into the satchel of its own course. Ghost’s mind was already elsewhere. “It’s possible that your wife was killed, not ill.”
Cypress made a choking sound.
Ghost looked up quickly. There was a look of blank horror on the green knight’s face, open and honest and raw.
Something coiled in Ghost’s stomach, a rare emotion: guilt. “I’m sorry,” he said at once. “I’ve overstepped.”
“I just…” Cypress cleared his face and shook his head. “I never thought she could have been killed. I believed.”
Ghost smiled wryly. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from being a Scribe, it’s this: A lot of ponies have believed and been misled. It’s unfortunate. But we have a lead, anyway.” He tapped the quill against his horn, still hot from magic. “Umbertown.”
Cypress looked worried. He shuffled from hoof to hoof, flicking his eyes from the fire to Ghost and back again. Not resting. “You’ll help?”
“Well, I don’t have a choice now, do I?” The quill joined the notes, back in the satchel. Ghost settled down, resting his chin on his crossed forehooves. “You’ve ruined my visit with my brother, kidnapped me, and stranded me out in the middle of the Everfree. Might as well get a good story out of it.” He glanced up. “And maybe your daughter back.”
Cypress didn’t say anything for a minute. There was just the soft crackling of the fire, the shifting of some creature out in the darkness, a bird on the wing.
“But I’d need some rules first,” Ghost said, before the knight could answer. “I need to speak to my brother immediately. It’s important.” Cypress’s daughter is missing, and that’s terrible, but Nightmare Moon might be killing ponies. That seems more pressing.
“Yes,” Cypress said. “Umbertown is on the way to the Castle.”
That displeased Ghost. His mouth turned down. “A letter, then. A pegasus can bring it.”
“I’ll pay.”
“Perfect. I’ll also need you to protect me. As you so kindly pointed out, I’m not terribly big. I can’t protect myself.”
“I’ll protect you.”
Ghost nodded. “That’s all.”  
Cypress bent his head. “Then we are agreed.”
Ghost nodded again, unnerved a little. Spending this much time with somepony was strange—and exhausting. But it was good, in a way. The Tower got stuffy. An old-fashioned murder mystery was a good way to break the monotony.
Cypress took the watch. Ghost lay down on the hard ground and tried not to think of crawling things touching him. For good measure, he slid a barrier around himself, something strong enough to block a good-sized insect but weak enough to not drain him to death in his sleep.
He was just drifting off to sleep when he blinked open one eye. Cypress was sitting upright, his huge helmet hanging off one shoulder, his red cape off the other. A father who’d do anything to get his child back, Ghost thought. Interesting.
With a flick of his thoughts, Ghost extended his barrier to encompass the knight, then surrendered himself to sleep.