• Published 16th Sep 2011
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Under The Northern Lights - CoastalSarv



Luna and Twilight travel to the northern land of the reindeer on a diplomatic mission

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Fifty-three

The clouds roiled over the tunnel-riddled glacier. The opening to Sampo’s tomb gaped behind the stunned little crowd.

“Vigg!” shouted Vidar. He tried to shake his nephew awake. Saga and Tuva shoved him while Kvalhissir loomed worriedly over Vigg. Spike jumped up and down and shouted Vigg’s name, the lantern in his hand jerking up and down and scattering its meager rays over the landscape. If Twilight had been a pegasus she’d hovered over him.

“Vigg, speak to me!” The fawn remained unmoving, though he breathed heavily.

“Let him be!” Wiglek’s shout made them jerk their necks towards him. “Let him breathe. You… don’t crowd him.” No one had jumped to the lich’s side when he fell, and Twilight was struck with a sudden illogical guilt over it.

“But he got less sick,” she thought, “we’re just being sensible…”

The lich limped up to Vigg and knelt beside him, keeping a careful distance. His speartip foot clicked against the ice, his dead hooves lightly tapped.

“You stupid stupid sarv... “ he sighed. “Always too noble for your good, always too careless…”

He carefully placed his good forehoof beside his head.

“How I wish I could cry…” he mumbled. Louder, he spoke: “Wake up! Wake up, come out of the nightmare!”

There was something in that voice, something magic, most of them noticed. All of them also noticed when Vigg jerked upright with a gasp, his hooves kicking and skidding on the ice.

“Oh my… oh my… oh buck!” he babbled. “What… oh… I can feel it… both of them…”

“That,” said Wiglek sadly, “that is how it is to carry the burden of two curses at once.”

“I messed up! I messed up, I couldn’t do it, it’s all my fault…” Vigg babbled. “I’m… oh no, I’m evil now, right!”

“No - no you’re not!” Saga protested. “It cannot control you just like that, can it?”

“Eventually it will…” Wiglek said. Saga glared daggers at him.

Vigg sobbed.

“I knew it… never fix it… I failed again… so stupid….”

“It will get faster if you keep it like that!” snapped Wiglek. “Those are the feelings the Nightmare needs! Inadequacy, jealousy, despair! That makes deer evil!”

“No no no…” Vigg continued to babble.

“Spike!” Twilight shouted.

“Y-yes?”

“Get me a mirror!” said Twilight and stepped up and grabbed Vigg in a hug. “Shh! Shh! It’ll work out, and I’ll show you how!”

“Mirror…?” said Spike.

“Here!” Saga grabbed a shield with a huge, polished bronze boss from one of the Grazers and gave it to Twilight.

“Thanks!” said Twilight. She levitated it up and held Vigg’s head in front of it, as she also held the lantern and shone its light from a useful angle at his face. “Look at it, Vigg. Look at it, with your Sight. Remember your Sight? You see the evil in deer! Are you evil? Look!”

With tears in his eyes, Vigg looked into his reflection.

“No… no… but it is so dark” he whispered.

“That’s not you,” said Twilight. “That’s Sampo and the Nightmare. They are no more Vigg than a flu and food poisoning is Vigg. We will get you out of here, and get the Elements of Harmony, and me and my friends will cleanse you, and everything will be like before. Right?”

Vigg nodded.

“Breathe,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Breathe. Slowly. So, so…”

“Change of plans. We need to get him out here as quickly as possible,” she said. “We can keep the defense working and warn the rebels while we get my friends and the Elements to Sarvvik, then get him back where he should be. Pegasi can take me, him and Wiglek to the Northern coast and - “

“No,” said Wiglek. “Not possible.”

“What?” said Twilight. “Are you crazy?”

“Oh yes, but my madness have nothing to do with this,” said Wiglek. “Your artefacts will cleanse him of evil magics - and the Sampo is an evil magic! Once he has lost it, he can never use it again. He must use his second wish to do as planned and foretold before he is cleansed!”

“Impossible!” said Twilight. “You see how Vigg is, he cannot keep at this much longer.”

“So we must do it faster…” said Wiglek. He bowed his head and muttered what seemed to be a dark oath.

“No, that’s not possible either!” said Twilight. “We need time to prepare!”

“Then let them hurry!” said Wiglek. “Let your dragon fylgja send one of those spell-scrolls to your Mistress, and tell her that dark magic is as it’s always been, and we need to hurry! Then we do as we said, and we three travel to the northern coast and protect him while he says his wish!”

“Absolutely not!” said Twilight.

Vigg rose and walked up to Wiglek.

“How fast…?” he said.

“Vigg!” said Saga.

The wind seemed to have picked up and more snow whirled about.

“Until corrupted, or what?” said Wiglek. “Oh, that will take a long while. You’re a better deer than me and I suspect better than the Kin-slayer when she took it in desperation. But it can make you slip up and waste the second wish, maybe even cause a disaster with it, long before that. At any time! Trust me, I have done such things!”

“Then we must find another way altogether!” said Twilight. “This might have been a red herring, but there must be something else… Wiglek’s magics, things hidden in the ice, this might not have been a waste even if we cannot use the Sampo…”

“No,” said Vigg. “No. I’m doing this.”

“Why, Vigg?” said Twilight. “Because of some kind of Trotholm syndrome? Wiglek is not your father, you are not his son!”

“Yes,” said Vigg, “I know. And I think Wiglek knows… But Saga said it was the way, and I trust her. And Skinf… Celestia said it was the way, and I thought you trusted her.”

“But it’s crazy!” said Twilight.

“I’m a teenager,” said Vigg. “We do crazy things all the time, so I’m told. You’ll know once Spike gets just a little older.”

The wind was even stronger.

“Wiglek, can you take us out of here?” said Vigg. “Like, fast?”

“Yes,” said the lich and chuckled, “I can, actually.” He went from muttering to chanting.

“Wiglek!” said Twilight. “Don’t do anything stupid!”

“Vigg, don’t” said Vidar.

“Bye everydeer!” said Vigg. “See you later.”

“I CALL UPON THE ACKJA OF KARHU-AKKA! CARRY US ALOFT, OH MOTHER OF WINTER!” shouted Wiglek.

Twilight already had a pretty decent forcefield shaped in her mind, but she wasn’t prepared for what Wiglek’s invocation did. A very dedicated whirlwind swept down, and at the same time, in a flash, the young sarv and the old corpse-being were converted to pure snow. The magic blizzard lifted and howled away, and for the rest of her life, Twilight’s scientific mind would wonder if it really showed the shape of a whale-bear-squid thing pulling an ackja within its spiraling snow, or if it was just her overactive imagination.


“Dang.”

Twilight’s voice was small, yet it could be heard over the wind.

“What do we do now?” said Vidar.

“Can you teleport ahead?” said Spike.

“No,” said Twilight. “I have no mark to target for a teleport and I cannot see the place they are going to. Besides, fighting Vigg now can only make him lose control. It’s useless.”

“What then?” said Vidar.

“We do as Wiglek wanted,” said Twilight, her voice thin, her head bowed. “We hurry to Sarvvik and speed up the preparations. I don’t know how fast the wind flows, but I can make calculations. I’ll need to teleport. You’d better ski, since reindeer can be hurt by teleportation.”

“Take me with you, please!” said Saga. “You need me!”

“I guess I do,” said Twilight with a smile. “Get ready… Spike, you as well!”

“What about our gear?”

“Leave it!” said Twilight. “Vidar’s herd can take what they can fit, otherwise we leave it!”

“Wait!” said Kvalhissir. “There is this…” He ran into the tomb.

“What’s the… what is that troll up to?!” said Vidar.

“Kvalhissir!” shouted Saga. “We don’t have the time!”

Soon the moose came out, carrying a spear.

He gave it to Saga.

“That was right beside Sampo,” he said. “I think you might need it.”

“Why?” said Twilight.

“It is a… how did Vigg say? Magical thingamajig. It will be useful. At least for morale.”

“Sampo’s spear?!” said Spike. “That’s like from the comic book! Seriously, that’s like Supercolt’s indestructible cloak or Mistress Mare-velous animated lasso! This… this is cool and ridiculous!”

Twilight sighed.

“Please be serious, Spike! This is reality, not some made-up fantasy adventure… Besides, magical weapons are my least favorite form of magical artefact,” she grumbled. “But okay. Is everyone ready?”

“Yeah!” said Spike and grabbed the spear.

“No, but let’s go anyway!” said Saga and shuddered.

“Take care!” said Tuva.

“We’ll come as fast as we can!” said Vidar.

“I’ll warn my people,” said Kvalhissir.

“Hold tight!” said Twilight and teleported.


Twilight slowly opened her eyes. They hurt, her head hurt, her nose hurt…

“Whu…?” she said.

“Mistress Twilight!” said Saga and leaned smiling over her… bed. She was lying in a hospital bed. The sheets were a bit cold and dry. There was a beeping machine connected to her chest and horn.

“Good!” said a voice she recognized. Mother Disa was next to the bed as well, a syringe and a bottle of some solution on a tray.

“I knew you would come to, Lady Sparkle,” said the priestess-physician. “But you should really be careful with magical workings, considering your earlier injuries.”

Twilight laid back, then sat straight up.

“We must warn them!”

“Shhh, calm down, mylady!” said Disa.

“We already did;” said Saga. “Or Spike did, I mean. He told Princess Luna everything.”

“Every… really everything?” said Twilight, sinking back down.

“Really everything,” said Saga and nodded solemnly. “She knows about the first wish.”

Twilight looked at the beeping machine.

“How did she take it?” she said.

“Not good,” Saga looked at the sheets. “But she collected herself, called on runners with letters and stuff. Everydeer is up and ready.”

“I need to be there too!” said Twilight. She prepared to roll out of bed.

“No!” said Disa. “With all due respect, you mustn’t take the risk, Lady Sparkle!”

“My country and your country is at war;” said Twilight. “I mean, not with each other, together! With, with monsters! And I am needed! At the front!”

Twilight ripped off the cables to the machine telekinetically and rolled out of bed. Her legs gave away and she landed in a heap.

“Twilight!” said Saga. She bowed down to help the unicorn up.

“Oooh… so… ouch…” said Twilight.

“This is what I’m talking about!” said mother Disa.

“I’m needed…” groaned Twilight and slowly rose.

Disa shook her head.

“Look,” said Saga, “this is a hospital, right?”

“Yeeess?” said Disa, an eyebrow arched.

“You got to have a wheelchair somewhere,” Saga said, helping Twilight up.


Vigg screamed first, then he realized he didn’t hear his own voice, only a howling wind. He didn’t see anything, except a shimmer of white light across black. He didn’t breathe, but he did hear his heart beating. He could feel himself twirling around like a carousel, but he didn’t feel any nausea or vertigo. His fear subsided. He felt a calm certainty.

“This is how it feels to be snow…” he thought. “This is weird. This is the things that happens in movies and comic books. Meeting the world’s greatest sorceress and the most powerful necromancer. Teaming up with the to defeat a horde of monsters. And… it’s mostly bad, because it’s all a chore. Not because it’s dangerous, though ancestors know I’m afraid, but because it’s all something you just have to do. Not doing it would be horrible. There are things you cannot just not do, like helping a friend up when he falls when skiing, or eating all the berries on a nagoonberry stand when you have started to munch on it, or shut your eyes when the sun is reflected in a snowdrift. And some of them are unpleasant, like this one. Though knowing what it feels like to be snow… that is a good thing.”

He felt himself ascending, then descending. He had no idea what time it was. He wouldn’t have even if he hadn’t been turned to whirling snow. He had no watch and couldn’t see the sun. He thought for a moment that it would be horrible if Wiglek had mucked up his incantation and they would never turn back to reindeer, but the thought only coalesced into its natural state of icy terror for an instant.

He could feel the Sampo, as a pulsating ball of greed and temptation, and the Nightmare, as an itch of selfish jealous anger, but they were just riding the same wind as the snow that was Vigg, and he felt he could handle them. That made things easier.

“If I get out of this… when I get out of this I need to talk with so many deer,” he thought. “Mom and grandpa and Saga and the cousins… but I also want to talk to Spike. Make him get some sort of… what’s it called, some royal decree that they’d better retcon ‘Sampo the Warrior Prince’ into something less ridiculous. Yeah. That’s my life goals if I survive this crazy manure. Make my family understand me, and make up with Saga, and reform foreign pop culture so it’s not so very stupid when it comes to reindeer. Yeah.”

He figured what he’d say to his mother and grandfather, and had a letter written to the editor of the monthly comic-book in his head, but he had still no idea what to say to Saga when he landed in the snow with a soft thump.

“Ow,” he said, after spitting out snow. He rose unsteadily. Wiglek was lying a couple of yards away

“Are… are you alright?” Vigg said.

“No,” said the lich from deep in the snow. “We’re in dire danger, you have made a mistake that can doom us all, and I just used up my last invocation of transportation.”

“Oh,” said Vigg.

Wiglek rose up, no more steadily that Vigg. Vigg saw that the bones and leathery flesh shifted, as if he was righting himself.

“I have called Svipp to follow us, but even for an untiring mokkurkalfe running at full speed, that can take days. We have no fire and no food, and while I don’t need them, you will.”

“So… what… we’re gonna die?” said Vigg, feeling something in his throat, and it was shadow and fear and anger.

“Not if I can help it,” said Wiglek, “and I can, but it will be the opposite of pleasant, and not easy.”

“What?” said Vigg. “What do you mean?”

“I have one protective magic that can save you from all danger here, both monsters and starvation and cold,” said Wiglek and started kicking away the snow, clearing a small area. “Come here, help me!”

“Oh,” said Vigg, trotted up to him and started kicking snow as well. “What’s that?”

“I can put you or anydeer, really, into a deep stasis - frozen alive and unharmed in a block of ice,” said Wiglek.

“Will it… hurt?” said Vigg.

“Only for a moment,” said Wiglek, “but probably badly for that moment. Then nothing. ONe only need to be careful when thawing you out, and nothing will happen to you. I only need to chant it just after you make that wish, and you will be safe.”

He stopped kicking.

“If I had used it in time, I could have saved my son,” he said. “He could have slept within the glacier unharmed. Both of us together.”

He sighed.

“Who’d have thawed you out?” said Vigg.

“What?” said Wiglek irritatedly.

“You’d both have been in a block of ice under the world’s largest glacier,” said Vigg. “Who’d have thawed you out?”

“I - I could have been outside the block,” said Wiglek. “I would have become free sooner or later, as you see.”

“You didn’t know, when the snow fell, that you would rise from the dead,” said Vigg. “There was nothing you could do. It’s not your fault.”

Wiglek just stared at him, then licked his leathery muzzle.

“That makes it worse,” he said. “That means I was helpless. Weak.”

“Look, we just travelled across Poatsula in the form of snow,” said Vigg. “You made that happen, I mean persuaded someone to make that happen. You’re not weak, that’s amazing, that’s the opposite of weak! I’m a normal mortal being. I’m weak. You’re an immortal mage, and a powerful mage!”

Wiglek opened his mouth, then shut it, unconfirmed.

“See here, let’s talk, I mean, practical stuff,” said Vigg. “Who will thaw me out?”

“I will be outside, as I said, and now I know I can handle it,” said Wiglek.

“What will you do outside the ice?”

“Keep myself as intact as possible,” said Wiglek and started kicking snow again. “Then, as soon as I am able, I will get aid to thaw you out safely.”

“How?” said Vigg.

“Fires and magic,” said Wiglek. “I know it can be done. Do you have another way?”

Thoughts were already racing through Vigg’s head, about wishing for safety or warmth or shelter, but he shook them off, and he started to shiver.

“If I don’t make it…” he started to say.

“You will!” snapped Wiglek.

If I don’t make it, listen to me, if I don’t make it, you must take messages for me!” Vigg shouted.

Wiglek opened his jaws then shut them half way again.

“What are these messages?” he said.

“Swear you will carry them and bring them,” Vigg said.

“I swear,” said Wiglek with some irritation, “by my brother, my son and my dog!”

“Okay. Well. For my mother: tell her I love her, and that I’m sorry I’ve b-been a bother, and that she must stand up to grandpa! And tell her to tell the rest of my family I’m… thankful, for everything.”

“I will tell your mother that you love her, that you are sorry for being a bother, whatever that is, that she must face your grandfather, and that you are grateful to your herd for all they have done for you,” said Wiglek.

“Tell Saga… tell her I’m sorry I wronged her, and that I… I love her, and that if she wants to summon my ghost, she needn’t use her whole regalia.”

Wiglek looked quizzically at Vigg.

“She’s a necromancer,” he said, “and, well… you should talk to her.”

“I will - but we must hurry!”

“Right!” said Vigg and swallowed. “Finally tell my grandfather - no, he’ll manage. Tell Lady Twilight Sparkle thanks for what she did, and that I forgive her for lying, and tell Spike to help us, to let people know the true story of Sampo.”

“The little dragonling?” said Wiglek.

Vigg didn’t even try to explain the concept of comics.

“He’s a scribe,” he said. “He’ll know what I mean.”

Wiglek nodded.

“I will bring all these messages if you do not survive,” he said. “but you will. Now hurry! Stand in the open space, and make your wish!”

Vigg nodded and complied. He swallowed.

“I will do my chant,” said Wiglek. “Be ready when I nod.”

“Yes,” said Vigg and started to cry silently as the old lich chanted very hoary names that won’t be repeated. Again the wind howled and the temperature fell even deeper, freezing Vigg’s tears.

Then Wiglek nodded, coming close to the end of his invocation.

I WISH FOR ALL WINTER MONSTERS IN POATSULA!” Vigg shouted.

Wiglek barely had the time to cry out to the Windigo and call upon their thick icy hoofpits, and encase the fawn in thick, blue ice and freeze him solid yet alive.

Then, the wish came true.

Author's Note:

Happy Summer Sun Celebration! It's Midsummer Day and time for another chapter. Oh, three months again... sigh!