Falling Pebbles

A window exploded open over Canterlot, and a unicorn came flying out.

The unicorn came trailing through the cloud of glass shards, screaming and flailing to no effect against the green aura holding him suspended in the air. A purple aura coalesced around his horn as he desperately tried to draw magic in to dispel his bindings, and a retaliatory whip-crack of acid-green magic slapped against his horn to dispel the aura. A large rainbow-coloured clown mask, complete with red rubber snout, bobbed out after him.

The magic around him winked out once he was well clear of the window, and he dazedly hung there for a brief second. Physics, which had a rocky relationship with Equestria at the best of times, took a few moments to register the proper reaction to an unsupported mass in midair.

Remember it did, and there then came a drawn-out wail from the unicorn as he plummeted down the side of the marble tower to the stone sidewalk far below. His plummet terminated in a resounding thunk, accompanied by the patter of falling glass, multiple startled cries from the students who had been in the vicinity, and a decidedly under-the-weather moan from the unicorn-shaped hole in the stone. The mask plummeted down after him, bouncing nose-first off his skull with a unhappy parp.

From the broken window far above, at the topmost level of the dorm tower for Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, another unicorn glared down.

He was of slight build, with a patchwork coat of white and dark brown, a black, combed-back mane, and pale green eyes that glowered out at the world from behind steel-rimmed spectacles. Three small stars glinted on his dark brown flank. His lip curled, and he brushed some stray shards of broken glass off the window edge after the defenestrated unicorn.

"Idiot," spat the unicorn, acid lacing the word.

His name was Skewbald Doul. He glared down towards the sidewalk, where a nearby gaggle of students were already rushing to the fallen unicorn. Some were staring up at the tower window and pointing. At him.

He glanced from the fallen unicorn, to the pointing students, to what looked to be a team of the school’s security galloping towards the scene. They’d see where the students were pointing.

It occurred to Skewbald that he might get into trouble for this. One hoof tapped a brief beat against the window edge. “Control,” he muttered to himself, his eyes closing as he did so. “Control, control. Think.”

He took a few steps back and summoned up his magic once again, winding out green spell-energies from his horn and exerting his will upon it so that it settled into a flat plane across the broken window. A further pulse of magic from the horn kept it in place, and made it into a reasonable simulacrum of an intact window, complete with light playing off the glass.

Reasonable, that was, so long as nopony noticed the draft, which was decidedly unmissable this far up. But that couldn't be helped. Fine control was his speciality; he wasn't enough of a magical heavyweight to create solid matter, however briefly.

Skewbald kept part of his attention on the illusion, keeping it active while he dealt with whatever was strewn across his room's floor. A quick sweep of his tail sent the remaining pieces of glass behind a curtain, which he pulled out to ensure their cover. He turned to his desk and shelves, from which several books and a sheaf of papers had been sent tumbling when he had started in alarm at Caballus's interruption. He plucked them off the ground with casual telekinesis, setting them back into their proper, orderly places while he paced, trying to think his way out of this.

He had plenty of room in which to pace. The room, large by dorm standards, was bare but for the basic furnishings: a meticulously-made bed, a desk topped with neat stacks of books and notes, an empty wardrobe, and shelves of carefully arranged library-marked books, the covers of which were the only splash of colour in the room beyond brown and grey.

From the city beyond, the rush of sky-chariots and steady throb of airships came as a constant drone. Distant wagons and carts clattered on cobbles, and the hubbub of the city's busy ponies came as a continuous mutter. The astonished cries of students and the pained cries of Caballus both rose in volume, and Skewbald wished they would all shut up. It was hard to think, for goodness’ sake. Did they have no consideration?

He had possibly overreacted, he was already telling himself, and merely returning the room to its normal state was as pathetic a deception as you could get when the evidence weighed against you was a unicorn embedded in the pavement and a multitude of witnesses. It could at least buy him a few extra seconds once anypony arrived to think of a convincing story.

He didn’t have the practice, but a convincing lie surely couldn’t be much harder than a good simulacra.

It had been Caballus's fault anyway for provoking the reaction; as far as Skewbald was concerned. If you were going to burst out of the wardrobe when other unicorns were trying to study, wearing that ridiculous mask and gurgling like an idiot in the name of 'fun', then you deserved whatever happened to you.

The school authorities would likely reject that notion, however. Assaulting another student with magic warranted immediate expulsion, as far as Skewbald knew. At the least.

Hurried hoofsteps were already sounding on the stairs, and Skewbald tapped one hoof on the surface of his desk as he tried to bully a story out of his skull. His fault … He came in here maddened, he must have had too much salt and he wouldn't calm down, I tried to defend myself … It was a magical accident, we were working on a rote spell mentioned in a lecture and something wouldn't click. There was a magical overload and he went flying … Just a bit of bother between students, sir, he'll heal quickly enough and I'm truly sorry if it caused any concern...

Two loud knocks sounded on the door, jarring Skewbald out of his train of thought. Keys rustled in the lock and the door flew open. The burly frame of the school's proctor loomed within the frame, flanked by a pair of equally burly assistants. Three sets of eyes blazed, and three horns glittered with pent-up magic. Behind them, wide-eyed students were craning their heads to see the source of the commotion.

Skewbald turned around, his expression cool and composed, his manner yielding nothing. A cool breeze and a growing cacophony poked past the curtains at his back. "Is there a problem, proctor?" said Skewbald.

The Long-Term View

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It was a matter of a half-hour for the headmistress to be appraised and for Skewbald to be brought before her. Mancery, a rose-coloured mare with crossed wands on a chalkboard for a cutie mark, began the meeting hoping that the situation was some grievous misunderstanding that could be resolved with a little peaceful mediation and minimal punishment. She finished it with a little less faith in pony nature than she'd had before.

Skewbald tried to pass off the incident as a harmless misunderstanding, playing to what he knew of Mancery's expectations, and took care to include the expressed hope that Caballus made a total recovery from whatever Skewbald may have thoughtlessly done.

The words themselves weren't bad. It was just the lack of anything like emotion in the tone with which they were uttered that let them down.

The headmistress was unmoved.

Sensing a cooling of attitudes, Skewbald decided that the story had to be amended. The misunderstanding between students turned into a misfiring ritual, the energies of which had violently thrown Skewbald into a wall and Caballus out the window.
This too would have been fine enough, if not for the fact that there wasn't a hair out of place on Skewbald's coat and mane, it was contested by the eyewitnesses who'd seen the unicorn at the window, the neat stacks of books in his room hadn't apparently been touched, and that it directly contradicted sentences spoken a few minutes earlier.

The headmistress was yet unmoved.

Aware that his future at the school was now on the ropes if not out for the count altogether, Skewbald hurriedly tried to shift some measure of blame to Caballus, implying that the other unicorn had threatened him into performing a rote spell they didn't have the magical muscle for. This did less than nothing to smooth over past contradictions, went against everything on Caballus's record, and wasn't helped by the fact that Skewbald only remembered about emotions and injecting them into one's tone in order to convince near the end.

A mountain would have envied the headmistress’s immovability.

Mancery called the meeting to a halt and ordered Skewbald to be put under guard by the school's security while his room was cleared out. Once her office was emptied of others, she pulled out a sheet of paper. With no satisfaction, but with a certain grim determination to see justice done, Mancery began drafting a formal letter of expulsion.

She debated briefly whether to get the Canterlot Guard involved, but decided against it. She'd just take the finished letter to Princess Celestia for her approval – for it was, technically, Celestia's school – and see this whole matter dealt with and over.

In a wide, well-appointed office at the top of the Lance, Canterlot's tallest tower, Princess Celestia battled with the collected paperwork that would see Equestria continue to function.

The paperwork, she felt, was winning. Goodness knows what its eventual triumph over her sanity would look like, and she didn’t especially want to find out.

Despite the best efforts of Equestria’s Parliament, bureaucracy, and multitude of ambassadors, Celestia managed to devote the largest amount of her attention to keeping the sun moving. Light streamed in through the open windows which filled the walls on all sides, setting surfaces aglimmer and the armour and lance tips of the two waiting Dayguard blazing.

A speaking tube by the door thumped, and one of the Dayguard made to pick it up.

"Let them in, whoever it may be," said Celestia, grateful for the brief distraction. The paper and quills fell into organised piles around her.

The door opened, and Celestia brightened when she saw Princess Luna, with two Nightguard pegasi in tow. Luna looked somewhat dishevelled and windswept, but an infectious grin on face managed to light the room even more.

"Did the Nocturna's maiden voyage go well?" asked Celestia.

"Well, for a given value of 'well', sister mine." Hoarseness crackled at the edge of Luna's voice, evidence of recent use of the Royal Canterlot Voice.

Celestia looked askance at her sister as Luna trotted to a stop before Celestia's desk, a teapot complete with cosy and cups being drawn out from below the desk. The Nightguard took up their own positions next to the Dayguard.

"What given value applies in this instance?" Celestia filled the cups, and passed one to Luna while sipping from her own.

"I confess myself to be no expert on these airship contraptions. But is it reasonable to assume that the engine falling out the bottom halfway through a flight indicates a design flaw?"

Tea wasn't sprayed across the room thanks to centuries of learned self-control on Celestia's part. "What? Was anypony hurt?"

"No. I was able to arrest the fall of the craft with magic and guide it to a flat surface. Many of our subjects below looked most appreciative when the deed was done. I received cheers. And a flower from a foal." Luna indicated the battered daisy stuck behind one ear. "The engineers and pilots aboard insisted on apologising a lot. They assured me they'd iron it out in the beta, whatever such referred to."

"I could send over some of the engineers who worked on the Diurna. They'd be able to see that sort of problem gone."

Luna made a face. "In all honesty, I'd wish for a chariot over an airship. Chariots hold an unmatched swiftness and … well, stateliness. And 'tis known that their means of propulsion aren't like to suddenly fall out."

"Always an important factor when crafting any such vessel," said Celestia, smiling.

The Dayguard and Nightguard, while their princesses spoke, settled into their routine of each trying to look more alert and fit for duty than the other. Wings flapped, peytrals creaked, and necks and spines stiffened for the sake of their old rivalry. Even though the Nightguard hadn't actually existed for any more than a year, everypony agreed that it would have deserved to be an old rivalry if not for that trifling detail.

The speaking tube thumped again, and hooves scuffed on the floor as one of the Dayguard succeeded in getting to it first. Words distorted by distance and metal crackled out, and the guard coughed to get the attention of the princesses.

"Princess Celestia, Headmistress Mancery requests a moment of your time," he said. "Shall she be given entry?"

Celestia frowned. The headmistress didn't make a habit of pressing for Celestia's attention. "Let her in." She turned to Luna, smiling wearily. "Business always calls. This shouldn't take too long."

The doors opened to admit Mancery. The headmistress bowed briefly and then trotted briskly forward, a folded sheet of paper drifting by her side.

"I apologise for disturbing you, princesses," she said, presenting the paper to Celestia. "A small matter's arisen in the school that needs to be resolved as quickly as possible. A student's warranted expulsion, and that needs your approval and signature."

"Expulsion?" Celestia frowned. The sort of students who earned a place at the school weren't those who usually earned lines, let alone anything more serious. She took the paper and scanned down it. Luna craned her own head to read it as well.

"What condition is Caballus in?" Celestia said halfway down, her voice briefly hard and cold.

"Very stable. There are wards placed around the tower levels in case of such or similar cases, and they prevented serious harm from being done. With assisted healing, his leg should be as good as new within a few days. Not that that should excuse Skewbald to any degree," replied Mancery.

Celestia finished reading and placed the paper on her desk.

"Skewbald Doul," she said. "The name rings a bell. Coltsburgh? Scholarship student?" She made a point of meeting each student after they'd earned entry, and tried to visit the school as often as her duties allowed.

"So I understand," said Mancery. "Do you wish to see his records?"

"Please."

Mancery focused briefly. A flash of red about her horn summoned a small binder to her with the crack of displaced air. It was one of many in the school's offices, kept for the sake of potential posterity and security. She passed it over, one brow slightly raised.
Celestia took the binder in a telekinetic hold, and absently finished her tea as she opened it and started reading.

The next minute passed in silence as Celestia flicked through page after page. Luna watched her sister with an impassive gaze and Mancery frowned.

Eventually, the binder was closed and placed on the desk, and Celestia stood still, her expression thoughtful and her gaze elsewhere.

"I feel I have to amend this punishment, Mancery," said Celestia. "And I give you fair warning that you're probably not going to like it."

She explained, and she was right; Mancery didn't like it. But the princess's word was final, and Mancery put reluctant trust in what she proposed.

"I'll explain it to him after I'm finished here," said Celestia, casting a glance back at the paper stacks and mentally estimating how much would yet be sent to her before the paperwork portion of her day was out. "Send him up to me in … three hours. Keep him held by school security in the meantime."

"Shall his belongings be moved to the airdocks?" asked Mancery.

"Only if he accepts what I'll ask of him. He is perfectly free to accept expulsion, and he'll probably want his things nearer at hoof if he does."

Mancery bowed and left, the door slamming shut behind her. With a sigh, Celestia rose and paced over to the other side of the room, to the open terrace facing west. Luna followed after her a few moments later, and rested her hooves up on the stone ledge.
On this terrace at the very top of the Lance, Canterlot's tallest tower, there were few things to the west Celestia couldn't see. There was no place touched by the sun in Equestria that was truly beyond her sight if she put her mind to it.

From the streets of Canterlot, there came bustle and rattling wheels and distant chatter. From the skies around, there came the rush of passing chariots and weather teams. Outside, looking west past the mountain into which Canterlot was set and down into the rolling plains, a silver river fresh from the mountain snaked its way through patchwork farmland in the middle distance. Past that farmland, on the very edge of the horizon, towers and factories began to grow up around the river.

Coltsburgh muddied the waters with the offshoots of industry, and spat nearly every manufactured good conceived of into Equestria by way of exchange. Factories blossomed, churning out steel and airship parts and magical synthetics and dyes and spun cloth on assembly lines beneath a forest of steam-venting chimneys and smokestacks. Houses and flats nestled around them, perpetually shrouded in a thin grey pall despite near-continuous work from the local weather teams. Narrow streets and alleys wound around and between the tall buildings, and steamboats and cargo-carrying airships gathered thick in the river and air.

"I would query thy decision," said Luna, as Celestia stood and regarded Equestria in silence. "What has the student done to deserve such clemency? That manner of utterly vicious reaction-"

"Every pony deserves a chance to atone for their mistakes. Whatever can lie within a pony that drives them to such deeds can be amended through their own efforts and a little help and luck." Celestia smiled softly. "Besides, I do have precedent on my side for this."

"...Not truly. When last thou effected such an action, the pony in question had a pre-existing special bond with others where you sent her, they faced an immediate peril that required them to bond through teamwork, thou weren't doing it partly as a punishment, and, and this is not an insubstantial and, she hadn't previously thrown another unicorn out of a window."

"It isn't a perfect fit for Twilight Sparkle. But then, I'll confess that I can't help but see … long-ago parallels with another."

Luna stood still there, and seemed almost to shiver. Celestia drew closer to her and nuzzled her gently.

"Not you," she murmured, and Luna relaxed slightly. Only slightly.

"You're referring to...?"

"Yes."

From where they stood, the endless Greycairn Mountains couldn't be seen. But in that moment, their presence loomed heavily in mind.

Luna glanced around briefly, taking in the waiting guards and the bustle of Cantlerlot below. Darkly-glowing magic coiled around her horn and spun out suddenly, drawing a veil of silence over her and Celestia. The outside world was muted, just as their own speech would be to any potential listeners.

Picking up on the action quickly, Celestia added her own magic to the veil, a golden aura distorting the air around them both. Any potential lip-readers would likewise find themselves thwarted.

Even when inaudible to the outside world, even with the very motions of her mouth indiscernible, Luna kept her voice low. "How often hast thou been able to ascertain his containment?"

"Once every five decades for the last three centuries, and more frequently before then. Each time, the mountain was quiet and unbroken. He remains contained." Celestia's soft murmur matched Luna for volume. "I was going to visit again during the upcoming state tour. It'll go as far as Bovaland, so I would have some manner of excuse to be in that region anyway."

"Good," said Luna, the lines of her face hardening. "Were a Princess were not needed to manage affairs here, I would go with thee and be certain myself."

Celestia didn't reply immediately. Silence pressed down for a moment before she said softly, "We shall have to attend to him in the end, one way or another. But not yet. Not until we can be sure to handle him between us."

Luna looked away and then briskly unwove the spells about them. The noises of Canterlot rushed back in to fill the hush, and the two sisters turned to trot back into the office.

"'Tis thy decision," said Luna, in the same ringing tones as if they'd been discussing the student all along. "But not all mercy is recognised and appreciated. Some are beyond it."

"If the student proves so, then it won't be the first mistake I've made about another. It likely won’t be the last. But I can't not offer mercy where it might grow into something better." Celestia heard Equestria's annual output of paper calling her name and pulled herself away. "Duty calls, my sister. Meet me at the dusk?"

"As always."

Skewbald had worn a groove in the room's floor by the time the summons finally came.

He had spent the first half-hour trying to assess his options for when he was inevitably kicked out of the school, and hadn't been inspired by any of them. The school had provided lodging, food, and entertainment in the form of the library for him for the past eight years while imposing very few annoyances, and he had nothing of value or contacts in the city to call upon.

Finding a job could have been easily done. Nopony else needed to know about the expulsion, and it would just be a matter of projecting the right image and giving the right assurances. Physical labour in the trainyards or workshops in the lower sections of Canterlot was all that was likely to be immediately available, however, and would be hard to do well with his small build. He wasn't some mule or an earth pony, after all.

He could leave the city. Indeed, he'd have to if he wanted any sort of work suitable for his talents. The Baltimare Arcane Institute might be looking for someone with fine magical control; though it occurred to him that they'd have frequent contact with the School for Gifted Unicorns and be warned off him as a result. Trottingham, perhaps? Or Manehattan, or San Franciscolt, or anywhere suitably large and filled with opportunities for a bright young unicorn. Plans at this stage tended to devolve into disconnected murkiness, but he saw no reason why they couldn't be devised as he went.

Getting to any of these places would have been a problem, but not an insurmountable one, and he was considering it when Mancery returned and crisply informed him that he would go before Celestia in a matter of hours.

That had given him a lot more to think about. He had met the princess briefly after passing the test to get into the school in the first place, and he'd seen her only at a distance since then. Did she just want to lecture at him before he went, or was she changing whatever his punishment had been? Were matters being treated more severely by the authorities than Skewbald had thought?

Lecturing didn't seem like her style, though. The impression Skewbald had gotten was all warmth and gracious smiles and stooping down to the eye-level of the foal she'd been speaking to. To him, it had almost been like ...

No. Let those memories gather dust.

Skewbald had paced, and tried to plan for a number of eventualities his imagination had thrown at him, and had used his magic to order objects in the room as much as he could past the magical inhibitor tied around his horn, and cursed the stupid inability of lie-crafting to be as easy as composing a simulacra. It had almost come as a relief when one of the Dayguard finally opened the door, gruffly ordering him to follow.

Skewbald did so, out of the room, out of the building, across the courtyard, and up the great winding stair that led to Celestia's office. Finally they reached the tower's top, where the guard silently ushered him in.

He saw the princess waiting on a terrace across from the door, where she was watching the growing dusk. The colours of her mane and tail bled into the sky, the edges of each marked by where the stars started to dot the darkness. Her face was turned away; he could read nothing.

Skewbald trotted in cautiously past the guards on either side, and got no response from her. He ventured, "Princess Celestia?"

She turned, and there was little about the merciful princess in her countenance. Her mouth was a hard line, her spread wings eclipsed the dusk at her back. Skewbald bowed, as was proper, and when he rose after a few seconds, her expression hadn't changed.

The memory of warmth vanished like a candleflame in a blizzard. Skewbald found himself reflexively looking for a place to shrink away to, and forced himself to stay standing.

"You know why you've been summoned, Skewbald Doul."

It occurred to Skewbald on an intellectual level that trying to lying to or manipulate the princess would probably be a really bad idea. Bad on levels inestimable by pony science.

"I do, Princess."

"You will explain your actions."

"Caballus interrupted me in my room, Princess," Skewbald said. "He'd been pestering me in the library, hallways, and after lectures for a few weeks, in the name of getting me to 'loosen up'. In his own words."

That wasn't entirely untrue. Caballus was a happy social butterfly who attracted and returned smiles and conversation wherever he went. He'd taken notice of Skewbald and had tried to engage him in cheerful pleasantries. Upon being told where he could go and annoy somepony else, he had seemed to regard Skewbald as something of a challenge.

"He hid in my wardrobe earlier today, and when I was studying, he thought it would be amusing to jump out at me."

It was a well-meaning and ill-judged attempt to amuse Skewbald as well, but he wasn't inclined to spare Caballus any sympathy regardless. Celestia still looked as cold and remote as a mountain's peak.

"Which was when you assaulted him with magic, not caring how badly he was hurt. Nor for the ponies below who could have been injured by falling glass." Ice all but fell from the Princess's voice.

"It … was a hasty reaction on my part, Princess. I wasn't thinking in that moment." A lie that galled Skewbald slightly in the telling. He prided himself on always thinking clearly in every moment, even if, he was forced to confess, he was usually too busy thinking in each moment and not normally the ones that would follow.

"Had you reacted with more care, more discretion, more thought, then you wouldn't be in your position." The Sun-Princess leaned forward, her magenta eyes gleaming like steel. "And I do not like the sort of reaction that comes forth to hurt one of my little ponies."

Skewbald closed his eyes and braced himself for expulsion.

"Thank your stars, then. I am prepared to offer you a chance beyond expulsion, which may help all of us in the long run," said Celestia. Skewbald's eyes slammed open again and he looked straight up at her.

"What is that chance?"

"You will be suspended from the School for Gifted Unicorns. You will not live there, learn there, access the materials there, or be permitted inside. And for as long as your suspension lasts, you will be banished from Canterlot."

That was much better than expulsion. Skewbald had no wish to leave the school forever, and being obliged to leave temporarily was better than the alternative.

"In addition, you will be taken by sky-chariot to the town of Fort Livery, where you shall be able to seek out lodgings and employment."

That wasn't so good. Being stuck in some pathetic town out in the middle of utterly nowhere with the chance of re-entry to the school was still better than outright expulsion, but a city would have been much more preferable. He still wasn't complaining too much. For all he knew, he'd be in and out of the town in an eye's-blink.

"How long will my suspension last, Princess?"

"It will be conditional. While you are in Fort Livery, you will make the company of other ponies. You will report to me regularly on your progress. And you will be admitted back into the school when you have learned about the magic of friendship."

"…What?" said Skewbald.

Crossing Points

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And that was how Skewbald Doul found himself en route to a place he cared nothing for, for reasons he felt no shame over, to a purpose that just left him bemused.

Wind whipped his mane into disarray and flapped the pages of the book he was doggedly trying to read. Sharp gusts had twice obliged him to save his spectacles from a groundbound doom. The two Nightguard pulling the chariot were happy to ignore their silent passenger, instead swapping jibes and rumours fresh from the barracks.

They cut a south-westerly course, and had been doing so since daybreak for the better part of two hours. Whenever Skewbald intermittently gave up reading out of sheer frustration, he'd look out over the sides of the sky chariot and see fields and hills and the odd crags of stray mountains rushing by beneath the cloud cover. Twice they passed over villages, the ponies on the ground waving up at the chariot bearing royal insignia. The guards waved back. Skewbald didn't.

Skewbald found himself going through old mental counting exercises and remembering rote tricks in an attempt to stave off the tedium. One interesting note had sounded at one point, when he'd glanced behind the chariot to look to the north-east. The clear horizon he'd expected had instead been marred with a heavy black band of what seemed to be stormclouds. Skewbald hadn't heard of any great scheduled storms, but it wasn't as if he paid much attention to the weather schedule in any event.

They flew on, and it seemed like an age to Skewbald before they neared the journey's end.

"There we go," said one of the guards in a loud and cheerful tone to her colleague, catching Skewbald's attention.

Ahead of them, becoming clearer as they started the descent through the clouds, Fort Livery sprawled, baking under the mid-morning sun.

It was built by a river whose name Skewbald hadn't bothered to remember, radiating out from an ancient wooden fort built atop a crag rising out of a meander. Streets of bright, thatched houses ran down the slopes, gradually yielding to farmland as they ran across the flatland. Dusty roads and stone bridges made the town a crossroads, linking Las Pegasus to the east with Trottingham to the west with the Buffalo Territories to the south. What Skewbald took to be the town hall rose above the houses in the centre of town, competing with the fort's towers for height. Banners atop these towers flapped in the hot wind, he noted, banners marked with the blue-and-bronze of the Equestrian Guard.

"Shout if you see a flat bit," said the other Nightguard, craning around to glance at Skewbald. "We'll come in for a landing as close to the hall as we can."

In a farrier's office in the middle of Fort Livery, Zephyr Gauze was trying and failing to write a letter home.

Dear Mother, Father, Boreas, Eurus,

I received your last letter as of the 21st, and am pleased to report that a rugged life out from Trottingham has not rendered me dead and/or uncivilised. At least, not yet.

The words sounded good when he ran them through his head, and he wrote them down. He then stared at the paper, tried to push past a sudden wall of writer's block, and failed. Zephyr let his pen fall from his mouth and flicked the paper into a wastepaper basket beside his desk with a sigh. It joined a growing pile that threatened to overflow the basket.

Stretching green wings briefly and flicking strands of his blond mane out of his eyes, Zephyr rummaged for some new angle with which to open a letter. He stole a glance at the speaking tube rising out of his desk in case it should thump with an appointment for him, and when it didn't, he turned his attention once more to a well-worn copy of Daring Do and the Griffon's Goblet.

There was little else in the office to occupy his attention. His medical equipment (stethoscopes, needle, suture thread, jars of antiseptics, ointments, sealants, bandages, orthotic shoes, the list went on) was as clean and prepared as it could ever be. Nopony had made any demands on his time since he'd arrived, whether patient or fellow farrier.

A less patient farrier would have been all but bouncing off the office's walls, he was sure. The townsponies had acquired an annoying habit of not getting injured or even mildly unwell a lot of the time. The Guard had their own medics and farriers in the fort to deal with their own still rare injuries. And Zephyr was sure that the other farriers in the clinic were deliberately steering the few cases they received away from the young student on a placement. It was, he conceded, probably a well-intentioned attempt by those who remembered themselves during their student days to save as many lives as possible, but still. He'd worked his initial years at the coal-face of medical education and emerged with most of his sanity intact. Some practical experience before returning there would be nice.

Zephyr kept reading, part of his attention listening to the world turn outside his office. He sat behind his desk at one end of the room, behind which a window allowed light to stream in. A stocked cabinet ran along one wall, and a farrier's chair and folding screen along the other. An elderly air conditioner gurgled away to itself in a corner, producing intermittent blasts of steam given colour by the deteriorating magical mechanism inside it.

One such blast broke him from his reading, making him remember with some guilt about the letter yet to be written. He tugged open a drawer and withdrew a fresh sheet of paper. Securing a pen in his mouth, he began to write, determined that this time, he would finally see it finished -

Dear Mater, Pater, Assorted young miscreants,

Your letter reached me alive and well...

And then, with the regularity of a metronome, writer's block. He stared at the words, created anagrams, reshuffled them, converted them into numbers and added them up, and then despairingly added the letter to the basket and re-found his place in the book.

Behind him, unseen, a flying chariot broached the town's skyline.

Above the Cadet Training Grounds for Fort Livery, the skies were drenching the ground with sunshine.

They were also bucketing down with rain, shrouding the ground with mist, sending gale-force winds chasing through a raging thunderstorm, and sending down enough snow to do a windigo proud.

The training grounds were a grid of nine hectare-sized squares, each of which bore a different feature, such as a thick forest, rolling hills, a facsimile of a border fort, or a perfectly level plain. The weather for each square was changed regularly by pegasi officers, according to the needs of whatever exercises were on the schedule. Currently, the central-south square was shrouded with fine drizzle. Sunbeams were caught from neighbouring squares to turn the edges into shifting rainbows, and to set the dripping armour of the drilling cadets inside aglimmer.

It was the sort of sight Chevalier would have normally taken a moment to appreciate, if he weren't distracted by another cadet trying to brain him with a waster lance.

Silver Shield's lance's blunt tip slashed down and was knocked aside by a last-minute swipe from Chevalier's own weapon. Chevalier back-stepped hurriedly as he tried to raise his lance into a proper ward. This was easier said than done when the thing had to be awkwardly couched under a leg or balanced in one's mouth, but Chevalier persevered, securing it in a firm bite just in time to dodge and knock aside two casual thrusts. Silver Shield pulled back and held his lance in the crook of a foreleg, flashing Chevalier a cheerful smile as he did so.

"I'm always open to surrender," said Silver Shield, who was proving himself irritatingly adept with the weapon. "Just in case you felt the need to offer it."

"Shtolen the wordsh from m' mouth," replied Chevalier, somewhat indistinctly past the lance between his teeth. "'M prepared t' be merfiful."

Silver Shield laughed briefly, just long enough for Chevalier to take advantage of his distraction and drive forward. Silver Shield's turn to hurriedly block came, and the cadet quickly yielded ground as their lances blurred and cracked together in the air, trying to maintain distance between them both.

They broke apart and circled one another, Chevalier shifting the lance so that the pole's midsection was supported only between his teeth. Silver Shield lunged forwards with a single straight thrust, interpreting the stance as weak. But Chevalier was ready for the attack, and side-stepped in the instant before the lance drove through the space where he'd been standing. Silver Shield tried to correct his momentum, too late to stop Chevalier from swiping his hooves out from beneath him with one swift and strong flick of the lance. Silver Shield all but spun in the air and came crashing to the ground with a clatter of armour plates and a startled release of breath, floundering on his back like an upturned tortoise.

Chevalier quickly positioned himself above Silver Shield's stunned figure, spitting out the lance and letting it roll free as he pinned the cadet down with the weight of both his hooves. Silver Shield struggled, but Chevalier was a pony to whom 'strapping' could be reasonably attached as a descriptor, and Silver Shield gave up after a few moments, breathing heavily with exertion.

Around them, there came the clacks and muffled oaths of other cadet pairs at their own lance drill, above which the voice of Staff Sergeant Ginger rose. As advanced cadets, Chevalier and Silver Shield were spared most of her attention.

"I'll take that surrender, if you're still offering," said Chevalier brightly, casually shifting his weight as Silver Shield renewed his escape attempt.

"Sun take it, Chev. If you keep pinning me to the ground during training, we're going to start rumours."

"Implying that they haven't started already." Chevalier nodded sagely, as if in grave contemplation, affecting to not notice Silver Shield's covert kicks to his midsection. "Wise advice. I'll be sure to do it more often and more publicly. Thank you for saying so."

"Well, that's – if you'd – moonrocks on a – arrgh." Escape attempt mark two was finally conceded as a failure, and Silver Shield opted for lying prone and adopting an annoyed expression. "Remind me again why I'm your coltfriend?"

"My skill at arms, easy wit, chiselled physique, and discrete and self-effacing nature? Agree to all of these and you go free."

"Fine. Assuming that sarcasm counts."

"It's such nice weather for lying in the grass," said Chevalier. "Obviously, you don't want to miss a single part of it."

Silver Shield snorted and threw his head back, the back of his helmet leaning on the damp grass, his grey eyes regarding the world behind him.

Then he said, in a low and careful tone, "Ease up. Your dad's coming over."

Chevalier looked up, towards the central square. A balloon with an under-slung basket was tethered to the middle of the square via a long chain. A ladder descended from the basket, allowing officers to scale the balloon and observe any training in progress, providing a point from which to take notes, plan future sessions based on performance, and only occasionally point and laugh.

From the direction of the balloon, a dark figure in purple officer's armour was trotting in their direction. Their gait was quick and limping.

Chevalier let Silver Shield go, offering a hoof to help him up. He checked himself over briefly, tucking a few stray red strands of his mane back beneath his helmet, and shook himself, sending some of the water soaking his armour and coat off in a spray. He was aware of Silver Shield doing the same, though perhaps with not as much care as Chevalier himself.

"At ease, cadets," said General Destrier De Gendarme as he neared, hardly seeming to notice the drizzle he had stepped into, and returning their salutes with a brisk one of his own. He turned to the approaching Ginger and returned her salute in turn. "Sergeant, would it interrupt your drill if I borrowed one of these cadets?"

"Not unduly, sir," said the rust-coloured mare, her gaze sweeping them over briefly. "The spare can help teach other groups."

"Very good. Cadet Chevalier, if you'd accompany me?"

Destrier turned and began trotting back the way he came. Chevalier followed after a backwards glance and a mouthed "Meet you after this?" at Silver Shield. He fell into step with his father, wondering what he had been called away for. The horseplay back there? A family matter? Was there an emergency?

When he was near his father, their similarities and differences were apparent. Chevalier had inherited Destrier's red mane and wine-coloured eyes, but where Chevalier was of slightly-above average height with a muscled build and a white coat, Destrier was tall, gaunt, and black-coated. Chevalier trotted in gleaming bronze-coloured cadet armour; part of Destrier's battered purple armour was missing to make room for a metal leg brace around his left foreleg.

"We'll be receiving a newcomer from Canterlot soon, via royal chariot," said Destrier as they passed the boundary from drizzle into clear skies. "A student from the School for Gifted Unicorns, from what I've gathered."

Chevalier said, "Yes, sir," by way of a place-holder, trying to contain the several curious questions that had immediately bobbed up. He instead waited for his father to elaborate.

"I imagine they'd be happier with somepony meeting them as they arrived, just to show them around the town, answer questions, give them directions, and help them get settled in." Destrier turned a dark red gaze on Chevalier. "If you're feeling presentable?"

Greeting a visitor should be an easy and simple enough task, and a student of the School for Gifted Unicorns – heck, so much as a student from the capital - seemed like the sort of pony who'd have an interesting tale or two to share with Chevalier. He'd get to show off some of Fort Livery, and depending on how long that took, he'd probably still be able to spend much of the afternoon with Silver Shield as well. Chevalier grinned, letting his inner presentability shine through as best it could past the rain and sweat.

"I can do that, sir," he replied. "When will they be arriving?"

Destrier glanced skywards.

"Around now-ish, if I may use formal parlance," he said dryly, extending a hoof. Chevalier looked in its direction, and saw a distant chariot pulled by two pegasi, with a figure too small and distant to be made out in the back. It was coming down over the town, and seemed like it was beginning to circle.

"Meet them when they land," said Destrier. "Wherever they decide to do so. You'll probably catch them if you start galloping now."

"Yes, sir," said Chevalier, saluting as he peeled away. He gathered speed, moving to a canter in the direction of the town, the sun already starting to bake his armour dry.

"Try the town hall again!"

"We've tried thrice! It's not going to stop being all statues and fountains!"

"Then – there!"

"That's a roof! You can't land on somepony's roof!"

Fifteen minutes ago, they had started their search for a suitable landing area for the chariot.

They had discovered that whoever had planned the town really had a thing for narrow, sharply-curving streets, and filling wide open spaces with sprawling fountains and statues with upwards-facing jags. The two Nightguard had started arguing about what parts of the town would have spaces in them, and Skewbald had been content to let them get on with it.

That had been fifteen minutes ago, when life was happy and full of joy.

Five minutes after that, the argument had resumed in earnest, when the Nightguard had started to insist to one another in sheer disbelief that there had to be a space somewhere, but had contended over where it could be.

Skewbald had tried, after their raised voices had become a definite distraction, to imply that he wouldn't actually mind if they just dropped him off somewhere outside the town proper. He had been ignored. Some manner of pride was now at stake, and stars save the pony who attempted to interfere.

Five minutes after that, the Nightguard had started pulling the chariot with escalating force, pulling off acrobatic stunts that a Wonderbolt would have respected and that dropped the bottom out of Skewbald's stomach as he held onto the chariot's side for dear life. They had kept on loudly denying reality and each other, and twice now had tried to pull the chariot in different directions.

Ponies below had become convinced that this was some sort of spectator event, and had started cheering every loop-the-loop and swerve. Bored guards on the fort's walls had produced score cards from nowhere and were watching avidly. A small crowd galloped after them, including one figure in gleaming armour who seemed to be trying to wave them down.

Skewbald was too busy holding onto the chariot to pay them much attention. His gaze flicked often to the straining ropes that kept the guards attached to the chariot. The tell-tale glitter of enchantments ran across their surface, ensuring the ropes would try and keep the chariot's top facing in the right direction no matter the movements of the pullers.

"Horse-words to this," declared one of the Nightguard suddenly. "Try the town hall again."

"Buck this with steel shoes," declared the other Nightguard at the same time. "Maybe the fort has a space."

"Just slow down and wai..." interjected Skewbald, straining to make himself heard above the rush of wind, just before the Nightguard, halfway through pulling the chariot in another midair loop, pulled sharply apart in opposing directions.

The ropes pulled taut. The ropes snapped.

The chariot whirled and entered freefall, spinning all the while, and Skewbald's perception of the world boiled down to sky buildings sky buildings sky ponies gasping sky ponies fleeing sky empty street sky WHUMPH.

The chariot by some miracle landed base-down with a mighty crash, tiles and thatch scattering around it from where it had clipped the edges of roofs. Skewbald was hurled about within it, his head slamming off the hard wood of one side. The concussive force knocked away his senses; he was aware of landing awkwardly on one foreleg but hardly felt it past the sudden new constellations that appeared to have sprouted to life and were wheeling across his vision. His legs, at least the three which were currently responding to instructions, flailed as he tried to rise. He swung himself upwards with a low groan, just in time to meet a falling tile head-first.

That knocked away any immediate enthusiasm for another attempt at rising, and for a long moment he lay in the chariot, content to admire the pretty stars and to let his senses gradually reknit themselves into something he could work with. The concerned hubbub of what were presumably bystanders rose from around him. He slowly twisted his neck around, looking up at the sky and at the looming edges of buildings.

One of the buildings sported a red-green banded pillar – the sign for any farrier's office – and Skewbald let his gaze drift there, just as another stallion rose up in front of it and perched his hooves over the chariot's sides.

He appeared to be a pegasus, his blond mane in disarray and his green wings spread out, the strap of a hastily-donned farrier's bag swinging around his neck. Bright yellow eyes looked over Skewbald with the typical analytic concern of a farrier, undershot with a certain worrying enthusiasm. "Are you okay?" the pegasus asked, his accent strange to Skewbald, even as it seemed to reverberate along with his blurring form. "Can you hear me?"

"Gggh," confirmed Skewbald, waving his obedient forehoof in the farrier's direction while attempting to summon a response. "Gah … yes." He realised part of the reason for the blurriness of the farrier beyond whatever jolt had been delivered to his skull; his glasses had been knocked from his snout. Magic coalesced about his horn, the very act of drawing it in seeming to set the world a little more to rights, and he scouted about the bottom of the chariot with some probing tendrils.

The farrier nodded, taking the information in. "Okay. Is anything in pain? Have you hurt a leg, your head, your horn?"

"Don't think ..." Skewbald found his glasses, levitating them up to reset them, and noted with some relief that they weren't broken. He tried to stand up inside the chariot, disliking being spoken down to, and managed to awkwardly roll himself over and rise to all four hooves before abruptly falling over to his right again.

"Retract that, maybe," he muttered. The lack of sensation below his right foreleg's knee was suddenly apparent to him, coupled with a faint and persistent pain just at the knee. "Leg, definitely. Maybe head."

The farrier opened his mouth to speak and then looked away, to the opposite side of the chariot. Skewbald glanced there, just as a new stallion perched their hooves over the chariot's side. His hooves were shod in what seemed to be enclosing metal shoes, and large red eyes scrutinised Skewbald from beneath a bronze-coloured helmet. "You okay in there?"

"Oh, yes, okay as can be," said Skewbald, trying to aim for 'scathing' in his tone but, he feared, probably only achieving 'confused'. The farrier was likely to be useful in the near future, some earth pony cadet with more hooves than brain cells likely wouldn't.

The cadet gave him a wry grin by way of response, and then looked up at the farrier. "You need a helping hoof here, farrier?"

"Some help getting him inside the clinic wouldn't go amiss," the farrier said. "Do you know safe lifting?"

"I've taken the courses, same as any other wannabe grunt." The cadet peered back down at Skewbald. "We'll get you outta there soon as can be, big guy. What's your name?"

"Skewbald. Skewbald Doul." The grim impression was coming over him that the cadet – and probably the farrier once he'd outstayed his service – had every intention of inflicting himself on Skewbald's future.

"Like it. Goes with the coat. I'm Chevalier. Chevalier De Gendarme," replied the cadet, his head briefly dipping in what was presumably meant to be a courteous bow. The name rolled out of his mouth with the hint of a Fancé accent. His hooves began to press down on the chariot's side, to accompanying groaning from the wood. "Sleipnir's danglies, that was an entrance if ever I saw one."

"Zephyr Gauze," offered the farrier – who, it now occurred to Skewbald, was suspiciously and worryingly young. "I'll see you up and raring. Welcome to Fort Livery, incidentally."

"Don't I feel it," muttered Skewbald, leaning his head against the bottom of the chariot and looking up at the sky again, to where the two Nightguard seemed to be getting into a heated argument over whose fault that had been, to where the noise of bystanders rose and beat on his patience like a drum, and where more tile fragments and thatch continued to patter down like raindrops

He'd had more promising starts, he wasn't going to lie.

Introductions

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Like any trained farrier student, Zephyr looked at the problem before him and the tools he had at hoof to correct it. The problem was determining whatever trauma had been heaped upon the unicorn before him and treating it properly, and the tools were the complete stock of his handsomely-provisioned office.

Getting one to the other would, admittedly, be a problem in itself. But there was a solution at hoof for that as well.

"Cadet Chevalier? Could you help me lift Skewbald to my office?" Zephyr clocked the noise of assent from Chevalier, mentally running through what he could do. There was the standard battery of tests for determining the extent of head injuries, the interview process, the standard and arcane materials he had for healing trauma swiftly…

"Alright, if I can get in from this side … " came Chevalier's voice. Zephyr looked up to see the cadet looking speculatively at the chariot's side and applying greater downwards pressure with his hooves. The wood groaned in protest.

"Wait, no," said Zephyr hurriedly. "You'd want to approach him and lift him from his left, since you don't want to jostle the right too much. Go round the other side, next to me."

"Ah, fair point." Chevalier circled around the chariot, while Zephyr watched him like a hawk. This would be the first patient he'd attended in – in a span of time large enough to be beyond his current capacity for estimation, and he didn't want anything to go wrong. He flapped into the air and hovered at a few feet, his eyes constantly darting from the cadet to the stricken unicorn, who at this moment appeared to be regarding them both with some impatience.

Chevalier insinuated himself next to Zephyr, and Zephyr gave him space, flapping to one side in the air while Chevalier loomed over the left side of the chariot. "Is there enough room to -? No, not enough to get into it and pick him up. This'll have to involve some amount of carefully controlled destruction."

"What are you doing? That's Royal property."

The interjection came from two pegasi seemingly swooping out of nowhere, giving Zephyr a start both at their entrance and as he recognised their armour and curious wings. He was flying next to Nightguard – Nightguard! - the personal force of Princess Luna herself. One of them came to a stop in mid-air next to Zephyr, shooting a briefly-curious glance his way, while the other, a mare, landed on the ground next to Chevalier to shoo him away from the chariot's side.

"Ma'am," said Chevalier, turning crisply to the Nightguard and throwing off a proper salute. "We're trying to retrieve the injured passenger within the chariot. The vehicle seems like it may be - "

There was a brief wobble throughout the chariot; upon which both badly-battered wheels attached to it seemed to just give up the ghost and collapsed into splinters. The whole thing jolted to the ground, and a cut-off curse issued from within.

"- Is definitely a write-off. Dismantling it to retrieve an injured occupant seemed like the appropriate course of action, ma'am."

"Hmm," mused the Nightguard. "You're a cadet, I take it?"

"Yes, ma'am. Cadet First-Class Chevalier, due to enlist with distinction next spring."

"Well, cadet, I'm Dame Nox of Her Lunar Majesty's Nightguard, and I suspect you'll have no trouble rising through the ranks and doing the Guard proud. And I'm awfully sorry to pull rank on you, but as you must be aware, these sorts of chariots are technically part of the Royal Household, personal possessions of the Princesses no matter their condition."

An impatient whicker from within the chariot went ignored. Zephyr was still trying to come to terms with being near actual guards of the Princesses themselves.

"Understood, ma'am," said Chevalier in his own turn. "But …"

"Therefore, if there's any wanton destruction to be dealt to Royal property, as responsible and proper members of Her Majesty's Nightguard, we get to dispense it." The mare looked up. "Sir Gibbous?"

"Aye?"

"Let's dispense some wanton destruction. Left side, so the farrier can get in."

"Fine," said Gibbous, gliding swiftly down to the ground beside Nox. "But I'm reserving cleaning this up as my duty. You get 'explaining-today's-spectacular-muckup-to-the-commander' duty."

"Shut your insubordinate and ugly face in front of the civilians, if you would. On my mark."

The two turned to the chariot, hooking one black-armoured hoof over the side apiece, and tore the side down to the ground with one swift jerk, revealing Skewbald Doul glowering owlishly at them. A flurry of stamping flattened the splintered edge at the chariot's bottom, and the Nightguard stood aside. Nox nodded at Zephyr.

"All yours, farrier. We'll take the chariot away when you're done."

"Good show. We'll get the passenger out shortly," Relieved to be back in the action and that all the wanton destruction had ceased, Zephyr sent a glance at Chevalier. "If you could?"

"I could indeed," said Chevalier trotting inside to where he stood over Skewbald. The unicorn looked at him with an expression soured by impatience, which Chevalier ignored. "I don't suppose you're able to stand at all? It's not necessary; it just makes this more … 'elegant' might be the best word."

Skewbald grunted and rose with some difficulty. "There. Will this … "

Chevalier ducked down and under Skewbald swiftly, rising again to yank the unicorn off his feet and sprawl him over Chevalier's back like the world's ungainliest and grumpiest saddle. Objection came only in the form of a short and startled grunt, deprived somewhat of air. Zephyr internally winced at the force of the technique, though he recognised it as the same used by firefighters and paramedics all the time without great calamity.

"There," said Chevalier, shifting slightly to make sure Skewbald's weight was more securely distributed as he began to carefully pick his way backwards. "Now it's just a matter of reversing out of here and putting you where the farrier wants you. You okay up there?"

"Ghhk!" replied Skewbald, the paint-stripping glare on his face suggesting to Zephyr that he was currently too surprised and outraged to produce vowels, let alone coherent words.

"Thought so." Chevalier continued to step backwards until he noticed a well-packed saddle-bag lying on the chariot's floor, marked with the same three stars that were Skewbald's cutie mark. He dipped his head again to pluck it up in his mouth by the strap. "Ah've got thish fr y'. S' y'rs, yeah?"

Skewbald produced something that could have been, "Yes," or another startled release of breath at Chevalier's sudden motion. Chevalier kept the saddle-bag in his mouth as he backed out of the chariot and turned to face Zephyr. He arched one brow in query.

"Just in here," said Zephyr, alighting on the ground and trotting towards the clinic. He turned back briefly towards the Nightguard. "Thank you for your help, sirs. Ah, sir and ma'am." He flushed. "Er, Nightguard."

"No trouble," replied Gibbous, already gathering scattered splinters into a pile inside the chariot with sweeps of his tail. "If anypony's roof got damaged, direct them to the Dayguard's offices for reparations, alright? They love handling this sort of stuff. Honest."

Chevalier saluted the Nightguard just before he turned and entered the clinic, carefully trying not to bounce his passenger's head or rear off the walls as he did so. Zephyr ushered him on, counting through assessments in his head.

Preoccupied as Zephyr was, he didn't see Skewbald, whose glare in that moment could have frozen a pan of water, reaching out discreetly with his magic to ignite a chariot-splinter at the bottom of the pile, by way of a parting gift.

"Set him down on the chair inside, then raise it up a notch or two. I'll just look out a few things."

Skewbald could hear the farrier's voice ahead in the open office, into which they had entered after passing through the building's reception area. A stallion on the reception desk had made eye contact and grinned at Skewbald slung over the cadet's back. He mouthed, "Royal treatment, eh?"

Skewbald had returned a glare utterly void of anything ponies could call warmth, which had only made the receptionist cackle quietly into his paperback. This hadn't been the desired effect at all, and Skewbald had tried to think of a suitably stress-venting and appropriately vicious insult to sling the receptionist's way before his thought process had been interrupted by the cadet lumbering forwards and booming, "Mind your snout on the door frame." Skewbald leaned his head back to avoid further ignominious injury from inanimate parts of the environment, and the cadet had then rotated, giving Skewbald a good view of the farrier's office.

It seemed to him both drab and barren of much of interest, and those parts with arrangements of objects were apparently trying to spite him with their disorderliness. The floor was speckled with dust, the window was grimy in places, and the cabinet's stock didn't seem to have been arranged with anything approaching coherence or order. Even the air conditioner occupying one corner of the ceiling seemed to be on its last legs. Wild magic had clearly corrupted part of the magic keeping the coiling coils frozen – the sparkly pink steam coming from it could have hardly been produced by anything else.

The cadet called Chevalier took several more steps forward to the other end of the room, jerking Skewbald's viewpoint around further, and then stopped before a much-patched and low-slung farrier's chair. "Braf' yrs'l f'r l'ndin'," Chevalier said – Skewbald didn't want to consider the damage his teeth would be doing to his bag's strap – and gently bowed before the chair as he stretched his hindquarters into the air. Skewbald slid down onto the chair, legs flailing over the edge, and the cadet gently butted him forward so that he was steady on the chair, his right foreleg still hanging free.

"You comfortable there?" asked Chevalier, releasing the bag and pressing down on the lever at one side of the chair to raise it by several inches. His eyes appeared genuinely concerned, and Skewbald had no idea why.

"Quite, thank you," Skewbald replied sharply, arranging himself into an approximately sphinx-like posture on the flat chair, his injured leg twinging whenever he did so. He looked toward the farrier – Zephyr Gauze, that was the name - who was picking through his own bag on the desk and humming cheerfully and tunelessly as he did so.

Zephyr turned, several objects in his mouth as he ambled toward the chair, still humming. Muffled cries of "Why … why is it on fire? How did you set it on fire?" and "I don't know! I swear to the Sun I don't know!" began to spill in from outside, and Zephyr detoured to slam the door shut and cut off the noise.

"Right," said the farrier, carefully placing the objects on the ground by the chair. "That was a nasty tumble you took outside, even by the relaxed standards of a Guard town. You said you thought you hurt your leg and head. Which leg?"

"Right foreleg," replied Skewbald. He considered asking for Chevalier to be removed – the cadet had elected to hover nearby in spite of being of about as much use as a stuffed draconequus at that moment – but that would probably only lead to unnecessary argument and time-wasting.

"Alright. Now, I'm going to check your head first. Just so we can all be assured nothing's been too badly knocked around in there. Could I ask you to take your glasses off?"

Skewbald reluctantly swept off his glasses and floated them over to the now-blurred table. Zephyr loomed in, largely reduced to a blur himself, and said, "Jolly good. Do you happen to know where you are?"

"In an Equestrian Health Service clinic, in Fort Livery, in the Neighvada region."

"Good. What were you doing before you fell?"

"Sitting in a chariot drawn by the Nightguard. Ruing my decision to get into it."

"Who's the current Arch-Minister in the Asinial Parliament?"

Skewbald paused. "Ah..."

"Be fair, farrier," said Chevalier. "Nopony knows that. They come and go all the time."

"Fair enough." Zephyr raised a hoof. "High-hoof me and then touch your own snout."

Skewbald opened his mouth, and then decided that a flat look could do all the talking necessary.

"Oh, go on. It's a proper assessment of co-ordination and everything." Skewbald sighed and did as bidden, as there came a poorly-concealed chuckle from Chevalier.

"Well, your brains don't seem to be currently rattled, which is always a good thing." Zephyr held still for a moment, presumably looking at Skewbald's gaze and his eye focus. "Nothing else that's a cause for concern – no headache, no blurred vision, no - ?"

"Yes," interrupted Skewbald. "That's the astigmatism. I'd like to put my glasses back on now."

"Oh, of course," said Zephyr, blushing briefly as Skewbald reached out with his magic to reclaim the glasses. "I'll give your leg a look-over. Make charming conversation while I do so – it might twinge a bit, and that'll help distract you."

Skewbald glanced down at the top of the farrier's head as he stooped to look over the leg, placing his hooves gently upon it. The world was adequately in focus again, and he turned to meet the gaze of Chevalier, who seemed to be regarding Skewbald with some interest.

"So," said the cadet brightly. "You're from the School for Gifted Unicorns, I've heard. A graduate?"

"No," said Skewbald, wondering how quickly the cadet would take the hint if he kept his answers short. "I'm here on an assignment from the Princess. Celestia, that is." Luna's return was still relatively recent, remembering that there was now more than one Princess wasn't yet ingrained.

"Oh? That sounds interesting. What's it about?" Chevalier had perked up at the mention of the Princess, an expression of awe briefly passing across his face. Zephyr's gaze had flicked up as well, naked curiosity fighting a winning battle with aloof professionalism across his expression.

Skewbald hesitated.

"It's … something obscure and magical. High-level theory. You'd have had to have read the books."

"Ah. Not easily explainable, then?"

"Not without big words and a preparatory lecture, no." Lying here was easy. The cadet had no reason to believe he was being told one. Let it stay that way.

"Big words? The horror," replied Chevalier with a grin. "Each of us to our own domain of expertise then. How long are you likely to stay for?"

"I'm not exactly – ow!" Skewbald was interrupted by the jolt of pain that came from his knee and quickly flowed down through his leg like a red-hot river. He reflexively drew back from Zephyr, who was watching him critically, and quickly realised he could move the limb again. It was stiff and sore, but within his control again.

"Dislocated knee," explained Zephyr when Skewbald turned a questioning gaze upon him. "Your patella had been knocked out of place by impacting against part of the chariot, by my estimation. I knocked it back into position and it should stay there, with any luck. Hold still for a second." He dipped his head to retrieve something from his medical supplies, and bobbed up again with what looked like a thick, short roll of gleaming white fabric. "Hold out your leg again, if you would?"

Skewbald presented the leg, and Zephyr wound the fabric around his knee and, with some practised hoof-weaving assisted by his teeth, bound it securely in place. He yanked free a red strip at one of the fabric. Motes of light shimmered briefly across it, and Skewbald felt a shiver coursing down his leg and up through his body.

"Recuperative cloth," said Zephyr. "Leave it in place for a day and it'll assist your tissue in repairing itself. You'll be walking around unhurt in no time."

"Thank you," said Skewbald on trained reflex, paying more attention to the recuperative cloth itself than Zephyr's words, holding up his leg and turning it to examine the cloth. Theory sprung fresh from memory. "This works directly on the Form, doesn't it? It determines the working Form of the pony it's bound around when you release the strip – I'd guess at an enchanted form of Crepuscular's Formula for that – and then it uses a small amount of whatever stored magic's been woven into a reserve to nudge it towards that Form, necessarily healing damage as it does so. Am I correct?"

"I think so," said Zephyr. "I was taught that sort of thing from a biological grounding. The arcane fundamentals weren't much touched upon, unless you wanted to go into research, which I didn't. I preferred learning things which let me whack bones approximately into place and tie bandages nicely. Let nopony say I failed in that." He regarded Skewbald with a touch of pride. "Gosh, I think you're really actually my first proper patient."

"Really?" Skewbald hunted around for where Chevalier had left his saddle bag and found it, lifting it up with magic and slipping it over his back.

"Oh, yes. This is my first placement in a clinic, and I've not seen much experience so far – sorry, are you in a hurry?"

"I need to see the mayor about accommodation, and get myself settled in here." A exertion of his magic tightened the bag's strap, and Skewbald gingerly stepped down off the chair. His leg twinged as he put his weight upon it, but he could take a few steps without falling over, and he fancied he could feel the discomfort ebbing. "I don't know how long I'll be here for, so I'd prefer to get ready sooner rather than later."

"Well, in that case, you should register at this practise," said Zephyr enthusiastically. "It'll only take you a few minutes, and let us access any medical history you had in Canterlot, and all sorts of other bureaucratic fun."

Skewbald wanted to leave this office and Zephyr's company – which had started to wear on his patience – but the pegasus was right. "Fine. I'd have to do it sometime. May as well do it here."

"I'll get the paperwork for you," said Zephyr, heading for the door.

Chevalier had trotted up to Skewbald's side. "You're going to meet with the mayor, then?"

Skewbald glanced in his direction. "Yes. Why?"

"I'll walk you there," offered Chevalier. "Help you get your bearings. Show you some of the sights. Make sure you don't get lost and carried off by a pack of timberwolves. All that sort of thing."

"Joy," muttered Skewbald, knowing it would be sensible to agree and resenting it for being so, as Zephyr came rushing back in with a wad of paper and a pencil held in his mouth.

"There you go," said Zephyr, as Skewbald plucked the papers and pencil free. "Just fill them in at your leisure."

Skewbald wordlessly accepted them and suspended the papers in mid-air, briskly filling them in. Name, date of birth, cutie mark, existing conditions, previous registered clinic, security number, nothing he couldn't recall in his sleep.

"You know, there's a get-together I'll be attending this evening after my shift ends," ventured Zephyr after a few minutes. "Nothing major, just a few friends I've made in the town. Snacks, a game of Beasts and Basilicas, that sort of thing. If you'd like to come along, I'll introduce you to the others, and you'd be more than welcome - "

"I'll probably be busy this evening," said Skewbald, entering his signature in the last space it was required, and setting the papers down on the chair. "Is that all?"

"Oh, well, yes," Zephyr hesitantly replied, looking slightly crestfallen. He hadn't seriously expected Skewbald to take him up on that, had he? "If you ever want to meet when you're not busy on an evening, or if – well, get in touch and I'll see you then."

"Perhaps. See you later," said Skewbald, trotting in the direction of the exit. He'd no intention of getting injured in this town again, and the farrier's hurt feelings and social gatherings were about of as much relevance to Skewbald as the beasts in Celestia's private menagerie. He ignored Zephyr and Chevalier exchanging their own farewells behind him. He'd wasted too much time here as it was.

He'd just trotted out of the building when he became aware of Chevalier falling into step beside him.

"The mayor'll be in the town hall this time of day," said Chevalier. "You got time for the scenic route, or do you just want to go in as close to a straight line as possible?"

"The latter."

"I hear you. That should still take us by a scene or two in any case."

"...And those're the earliest members of the family we've got on the records honoured right there in statue form," said Chevalier. "Cataphract and Oriflamme, kicking flank as a married item one-and-a-half thousand years ago, back when Commander Hurricane was still defending Equestria in the Draconic Wars. Founders of Fort Livery as well, sort of, though that's a whole mess of a story - "

A scene or two turned out to be a scene or millions, and the majority of them – whether statue, fountain, or plaque – seemingly commemorated some distant member of Chevalier's own family line, which had apparently been in the business of idiotically dying in some violent manner for Equestria ever since ponykind had been capable of articulating the word 'Charge!'

Skewbald had accepted it as a chance to practise turning his brain off and nodding whenever Chevalier started forming words with his mouth. At least there had been nods to the local general store and library amidst the drivel.

"Over there's a memorial bench to great-great-uncle Flanchard. Highest-ranking casualty at the Battle of Dream Valley, during the Corvid Incursion. Apparently the corvids have a black powder that explodes when you put a flame to it, and he was struck by a thrown bomb full of the stuff. Bits everywhere, like you wouldn't believe - "

Skewbald wondered if any of the other ponies about in Fort Livery, if any out shopping or visiting neighbours at this time of day, or any of the elderly trio currently resting their haunches upon the General Flanchard memorial bench, or any of the foals playing hopscotch in the street, were so much as physically capable of giving as much of a damn about this as Chevalier apparently did. He suspected otherwise.

"...And here we are, just at the top of Pig-Iron Avenue," said Chevalier, coming to a merciful halt as he indicated the town hall, a tall and sharply-angled building towering above the houses on either side. The flag at its top snapped in the sudden stiff wind that sprung up, strong enough to make Skewbald wobble on his feet and make Chevalier place a steadying hoof on his helmet.

"Odd," said Chevalier, turning to look up into the sky. Skewbald followed his gaze, at the clear blue sky marked only by a few swiftly-moving white clouds … and a darker band of them at the northern horizon. "I don't think we were scheduled for winds. I'll have to see what the Weather Patrol's up to." He shrugged, and turned back towards the town hall. "This is your stop for Mayor Red Tape in any case. Want to see if I can get you one of his assistants? That'll get things moving much quicker, in all honesty."

"No," said Skewbald. "I can take it from here. You can get back to … whatever it was you were doing before I arrived here."

Chevalier frowned. "Are you sure? I don't want to have to wander by here later and find you old and bearded and still waiting for a meeting, or carried off by aforementioned timberwolves."

"Very sure. I can handle these sorts of things by myself. In fact, I prefer to."

"It's your call." Chevalier turned to leave, and then glanced around. "You know, if you want to get yourself settled in and introduced to some of the folks around here, you could come by my family's house for dinner some night. You could … "

"You heard what I said to the farrier. I'll be busy this evening." Skewbald let sharpness enter his tone; he had cleared himself of one needless contact, he had every intention of avoiding another, and impatience was biting at his hooves. He was halfway up the steps to the town hall.

"Well, not necessarily this evening. But sometime this ..."

Skewbald turned on the steps, letting an acidic smile find its way onto his features as sharpness took up a full roost in his voice. "Look. Assume that I'll be busy every evening and we can draw this to a happy close. Understand?"

He didn't wait for a response, but simply turned around and kept on walking up the stairs. Behind him, he heard the sound of Chevalier beginning to speak, and then simply letting out a long breath.

That hadn't ended too badly at all in Skewbald's eyes. If he was fortunate, the remainder of the day could be set on a similarly smooth course.

Minutes ticked by, gradually giving way to hours. The sky shifted, the sun moved, and the clouds ran onwards. Unscheduled rain pelted down briefly, was contained by a perplexed Weather Patrol, and then resumed in earnest from a darkening sky. The afternoon turned into evening.

Round about the point where evening started to shift towards night was the point where the door to the town hall creaked upon, from which Skewbald Doul stalked out with a jangling set of keys suspended in a magical grip.

He wasn't sure what he had expected from a mayor whose parents had named him Red Tape, and all things considered he really should have expected that. Thrice he'd had to remind himself that setting legal authorities on fire wouldn't improve his chances of getting back into the School for Gifted Unicorns. But somehow he'd survived, finally had his papers from the Princess verified, and had been directed to a dwelling apparently built around the back of the Town Hall itself in a moment of bizarre architectural whim. He'd been advised about finding a good, steady job in the understaffed local post office, or some seasonal work in the farms for the upcoming harvest season. He was free and clear.

He glanced skywards; the weather was foul and getting fouler. Rain pelted down, and a mutter of a rote trick he'd learned some years ago produced a translucent dome in the air above him, patterned to resemble an umbrella. It kept the rain off as he made his way around the building to where his new home awaited him; a squat structure that was painted to resemble a protrusion from the town hall itself. A moment's fumbling with the keys unlocked the door, and as he stepped inside, another rote trick to produce light let him see.

He coughed at the dust he disturbed as he ventured inside, and knew he'd have to do a lot of cleaning and re-arranging of the furniture before he'd feel comfortable. Unlit candles hung suspended from the ceilings of the rooms he ventured into, and a flame-producing trick applied to each gave the place a much warmer atmosphere.

Locating the bedroom, he slung his saddle-bag onto the bed and dug out the contents, which were all the personal possessions he had in the world. They were few in number – an apple for this night's supper and another for tomorrow's breakfast, a manebrush and toothbrush, a small bag of bits, writing material, and a couple of thick books liberated from the School library – Firebrand's Past Reflections On Fundamental Attribute-Manipulation Of Forms, and Winter Rose's The Theory And Formation Of Glamours: Part Four. He was already partway through them, and with any luck they'd sustain him for another few days.

An hour's dedicated dusting and reshuffling – resorting to physical exertion where his magic simply wasn't strong enough – finally got the whole place in something approaching a habitable state, and Skewbald threw himself onto his bed with satisfaction. He drew out a pen, paper, and the apple, and ate as he considered his next approach.

He'd not divulged his Celestia-sent purpose to Zephyr and Chevalier. 'Learning about the magic of friendship' was the aim of his stay here, but it was one that seemed entirely pointless to Skewbald. He knew you only became friends with other ponies for the value they offered you in that acquaintance, and he'd usually been able to get what he wanted from other ponies with a blessed minimum of contact. It was undeniable that there was some manner of potent magic developed by sustained and productive friendship – you only had to pick up a newspaper detailing how the Elements of Harmony and the ponies who bore them had liberated Princess Luna from Nightmaredom or vanquished Discord for evidence of that.

But as far as Skewbald could tell, you would only ever actually acquire friends if you were incompetent enough to need them or patient enough to tolerate them, and he was certain he was neither of these things. Whatever methods other ponies used to acquire friends, he found a tiresome and patience-eroding chore with no benefit. But if he couldn't overcome that, then his chances of getting back into the School were non-existent.

Luckily, that wasn't his only means of educating himself on the magic of friendship, wasn't it?

After all, wasn't there a student in the year above him in the school – one favoured by Celestia, especially – who had apparently found the magic of friendship where she had been sent? Who had used it successfully in dispatching not one but two crises that had threatened Equestria? Who he had seen in the library from afar almost every time he entered the place while they'd both been in the School, and, although he'd never had any interest in speaking to her, would presumably be open to sharing her knowledge?

Setting pencil to paper in the air above him, he wrote:

Dear Ms. Twilight Sparkle,

Our mutual teacher at the School for Gifted Unicorns and sovereign, Princess Celestia, has assigned to me the task of learning about the magic of friendship. In your capacity as an Element-Bearer and a fellow student of advanced magic, I would particularly value any advice you might offer on pursuing such knowledge.

In particular, in the spirit of scholarship, I would appreciate access to copies of any written findings you may have developed for the magic of friendship.

Yours with respect,

Skewbald Doul

With that, he filled in the necessary addresses, and considered it further. Short, simple, and, with any luck, bound to unearth any knowledge he'd need. He wasn't actually sure what manner of technical studies he might receive if she responded – mental techniques on extracting arcane power from pony interactions? Interpersonal techniques that had been necessary for unlocking the Elements of Harmony, for all the use that might be to him? He had no idea in all honesty, but he'd deal with that as it came. He could post the letter tomorrow when he ventured to the post office. He'd explore a possible job there as well, one which wouldn't require him to deal with too many other ponies, with any luck.

Rain slammed down against the walls of the house, a constant muffled noise that gradually lulled him towards sleep. It had been a bizarre day as his days went – but he'd survived. He could even begin to adjust quite happily.

If everything happened as predicted (and a small sardonic voice in his head mocked the thought even as it came, though he wasn't sure why), then he would get through this without any trouble at all.

Chevalier trotted home, rain pelting down upon his armoured back as he went. The overcast sky had turned the streets pitch-black and shrouded them past sheets of rainwater. It hardly slowed him. He could have navigated Fort Livery blindfolded if he'd had to.

He gently pressed open the door to the home of the De Gendarmes, nudging open the exterior latch and shouldering his way in when as narrow a gap as possible had been made, letting as little rain and wind as possible into the house. The rain lashed after him as he worked his way inside and went ignored. A grin still lingered on his dripping-wet features after Silver Shield had kissed him and departed, laughing.

Kicking the door shut at his back, Chevalier flipped his head quickly forward, sending his helmet tumbling to the thick carpet beneath his hooves. Other pieces of armour followed, to be placed on the rack that sat at the hallway's side. On another rack, purple armour sections lay arrayed and gleaming.

"You're back late," came the voice of his father.

Chevalier looked to face the direction of the voice. Destrier was lying on a couch in the large and open living room that faced the front entrance, lit by a roaring fireplace. Papers were spread on the floor, next to where his metal-braced leg dangled. Tired red eyes looked up to regard Chevalier, a frown tugging at the corners of the general's mouth.

The countless portraits that lined the living room's walls seemed to regard Chevalier as well. Past De Gendarmes looked down, whether triumphant, grim, impassive, weary, whether clad in full parade uniform or battered and stained armour. They shared space with framed pieces of archaic pony-armour and crossed lances, with old banners and even older woodcuts, with a small and truly ancient tapestry showing Paladin herself being knighted by Celestia.

"Sorry, dad," said Chevalier, venturing into the living room as well to dry himself at the fire. "I went out with Silver Shield after training. We went for a run in the rain, and then for dinner at his place."

"Hmmph. Well, I suppose I can imagine worse things to be doing at your age." The faint frown softened. "Never mind imagine. I probably did most of them. Not that I'm advising you follow my wise example."

A wry grin passed across Chevalier's features. "Where are mom and Chevauchée?" he asked, glancing around the room. Normally, if he'd arrived back this late, other voices would be joining in, and he'd have to soon assist in reminding his little sister it was stupidly past her bed-time.

"Your mother's train back from Trottingham was delayed by the weather. Chevauchée's at a friend's house for a sleepover. They should both be back in the morning, assuming neither of them have to look into acquiring boats to do so." This came on the heels of a thunderclap from outside. "Guess what I'm looking over, incidentally."

"Hmm." Chevalier pored over his father to get a look at the papers himself. "I'm guessing this is about the weird weather?"

"That indeed. The Weather Patrol's baffled, and so are the teams in other towns and cities. Luckily, I know how to turn this to good advantage. I have it on good authority that cadets love training in downpour conditions, and couldn't stand to do without it."
"Ah. I don't suppose I could convince you of an opposing viewpoint on the matter?"

"Why would you want to do that? Surely I'm the best authority on those matters." A thin smile touched Destrier's gaunt features. "Get yourself dried off, lad. The water in the kettle recently boiled, and there's enough left for another cup of something suitably above room-temperature, I'm sure."

"Thanks, dad," said Chevalier, heading in the direction of some towels.

"Incidentally," called Destrier. "What came of that student you were meeting? Did you get him settled in?"

Chevalier paused, considering tactful phrasing. "Yeah, I did my best."

"Hmm. Did you get on with him?"

"Well, ah … honestly, he's about as likeable as a kick to the flank from steel shoes." Chevalier felt slightly guilty about the remark as soon as it left his mouth. Silver Shield had left him in a good enough mood to try and feel more charitable. "He's in a new place and among strangers. Maybe it'll just take him a while to warm up."

"Well," said Destrier with a wry grin that matched his son's. "There's always a slim hope, isn't there?"

Zephyr hurried home from Vanguard's house, the Guard officer who was currently hosting and Games-Mastering the weekly sessions of Beasts and Basilicas. Iron Thews the barbarian had somehow managed to survive another session of inept dice-rolling and monsters with far too disproportionate a challenge rating, though his character sheet might not survive this deluge. Zephyr kept it tucked under one wing as he cantered through puddles.

His other wing was spread out. The dripping feathers brushed through the currents and texture of the air all around. Even as part of Zephyr's mind stayed focused on not tripping head-over-hooves and falling face-first into a puddle, another part of him considered the sensations he was getting from the wing.

He may not have been a pegasus who had opted for weather-control training, but it was still something he had some base talent for – he was a pegasus, after all. The sensation of the weather about, the currents that could be manipulated and the outcomes of doing so, all were available to him in a perception that had been available to him even before he could fly.

Something broiled on the edge of that perception. Something was off with the weather, something sinister and wild almost seemed to be making it unpredictable. It was a fundamental percept being knocked away, and something about it set Zephyr's teeth on edge.

He hurried home, as thunder rolled overhead.

And several thousand miles distant, where the night skies were clear and crowned by distantly-gleaming stars, a crow flew through the open darkness.

He flew over the Greycairns, over the jags of the grasping mountaintops, over the ragged gashes of the bracken-filled river glens, over the solitary titan pines and copses of their smaller brethren. A favourable wind drove him onwards, giving strength to his wingbeats and sending a tingle down the lengths of his tucked-in claws, sheathed as they were in sharp steel.

Amidst the serrated ranks of mountain after mountain, he saw his destination. One mountain, different from the others in its base, which was so crumpled and jagged as to make the mountain look as if it had been pressed into the world by an angry god.

One mountain which had recently acquired occupants, of all the queer things to happen to a mountain in this part of the world.

The crow circled the mountain at a steady glide, regarding it from afar. He had been here before, and at the base of one side he should have been able to see an open doorway, lit by burning torches at its front. Instead, the doorway stood cold and closed, and the snaking pathways that led to it were empty.

It was quiet. Too quiet, to borrow that cliché so beloved by the bards.

He dipped in the air, flying down towards the doorway. As he descended, he caught a strange scent as if from a great distance, like ash and burned stone. The crow frowned and continued his descent. Could the denizens have had some calamity happen below ground, involving fire in some capacity? They were meant to be great miners, but even great miners surely had their off days.

Personally, the crow was betting on them delving too deep and unsealing some ancient horror long forgotten by the gods that would unleash itself upon the world once more. He'd heard the stories and how that sort of thing invariably happened to the suicidally curious, and he wouldn't put it past anyone who hadn't had the sense to be born a corvid.

Alighting at last on the ground before the stone door, he regarded the closed doorway and the cold torchpoles, dark within the shadow of the mountain itself. The doorway itself didn't look disturbed or broken at all. It was the same flat stone surface, had the same strange runic script flowing across the top. The smell of ash was stronger here, though.

Nothing ventured, nothing discovered. The crow hopped close to the door, balanced himself on one upright leg, and struck the door with the steel claws of the other twice. "Diamond Dugs? Are ye all still alive in there? There's been no sign of ye in a day, at least."

A few silent moments passed and he knocked again. "Diamond Dugs? If ye're alive and weel, chap back once. If ye're all deid, chap twice."

No answer. The crow considered his options, and flying back without information to the Cormaer wasn't amongst them. He edged closer to the door, and shoved upon it with one claw and all the strength his powerful mass gave him. He hoped it wasn't shut or barred from the inside – flying back to the hometree for some black powder would be a pain in the tailfeathers, and the Cormaer would get impatient, and –

But before he could finish that line of thought, the door opened slowly inwards. It moved as if pressing against a small but constant force behind it. Ash trickled out of the growing gap.

He finally shouldered it open far enough to get himself inside, and peered in through. He coughed immediately, the opaque air of the black corridor beyond thick with ash. The smell of it hammered outwards, forcing the corvid to take a few hopping steps back to clear his lungs.

A glint from the corridor caught the crow's attention, and he turned to see one of the helmets worn by the Diamond Dog's fighters. It was all but melted on one side, the running metal bright against the black soot and the scorched remainder of the helmet. Thick ash pooled around it, a few larger and scorched fragments nestled in the midst. Bone fragments?

The crow looked down at the helmet, and then back down the unseeable stretch of corridor. The wind cut a chill across his back, and the wind was all he heard.

He wished for a moment that he'd had a wyrdling raven with him, who could have wrought a spell to let him see through this murk, or a magpie who could have called a wind to buffet away the dark clouds of ash.

But he was a crow, as hard as the mountains and swift as the wind itself, and he did not shrink from a challenge just because it made him cough a little. Nor was he about to become known as the scout who'd fled like a fledgling from imaginary bogles in a tunnel. He stepped into the corridor, drawing one wing across his beak like a veil to try and keep the air he breathed clean.

He took another step clear of the entrance, and in that moment, two blazing points of blue light flashed to life in the darkness beyond.

The crow blinked to clear his vision of the flash of blue, and hurriedly hopped back towards the doorway. Red light coalesced around a point above the blue points, and the crow found himself slamming into a sudden flame-red wall of sheer magical force that filled the doorway at his back. He jabbed out a claw behind himself reflexively, and it found the force wall as yielding as solid granite.

He was trapped. Panic swelled briefly in his chest like a tide, and was hammered down by words and instincts that ran deeper than corvid blood. All things can be fought. All things can be killed. Call yourself a corvid, and educate whatever this is of that in explicit and unnecessary detail. The crow found his footing, and rallied to stand with his back straight and his eyes narrowed and glinting.

The red light dimmed and faded away, and the blue focused into two bright eyes. From the darkness, a voice came.

"So thy kind still flock where the maddest fear to tread. And act as Our welcoming honour guard into the waking world once more. Betimes We suspect Our lot to be cursed, and find the world eager to confirm it."

It was no properly harsh corvid voice, nor was it any Diamond Dog’s bark. It was deep and melodious; as soft and rich as velvet. A undertone of amusement thrummed through it.

"Aye? And who or whit's speaking?" The crow tried to peer through the ash for any sign of a face around the blazing blue eyes, and found himself thwarted. "Shall ye give me a name, or would ye prefer I gave ye a slur? Whit are ye?"

"We are no longer a prisoner. We are impatient beyond measure. We have more names and fair descriptors and titles than thou could fathom." The blue eyes narrowed. "And We welcome thy company, little fly. Talk to Us of Equestria."

"Equestria? The cuddies?" Why this voice in the shadows wanted to know about the cuddy queendom, the crow had no idea. "I've heard they're all too-welcoming of gowks who gurgle on like they're a plural. Fly south-west for about a continent, ye cannae miss it. Trade ye an answer for an answer, whit have ye done with the Diamond D-"

Stop.

The word came as a command of pure, searing force. It slammed straight into the very mind of the crow, bypassing his hearing entirely and going straight for pure mental comprehension. He tried to react, to move, but he couldn't move so much as a single claw. He couldn't blink his eyes as the ash particles in the air began to itch upon them; a multitude of tiny agonising points. Terror rose in his chest like fire as he realised that his breathing was stilled, that he couldn't breathe in spite of the ever-tightening constriction wrapping around his lungs.

Silence stretched out for a long moment before another command – Move – slid into the crow's mind like a white-hot blade. He collapsed on the spot where he had been paralysed, blinking away to relieve the agony that had built on the surface of his eyes, and sucking in air with rapid, greedy breaths that mixed with small, terrified gasps.

"Thou wilt speak," came the voice again; still soft, still melodious, but with little amusement. Red light drifted around the eyes like volcanic clouds, still showing nothing of the speaker. "Speak on Equestria. Speak well."

"Equestria, Equestria," gasped the crow, trying to piece together what he'd been taught by his elders so long ago, what the peddlers and bards chattered about. "The cuddies still dwell there, so far as I ken, and the last Cormaer we had a hundred years back brought us tae war wi' them, and the new one's promising mair of the same, and –"

He stopped then to cough a deep, rasping cough. He recovered, and drew in one breath and then another, the process of them seeming to take achingly long moments. He was aware of the red light simmering, the blue eyes narrowing – no, one was constant, but another was growing smaller and dimmer all the while.

He finally recovered, and moved to speak, but before he could -

Stop.

The crow all but trembled where he stood; fear now crowding out every other emotion in his mind. The red light intensified while the blue eyes grew ever more lopsided, one now a mere pinprick. His lungs screamed with the lack of air, and the burning sensation around his eyes built and built until their removal would have seemed like a mercy.

The blue eyes held steady. From the darkness, there came the sound of an indrawn breath.

Then the red light erupted into an enveloping storm of fire, and the thunder of the voice came with it. "DOES CELESTIA STILL CLAIM THE THRONE IN CANTERLOT?"

The noise of it all but tore the crow’s eardrums to shreds, his conscious thought reeling away from the volume. The voice’s softness and melodiousness had melted away like sea-mist, scoured down to something as grinding and guttural as an avalanche. "DO THOSE CRAVEN ENOUGH TO CALL THEMSELVES HER CHATTEL STILL KNEEL AT THE BROODMARE'S HOOVES? HAS EQUESTRIA ENDURED THESE LONG CENTURIES, FLY? SPEAK OR BURN."

Some unseen force seized the paralysed crow and tightened about him, his heart pounding and his gaze jerking and his lungs burning, burning, burning. The volcanic heat of the corridor now blistered, matching the pain of the final bellow that blasted the growing black cobwebs out of his mind. “SPEAK!”

Move slid into the crow's mind then, and as soon as he could so much as gabble the words, he choked out, "Aye, aye, the cuddy queen still rules there! Celestia! She's got a new one, Lunar or something like that!"

The fire quieted, becoming a constant red glow once more. The heat diminished, becoming almost tolerable. The force holding the crow withdrew. The crow drew in deep, rasping breaths, and tried to not topple over as he trembled.

The blue eyes shone steady and still, returned to equal sizes. They seemed to focus on some point far beyond the crow.

"Now there’s a pretty tale,” purred the soft voice, the brief harshness hidden once more. “Two princesses reunited after so very, very long, after so much grief and conflict. Side by side on the throne, leading Equestria to peace and harmony and all such cloying promises. Fools to think themselves secure, with Our might still existent. Pinned 'neath stone, pah! Did they think We'd meekly sleep 'till Tartarus froze?"

The eyes began to move forwards down the corridor. The crow saw a great form beginning to emerge from the ash, broad wings stroking the air and long legs striding across the floor.

The crow, who had started this whole encounter confused, felt himself go past some critical threshold of complete befuddlement when he recognised the shape of the speaker. "Ye … but ye're one of - !"

"We fancy that the last thing Equestria is about to enjoy is a time of peace," said the figure. "We shall make certain of it."

The crow opened his beak once more.

His world turned red.

Darkening Horizons

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The next day had dawned. Skewbald had woken early, read in bed, and had not yet gone to the post office or sent off his letter. Something far more fun had come up.

In essence, the Proposition is such: Wherever the subject Object possesses such Properties as are known and understood within our Natural Philosophies, these same Properties may be Reassigned or Transposed by raw magical calculation and determination. When what we believe of our Arts and the concepts we hold aligns with the Arcane given Structure, we may impose such effects as hath been discussed, in a silk's Softness granted by Reassignment to a rock, that same rock's Weight Transposed with that Weight of a crimson feather, a lance's Edge layered 'pon the feather through Reassignment. To these, I would add a last; the Reassigning of Colour.

A red apple and a blank piece of paper sat side-by-side on the table in Skewbald's kitchen-cum-front room, drab in the early-morning light. He stood before the table, licked his lips with anticipation, and fixed the apple and paper with a particularly intense stare.

Let Colour then be our Property, the creation of which is known within the Philosophy of Opticks, on which subject I grant higher experience to my honoured friend Starswirl and his Treatises. Let a sphere of whitest quartz and our much-abused feather (the previously-applied Properties voided) be our Objects. Let us therefore Reassign.

Let nopony say Past Reflections On Fundamental Attribute-Manipulation Of Forms hadn't been an informative read if the theory was adequately understood. Amongst a collection of different papers by different ponies throughout history on the subject, most of which had been as dull as dishwater and mostly prattling on about the theory, one Red Hunter's The Malleability of the Properties of Objects had finally helped Skewbald hold the whole subject in his head.

True, it might have been written in Pre-Princess times and had the language to match, but least Red Hunter had had the decency to actually write up his experiments and calculations in detail.

Observe the twelfth figure, in which I hath presented the Arcane Summary of the feather's Colour with accompanying calculations, alongside suchlike details for the quartz. The mental exertions as described in detail in the Reassignment of Softness, wherein the Summaries are held in mind and applied to the appropriate Object, are of such an undemanding nature for the Property of Colour and the Objects concerned that an adequately-schooled unicorn foal could accomplish the task. Upon the release of magic, the expected effect indeed occurred; the quartz all but glowed with the overlay of red light, while the feather rested with its colour drained away. To Transpose would demand such exertions as explained in the Transposition of Weight, and would grant the feather the white hue of the quartz.

Skewbald concentrated, magic beginning to gather about his horn as he mentally composed the calculations to produce the Arcane Summary for the colour of the apple and paper, the natural mechanics and physical properties of both translated into a magical form. That was easy enough – it was a task he'd made himself rehearse often enough back in Canterlot. His mental effort expanded to the apple, and then the paper. Both shimmered amidst the pale green aura of his magic.

The magic built in his mind, to the point required for the physical world to actually sit up and take notice, and Skewbald's eyes reflexively slammed shut as he released it.

He slowly opened them again. The paper was a bright shade of apple-red. The apple was as black as the spaces between stars.

A laugh of satisfaction escaped Skewbald, and he fell back to sit on his haunches. "Who's a clever pony, who's a clever pony?" he murmured. "Who is? You is, Skewbald."

He casually reached out and pulled the apple closer to him, breakfast as a reward for a job well done of Reassigning. He'd eat half of it, and then he'd attempt Transposition.

It was far more advanced than rote spells and most routine tricks, and most of its intended effects could be replicated under such. It required breadth and depth of scientific knowledge so you would know what you were manipulating and so that you could produce the Summaries required. But it potentially let unicorns punch far above their magical weight by utilising pre-existing magic embedded in the world, and that was its main appeal for Skewbald.

He was about to take a bite of the apple when there came a ferocious knocking on the front door, followed by a mare's angry voice. "Open up!"

Skewbald paused, glanced around at the door, set the apple on his table, and slowly rose to his hooves. He didn't think he'd done anything to especially aggravate anypony since arriving in the town.

The knocking ceased for a second, and then resumed with even greater force. "For Pete's sake, OPEN UP!"

Skewbald, by turns annoyed and vaguely intrigued by what could be provoking this sort of thing, trotted towards the door and yanked it open. "Wha …"

A dun-coloured pegasus mare blazed, "FIX HIM!" and brandished a flapping duck at Skewbald. The duck quacked as if by way of frantic agreement.

Skewbald's cogitation decelerated, stopped altogether, and then slowly gathered speed again as he found himself saying, "You'll want a vet for that, good day, ma'am," and started to close the door.

"No! He's not a duck!" The mare wedged a hoof in the door and threw it open again.

Skewbald took several cautious steps back even as he looked over the duck. It was certainly duck-like in appearance, moving the way a terrified duck could be expected to, and producing appropriately alarmed duckish sounds.

"Empirical observation and inductive reasoning aren't on your side in this, and I'll have to ask you to -"

"Bolt. Bolt. Relax."

This new voice came from another mare, another dun-coloured pegasus coming up from behind the first. She seemed to be the older of them – Skewbald guessed they might be siblings. She placed a calming hoof upon Bolt's shoulder. "I think the guy needs to be given some sort of explanation first."

"Yes, do," replied Skewbald, stopping as his rear collided with the table. He steadied himself with a flush of irritation and fixed the mares and duck with a look of deliberately detached appraisal.

"Sorry to burst in on you like this," said the older pegasus, while Bolt simmered with agitation. "Are you the student from Canterlot, from the School for Gifted Unicorns? We'd heard from a friend working in the town hall that you'd arrived yesterday."

It was hard to maintain gravitas in the face of a panicking duck, but Skewbald gave it his best effort. "Yes. Skewbald Doul. And you are?"

"We're the Thunder siblings. I'm Head, this is my sister, Bolt. And this," said Head, indicating the duck, "This is our brother, Clap."

Skewbald looked again at the duck, at the sisters, at the nearest wall, back at the duck, and then at the sisters.

It was far too early in the morning. "Could I indulge in a smart remark about the family resemblance?"

"Shut up," replied Bolt. "He's been transformed."

That … added some amount of sense to the situation. Skewbald peered closer at the duck. "How?"

"You think we'd know? It happened while we were out on weather patrol for all this stupid freak weather. One minute, little brother moving to help disperse a cumulus congestus; the next, duck!"

"I saw him moving around the cloud," interjected Head. "He called out, just to let us know he'd found a potential weak spot in the cloud, and then there was a flash of white light. We thought it might have been lightning, and rushed to see if he was alright. We found him like this." She looked at Skewbald pleadingly. "I know there are specialised wards in hospitals that can reverse this sort of thing, but the nearest one's fifty miles away in Las Pegasus. If you know how to help him … we'd owe you one. Please."

Skewbald took a deep breath.

He had an idea about how to go about reversing the change, which was almost certainly some weird result of an eruption of wild magic, somehow. He'd never heard of such occurring mid-air before. But he was half-tempted to claim ignorance and tell the Thunder siblings to get out. Bolt's yelling had set him on edge, and he wanted to get back on with his own work.

But this could be fun as well. In fact, he was certain he knew how to go about reversing the change – and seeing it done successfully would be satisfying for its own sake. There was even the possibility that assisting other ponies like this could assist him with Celestia's assignment, that it could unlock the magic of friendship or make Celestia just appear outright and congratulate him on a job well done.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Skewbald looked at the duck. "Bring him here. I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you," said Head with all apparent gratitude, and nodded at Bolt. Bolt released the duck, which flapped out of her grasp only to be snatched a second later in a firm aura of Skewbald's magic. It flapped and quacked with panic as Skewbald pulled it closer for inspection.

"Don't hurt him!" snapped Bolt, starting forwards.

"Do you see me telling you how to do your job?" replied Skewbald, extending part of the aura to poke at her snout and stop her in her tracks. He willed arcane perception throughout the aura's field to get a better sense of the duck's dimensions and current properties, each bit of information flowing into his head in pure number form and being neatly stowed away for reference. The numbers were in flux over the short time intervals that he took them, subtly but surely changing in different directions – by microscopic amounts, certainly, but changing all the same.

This was exactly what he'd expect from the effect of a transformative bolt of wild magic. The form imposed was strongly held, but the magic wouldn't last forever, and it was already diminishing. Give it about a century and it would bleed off naturally, gradually restoring the subject to their proper form and consigning them to decades of both a form and a mind somewhere between duck and pony. Give it to a unicorn who knew how to bleed it off safely, and it could be reversed in an instant.

Skewbald closed his eyes, composed himself, and then slammed an arcane needle into the wild magic permeating the duck.

Magic began almost instantly to blaze off, which Skewbald was prepared for and caught in a transformative effect of his own. It was turned into bright but harmless light, radiating out from the duck and Skewbald's aura of magic in all directions. He squinted and edged his eyes open – the sisters could barely be seen, holding their hooves over their eyes, while the duck was a half-glimpsed, twisting, growing silhouette in the air before Skewbald, producing alarmed noises that couldn't even remotely be described as natural.

The magic outflow grew suddenly, alarmingly so, and Skewbald struggled to not lose control. If he did, the currently-releasing magic would become wild in its own turn. That would be unpleasant for everypony, especially himself, and release Clap in his current half-duck, half-pony form. With a great and frantic exertion, he kept a lid on the magic, making sure it continued to be converted into light.

But it continued to build, continued to exert greater and ever-greater pressure on his ability to keep on processing it all, and soon the pricklings of fatigue began to build within his horn – a gentle sensation that would soon burn -

And then, with one great rush that almost stole Skewbald's hooves out from under him, it was done. He leaned sharply forwards as he gasped for breath, while the form of an exceedingly surprised dun-coloured pegasus stallion collapsed to the floor in front of him.

"Clap!" cried Bolt, diving forwards. "Are you alright? Don't you dare frighten us like that again! Don't you dare, you complete and utter - "

"What?" said Clap, his eyes alighting on every part of the scene around him with no little alarm and confusion. "What – what just happened? Everything went – was I knocked out? Where am I? I don't – what?"

Head looked down at Clap, pure relief breaking like a sunburst across her features, before she looked back up at Skewbald. "Thank you! Thank you from all of us, once the other two have their act together. We had no idea whether he was in danger or - "

"Don't mention it," said Skewbald, in a voice that was part growl. The prickling heat in his horn had become compounded with a fatigue-induced headache, and futilely shaking his head back and forth wasn't doing anything to help it. He'd have to rest before attempting any more magic for today, and he would be hesitant to attempt Transposition at all for the rest of today even after doing so.

It could also be assumed from the lack of the manifestation of a beaming Sun-Princess or any sudden rush of goodwill on his part towards the pegasi that no breakthrough in the magic of friendship had been achieved either. This hadn't been nearly as satisfactory an exercise as hoped for.

Thunder Head regarded him as he tried to shake the ache out of his skull, and then looked past him to the table at his back.

"Out of interest," she said, "Why is there an apple-shaped void sitting on your table?"

"Magic reasons," replied Skewbald. "Now kindly get out, all of you."

"Doth thou comprehend?"

The orange-coated filly that stood before Luna in the midst of the dreamscape scuffed one hoof awkwardly across the ground. "I ... guess so?" Her Manehattan twang was mockingly echoed by the various spectral figures that were now fainter than when Luna had first entered the dream

"When assailed by thine tormentors ... "

"I ... 'return their torment in equal measure, grant wound for wound, and let myself not be belittled with impunity'?"

"Good now, good." Luna permitted a gentle smile pass across her face, before poorly-concealed uncertainty that matched the filly's own replaced it. "Such sentiments still match the current cultural ethos, do they not?"

"Not really." The filly flicked a strand of red mane out of her face nervously, apparently considering the best way to inform a princess that they were mistaken. "Everypony I've spoken to talks more about not falling to the bully's level. Should ... should I have been ignoring them?"

Luna stood still for a moment before speaking. "Perhaps we had better start from the beginning again. In sooth, I would not have thou embarking upon an entirely inappropriate course of action because of mine ad - "

"Princess Luna?" The reverberating voice that suddenly issued from all around, that of a stallion, came as if from underwater. Luna started, then sighed. The filly tilted her head, apparently deaf to it. "Princess Luna? An urgent matter requires your attention."

"We'll discuss this anon," said Luna quickly as she quickly pieced together the magic to propel her consciousness out of the dreamrealm. "Mine services are suddenly required elsewhere. I now wish to counsel caution about the whole 'granting wounds for wounds' matter until I can better acquaint myself with modern mores."

"Wait, hang on - !" started the filly a second too late. The dreamrealm was already melting away around Luna, giving way to the figure of a concerned-looking pegasus Dayguard at the edge of her bed. The morning sun poked in at the edges of the bedchamber's windows.

"Princess Luna? Are you well?" The Dayguard's voice grated on her nerves.

"It has been but an hour since we lowered the moon. We desired rest and the chance to better a foal's life-course, and quite possibly failed to achieve the latter. Kindly explain your purpose."

"Princess Celestia's summoned the privy council for an emergency meeting, Your Grace," said the Dayguard. "She bids the other Princesses attend as well. She emphasised that it was quite urgent."

Luna closed her eyes briefly and let various rote tricks flow across her, smoothing her coat and straightening the stars in her mane. When she felt civilised enough to venture outwards, she extricated herself from the covers and stepped down. "My commendations for your swift service, then, and my apologies for my surly manner, good guardspony. Return to my sister and inform her that I am on my way."

The Dayguard nodded and left. In her privacy, Luna shrugged herself into her crown, shoes, and ornamental peytral one by one. Diminished as her magic was in the daytime, it was still an effort - always an effort - to curtail it to the point where it could accomplish such small and precise tasks. Alicorn magic was suited for larger things, but she made the effort.

Eventually victorious and fully clad for the day, she breathed out, murmured, "Ever onwards," to herself, and ventured to Celestia's meeting.

She crossed paths with Princess Cadance partway into the maze of twisty little passages that filled the lower palace, attended by her own guards. The smaller alicorn, not yet grown into her full size and power in spite of the passage of years (Luna intended someday to fully appraise herself on what exactly had happened to the Crystal Empire) brightened when she saw Luna.

"Auntie," said Cadance, trotting up to Luna and nuzzling her briefly, a gesture which Luna returned. There was no blood-relation between them, Luna was certain of that, but the affectionate honorific had stuck even before Cadance's rise to alicornhood. "Do you know why the council's been summoned?"

"I fear not," replied Luna. She and Cadance fell into stride as they continued towards the meeting chambers. "She has the habit of divulging in full only when the news is good or of no great importance. Holding silence until others arrive compels us to attend."

"It's serious, then?" said Cadance. The pale marble corridors they travelled through straightened; the sound of their hoofsteps echoed ahead of them. Luna cast her attention to an insignificant-seeming side-corridor a short-distance ahead.

"If not, I shall be very put out with her. But it is likely so." They detoured down the short side-corridor, and Luna reached out with her magic to open the plain wooden door at the end of it.

Almost immediately, ranks of gleaming lance tips descended to face them from the room beyond. "Halt, and identify yourselves," came a stallion's voice.

Luna sighed. "An invading horde. Surrender your treasures and we shall leave ye unmaimed."

"Stand easy, guard," came the same stallion's voice. The Princesses stepped into the small room, seemingly filled entirely with rows of lance-wielding Dayguard. The captain, a white-coated unicorn in purple officer's armour, stood before the door at the room's back. He nodded to Luna and Cadance in turn. "Princesses Luna and Cadance. Princess Celestia and the rest of the privy council wait in the chamber for your arrival."

"My thanks, Captain Armour. Who amongst the council wait within?" Luna had noticed the way he and Cadance had looked at one another, and made a note to herself to follow this with interest.

Shining Armour paused in thought. "Princess Celestia herself. Ministers Elusive, Cold Spell, Royal Purple, and Grimoire. High General Hobby. Prince Blueblood."

Luna considered it an odd collection of councillors, and struggled to guess at what the Intelligence, Weather, Diplomatic, and Magic Ministers could collaborate on with the Guard's High General and Prince Blueblood (she understood the latter's title was purely aristocratic and not the result of an alicorn-minting spree by Celestia, and that his presence owed more to loopholes of hereditary than actual expertise)

"Very good," she said to the captain. "Grant us entry, then."

Shining Armour nodded and stood aside, opening the door with his magic as he did so. Luna stepped in, Cadance on her heels, and as they entered, the door was shut behind them.

The privy council's chamber was a high-ceilinged room, as old as the original foundations of the palace itself, lit from all sides by suspended magical lights in hovering glass spheres. A semicircular oak table sat in the middle, the flat length of it facing the far wall, on which was raised a great and flat plane of stone.

The councillors around the curved side of the table looked up and greeted Luna quietly as she entered. She recognised them from left to right: Weather Minister Cold Spell, a bright and cheerful-looking periwinkle-coated pegasus mare; Magic Minister Grimoire, an ageing and indigo-coated unicorn stallion who carried himself with dignity; Diplomatic Minister Royal Purple, an earth pony stallion who seemed to be engaged with some kind of quiet dignity competition with Grimoire; Intelligence Minister Elusive, an indeterminate mare hidden under a outsized cloak; High General Hobby, a pegasus mare clad in dull red armour; and Prince Blueblood, who was making a valiant effort to look as though he knew what he was doing here.

Behind the flat side stood Celestia, and she nodded to Luna and Cadance as they circled the table to stand at each side of her.

"Well," started Celestia, "Since we have the entire current privy council at hand, I see no reason to delay any further. Cold Spell, if you could begin with the report you gave me?"

Cold Spell nodded, cleared her throat, and said, "There's a storm inbound for Equestria. A wyld storm, coming from the north, and expected to discharge within our borders."

There were some intakes of breath from the council, and some confused mutters. Luna thought an exceedingly foul word to herself before Royal Purple spoke up. "I'm aware of the general principles of a wyld storm – it's natural severe weather that's managed to get itself infused with wild magic along its path, isn't it?"

"Correct," said Cold Spell. "It's a moving storm system that's soaked up a great deal of wild magic in its starting location. It's pushed by streams in the atmosphere, the Great South Stream in this case, continues to soak up wild magic, and discharges all of its energy and magic once it reaches a certain critical level. This isn't a good thing if you're where it discharges. Which we are. Princess, if you could - ?"

Celestia closed her eyes as magic pulsed around her horn, and the great stone plane at her back suddenly lit up with a brightly-glowing golden map of the continent.

Luna peered at it. There was the familiar wedge-shape of the continent running from south-west to north-east, with Equestria comfortably sprawling across the south-west and the lands north of that. The Greycairns started just within Equestria and bisected the continent into the inhospitable north and settled south, with all the nations south of the Greycairns picked out in glowing borders – neighbouring Asinia, Ovarn, mountainous Capra, Bovaland, and finally distant Corva occupying the far north-east.

On the map, there was another curving line, glowing red. It came from across the sea and off the map's top edge, from the terrible and eternally-frozen Far North. It passed into the continent at the eastern edge of Corva, shifted its course westwards to pass through Corva and clip the edge of Bovaland, and terminated in a flashing little circle in the Greycairns just north of Capra. A dotted line passed out of it, indicating an expected route that exited the Greycairns, just missing Asinia as it did so, and which came to an abrupt stop just in the middle of Equestria.

Hobby cleared her own throat. "What effect will it have when it makes a stop here? I'm guessing a huge amount of wild magic ruining everyone's day."

"In essence," said Grimoire, his voice a melodious and commanding baritone. "Warped natural workings, random transformation, destruction of towns, ponies, environments – envisage when Discord held sway, without any remote sense of fun behind it all. I may exaggerate – has a strength category been determined yet?"

"The Weather Office is inclined to call it a Category Four, more than sufficient to cause widespread devastation if left unchecked." Cold Spell paused in thought. "It could be a borderline Five, we're not sure yet."

"Oh, almost certainly a Five," said Blueblood suddenly. "That sort of track length would be positively abnormal on anything less, if I recall correctly. I don't suppose you've managed to determine mean precipitation levels where the storm's already hit? They can be inversely proportional to the strength of it, as a rough measure – the magic can retain a lot of the moisture, it's a funny process... "

He stopped as the silence from the rest of the table began to sink in.

"I, ah, studied this. I have a doctorate in meteorology, and my thesis was on magically-altered weather systems such as wyld storms."

The silence continued.

"...It doesn't come up much in conversations – when is it expected to arrive?" said Blueblood hastily.

"Thirty six hours," replied Cold Spell. "More or less by about an hour."

"That's accursedly close-at-hoof," said Royal Purple. "Surely it's still got half the continent to travel?"

"The Great South Stream's driving it on, and it's not unknown for effects within wyld storms to give them unnatural speed."

"Reports from Bovaland about the storm came earlier, and sightings from the borders of Capra shortly after," said Elusive for the first time. "It's moving quickly. There have already been reports from Weather Patrol leaders about freak wild magic incidents across Equestria. I understand such storms push a vanguard ahead of them through the weather currents – we're already seeing their effects."

"Correct," said Cold Spell. "I will point out with all due long-suffering patience that those are my office's reports."

"I'm the Intelligence Minister. Every report is eventually my report."

"Is this purely natural?" asked Luna, sending a brief glance Celestia's way, which was answered with a nigh-imperceptible nod of acknowledgement. She turned to the rest of the privy council. "Such storms have been prepared and released as weapons before."

Elusive shook her head. "It's almost certainly natural. Agents of mine sighted it moving into Bovaland from Corva, so Bovaland could have had no hoof in this. The Bullwalda seems to have been caught off-guard by it as much as we have. As for Corva, a new Cormaer has emerged." To the side, Royal Purple choked with annoyance at his planned contributions being stolen. "I suspect I'll be calling for a meeting of this council alongside General Hobby on that matter in due course. But they don't presently have the capacity, infrastructure, or unity amongst their magic-users to create something like this."

"Foreign threats or otherwise aside, what's to be done?" asked Royal Purple. "Have we some means of nullifying wild magic en-mass across Equestria? Grimoire?"

"We have the nullifiers in every town and city," said Celestia then, with grim satisfaction.

Grimoire chuckled. "I'd forgotten about that system. A relic from my predecessor. Holding onto it for a rainy day, indeed."

"Equestria was last hit by a wyld storm of this magnitude fifty years ago. We had more forewarning then," said Celestia. "A nullifier was a device that could earth the wild magic in the sky for miles around, enough to take it from the skies above a settlement and focus all the magic onto the device itself. When the magic was contained, the storms could then be safely dealt with by weather teams. Equestria pulled through intact then, and holding onto the devices in every town where they'd been used seemed wise."

"Well, that's something of a relief. Do they require any especial training to be used?" said Royal Purple.

"Nothing beyond what any unicorn with above average magical control and a minimum of strength can achieve," said Grimoire. "There should be one of those in every settlement, I should think."

"Nearly all. Some settlements are dominated by some tribes. And some newer ones have no nullifier." Celestia stood upright to her full height. "To that end, I will receive records indicating those settlements that have been established after the time of the last storm. Either myself or Luna will be able to see them protected."

"All of them at once, Your Highness?" said Hobby sceptically.

"All of them. If the storm strikes during day, I can move wherever the sun shines in an instant. Luna may do the same after nightfall."

"A sensible approach. I propose that the other of us attends to Cloudsdale. I believe it remains the largest purely pegasi settlement, and will require protection absent a unicorn resident," said Luna.

"Cadance," said Celestia, turning to the smaller alicorn. "Canterlot is the largest city in Equestria. I would place its nullifier under your care come tomorrow."

"Consider it done, Auntie," replied Cadance. "What about the other towns and cities in Equestria?"

"For the rest of today, the word shall be put out that a wyld storm is inbound," said Celestia. "All towns shall unearth their nullifiers, place them atop high ground, and see that a competent unicorn helms each one; with all resident ponies safe indoors and isolated homesteads evacuated. See that notice and instructions are given to all local authorities, Royal Purple. Cold Spell, see that weather teams are grounded and kept on stand-by, to begin an immediate clear-up after the magic from the storm is contained. General Hobby, begin a partial Guard mobilisation to assist in the repair of whatever infrastructure will be damaged. If we work swiftly and see that all are informed, not a single pony shall have to suffer come tomorrow."

She rapped a hoof on the table. "Any further information or suggestions, councillors?"

Heads shook around the table.

"Meeting adjourned, then. Let us avert mischief and see Equestria endure."

Simple Expectations

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"Forward into their ranks! Skewer them all!"

A wooden lance-head smacked against Chevalier's bare flank to emphasise the instruction. He turned his head mid-trot to fix his rider with a reproachful look.

"Ow! But Your Draconic Highness, I don't have anything to skewer them with."

"Well … " This briefly disconcerted the tiny white-coated filly on his back, before she rallied and waved her toy lance, threatening the living room's dresser. "Improvise! That's an order!"

"Yes, Dread General Chevauchée. Your arbitrary wish is my command!" said Chevalier, rearing back in appropriately dramatic fashion as he prepared to lunge forward into a sedate canter.

He was interrupted by indignant squeaks from his younger sister. "Talon! I'm Dragon Queen-in-Waiting Talon! We're playing the Draconic Wars! You're Hurricane, remember?"

"Ahhh. That makes more sense," replied Chevalier, nodding and turning back towards the dresser. He raised himself into a rearing position, stopped, and then twisted his head back around. "Wait, wasn't Hurricane a mare?"

"Yeah, but Talon never went on anypony else's back into battle. You have to be Hurricane!"

"What if we make a completely alternate history?" said Chevalier, all-innocent. "One where Talon rode Clover the Clever into battle, and ended up negotiating peacefully with the rebel queens, and Hurricane was actually a stallion all alo-"

"Aggh!" was Chevauchée's less-than-enthusaistic rejoinder, as she took advantage of her perch to lunge forwards and try and attack Chevalier's face as best she could. "You're terrible at this!"

Chevalier wasn't quite sure how he'd ever lived a satisfying life before he'd acquired a younger sibling to casually torment, but damned if he wasn't taking advantage while it lasted. He laughed as he wove his head out of the way of her initial flailing. "Mind my eyes, squirt. I need them for a few things."

"I'm not a squirt!" squeaked Chevauchée in tones high enough to splinter glass as she renewed her assault.

There came a sudden knock on the living room door, and Chevalier fell back to his forehooves. Chevauchée paused, her lance tangled in Chevalier's mane. The door creaked open, and Destrier's voice came from the other side. "Offspring? Are you trying to murder each other again? Are you at least using proper combat technique, as we discussed?" The general poked his helmeted head around the edge, one querying brow raised.

"No, dad. I, in my capacity as Commander Hurricane, am bearing Queen-in-Waiting Talon into battle at Draketooth Mountain. Queen Hook's forces are cunningly disguised as our dresser, but we've out-foxed them," said Chevalier, to which Chevauchée nodded.

Destrier looked from Chevalier maintaining a stoic pose to Chevauchée attempting to discreetly remove her lance from her big brother's mane.

"Could you not tell at a first glance?" asked Chevalier.

Destrier rolled his gaze briefly skywards before clearing his throat. "Your mother and I are heading to the town hall for what's apparently an important matter in need of a general and the town recorder. You stay here and look after your sister, Chev. Don't let the house burn down in our absence."

Chevalier bit back a protest. He'd been hoping to go and see Silver Shield at his house, with a day free of training for both of them. But assuming responsibility in times of need had been hammered into him almost to the genetic level, and he instead nodded. "Will do. What's the matter about?"

"We haven't heard much specific so far, but it's apparently a message from the Royal Court to the whole country," came Sagacity's own voice as she pressed the door further open from behind. She loomed from behind Destrier, a white-coated earth pony, Destrier's wife, Chevalier and Chevauchée's mother and Fort Livery's Recorder of deeds. Small bags under her eyes hinted at some residual fatigue from her late homecoming last night. "Apparently, Equestria's in imminent and mortal danger."

"Again?" Chevalier grinned. He felt Chevauchée finally extract the lance and wriggle off his back. "I'll keep it from hitting the house while you're out. How long will you be?"

"Maybe an hour, maybe more, maybe less, maybe until heat death kicks in and the world collapses into the Abyss once more. You know how Red Tape's meetings go," replied Sagacity.

"If we're kept well into the evening or get carried off by a pack of timber wolves en-route, there's still oatmeal in a pot on the oven," said Destrier, heading for the door and ushering Sagacity along with him. "See you both later."

Chevalier waved them off, craning his head to see them leave through the front door, and then turned back to Chevauchée. "Right, not-a-squirt-apparently. What do you – Arrgh!" The lance stabbed up at him the moment he turned. He caught the head straight in the middle of his torso and rolled over to one side, flailing his limbs as if in mortal agony. "Betrayal! Cruel and unusual betrayal!"

"Now we're playing Talon's Reversal!" said Chevauchée, stumbling forwards to get the lance back. "You're still Hurricane!"

"Gauze? If I might prevail upon you?"

Zephyr Gauze looked up from the last few pages of Daring Do and the Griffon's Goblet, recognising with some surprise the head farrier of the clinic. Hippocratic, an elderly earth pony mare with apparent previous service as a Guard medic under her belt, trotted primly into his empty office, her long white coat trailing on the floor.

"Oh, certainly. What do you need?" he said, placing the book down the desk and stepping out from behind his desk. The last time he'd interacted to any great extent with Hippocratic was when he'd first come to the clinic two weeks ago. He'd introduced himself as a student on a placement from Trottingham University, she'd apparently resisted the urge to recoil with horror, and then she'd led him to his dusty office. If he could make a good and professional impression now, at last, then maybe …

"The mayor has apparently received orders from Princess Celestia, and has called an emergency meeting at the town hall. He has requested the presence of the town's head farrier. In my absence, I would, ah, ask that you cover my appointments for today. I understand you don't have any scheduled to deal with yourself."

Because you and the others keep stealing mine, bubbled up the vaguely resentful thought. Zephyr quashed it and said, "Of course. I'll be all too glad to handle them."

"They're simple cases. Not too hard to deal with," said Hippocratic, seemingly to reassure herself as much as to inform Zephyr. "You'll be able to handle them? Hickory will be able to give you the list and details, direct them onto you - "

"I assure you, they'll be fine in my hooves," said Zephyr in as reassuring a tone as he could. "I'll get their details and prepare accordingly."

Hippocratic looked him over, her expression still betraying a certain measure of dread . "You're quite sure?"

Flying feathers, what did prior generations of farrier students do that this sort of impression had to worked past – blazed the same line of thought, which Zephyr didn't consider himself brave enough to seek an answer for. Instead, he nodded serenely.

Hippocratic still looked uncertain, and when she left, it was with many a glance backwards. Zephyr ignored her as best he could, instead focusing upon making sure his equipment was as ready as ever.

When Hickory, the clinic's receptionist, wandered by his office to give him a clipboard with the names and ailments of the ponies due to arrive, Zephyr was all but fluttering around his office with nervous excitement. The unicorn yesterday should have tempered him, should have greatly diminished this need of Zephyr's, even. Instead, his appetite had only been increased.

He had been assured by older graduated farriers back in the university that his genuine desire to help everypony who hurt was a passing and unnatural phase that he would soon be well rid of. This seemed impossible then, and it seemed impossible now.

The time came, and he leaned out of his office door and into the reception area. "Mr Thunder Clap?"

A dun-coated pegasus stallion got up from a chair, wincing as what looked like a twisted pinion shifted. Zephyr held the door open for him as he trotted inside.

"You're looking awfully stallionish, Farrier Hippocratic," said Thunder Clap with a slightly pained chuckle as the door closed behind him.

"I'm covering her appointments for the day. Zephyr Gauze, at your service" said Zephyr smoothly, making sure the patient was seated. "Twisted pinion, I assume?"

"You – ow – assume correctly."

"Mind if I ask how?" said Zephyr, leaning in for a closer look.

"Gust at mid-altitude. Took me by surprise and bounced me right off the fort wall," started Thunder Clap. He shook his head. "Some days, I get the impression the weather just doesn't want to be managed at all."

Skewbald had scarcely stepped outside his front door when the call rang out. "You there! Are you the student from Canterlot?"

He briefly wondered if this was his new lot in life, to be continually harassed by Fort Liverians, and that this was some sort of drawn-out punishment by Princess Celestia rather than an attempted learning opportunity. He turned in the direction of the call, to the burly and grey-coated stallion that had produced it. "Last I checked, yes."

The stallion snorted with satisfaction. Skewbald suddenly recognised him as one of the assistants that had been floating around the town hall last night. "Mayor Red Tape requests your presence at a meeting in the town hall, post-haste."

Skewbald juggled his inclination to tell the stallion where he could stick another meeting with the mayor with curiosity about this might actually involve. He'd had a plan of action when stepping out of his door; he'd rested a few hours into the early afternoon after the incident with the pegasi, and then intended to deliver the letter to Twilight Sparkle and see what the local library could offer. Getting some food from the general store was also intended to come in as an objective somewhere on the list, as was enquiring about a job at the post office – he had enough bits to postpone that for a few days yet, however.

Curiosity won out. "What's the meeting about?" he asked, stepping towards the assistant, who, seemingly encouraged by this, started trotting in the direction of the front of the town hall. Skewbald followed him.

"There's apparently a wyld storm inbound," replied the assistant. "They're going to unearth the old nullifier, and that might need a competent unicorn at its helm. The fortuitous recent arrival of a student from the School for Gifted Unicorns came up in the discussion."

A wyld storm? That would explain the aberrant weather of late. Using the nullifier (something Skewbald had never done before, though if any vaguely savvy cretin with a horn plucked off the streets could use it, there was no reason he couldn't) wouldn't be too much of an ordeal.

In fact, this seemed promising now that he thought on it. There was probably going to be a certain amount of kudos to be gained in this town from doing something like helming its nullifier in a time of need, and that might pay off in terms of favours and requests Skewbald could make later.

A new spring entered Skewbald's step as he followed the mayor's assistant around the building, carefully stepping over puddles produced by the torrential rain yesterday. Reaching the front, they passed through the open door and into the hallway, which here consisted of the entire circular ground floor of the building. It seemed quiet in the place, save for a secretary furiously tapping away at a typewriter behind an over-large desk and for the muted sounds of a discussion with multiple participants talking at once from a room upstairs. The assistant made for the circular staircase that ran up and around the building, and Skewbald continued to follow him.

They stopped at the third floor, outside the door for the level, from which the sounds of a discussion could be clearly made out. The assistant knocked twice, and the discussion stopped. A call of "Come in!" issued, and the assistant pressed down on the door's ornate handle with his hoof, granting entry.

Ponies were already seated at the round table at the room's centre, some of which Skewbald recognised as they turned to face him. He recognised Mayor Red Tape, a pegasus stallion with a vivid red coat and drooping white whiskers, sitting at the opposite end of the room with papers spread out before him. To his right, there was a gaunt-looking Guard specimen in purple armour, and to his left, an earth pony mare in a farrier's coat. Skewbald knew neither of them, though he guessed they were the head of the Guard presence and the local farrier's clinic respectively. Another mare next to the Guard officer seemed to be carefully picking her way through a towering stack of papers, and several other ponies who Skewbald took to be members of whatever council this town elected crowded that end of the table as well. Most of them could probably be safely dismissed from mind.

"Ah, we have a student! Thank you, Helping Hoof," announced Red Tape, and with a nod, the stallion who had escorted Skewbald left the room, closing the door behind him. Skewbald stepped slowly towards the table, aware of the gathering regarding him with some interest. "Skewbald, wasn't it?"

"Good day. I believe I was called here for something about a wyld storm?" Assume good manners; present yourself as if you were knowledgeable. Even Skewbald himself could instinctively feel somewhat more well-disposed to a pony that followed those rules.

"Helping Hoof gave you some of the details, then? A wyld storm indeed." Red Tape reached out and snared a paper near the stack-sorting mare, pulling it closer to him to examine it. "Category Five or thereabouts, due to hit us at about eight o'clock tomorrow evening. Word got to us from the palace at about mid-day, and I've been going over plans with the assorted miscreants here." There came chokes and protests from around the table which Red Tape blithely ignored. "We've sorted out everything – the announcement I'll make in an hour, the patrols General Destrier here will dispatch to the isolated farmsteads to see them warned and taken to safety if they want it, where the farriers will be stationed in case of emergency, and some good sturdy evacuation points – by which I mean the fort and every space inside it."

"Indeed," muttered the general. "You've been remarkably – nay, uncharacteristically efficient."

"I can neither confirm nor deny whether I've been recently replaced by a changeling," said Red Tape. "I will happily confirm, however, that I can be efficient when I need to be. It's just more fun the rest of the time to watch you all get frustrated."

"And to think you keep on winning re-election," said the farrier dryly.

"I'm as amazed as you are most of the time, Hippocratic. But we digress. The point is, we still require a unicorn with their head on their shoulders working that nullifier when the storm comes plunging down." Red Tape turned back to Skewbald. "You're from the School in Canterlot, and I understand scholarships there aren't handed out as party favours. You've got the grades – and an apparently secret mission from the Princess herself – to give me confidence. If you volunteered – there's nothing binding you, I add – then you'd earn my thanks, certainly."

Skewbald didn't need to make his mind up. He just needed to present the appropriate enthusiasm. "I'd be more than happy to helm the nullifier for Fort Livery. It's the least I can do as a guest."

"Good show, that unicorn," said Red Tape approvingly while the rest of the table. "We'd be placing the nullifier on top of the fort's highest tower – the higher-up, the better, apparently – and you'd get a good resilient cloak with weighting in the trim and nullweave throughout. You won't get blown away or transformed inside-out or what-have-you with that all about you."

"There'd also be a Guard unicorn on standby if you become incapacitated," said the general. He seemed familiar to Skewbald in no way that he could immediately place, and seemed to be regarding him with a measured hardness. "Cadet Comet Trail will be able to keep you covered."

"That's a comfort," said Skewbald, immediately forgetting the name. "I wouldn't mind looking at the nullifier itself and any documentation it might have, while I'm here. I assume it's yet in storage?"

"Here's the documentation," said the stack-sorting mare suddenly, pushing what looked to be an old-fashioned leaflet across the table at Skewbald. She rose to her hooves as well. "I'll show you the nullifier as well. It's currently in the building's basement. With your leave, everypony."

There was indeed a nullifier in the town hall's basement. There even turned out to be an old instructional film reel as well, of all the joys.

"Good day, everypony!" said the scratchy voice from the black and white image produced by the town hall's projector. A genuinely and worryingly (one informed the other) enthusiastic pegasus mare trotted across a monochrome meadow, accompanied by a unicorn stallion who seemed to keep glancing about his environment in a paranoid manner. "I'm Sunny Countenance, and with me is my ever-faithful assistant, Punching Bag!"

"Hurrah," said the unicorn in a tone almost too quiet for the primitive film to have picked up.

"You may remember us from other instructional films such as 'Hydra Self-Defence: A Practical Demonstration' and 'First-Aid In Polar, Desert, And Acidic Environments' - "

"I remember precisely none of those, but your prompting is appreciated," muttered Skewbald. He was perched on a dusty bench in the darkened basement, watching the film displayed onto a bare wall.

"Oh, shush," said the mare, who had introduced herself as Sagacity. She sat next to him, riveted on the film. "This is nostalgic for me. I remember when they moved on to Bridleway."

"- But today, we're going to walk you through the ins and outs of operating a nullifier!" A still image of what was either a brightly-shimmering cloud in a forest or a smear on the reel replaced the pair. "Nullifiers are used to counteract the chaotic effects of wild magic! If left unchecked, wild magic can undo and change things about it in an unpredictable manner - " This came accompanied by a still shot of Punching Bag screaming and trying to flee from a swarm of bees emerging from a distant hive, each bee about the size of a wagon. "Luckily, the Magic Office came up with the nifty solution of nullifiers a few years ago to protect against the great wyld storm that hit Equestria then. Walk us through how it works, my faithful assistant!"

A diagram of the nullifier popped up, a white obelisk shape about three times the height of a pony with a metal band about it at about operating height. It was similar to the diagram in the back of the old leaflet, which Skewbald had hovering and spread-out in the air beside him. "The nullifier works by essentially drawing in the wild magic from the environment into itself. Once inside, the magic is able to be processed naturally by enchanted mechanisms within the base of the nullifier and converted into light, thus removing it safely." The stallion's voice wasn't only bereft of enthusiasm; it actively sucked it from the very air.

Arrows appeared on the diagram, pointing to components and control on the base. "To make sure that the nullifier operates properly, a unicorn must be able to attend to the controls and permit the automated processes access to a small portion of their own magic for as long as the nullifier is in operation. The red button at the left turns on the mechanisms and makes the nullifier able to safely process the wild magic. The rate of the process is indicated by the position of the dial on the scale here. To keep this process controlled and to make sure nothing gets damaged inside the nullifier, the operating unicorn must make sure that the dial keeps out of the red section of the scale as much as possible, and ideally keep it in the middle of the scale to keep the process efficient. This they can do by shifting the lever here in the desired direction with their magic. Mechanisms inside the nullifier can handle the rest."

"Very clever! Whatever will the Magic Office think of next?"

"I shudder to think."

"Oh, you card." The diagram vanished, and was replaced by a film of ponies with a nullifier atop a cliff-top, pointing it up towards a broiling sky. "With nullifiers, ponies have been able to keep themselves safe from wyld storms ..."

Now a film of a small nullifier being wheeled into an arcane laboratory, while some unicorn students hovered by and looked sheepish. "... Quickly remove any threat from when we make mistakes ourselves – the Magic Office can't get it right all the time, can they, Punching Bag?"

"Apparently not."

" … And also clear high-magic areas to make them safe for pony habitation." This time, the film was of what appeared to be some edge of the vast Everfree forest, with Punching Bag manning an active nullifier that was levelled toward the forest like a lance. A large shape moved between the trees, and then pounced out into the open, taking the form of a somewhat perturbed manticore. Punching Bag got off a brief "Oh, mother of -" before the manticore pounced and the film abruptly shorted out, to be replaced with Sunny Countenance trotting through the meadow.

"Don't worry, everypony. Punching Bag, as always, eventually made a complete recovery! But that brings me onto the second part of this video. Operating your nullifier safely is simple, but requires that -"

Skewbald reached out with his magic and stopped the reel running. He considered the diagram in the leaflet again.

"They're both retired now, I assume?" he said.

"Oh yes. Just a couple of years ago, actually," replied Sagacity.

"And like that, Equestria seems a little sunnier in my eyes," said Skewbald, jumping off the bench and keeping a hold of the leaflet. "That seems satisfactory. I'll take this home for study and give it back to you afterwards."

"Do so," said Sagacity. She looked toward Fort Livery's nullifier itself, a great vague shape still covered by a dusty tarpaulin. "We'll test the nullifier to be sure it works, and then get some cadets to wheel it up to the top of the fort's tower. We'll arrange to call on you when the hour's at hand."

Skewbald didn't respond. He was already leaving the basement via the winding stairs, giving the leaflet another look over.

This was going to be absurdly simple.

The afternoon, the evening, and the night thereafter passed without any noted incident.

It wasn't until the next morning, the day of the storm, that anypony discovered the initial rain of frogs.

The Storm's Victory

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Herding frogs turned out to be much harder than it sounded.

Once other duties for the day started competing for their attention, the Guard stopped trying.

Skewbald lay on his bed, quietly reading The Theory And Formation Of Glamours: Part Four. A candle suspended on the wall filled the room with a soft yellow light. From the window to his side, what was as yet an early afternoon appeared to have been plunged into an early night. The muffled roar of thunder – as well as another curious drone which he couldn't quite identify the source of – should have been a distraction, but instead somehow lulled him into relaxation.

A courier-bell sat still on his bedside table, arcane markings engraved across its metal surface. They glowed suddenly, and the bell rang. Skewbald glanced around at it, knowing that that was the summons from the fort. With a reluctant sigh, he put the book aside, and reached out to levitate a packed and ready saddlebag onto his back. It wasn't heavy, containing as it did the nullifier's leaflet, a daisy sandwich, and a thermos of coffee.

It was time. And, judging by the clock on his wall, before time as well – the storm must have moved in faster than expected.

Skewbald checked the saddle-bag's straps were secure, clambered off his bed, and made for the front door. He reached for the handle, braced himself for stiff winds and chill, and opened it to trot forth to the outside world.

Then the source of the curious drone revealed itself, and he stopped in his tracks.

Someday, Skewbald swore to himself, he would open his own front door, and there would not be some absurd problem on the other side of it demanding his attention.

"Scat, the lot of you! Go on, away with you!"

The army of frogs outside Skewbald's front door seemed entirely unsympathetic to his heartfelt plea, nor did they seem to be concerned by the gaze of pure and concentrated bale he directed upon them. They were all but a solid mass, a new frog always immediately leaping in to occupy the space another frog would leave as it hopped away. Occasionally, one of the gusts of wind that came pelting down the street would knock a leaper into a cluster of their comrades, and there would follow much aggrieved croaking.

They were all entirely new to this whole existence business, and were mostly remaining still and unmovable, their bulging eyes flickering from point to point as they tried to sort out the world around them. They were communicating entirely via what Skewbald could only assume was a competition to produce the most aggravating ribbet. Most saliently, they had chosen to congregate outside his front door.

Thunder rolled from the iron-grey sky above. Skewbald tried diplomacy once more, oblivious to the glances or muted cackles he was receiving from the few laden-down passers-by still making their way to the fort.

"Get lost!" He threateningly waved a hoof in their direction to emphasise the point. "I have a fort tower to get to, and you are not helping."

The ribbeting mass responded to this by turning in his direction, jerking their pupils to roughly track the movements of the hoof, and extemporised on their thoughts on this development to all their immediate peers while remaining planted firmly in place.

Skewbald bit back a tirade, looked again for any pattern of empty spaces he could hop across without plastering frog all over the bottom of his hoof, and failed to so much as find a single one.

He focused briefly on a point in the air above the central body of the frogs, swiftly heated the air with a calculated outpour of magic, and produced a short but sharp thunderclap with the expansion and shockwave this produced. It briefly deafened him, and from what he could hear as his eyes reflexively shut, several nearby windows must have rattled. If that hadn't worked...

Skewbald opened his eyes. The frogs had turned to direct their attention to the point where the thunderclap had come from. One croaked in a perturbed manner, which others echoed; and then the initial shock became a redoubled wave of fascinated ribbeting.

The noise rose. The last ponies nearby trooped away. Skewbald breathed heavily.

In the end, what proved remarkably effective was levitating a random frog up off the ground, tossing it sharply so that it smacked into a group of other frogs, observing the fleeing frog group and the lovely knock-on effect it had of compelling neighbouring groups to start hopping, and then repeating the process with a certain vicious satisfaction until the horde had been dispersed, the members fleeing in all directions while croaking with terrified confusion.

Skewbald stepped primly out of his front door, another burst of magic slamming it shut behind him, while he levitated the exceedingly woozy frog-bludgeon up before his face.

"I think you ought to know that you entirely deserved that, and that it was - " he started.

The frog opened its mouth, and with a thoroughly static-infused croak, it spat forth a bolt of lightning faster than Skewbald could as much as blink. The lightning slammed right between his eyes, and Skewbald's capacity to control his muscles and form coherent thoughts briefly found something much more interesting to do elsewhere. He fell groundwards with a pained and startled, " - entaaaAAGH!" His magic winked out and the frog fell from his grasp, took a few moments to gather itself, and then beat a hasty retreat.

"Gyergh?" was Skewbald's first attempt at speech, after a few seconds of twitching in the street had passed. "Wha – what? I – gah!"

He was going to kill the wyld storm.

The sky rumbled again as if in mockery, a forbidding dark-grey expanse that seemed to have cast the day into a premature night. At the horizon, threads of red and green seemed to briefly ripple through it, stirring up the frothing clouds ever further. Distant pulses of lightning came from it, thunder applauding each one a few moments after.

Skewbald didn't notice the shadow falling across him until it spoke with a soft Trottingham voice that was vaguely familiar to him. "Excuse me, are you alright?"

"Yes. I'm enjoying a nice lie-down in the fresh summer sunshine, you dolt." There weren't any frogs left nearby for a stress-relieving pulping, so throwing feeble barbs at this newcomer would have to do. He would have tried to muster something more scathing, but his brain still felt as though it had been whisked into a fine froth.

Most sensible ponies would have trotted away at that point, in Skewbald's experience, but this one still seemed to be hovering nearby after a moment had passed. Skewbald grunted with aggravation as he turned his head to see them. Them turned out to be a green-coated, blond-maned pegasus stallion, with heavy-duty farrier's saddlebags strapped over his back and what appeared to be rolls of gauze bandages as his Cutie Mark. He was looking at Skewbald with some concern, as if he'd somehow become invested in Skewbald's wellbeing for whatever reason an unpaid farrier might cook up for themselves.

It was the farrier he'd encountered and blown off, Zephyr-something. And rather than leaving Skewbald alone, he extended a hoof downwards and asked, "Do you need a help up?" A wry grin flickered briefly across his expression. "We should stop meeting like this, you know."

"I can do that – arrgh – myself." It took some wriggling, and his legs refused to return to his control without a great deal of angry cogitation in their direction, but Skewbald was able to eventually roll over onto his belly and push himself upright to a standing position. "See? I can - "

All things considered, he opted to not vocally complain when the farrier quickly moved to lean against him as he fell to one side.

"Frog got me," Skewbald muttered, as they began to trot along awkwardly in the direction of the fort. The farrier had folded a wing over Skewbald, keeping him supported whenever his balance threatened to go wandering again. "Lightning. Somehow."

"You're the second I've had to deal with there," said Zephyr. "Don't worry. The wooziness should wear off after a few minutes. Did you try just lifting them up and putting them down elsewhere? They're quite placid; that worked for nearly everypony else."

"... In a sense. Just forcing them out of the way was faster." Skewbald shook his head to try and clear off some of the remaining fuzziness. Next time, he wouldn't make his face a convenient target.

He looked up; over the buildings, he could make out the fort's great towers, their flagpoles bare. Atop the highest of them, stark against the sky, a white obelisk jagged upwards. He nearly stumbled over a drainpipe, and turned his attention back to the path winding between the buildings.

"Do you not think there's maybe a moral lesson in all this?" said Zephyr after a few moments, with some injected levity in his tone. "About treating other creatures kindly no matter how much they aggravate you and all that sort of thing?"

Skewbald merely responded with a snort. "No. You just don't let them near your face, that's all. There's more than a few archaic rituals with equally archaic ingredients that I'm sure can only benefit enormously from this influx."

Zephyr didn't respond to that. They emerged onto a long, broad street leading up the gentle slope to the fort itself, the looming walls strewn with lights across the worn battlements. A crowd of ponies waited before them; townsponies seeking shelter from the storm, families from further out in the countryside with what looked to be significant portions of their worldly goods braced across their backs, crying foals, the mayor's assistants galloping to and fro with sheaths of paper, and several squadrons of Guard trying to maintain some sort of order before the open main gate of the fort, through which the crowd were allowed to trickle through. At the side, a determined-looking cadet with a broom in his mouth shooed a cluster of frogs away down the slope.

"Remain calm and orderly!" An orange-coated Guard mare addressed the crowd from atop the fort's gatehouse, the strain in her voice suggesting she'd done this recently and often. "Approach the fort entrance, and Guard cadets on the other side will escort you to a safe location within the main fort building! Excess personal belongings must be stored separately, for which receipts will be issued if desired! Food and water will be available, as well as milk for younger foals! If you're part of a family group, remain together, and if you become separated, ask the nearest free cadet for assistance! Remain calm and orderly! - "

"Do you need some help getting to a spot in the fort?" said Zephyr gently, his voice still soft in utter contrast to the Guard mare's. "I don't have to be at my own post yet, so if you need ..."

"I'll be fine," said Skewbald, feeling at last in full control of his legs again, and stepping away from the farrier. "I'm not some evacuee." He cast an eye over the crowd, which was moving far too slowly into the fort for his patience.

"You're not?" said Zephyr sceptically. "Then what are you doing here?"

"Helming the nullifier," replied Skewbald, a movement by the fort catching his attention. An armoured cadet was cantering in his direction around the edge of the crowd. Skewbald narrowed his gaze, and realised that they – a unicorn mare, on closer inspection – were waving directly at him.

"You there!" the cadet shouted, skirting the crowd and continuing to wave at Skewbald. She neared him and Zephyr, regarding each in turn appraisingly. "Are you the student from the School for Gifted Unicorns? Skewbald Doul, correct?"

"Yes. Why?"

"General Destrier said you'd be coming. The nullifier's at the top of the riverside tower – tallest one, you can't miss it. Whoever's on guard will let you right through." The cadet seemed to remember something, and extended her hoof. "Cadet First-Class Comet Trail, by the way. I'm your understudy for tonight should anything go horribly wrong."

"Nothing will," replied Skewbald, perfunctorily shaking her hoof. "Will whoever's guarding the fort gate let me through quickly as well?"

"I should think so. You as well, farrier," said Comet Trail, turning to Zephyr. "Just step up and let the guards see your farrier's bag; they'll let you on through to your designated spot -"

Skewbald quickly trotted away from them towards the gatehouse while they were occupied, taking a path around the edge of the crowd. He had no need to waste more time with the two, and with any luck the ponies at the gate wouldn't impede him.

At the gatehouse itself, the crowd was as-yet relatively orderly. A pair of cadets and a pegasus stallion in silver Guard armour were keeping the influx controlled, waiting for a cadet returning from elsewhere in the fort to take the next pony or family in hoof. A stressed-looking mare and stallion with a foal in a pram were hurried through, one of the cadets breaking off to lead them in, and Skewbald quickly trotted in ahead of those next in line, an elderly unicorn mare with young grandchildren at either side.

"Excuse me," said Skewbald to the pegasus officer, ignoring the calls of protest from behind him. The officer looked up at Skewbald, his expression a bright and brittle smile.

"Good day, sir," said the officer. "Shall we have a talk about the concept of 'queuing', or shall I just tell you to get to the back of the line now?"

"Alternatively, you could let me through to helm your town's nullifier," snapped Skewbald. He levitated the device's leaflet out of his saddlebag and waved it in the pegasus's direction, while turning slightly to make his cutie mark visible. "Skewbald Doul. School for Gifted Unicorns, etcetera."

The officer squinted, and then grunted dismissively. "Oh, rapture, our saviour is come unto us. Go through to the Riverside tower. Closest stairs are on the west wall. Try not to get too lost, now."

Skewbald brushed past him before he'd even finished talking, trotting into the fort proper and leaving him to address the old unicorn coming up behind Skewbald. "Apologies for that, Mrs Cygnus. Follow the cadet here to -"

Inside the fort itself, Skewbald took a moment to get his bearings. Within the walls, a great and low-slung stone keep filled much of the fort's space. Most of the ponies Skewbald could see were cadets escorting others through the various open doors leading into the keep, and cadets filtering out of the keep at a swift trot, their escorts presumably left somewhere within. Looking up, he saw a couple of pegasi officers taking down the last of the flags that adorned the multitude of poles dotted around the keep's exterior. They struggled to maintain steady flights in the sudden winds that had picked up.

He sighted the tallest tower at the eastern side, the white shape of the nullifier visible at its top. Stone steps ran down from the doors set at either side of it, descending to the level of the rest of the walls. Another stone door sat at the base of the tower, through which Skewbald could glimpse stairs. He made for the door at a brisk canter, speeding nearly to a gallop when he began to feel the first fat raindrops splashing down against his hide.

Reaching the safety of the door, if not before he managed to be comprehensively drenched by the sudden rain, Skewbald knocked it shut behind him with a swung hoof, leaving him in the pitch-darkness of the tower's base. He took a moment to shake himself dry, listening to the low drone of raindrops hammering off the stone walls outside.

Skewbald concentrated and summoned light from the tip of his horn, sending cold green-hued illumination spilling across the dark stone of the walls and up the spiral staircase. He scrutinised the stairs, the steps of which seemed to have been made for a much larger pony than himself. Hoofprints had been impressed into the thin layer of dust, and from far above he thought he could hear voices.

He started to climb the stairs, and became grateful for the several landings en-route where he could stop and briefly gather breath. Arrowslits ran along the wall to his left all the while, intermittently letting natural light into the tower whenever lightning flashed in the sky without.

The distant voices became clearer and clearer as Skewbald climbed the stairs, and he guessed that these were the guards Comet Trail had mentioned. They seemed to be on the last landing, and he caught glimpse of a soft orange light coming from there.

Eventually, he heaved himself up onto the last landing and saw the source of the light; a fire-fly lantern containing several of the insects, sitting on the middle of the floor. A pair of earth ponies in bronze-coloured cadet armour stood by it, warm dark cloaks tucked about their shoulders. One of them turned to face him, and Skewbald recognised the cadet, Chevalier, from the day before yesterday. Chevalier seemed about to demand identification, and then relaxed as he recognised Skewbald.

"We've got our unicorn," said Chevalier, nodding to the other cadet before turning his attention back to Skewbald. He didn't appear to be fazed from their last meeting, instead simply seeming glad that Skewbald had made it. "About time as well. The storm seems like it's really picking up. How's everypony doing out there?"

"Everypony seems to be getting safely into the fort. I assume that's the desired course of events," replied Skewbald. He looked behind the cadets to a last section of staircase winding up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The wind from outside was all but tangible to Skewbald as it scraped and howled across the surface beyond. "Has the nullifier been fully deployed?"

"We believe so," said the other cadet, whose own coat was silvery in contrast to Chevalier's white. "The control panel's been protected by a screen against the rain, and it's been tethered down so that it doesn't go flying all the way to the Utmost South or where-have-you. We're here in case something goes wrong and you need help, whatever that help may be. Did you meet Comet Trail en-route?"

"I did. She explained she was my understudy, and hence useless." Skewbald glanced again at the stairs. "It's up there, I take it?"

"Yes -" started the silver-coated cadet, his ears flattened slightly and his tone slightly less warm.

"Good," replied Skewbald, trotting around them and up the stairs, focusing on the latch for the trapdoor. He expected driving wind and rain when he opened it, reached out with his magic, and wasn't disappointed. Rain came slamming down, and he quickly summoned up his protective dome to ward off the worst of it. The wind was a different matter, threatening to send him tumbling backwards down the stairs, and it took nearly all the strength he had to climb against it.

"Leave the door open!" called Chevalier, straining to make himself heard. "Just so that we can get up quickly if need be!"

Skewbald pulled himself up past the last step, leaving the trapdoor wide open on the stone surface of the tower. He raised his head to face into the buffeting wind, angling his protective dome to try and keep the force of it from sweeping his glasses away. Before him, there rested the nullifier.

It stabbed up towards the seething black sky like a white lance, trembling only slightly in the fury of the storm. The white material of it came to a point, and shimmered slightly as small parts of its innards processed the growing level of wild magic in the air. Under a stiff canvas canopy, open at one side and wrapping around the base like a shell, the control panel for it gleamed. On the stone ground within the canopy was Red Tape's promised cloak.

Skewbald stepped inside, the canopy immediately seeming to muffle the worst of the storm. He levitated the cloak up and around himself with some effort; it was as weighty as Red Tape had claimed. Once the hood had been draped over his head, he felt even more insulated. It was waterproof, warm, and the nullweave which would shrug off most magic that might strike at him was an entirely welcome bonus.

He turned to the control panel. Everything the leaflet and the film had promised was there, everything he'd need to handle it.

He looked to the sky. Past the protective dome of his magic, upon which raindrops constantly pelted, the sky was a churning abyss, elemental forces beating at its heart and raw magic sending great sheets of light flickering through it in an eye-blink.

It wasn't yet descending, ready to be caught by the nullifier. Skewbald pulled out his thermos and sandwich. And he waited.

Celestia flew through the skies above Seaddle. The lights of the little port's houses gleamed below her, the ponies here having battened down in their own homes rather than go to a central refuge. The sea slammed itself against the coloured stone wharf like a raging beast, and the forest at the town's back whipped itself into a rustling frenzy in the midst of the wind. Both she quietened with but a thought; the townsponies hardly needed more cares competing for their attention.

The stormclouds over the port weren't descending yet; no streamers of chaotic energy came whipping down from them. Celestia focused briefly, and in an instant she was flying over Appaloosa.

No rain fell here, on these parched red plains. But the storm hung heavy and oppressive regardless, and the magical energies within it flared with terrible force. The town and the orchard on its outskirts were both illuminated with mad and ever-changing colours. The storm here was ready to break.

As Celestia flew, green flames constantly materialised in the air around her, spitting out paper. Messaging-fire, from all the towns in Equestria to her presence, bearing word of their readiness for what followed. Many of the names she recognised as past students in her School; others that she didn't recognise would the most magically-adept unicorns in their community.

Manehattan bade her know that Moondancer helmed their nullifier atop their highest building, that they were ready. Canterlot informed her that Cadance, with Captain Shining Armour in watchful attendance, was at the city's nullifier. Rune Carver stood ready in San Franciscolt. Each paper was spat into existence around Celestia, was immediately read, and was then rolled away into the gilded saddlebag she bore to join the multitude already there. All were carefully noted, and she waited with all due anticipation for those yet to come.

Baltimare's message informed her that Lapis Lazuli was ready at their nullifier, and that their own storm was yet to break. Twilight Sparkle's letter, borne by Spike's own enchanted messaging-fire, informed Celestia that she had Ponyville's nullifier well in hoof. A letter from Fort Livery told her that Skewbald Doul was now helming their nullifier – and wasn't that fine serendipity. Celestia briefly smiled at it, and then turned her attention back to the storm.

A cloud was about to break near her. Celestia saw it pulse, beating as if a heart pounded within it to the breaking-point – and then it did. Teal-edged lightning lashed out of it in an instant, aiming for Appaloosa.

It stopped in the next instant. To Celestia, it had seemed to move almost comically slow, and her power contained it and dispersed it with little exertion. It fell apart into motes of harmless light, and Celestia turned her attention to the other clouds. None of them were threatening the town yet, and so in the next instant, she flew into the skies over Omareha.

A song from her distant fillyhood in an earth pony tribe came to Celestia's mind then. She found herself singing it softly. "Come little foal an be thou still, put rain and tumult from worry -"

A thunderhead screamed above, magic ripping out of it in an eruption of light and concussive noise. Celestia dove right up at it, and the wild magic faltered, drew back, and devoured itself, less than half a second after it had first emerged.

She had memories – vivid in spite of the passage of years – of curling up next to her own mother while a storm raged outwith their cold hut, and of hearing the same song sung gently to her. Amazing, that she still had the memories.

"- The winds shall cease an dark shall pass, let dawn and sun find thou merry - " Seaddle, again, and now the storm about her buffeted with force that would have sent a dragon crashing down to the ground. She remained a still point in the sky, and the calm about her radiated outwards. Streams of magic sparked and vanished, and the clouds stopped in their wild routes.

"- The sky shall turn and storms shall die, let bright hope return with its grace -"

A last letter popped into existence before her, in a flash of dark blue fire. The message was short.

Cloudsdale is secure. Best of luck, sister.

Celestia smiled, and stared down the storm over Salt Lick City.

"- See the night and all chaos pass, and let harmony take its place," she finished. She tore the stormclouds apart with a thought, aware of the unscratched layers far above it, and raised her head to face them with grim determination.

From below her, from every town she flew over, she could feel the fear and anticipation of her little ponies as an all-but-tangible force pressing up into the sky.

With one great sweep of magic, Celestia soothed their fears, stilled their terrors, softened anxiety so that hope would have more room to flourish.

With another, she did battle with the storm.

At Skewbald's back, the distant noise of the crowd filing into the fort had gone completely. He turned and peered out over the tower's side, and saw nopony still out in the open.

Excellent. It was now just him and the storm, which had built to a fever-pitch. The protective canopy all but buckled in the gale-force winds, and the nullifier's body gleamed a constant, steady white from the gradually-escalating level of background wild magic.

Above Skewbald, the morass of black clouds drifted in the shape of a spiral, coming to one central point that practically throbbed with magical power. It drew in all it could from its surroundings like a whirlpool, and then – with the same ponderous unstoppability that a falling mountain would have possessed – it began to descend.

It was time. Skewbald kept a watchful eye on the nullifer's control panel, and reached out for the big red button at the left. It sank in, and with an appropriately enthusiastic powering-up roar from the mechanisms within the nullifier, the whole device started to tremble. The white light suffusing from it began to grow in brightness; the storm above seemed to take pause.

Then there was an alarming gurgle from within the nullifier, an even more alarming screeching from some component of the mechanisms, and a downright-appalling ebbing in the light streaming from its body. The innards fell silent, and the storm's raging continued unabated.

Skewbald stared at the device for but a second, regretting having wasted his entire good bale on the frogs earlier, before he reached out for the front of the control panel. A moment's questing with his magic found the screws holding it in place; a moment's focused telekinesis yanked it free. The front panel clattered on the ground, and Skewbald leaned in to investigate the workings.

Past the now-exposed and naked-seeming button and scale, the mix of enchanted pieces and bright steel clockwork glittered. But in the centre, a section of the delicate cogs and gears had turned to little more than a solid patch of rust. Skewbald gingerly probed it, and it crumbled apart.

He took a step back. This was …

… 'less than convenient' was the politest possible way of putting it. This would require some thought. The storm roared as it continued to descend. This would require some exceedingly good thought.

There was a bare metal flag-pole next to him, jutting out of the crenellations. The first impressions of some exceedingly good thought came to him just as the storm broke.

A bolt of crimson-edged lightning zigzagged down from the sky, aiming straight for the tower. Skewbald didn't have time to think, time to pass through panic and come up with a plan, before it slammed into the side of the tower past the nullifier. He staggered back, briefly blinded by the flash, and the thunder that came pealing on its heels knocked the rest of his senses away.

Wind drove down, stronger than anything Skewbald had yet felt, strong enough to almost lift him away in spite of the weighted cloak. The nullifier wobbled wildly, and Skewbald realised only too late that the lightning-strike, whatever else it had done, had ripped apart the device's tethers on one side.

The nullifier swayed too far. It loomed over Skewbald, and with what seemed like a scream of triumph from the storm, came crashing down. Still dazed, he bolted to one side to try and avoid it, half a second too late.

It crashed down, catching one of his back legs as it did so. He was knocked straight to the ground, the pain that immediately shot up from his back leg becoming a mass of white-noise that made thought impossible. Skewbald screamed with the sudden agony as he tried to pull himself free from the overbearing weight. He scrabbled with his front hooves and tried to twist his body as far as his pain threshold would let him. He yanked his pinned leg free with an agonised hiss, and twisted his head to try and get a clear line of sight on the nullifier. Acid-green magic coiled around his horn and arced towards the nullifier to try and lift it.

The magic collided off the white trunk of the nullifier and was then neatly absorbed, becoming nothing more than a glowing pattern playing off the surface. Skewbald's subsequent curse was lost amidst another roll of thunder.

The clatter of hooves on stone steps sounded from below, and Comet Trail rose from the open trapdoor. She stared at the fallen nullifier with shock, turned to Skewbald with concern, and then glanced around at the other two cadets following at her rear.

"Right!" she yelled, straining to make herself heard above the noise of the descending storm. "Silver Shield, you get Skewbald below to safety! Chevalier, help me get the nullifier pointing skywards - !"

Comet Trail got no further. Lightning arced suddenly down from the sky, and she looked up just as it struck her. Her entire form blazed white briefly, and shrank down suddenly as a distorted scream escaped her.

"Comet!" screamed Silver Shield, starting forward before he suddenly paused.

The duck formerly known as Comet Trail had a great many instincts rushing throughout its new duck brain amidst the chaos of the storm, and foremost amongst them was murder. The duck launched itself at Silver Shield's face beak-first, and the noise produced by both filled the tower-top.

Chevalier looked from them to Skewbald to the nullifier to the storm, and his face set as if carved from stone. "Shield, get her below!" he yelled. "I'll stay here and get the nullifier raised. Go below!"

"But what about - !" started Silver Shield, who had managed to pin the enraged duck down in a full-body lock.

"I'll be fine! I'm always fine! Now get her below!" Chevalier wheeled back towards Skewbald, and there was a note of pleading in his expression. "Tell me you can still operate this if I get it raised."

"With … difficulty …" hissed Skewbald, the words a strain to produce. His back leg – the left, this time – refused to obey any function beyond register pain. "I – I need to be closer -"

There came the crash of something landing hard on the stone next to him. Skewbald turned, and saw Zephyr Gauze. His wings were sodden, his eyes were wide and terrified, and his mouth moved quickly as if on panicked reflex. "I saw the nullifier fall and somepony go down beneath it are you hurt can I -"

Whatever twist of fate insisted on having the farrier constantly loom above him, Skewbald wasn't going to complain about now. "Get me standing!" he said. "Get me near the nullifier! Worry – worry about other things after."

The farrier nodded, his eyes still wide, and leant down to support Skewbald's attempt at standing on his useless back leg. Zephyr's head pressed up from beneath Skewbald's chest, extracting the unicorn from the folds of the cloak and the broken canopy. Skewbald rose, painfully, and leant upon the farrier's body as he hobbled forwards to the nullifier. The device itself was being gradually raised off the ground by Chevalier, in spite of its absurd weight and the buffeting force of the wind against it. The cadet's eyes burned with effort, his teeth were gritted, and his muscles under his armour bunched with sustained effort. Inch by inch, the nullifier rose.

"Let me down here!" ordered Skewbald once they were a couple of feet from the still-slanted control panel of the nullifier. "Leave me – I can fix this."

Zephyr let him down gently. Skewbald lay sphinx-like on the stone surface, and fixed the exposed and rust-eaten mechanism with a look of utmost concentration.

A brief exertion of magic, possible even past the pain, cleared out all of the rust. It seemed to have been only steel components that had been destroyed due to a lapse in care. That would make this easier.

He breathed in, seeking for a still point within himself, an eye within the storm of brute physical pain and sensory overload that filled his mind.

"Give me a helping hoof, farrier!" came the distant voice of Chevalier, a vague and easily-ignored distraction in the state of mind Skewbald was aiming for. "This has to be vertical!"

Another bolt of lightning tore down from the sky, striking distant woodland far on the other side of the river. Skewbald saw it flash as it hit a tree, and saw the tree turn into magma that briefly held its shape before collapsing into fire. The forest about it burned. This too was irrelevant.

He breathed out. Sheer will drove down the distractions his body imposed, just in this moment. The pain wasn't gone, but it wasn't something to be feared. Merely something to be worked past. His mind could get to work. His magic could be properly unleashed.

From memory, the diagram of the nullifier's innards. Before him, the broken nullifier. The image of the former was summoned from mind and layered atop the other, an illusory model of green-glowing lines that indicated what parts were missing and where they were. With the cold efficiency of a mechanism, Skewbald noted each missing part and its purpose, derived approximations of each part's dimensions and weight, held the whole and weighted the individual components.

Skewbald blinked, and in the next instant turned his attention to the bare metal flag-pole. It still stood. It was made of steel, if he was any judge.

Assume stainless steel. Use Standard Fire Trick, suspended at co-ordinates x, y, and z relative to current orientation, adjusted to 750 degrees Coltigrade above norm, diameter of two inches to encompass entire width of pole shaft. Diminish y-co-ordinate at rate of one inch per second.

Green magic flared out, and incandescent fire erupted at the top of the flag-pole. It blazed down the rapidly-collapsing length, molten steel flowing out and being quickly caught in a containing aura Skewbald summoned to envelop the entire pole.

Modify interior dimensions of the aura to contain three-dimensional bubbles. Assign stored dimensions of parts one through sixteen to these bubbles. Align the current of steel to flow through and fill each dimension, remove temperature with Standard Cooling Trick. Set in assigned co-ordinates within the nullifier once solidified.

The molten steel flowed through the aura, and with great effort – splitting one's mind multiple ways for simultaneous calculations and magical manipulations was something Skewbald would have preferred to prepare for in the best of circumstances. It flowed into moulds in the aura, taking the shapes of the small component parts, and with a flash of magic about each one, they shone silver in the howling darkness.

Skewbald swiftly levitated each one as it set over to the exposed nullifier, quickly slotting them into position amidst the frame. His horn felt like it was burning, a headache was building in the back of his skull, but he wouldn't stop, he couldn't stop. Little else existed but the flow of calculations, the numbers neatly stored and recalled in a torrent from memory, the path from what is to what ought.

He was only vaguely aware of the slash-like smile that had emerged on his face in the last few minutes, even as small fires seemed to burn in the crevices of his horn

Skewbald finished off the last of the parts and slotted them into place seven seconds after he'd first touched fire to metal, just as the nullifier finally settled onto its base with one last heave from Chevalier and Zephyr's combined efforts. With another great burst of magic that now sent acute shivers of agony running down from his horn, Skewbald set the panel back on the front of the nullifier. He strained to reach the red button with his hoof, and when he finally managed to shove it in, he held his breath.

The nullifier blazed white, and Skewbald released his breath in relief. The mechanisms within roared to life, and he set his attention on the scale and lever before him. This seemed almost restful now.

"Is that it?" came the astonished voice of Chevalier, trotting over. Skewbald had half-forgotten he'd even existed. "Is it working?"

"It's descending now," said Zephyr in turn, his voice quiet and trembling, and Skewbald looked up.

The wyld storm was hurling itself downwards, bellowing as it seemed to aim directly for the active nullifier. It came streaming down, vast and primal and mindless, as if it were being poured down some vast funnel. Lightning raced around the outside, colours pulsed and flickered within its depths. The very air seemed to have an electric charge.

Skewbald turned his attention to the nullifier, hoping against hope that its mechanisms would hold. The dial on the scale swung straight into the red segment, and he threw all the arcane might he had left into pressing against the lever to keep it controlled. He felt the prickle of the mollifier leeching off part of his magic to sustain its own self-control – but it wasn't enough. He couldn't push the lever far enough, the dial flickered on the edge of red, the whole nullifier was trembling, he needed -

"Help me!" he rasped. "Push against the lever! Push against it!"

Chevalier was already there, throwing his own might into the lever to try and push it to the left. Zephyr was at his back in a moment, throwing utterly terrified glances up at the storm as it came pelting down.

The dial edged out of the red. The mechanisms settled down to a steady, throbbing bellow. The nullifier blazed like a beacon. Skewbald looked up, at the very tip of the storm which was now all but within spitting distance, which touched the top of the nullifier.

From above, white spat down.

Skewbald raised a hoof, trying to shield his face.

White crashed into him, and conscious perception left him and robbed him of wits and insight, left his world a screaming and blind rush of pure happening, images and sounds and experiences slamming into him with the grace of a freight train.

the dark skies over Canterlot, cloud-wreathed spires spearing through blackness

Caballus flailing as he fell from the window, his eyes wide with shock

a vast expanse of mountains, over which a squadron of armoured griffons flew in neat formation

a multihued egg descending sharply onto a table edge, fragments of shell flying as the invigilators shouted

rippling mountains and forest-choked valleys, as far as the eye could see

huddling amidst flowers in an attempt to become warm, red and yellow petals shaking all around

a forest girdled by a great and unknown sea, the spines of some vast beast cutting through the churning waves

a door slamming open, and a stallion's voice blazing I said GET OUT

Consciousness returned to Skewbald. He was cold. He was in freefall, wind whipping at his whole body and sending him tumbling through the empty sky.

Below him, rather than the river past Fort Livery or the courtyard of the fort at his back, as might be expected, there instead lay an night-shrouded expanse of wild forest, the sea on one side and mountains on the other.

This is silly, and obviously a hallucination, observed Skewbald. At any moment, just before I'll impact with those trees most likely, I'll wake up and reality will hit me again.

Instead, he hit a springy tree branch, a lower branch on an adjacent tree, a somewhat stiffer branch below that one, the top of a grassy knoll face-first, the side of the grassy knoll repeatedly as he rolled helplessly down, and finally a boulder at the knoll's base.

At that point, Skewbald stopped resisting the inevitable and let the world go black.

Interlude: The North

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Maybe you're an antiquarian, looking to hunt out the Pre-Equestrian roots of the ancient pony tribes. Maybe you're the sort of scientist with a hunger for unsounded knowledge and a cavalier attitude to life and limb. Maybe you read too many Daring Do books at an impressionable age. In any of these cases, your eye has surely wandered to a map of the world and the great expanse of grey marked as 'The North', and plotted adventure.

Here is my advice if you are planning on a trip into the North.

Don't. Go elsewhere. The Asinial Republic is nice most times of year, from what I've been told; and if adventure is what you truly desire, then Saddle Arabia offers as much potential with a much-diminished likelihood of your horrific death as a result.

If you cannot be swayed, however, then at least know what you are getting into. Prepare accordingly. Look up the inventories and skills possessed by those expeditions that made it back to Equestria with some of their members left alive. Every foal knows of the horrific fate of Borealis and her expedition for the Utmost North, of the tragic end of Scolt and Oat's quest for the Flowers of Youth, of the deprivations endured by Galloply's party before a rescue expedition could reach them. The mistakes of those journeys are in every relevant book and you have no excuse for not learning from them.

But even that may not be enough. You may have trained yourself in surviving cold-weather conditions beforehand, made sure of your equipment and provisions beforehand, and gathered a team of similarly brave ponies to go with you; the very least of the preparations you should make. Maybe you've even planned for your initial journey through the Greycairns, and have arranged for emergency assistance from a friendly dragon, transit alongside one of the nomadic griffon tribes, or even established a starting base within a Diamond Dog underhold. The Diplomatic Office has channels through which it can reach stranded ponies in the world, and you may have explored those in detail.

Even all of these may not be enough, because nopony – perhaps not even the Princess Herself – can guess at the full extent of what lies North of the Greycairns.

The whole territory is an Everfree writ large, with everything left up to the random and fickle whims of nature constantly intruded upon by wild magic that permeates the very air. The bestiaries we have are horrific enough in their scant detail, but are known to be incomplete. In the western forests and tundra, large predators such as hydras and manticores top their food chains and occasionally migrate down into the Everfree forest. Where the tundra turns to a sheer ice-sheet, snow leopards haunt the waste, as cold and dangerous as the icebergs which spawn them.

Eastwards, where the North's terrain turns in expanses of ragged mountains and steep river-valleys, is where it becomes stranger yet. That is where wild magic holds sway, creating a climate of horrors amidst the desolation that only equal horrors can survive and thrive in. Elementals, beings born where concentrations of wild magic give the landscape itself life, thrive in these places, and have absolutely no instinct beyond savage territorialism. Lesser beasts become infused with magic also, becoming augmented or deformed or savagely resilient to it. We know next to nothing of what lurks in the dense forests and valleys of the North-East. Borealis's bloodstained notes left little to go on.

Consider this. The nation in the best position to expand into the North-East is Corva. The corvid clans – the corvids, I'll emphasise - have never established anything like a lasting settlement there.

If none of the above has dissuaded you from going forth and giving everypony who loves you cause to fret, then all I can say and warn you about to my own knowledge is contained within these very pages. If nothing else, heed the following.

Prepare past the point of sense. You will need food, sturdy travelling equipment, and the training to handle the conceivable and inconceivable alike.

Do not be afraid to simply admit defeat and head back to Equestria when the going becomes tough. One living pony is worth a thousand dead heroes.

Remain ever vigilant. Anticipate danger in every square metre, and don't be careless with your life or the life of your expedition comrades. Be paranoid, and the North will be more than happy to prove you justified.

Above all, remain a coherent, trusting, and disciplined team with whatever friends travel by your side. In the North, you unite. It will not permit you any other option.

Extract from Wildflower's The World Beyond Our Borders: The North, courtesy of Royal Manehattan Press, 1406.

Here Be ...

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After a time, darkness yielded to cold and tangible sensation. Past the clearing fog of unconsciousness, Skewbald became aware first of the startlingly cold wind that slashed across his back. Rustling came from everywhere around him. As if from a great distance, there came a constant and muffled crashing. A harsh caw sounded from above.

Opening his eyes demanded more mental willpower than Skewbald possessed in that moment, and he remained still where he lay. He became aware of the chilly grass beneath him, and the rough surface against which his back rested.

He must have been thrown right off the fort wall, Skewbald concluded. He was probably on the exterior, since the fort's courtyard had been entirely hard dirt. Judging by the lack of thunder and pelting rain, the wyld storm must have been entirely dissipated by the nullifier in the few minutes he'd been unconscious. It had been unconsciousness rather than sleep, he knew – enough misaligned and backfiring spells had educated him about the sensation in detail.

Had it been just a few minutes? Skewbald knew you couldn't be knocked unconscious for much longer without enduring nasty brain damage, and he tried to assess his own faculties as best he could. He was in Fort Livery, in the Neighvada region, and likely just outside one of the aforementioned fort's walls. Before he'd lost consciousness, he was operating the nullifier in spite of the universe's best attempts to stop him. The current Arch-Minister of the Asinial Parliament could be the Queen of Shebuck for all he knew. Nothing about that knowledge seemed incomplete.

Skewbald relaxed. It had just been a few minutes after all. He couldn't feel much discomfort beyond some bruising – even the leg that had been hit by the nullifier didn't hurt much. It throbbed, certainly, but not as much as it should have done if something had been broken inside. His horn itched and his head ached, but not to intolerable degrees. Any moment now, he'd hear the sound of a patrol coming to find him, he'd be taken somewhere warm and with a bed while being roundly congratulated, knock back a glass of heated and well-salted cider for his pains, and sleep until approximately the end of the next glacial aeon.

He liked that plan. He opened one eye on the off-chance the rescue team would be within sight already.

A blurry grassy knoll rose before him, shrouded in night's darkness. A cluster of several wiry pines clung to its top and sides, their limbs and trunk pale and their lower branches as bare as bones. His saddle-bag dangled from one of them, still swinging to and fro gently. Past the treetops, stars glimmered in the blackness, outshone by the rising moon. Faint blue trails ran behind the moon as it rose, the clear and constant aura of Luna's magic keeping it steadily moving.

Skewbald blinked, taken aback. He probed around for his presumably fallen glasses, found them a short distance away, and perched them on his face. He looked over the scene again, to no effect. It had been early in the afternoon when the storm had hit. He couldn't have been unconscious or left alone that long, surely.

And then it occurred to him that he'd not seen any trees inside the fort or around its walls.

He opened both eyes and, with a groan, rose tremblingly to his hooves. The knoll sat in the middle of a long and shallow gully, sparsely covered by the same pale pine trees. Moonlight peeked past the thin canopy and made the damp-looking leaves and undergrowth glimmer. From around Skewbald, there came distant chirps, scuffles of movement, rustles as a faint wind stirred faraway branches.

The rising sides of the dale were similarly covered by the pine forest. Past one side – the west, if Skewbald was judging the moon's direction of travel correctly – he could see great white shapes made indistinct by the veil of trees. From the eastern side, the visible sky of which was dominated by the moon, the same rhythmic crashing sounded. It was vaguely familiar to Skewbald, poking at some distant memory, and he was aggravated that he couldn't determine what it was.

That same aggravation pooled with confusion at his surroundings. There was no sign of Fort Livery; no fort, no ponies making themselves a nuisance, no river or farmland or so much as residual clouds from the wyld storm.

The last fleeting images of falling before he'd lost consciousness then resurfaced in Skewbald's mind, and a slow-burning and sinking suspicion took hold.

He turned for the eastern rise and began trotting there, absently magically lifting and securing his saddle-bag around his middle as he went. It was treacherous going. Far too much of the undergrowth seemed to consist entirely of cold and slippery mud, and protruding roots obliged Skewbald to summon light from his horn to be able to see his path. A small and chattering shadow darted across his path, and it had already vanished between the trees when he flicked his gaze to follow it.

Skewbald turned his attention back to the rise. With a last burst of exertion, he heaved himself up the steepening slope and squeezed through a narrow gap between the trees lining the top. A rocky outcrop ran out from the rise, which plunged down again into another expanse of forest. Skewbald stepped out onto the outcrop.

The world stretched out before him.

An ocean lay across the horizon; an expanse of black water beneath the starlit sky, holding the shimmering reflection of the overhanging moon like a jewel in its midst. The tide pounded on the ragged stretch of rocky coastline; the silhouettes of gulls swept back and forth across the moonlit stretch. The shapes of tiny islands sat out at sea like strewn pebbles. The forest plunged down to fill the great space between Skewbald and the sea, glittering under the stars and stirred by the cold wind.

At Skewbald's right-hand side and back, the forest ran onwards. Great white mountains broke from it like the ridged and worn spine of a leviathan. Their peaks seemed impossibly distant, all but shrouded by clouds and mantled by frost, and beyond them Skewbald saw greater mountains yet, turning the horizon beneath the stars to ragged darkness. The forest rose and fell around them like an ever-churning sea.

There was not a single sign of Fort Livery. Or so much as anything relating to the town, or the Neighvada region, or Equestria for that matter.

Skewbald's mouth slowly dropped open. "Horse-feathers," he breathed. He didn't fall to his haunches, but only with effort.

How?, was the first question that rose in his mind, closely followed by Where?, with a small and spiteful concluding grumble of Why me?

For How?, Skewbald guessed that some form of long-distance teleportation had become involved, assuming that this wasn't some sort of exceedingly underwhelming afterlife he'd been catapulted into by the last lightning strike.

Teleportation also would make sense of his surprisingly unharmed leg – Crepuscular's Formula had been found through examination of whatever long-distance teleportation was found in nature. Keeping yourself unscrambled after projecting everything that you were across hundreds of miles was an evolutionary benefit for magical species like the Sedentary Albatross, and the attribute seemed to naturally bind itself to any teleportation. The leading arcane scientists had yet to determine exactly why.

As for Where? … that was a different beast of a question altogether. Skewbald regarded the twists and knots of trees running before him and felt the sharp chill of a sudden breeze at his back with a faint queasiness. Nature was something every civilisation on the continent with so much as a pair of brain cells to rub together and the self-respect granted by so much as a half-inch of spine knew had to be controlled. He'd seen pictures and film footage of the Everfree, the Greycairns, and some of the untamed land in the continent to the south; but that wasn't anything like the same as actually being in it. If the inhabitants of this strange place didn't take their environment in hand – or if they didn't exist at all …

Skewbald glanced at the trees and resented them for not being more recognisable. Flora and fauna had always been trivia fit for earth ponies as far as he'd been concerned. The best he could guess about pines was that they thrived in colder climes. The snow-shrouded mountains offered support to that guess.

Skewbald looked back towards the rising moon, and what he guessed was the eastern horizon. Equestria didn't have much coastline that faced east, and certainly had none as disgustingly untamed as this.

He regarded the moon with some interest, a line of thought occurring to him. It had been an early afternoon in the late summer back in Equestria. Assuming that he had been out cold for just a few minutes, then he could extrapolate from the moon's position…

His train of thought was broken by a sudden and encroaching crashing from the trees to his left, coupled with what seemed like muffled yells.

It occurred to Skewbald then that he had exactly no idea what sort of creatures and predators haunted this land as well.

He was immediately on his hooves. He crouched slightly, his horn levelled and a defence-standard kinesis spell at the forefront of his mind, his eyes alighting like a marksmare's on each tree and shadow for any sign of oncoming movement.

The crashing, as if of a heavy creature barging past trees and trampling the undergrowth, came closer and closer. Skewbald tensed, looking for anything else he could use. Knock down overhanging branches and use a Fire Trick upon them, Reassign the edge from a sharp stone or broken branch to a kinesis blow, see if the creature had eyes, ankles, a throat –

The crashing came closer, and then terminated with an almighty thunk and a muffled and pained grunt. A few moments passed and then the crashing resumed, veering to one side.

Skewbald paused. Then he crept after the source of the crashing, carefully twisting off a broken branch and floating it at his side as he went. Passing between thick knots of trees and ducking under low-hanging branches, he finally emerged into a space where the trees were thinned out. There, the source of the crashing revealed itself.

A stallion covered over in bronze-coloured cadet armour, his white hide streaked with mud and scratches, seemed to be getting eaten head-first by a rotten tree stump. He stumbled along, blind to where he was going and vigorously trying to slam the stump side-on into the trees he collided with.

Skewbald stared, the branch falling from his grasp. But then again, if he had apparently been swept away to parts unknown –

Who else had been on the tower? "Chevalier?"

The stump-headed stallion paused in his thrashing attempts to dislodge his impromptu headwear, and tried to orient himself in the direction of Skewbald's voice. "Hnngld?"

The racket from Chevalier's attempts to get the stump off could bring down approximately every predator in a thousand-mile radius, if Skewbald was any judge. And he wanted a coherent second opinion on matters of timing, in any case. Green light built around his horn. "Hold still! I'll get that off!"

"Mmk!" Chevalier bowed his head towards Skewbald, trying to not tip over in the process. Skewbald extended his magic out to the stump, extending an aura around it. One hard and sharp tug should do it, and one hard and sharp tug did it; with an eruption of wood fragments and mould, the stump flew free.

It wasn't until the second after it flew free that Skewbald suddenly remembered important concepts like relative position, velocity, and direction of travel, and before more important concepts hit his mind, the stump got there first.

He wasn't knocked unconscious again, mercifully, but he was knocked tail-over-teakettle and spent the next few moments tasting purple while a bronze-coloured mass in the centre of his wobbling field of vision made concerned noises at him.

"- Are you alright?" came from Chevalier when the concerned noises started to coalesce into something Skewbald could make sense of. "Can you talk to me? I can carry you on my -"

"I'm somewhere that isn't Fort Livery," Skewbald managed, in a slightly slurred manner. "I was trying to determine what that somewhere was before some idiot got a stump planted around their skull. Who is the Asinial Arch-Minister, does anypony know?"

"I looked that up. Burro Delver, two terms served as yet. Do you need help standing?"

"Mother of – no," hissed Skewbald, rising by difficult increments to his own hooves and trying to shake his mental cogs and gears back into proper order. "I'm fine. My brain's … thing." More shaking. "Look, in the interests of saving myself needless thinking later on, do you know where we are?"

"I don't. First I knew after that lightning came hammering down was … falling through memories while the land passed underneath, if that makes sense? Then I was falling down through the sky and – well, met that stump head-first. I've been trying to get it off with my hooves and trees I blundered by for the last few minutes." Chevalier looked down at the ground, where his helmet had fallen after being tugged along with the stump. The white crest was spotted over with mould and scurrying woodlice, which Chevalier gently brushed loose. "I thought you might know. If we've been teleported away from the Fort – that what it seems like, at least – can you track where the storm took us?"

"Not directly," said Skewbald. "If I get the time to think, then maybe I can roughly plot where we - "

Just then, there came what sounded like a cry of alarm from further yet in the forest, accompanied this time by a furious high-pitched barking.

"Never mind. Apparently the world just doesn't want thinking to be done today," muttered Skewbald. Chevalier had already turned and was running; he scooped up his helmet and slammed it back into place.

Skewbald followed in his wake after a few seconds, just in time to meet the branches Chevalier had knocked aside swinging back into place. By the time the sound of the shouts and barking drew nearer, Skewbald had had to retrieve his glasses from the forest floor twice and was wishing a black curse upon all foliage that lived. He nearly ran into the armoured back of Chevalier, and turned aside just in time to avoid him. The source of the noise revealed itself.

Amidst the entangled branches of a cluster of confused pine trees that had apparently decided to start getting to know one another exceedingly well, an upside-down, trapped and familiar green-coated pegasus flailed. Each frantic flap of his wings sent leaves spinning to the ground, to the timberwolf that jumped up at the tree's pale trunk and barked incessantly.

"Help!" he cried out, in high and pleading tones. "Anypony? Help!"

The timberwolf in question was a puppy, the wood of its limbs still fresh and dark and spindly, its large eyes still bright and vivid green. It probably came up to the height of Skewbald's knees at its shoulders, and its barks bordered on excited yips.

Skewbald supposed that Zephyr's perspective in all this was upside-down, with the needle-teeth of the puppy landing mere inches away from his eyes with every leap it took; but it was the sort of sight that deserved some amount of snickering regardless.

Another timberwolf came limping out from between the trees. This one was an adult, and probably an old adult from what Skewbald could tell. Its wooden frame was pale and covered with old scars and knots, and it hesitated before each step, as if trying to estimate its environment with its pale eyes anew each time. It hovered near the pup, keeping an eye on the pegasus but seemingly too weary to take a leap of its own.

"Hold on!" Chevalier cantered towards the tree, stamping his hoof once to draw the attention of the timberwolves. The pup turned, seemed fleetingly befuddled by the sight of a larger and shinier oncoming target, and then a tinny snarl bubbled up from inside it. Chevalier wheeled to face it, his stance lowering and eyes narrowing. One steel-shod hoof stamped the ground before him in warning.

Before the pup could pounce up at Chevalier, the older timberwolf slammed out a paw onto the pup's tail with a fierce snarl. The pup yipped twice, with a furious and then imploring tone. A low growl was its answer from the older timberwolf. Its tail was released, and the pup slunk reluctantly behind its elder. The elder looked in turn from the paused Chevalier to Skewbald, and then padded away through the trees once more.

The pup seemed reluctant to follow, until a single rasping yip brought it to heel. It slunk away with its tail between its legs, casting brief glances behind it all the while.

Eventually, the sound of the timberwolves faded away altogether. Zephyr released a long and relieved breath. "I … thank you. That was timely." He tried again to extricate himself from the tangle of branches and wings. "What happened? Where – where are we?"

"Excellent question," said Skewbald, trotting up to stand beside the tree cluster. "I'll let the next pony in distress make themselves known before I start trying to answer."

"What?" Zephyr twisted within the tangle to little effect. "I, ah, I don't suppose you could help me down? I appear to be stuck."

"On it. Brace yourself," said Chevalier, striding up next to one of the trees and turning smartly. He crouched, his forelegs bending, and then snapped out his hindlegs to buck the trunk. The whole tree cluster wobbled under the impact, the shaking extending up to the tangle of branches. Zephyr struggled, got a wing free of the shaken tangle, and one bout of undignified flapping and kicking saw him free. He flapped down to the ground, and after a moment spent catching his breath, he turned to face Skewbald and Chevalier.

"Thank you for that," he panted. "I didn't know what else might … well …"

"What other timberwolf pups might come by and yip at you incessantly?" said Skewbald. "Quite a worry, certainly."

"I …" started Zephyr, flushing red and lowering his gaze. "…It looked bigger upside-down -"

"Enough," said Chevalier, sending a brief glower Skewbald's way before turning back to Zephyr. "Are you hurt at all?"

"No," said Zephyr, glancing over himself and shaking each limb and wing briefly. "No, not that I can tell." He paused, and then asked, "Where exactly are we? The last thing I remember was helping with the nullifier in Fort Livery. Then a bolt of lightning came down, everything got a little hectic, and I ended in freefall over – over wherever this is."

"Same for each of us who were on top of the tower." Chevalier glanced around them, concerned. "Silver Shield and Comet Trail went below, didn't they? They were the other cadets."

"They'd have been out of danger," said Skewbald curtly, glancing around as a distant howl sounded. He couldn't guess where or how far it had come from. Chevalier and Zephyr seemed to have heard it as well. "I doubt they're the ponies we need to be thinking about right now."

Chevalier seemed about to object, and then sighed. "You may be right. Come on. We'll find a safe place, hole up, and then try to figure out where we are."

Zephyr paused, where he'd been retrieving his fallen farrier's bag from the base of a tree. "What's a safe place here, exactly? A cave? A clearing?"

"Anywhere we can get a fire going," said Chevalier. He looked towards the mountains, their great shapes barely visible past the ragged treescape. "Come on. Summon up some light for us, Skewbald."

They made their hurried way through the forest in silence. Fallen branches snapped underhoof, and great trailing tree roots threatened to trip them up at every turn. The green orb of light Skewbald had summoned and which he held suspended above him gave them some illumination. He took the lead, his gaze constantly flicking to where the deepening shadows twitched and moved. Chirps and rustles, cut-off shrill screams and caws and cackles came as a constant litany from the trees around them as they pressed deeper into the forest. Skewbald caught sight of the odd pair of beady eyes watching them from undergrowth or atop branches, which vanished almost as soon as he focused upon them.

At his back, he was aware of Chevalier's heavy treads. From time to time, as they passed a dead and withered tree, he'd hear the cadet smash off several branches and shrug them onto the growing load on his back. Skewbald paid him little mind, assuming he'd be able to keep up. Zephyr, on the other hand, had taken up a scouting position above the treetops. From time to time, helpful advice would be hurled down, such as, "Veer right. I think there's a cave there not too far away!" or, "Wait, no, disregard that! That's a ravine and there's … something, maybe a hive of somethings moving in it!"

Eventually, the shout came, "Keep going straight on! There's a glade just ahead of us!"

Skewbald narrowed his gaze; and yes, there did seem to be a point past the trees where his light played over rustling grass. He cantered forward towards it, Chevalier close at his back. He emerged into the promised clearing, a surprisingly barren grassy circle amidst the trees. A tall and thin-branched tree sat in splendid isolation at the centre of it, while small creatures cropped at the grass around the edges.

Skewbald glanced at the creatures as he passed by; small hare-like beasts with the wings and tails of birds which he recognised vaguely as skvader. He'd only ever seen them before in half-ignored pictures in books and from the odd zoo trip when he was younger, and tried and failed to remember their natural habitat. The skvader flock seemed entirely unfussed by the ponies entering their midst. A pair of leverets even ventured a closer look, half-hopping and half-gliding across the grass.

He ignored them, instead turning his attention to Zephyr as the pegasus descended from the sky with an absurdly pleased look on his face.

"Good, eh?" said Zephyr. "Set up a fire here, and that should keep any wild nastiness off our tails while we catch our breaths and plot the shortest route back to civilisation. Do we need to get wood, or - ?"

"Way ahead of you," said Chevalier, trotting into the clearing and tipping the collected wood off his back with a grunt. He crouched down and began arranging it into a suitable shape for burning, stacking the branches into a rough pyramid of perpendicular layers.

Skewbald let them work, turning his back to them as he looked up and towards the moon, glimmering like a silver bit in the darkness.

With a murmur and a brief exertion of magic, he summoned the green-glowing transparent shape of a protractor before his eyes in mid-air. He angled the base line of the light construct to point towards the edge of the horizon with exacting care, and then rotated a leg on the device to point up towards the moon's centre, peering hard from behind it all the while.

"Is there some trick to lighting it?" came the voice of Zephyr. "Would you need paper, or kindling? I could try and get a lightning bolt to strike it if you need."

"There is such a trick," came Chevalier's intrusive reply. "In the Guard, its technical name is 'Get the unicorn to do it'. Skewbald, could we get a Fire Trick over - ?"

Without pausing as he noted the degree at which the leg sat, Skewbald focused briefly on the position of the fire and willed fire; with a satisfying rush of warmth at his back and orange light that spilled across the grass of the clearing, the wood ignited. There came thanks from Chevalier and Zephyr which Skewbald ignored as he considered the moon's angle. If he had to extract a time of day, he may as well be precise.

"Were either of you knocked out by your fall?" he said, turning back around to face the fire and the two ponies around it. Zephyr considered, and then said, "I don't think so, no," while Chevalier shook his head – he was midway through shrugging off his armour and his mouth was worrying at a strap.

"Assuming no time elapse in our teleportation," muttered Skewbald. "Time of day in Fort Livery versus time of night here, comes out to such-and-such chronoregions travelled - " He tried to bully the distances from his skull, but his earlier rapid-fire calculation at the nullifier and the stump's impact had conspired to leave his thoughts with a constant unpleasant background buzz. Thinking was hard, and he opted for the slow and stupid approach. That would probably be easier to explain to these two, in any case. "Here, I'll show you where we probably are."

He walked to the fire and collapsed next to it, his legs relieved of a fatigue he hadn't appreciated before. With another burst of magic, he summoned forth a rough outline of the continent in the air between him and the fire. Zephyr and Chevalier edged around to get a closer look, Zephyr doing so with a flight right over the building fire, while Chevalier trotted around , kicking the last piece of armour off his leg as he did so. Skewbald took stock of the cadet's unveiled cutie mark for the first time – two interlinked horse shoes – before turning his attention back to the map.

"That's where we were previously," said Skewbald. Equestria's green borders burst into existence on the blank map, and the approximate region of Fort Livery pulsed within it. "It was the early afternoon when we were spirited away, and if we assume it's still that early afternoon in Equestria, we've moved back a few time zones." Thin evenly-spaced vertical lines raced down the map, Fort Livery falling neatly in between two which passed through Equestria.

"I hear you," said Chevalier softly, frowning and peering closer even as he glanced briefly round at the moon. "So we must have been thrown eastwards, if the moon's already low in the sky where we are?"

"Quite a bit eastwards," said Zephyr, looking at the map with concern. "I'm trying to think where, though. Hopefully we're not too far from someone or something friendly. This whole region looks like it could fit into the Greycairns – we might be just north of Capra or Bovaland, or next to an underhold or something of the sort."

"If we look at the time difference indicated by the moon's position, then we could actually get an exact answer rather than vague inferences and blind hoping." A svkvader pressed itself against Skewbald's side and he shoved it away, irritated. He focused again on the map. The lines of the time zone for Fort Livery flashed, and then the flash moved right to the next time zone along. "Working back like this, then …"

Chevalier and Zephyr watched as the highlighted time zone moved steadily eastwards. Skewbald was aware of Zephyr wincing as the highlight passed from Equestria altogether, and of Chevalier frowning briefly as it passed over the narrow strip that was the Asinial Republic.

The highlight moved onto the parallel nations of Capra and Ovarn, the former running along and into the Greycairns and the latter running past Capra down to the coastline. They both sprawled over several time zones as well, and Skewbald kept going.

He only began to get an inkling of the stopping point by the time he'd moved onto the first time zone passing through the mass of Bovaland. "Hmm," murmured Skewbald, in surprised acknowledgement.

"'Hmm'? What's 'Hmm'? Are we – oh, skyfire, don't tell me we're that far out," said Zephyr, his voice becoming ever-so-slightly higher as he spoke.

"Save your skyfires yet. He's still going – oh, perfect," interjected Chevalier, as the highlight moved past Bovaland and into Corva, the last long tapering expanse of land where the Greycairns didn't run into the sea. "Don't tell me we're either north of or within Corva, neither's a pleasant prospect."

"Not exactly," muttered Skewbald as the highlight took its last few jumps across the ragged country.

"What do you mean, not exactly? What the flying feathers is left - ?" Chevalier stopped speaking as the highlight finally stopped.

It had stopped more than a full time zone past the eastern border of Corva. The only dry land in the whole time zone from Utmost North to South was the last spur of the Greycairns jutting into the ocean.

Silence held for a few moments, broken at last by Chevalier saying in an unusually calm voice, "Oh, so that's what's left. Don't you live and learn." A subdued laugh then broke free of him, and he rubbed his forehead with his hoof. "For the love of Celestia, double-check that estimate. Please double-check that."

"We're that far out?" said Zephyr in a small and astonished voice, that didn't seem to know whether it wanted to thrill to the occasion or be terrified. "That … that's as far from Equestria as a pony can get without treading water!"

"Isn't it just?" Skewbald's own measured tone, he felt, managed to conceal a great and growing distemper at this twist of fate. He'd signed up to protect Fort Livery with the hope of receiving kudos and congratulations. Not for this.

This went beyond rank unfairness on the universe's part, beyond what he might have normally come to expect. This was a frankly amazing new low. Skewbald felt he'd need some time to dwell on it before the full implications set in.

In his peripheral vision, one of the skvader leverets hopped closer to the tree at the clearing's centre. The firelight carved rough shadows into the dark red bark of the tree's trunk and made the shadows of the whip-thin branches jerk and dance. The skvader lowered its head to crop at the tree's base.

Without warning, one of the branches lashed down and wound around the skvader's throat. Skewbald started and fell back, surprised by the sudden motion, while Zephyr and Chevalier turned to see the motion and let loose their own cries of alarm. A crack sounded from the tree, and what Skewbald had taken to be a natural thin hole in the wood peeled apart further. The serrated wood at the hole's edge glistened, and a long, low rattle sounded from the tree.

The skvader struggled briefly, high-pitched coughs escaping it all the while. With one ferocious tug, the branch whipped it off its feet and into the air, dragging it swiftly towards the hole in the trunk. The creature was tossed into the hole before it could begin to flap its wings, and with one sinuous motion that seemed to shiver up and down the trunk, the hole slammed shut.

The rumble from the tree and the crash of wood was almost enough to drown out the crunch.

Chevalier boggled, and rested one hoof on his helmet at the ground. Zephyr opened and shut his mouth, his face pale.

"Yes," said Skewbald absently while the other two stared, "Definitely far away from Equestria."

Trailblazing

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Afterwards, Zephyr maintained to himself that he had only gibbered in horror a little bit, and that his retreat to place the fire between him and the skvader-devouring spruce hadn’t been too frantic.

In his defence, he thought, Chevalier and Skewbald had joined him almost immediately afterwards, albeit in slightly slower and more guarded fashions. The cadet had slung his helmet back on and was taking care to constantly face the tree, his gaze flicking to the tendril-branches near-constantly. The unicorn kept one gimlet eye on the tree as well, as if assessing whether or not he should just set it on fire at that moment.

Once they had all sat down at the fire and Zephyr felt the terror-induced adrenaline beginning to ebb from his system, Chevalier closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, his composure had again asserted itself. “Perhaps we should go through your calculations again, Skewbald,” he said. “Walk me through what you’re doing as you do it.”

The cadet was like a rock Zephyr felt he could lean on. All that Guard training – of which he had only heard sparse and doubtless exaggerated rumours – was probably the single best asset available to them all.

Skewbald threw Chevalier a glower which shortly transitioned to a brief eye-roll. “Try to keep up,” he muttered, and summoned the glowing shapes of an illusory protractor and map in the air.

The unicorn looked similarly composed, but not in such a way that his company reassured Zephyr. It was as if the sight of a tree casually eating something had just bounced off some unfeeling steel core, that had simply taken the whole thing in and made notes as it did so. Mind you, it was unfair to make those judgements based on what could well just be an amazing lack of social graces. The presence of a unicorn with the finest magical education known to ponykind could doubtless only be a good thing.

They began speaking. Skewbald angled the protractor at the horizon just below the rising moon and snapped off facts about the angle of ascent and summer-standard hourly intervals, Chevalier nodding his way through the explanation and interrupting occasionally to have a point clarified. After one such interjection, Skewbald seemed to start speaking exaggeratedly slowly and simply, and the conversation on Chevalier’s part after that turned distinctly colder.

Zephyr knew he should be paying closer attention, knew he should have been ready to provide his own scant knowledge where needed or to defuse any tensions. But his mind was all awhirl. For one thing, his Eohippic lower brain was still loudly advocating screaming and fleeing until everything remotely pertaining to a predator had been banished from sight. His self-esteem was berating the Eohippic part for being the customary foe it always was. His executive function was too busy trying to force the former two to shut up so it could pay attention to what was happening to actually pay attention.

And apart from all that … the North!

It was one of the few places in all the known world where fact was hard to extricate from gruesome fiction. It was one of the few places to not actually be a part of the known world. You could only sometimes reliably know what was outright mythical. According to old Equestrian creation stories, it was in the North that Sleipnir the Great had guarded the first pony souls after rescuing them single-hoovedly from the jaws of the Abyss itself. It was where the last Fires of Creation still burned in the world. All that storybook stuff.

But then you got into more ambiguous territory. Depending on who you listened to, it was where the original pony tribes had dwelt in pre-Princess and even pre-Equestrian times: the pegasus stratocracies, the unicorn kingdoms, and the earth pony republics. It was from the North they had all fled during the Windigo Winter, and it was in the gentler southern lands of Equestria that they had settled. Alternatively, ponykind had always dwelt in Equestria, and such former accounts were mere conflations with the long-vanished Crystal Empire. None of the few pony historians were yet sure, and no Princess had yet formally resolved the matter.

All a pony really could know about the North with certainty was that it was huge, it was inhospitable, and it was wild beyond any easy domestication. It was where a third of the Daring Do series had thus far sited each book’s MacGuffin. It was where explorers went to die. It was not a nice place. Do not go to the North if you want to live today, went the received wisdom. Do not go to the North, period.

Zephyr was apparently in the middle of the North. This, all the components of his brain could concur, was a bit of a pickle.
A disturbance in the conversation before him broke Zephyr out of his train of thought. “Can you create a bigger and clearer picture of that from memory?” asked Chevalier, waving a hoof at a chronoregion of the map – the same chronoregion, Zephyr unhappily noted, which contained the thin peninsula of the furthest North they were currently occupying.

Skewbald’s eyes narrowed and the green lines of the map split apart into an inchoate tangle. They peeled apart and reformed in the night air, forming a larger picture of the peninsula which Chevalier regarded critically.

“Semi-good news for us,” Chevalier said after a few minutes. “We’re not right at the end of that strip. I remember look at that same peninsula on a map which showed elevation. It’s nearly all solid glacier. That means we’re likely to be here.” He gestured at the lowest and most westerly part of the peninsula, where an east-facing coast ran down into the rest of the continent in a rough curve. “I forget whether that places us in tundra or taiga. Either’s equally unpleasant, I suspect.”

“Shave a hundred miles off the worst-case scenario’s total, then.” Skewbald summoned a small image of the rest of the continent, the peninsula a pitiful nub in comparison. “It’s not that big a difference overall.”

“It’s a hundred miles of glacier. It’s a pretty big difference as far as differences go.” A grin played around Chevalier’s features for a second, before being wiped away by solemnity. “Let’s look at our options, then.”

“Fine,” said Skewbald, falling to a lying position on the ground with a sudden sigh, the green-glowing map suddenly winking out of existence. “But just to pre-empt one of them; no, I can’t contact the Princesses to come to our aid.”

“… Ah. Blast. I thought every student at her school got some familiar, or some way of sending a message to her?”

“The Element of Magic’s not a good model to extrapolate from, no matter what you’ve heard about her. Most students aren’t issued actual dragon eggs to hatch for their first tests.” Skewbald’s mouth twisted in what Zephyr reluctantly labelled a smile. “And I can’t create any messaging-fire of my own, either. I don’t have the magical muscle for this sort of distance, and it wouldn’t be bound to anywhere specific even if I did.”

“Fine, fine,” said Chevalier. “But while we’re on the subject of dragons, would they be worth trying? I know that the Diplomatic Office offers gold and jewel rewards to dragons that rescue ponies in distress. If we could make contact with one here, then they could potentially fly us home.”

“Not likely, I’m afraid.” said Zephyr. It was his first contribution, and the other two seemed startled. He pressed on. “The, um … relatively civilised dragons who respond to those offers tend to gather around the western side of the continent. They mostly rescue ponies who’re lost in the Greycairns or Near North, that sort of thing. Eastwards, where we are, they’re practically feral. They probably wouldn’t respond to words, let alone an official request for extraction with the promise of future compensation.”

Chevalier frowned and rubbed one hoof against the ground. Skewbald’s smirk sharpened.

“… What are you smiling at?” said Chevalier after a few silent moments.

“The world in general. Its nigh-hilarious unfairness in particular. Your frustration. Take your pick.”

“What’s the nearest nation to us?” Zephyr interjected. “If it’s just a matter of surviving a trek there, then we’re -”

“Corva. But it’s a toss-up between it and the North over which is less likely to be friendly to us,” said Chevalier. “They’re still sore over the whole being-handed-their-tailfeathers-in-the-Corvid-Incursion business. Let’s not count on much assistance being found there.”

“They’re surely not all going to be unfriendly towards a lost group of ponies,” said Zephyr.

“They’re a fragmented pack of carnivores whose three national pastimes are fighting anything with a pulse, glorifying the wars they won, and nursing grudges over those they lost. Like I said, let’s not count on assistance there.” Chevalier shook his head. “What are our other options, though? The griffons don’t migrate this far east. There aren’t any Diamond Dog underholds in the east as well, I think. The nearest friendlyish nation past Corva is Bovaland, but that’s still a long trek away.”

Silence fell for a moment across the campsite. Zephyr looked into the dancing flames, bright against the blackness all around, their crackling sharp against the rustling of the trees, their warmth all too small compared to the cold weight at his back.

“No miracles, then,” Zephyr murmured, partly to himself. “A long trek it is.”

Chevalier sighed, his steel-shoed hooves digging small furrows into the ground. “Bring up the map again, Skewbald. Include any terrain you can recall apart from just the outline. We should try and plot a course.”

“I’d rather not,” said Skewbald, a sudden yawn breaking from him. Zephyr noted then that his eyes were red-rimmed, and that small tendrils of smoke were creeping up from the cervices of his horn. “I’m tired, battered, and still magically-drained from preventing your entire town from being turned into porridge or lava or a portal straight to Tartarus. Whatever we need to plan can be planned after some sleep.”

“That’s not a bad suggestion,” said Zephyr quickly just as Chevalier’s expression hardened. “I’m feeling a bit out of sorts myself. Once we’ve had some rest, we’ll be much better equipped for planning our way out of this.”

“Fine,” said Chevalier after a moment, his hard expression softening. Skewbald had only briefly glanced at Zephyr before resuming curling down next to the fire. “We’ll arrange a proper watch rota if this has to become a habit, just so we’re not likely to be taken by surprise by anything out there. But for tonight, I’ll take the full watch. I woke up late today anyway.”

“Very gracious,” grunted Skewbald, taking off his glasses and setting them down beside his curled-up form. He closed his eyes there and then.

Zephyr looked from Skewbald to Chevalier, where the cadet met his gaze. “Are you sure you don’t want to split the watch?” he enquired softly. “I’m admittedly still a bit on edge. I wouldn’t mind.”

“You came straight to us at the fort, farrier,” replied Chevalier. “You did well. Better than could have been asked of you. Have a rest. My treat.”

Zephyr, at a loss for how to respond to that, slowly bedded down next to Skewbald. The unicorn had taken the prime position, within a small dip in the ground close to the fire that was directly opposite to the ever-waiting murder-spruce. Zephyr made himself as comfortable as possible, and closed his own eyes in turn.

Past the crackle of the fire and Skewbald’s soft snores, Zephyr was aware of cut-off barks and screeches deep within the forest, of the soft rustling of what was either the wind moving through the trees or the murder-spruce readying for action. His mind’s eye, apropos of nothing, helpfully played out the likely course of events should a timberwolf creep up on him while he slept.

When that lost its edge, the letter to his family he’d never quite finished entered his thoughts.

Thus it was that Zephyr Gauze didn’t sleep a wink during his first night in the North.

Elsewhere, the grey sky was clearing.

General Destrier had been one of the last into the safety of the fort. A heavily pregnant mare had alighted upon the worst possible time to enter the active phase of labour; and between her difficulties, her partner’s panic, and Destrier’s attempts at shouting for a farrier past the din of the storm, he had only managed to get her into the fort as the storm finally broke.

He’d seen it all from a ground-floor window. The nullifier blazing with light, the storm striking down in one savage thrust, the ponies clustered around it. One armoured form in particular, helping push at something at the nullifier’s base.

The explosion as the storm’s bulk was funnelled into the top of the nullifier, the follow-up assassin’s blow from a stray bolt. The tower all but erupting, a cascade of stone falling to the ground far below.

It was at that point the general had galloped for the building’s exit as fast as his crippled foreleg would allow, nearly battering Lieutenant Vanguard to the floor before several cadets had jumped in to (just) restrain him, nearby civilians wide-eyed with confusion and fear.

He remembered Chevalier’s look of delight when he’d found out that he’d been randomly assigned the position below the nullifier alongside his coltfriend, as prestigious and risky as befitted a De Gendarme. Only theoretically risky, Destrier had thought at the time. Everything will be well in hoof.

But it hadn’t been entirely random, had it? What was the point of a little power if you couldn’t take advantage of it once in a while? What harm was there in putting an exceedingly competent cadet in a position of responsibility, and making your colt all but explode with delighted pride in the bargain?

Now the storm was dying down, and the cadets’ grip had loosened enough for Destrier to shrug free and pelt for the doorway, bursting through and galloping out into the damp and ozone-sharp air. The sky was still dark overhead and the ruin of the tower darker yet against it.

At its base, a door had opened. A cadet was trudging out, a struggling duck tightly held at their side. Destrier’s relief evaporated when they came closer.

“General -” started the broken-looking Silver Shield, raising his free forehoof in an attempt at a salute and trying to not fall over.

“Cadet Shield, where is Cadet Chevalier?” said General Destrier. His voice didn’t break. Not yet. Not quite yet.

“General, I -”

“Silver Shield,” said Destrier, smacking down the salute and leaning in close to the cadet, so close that he could all but see himself reflected in the cadet’s wet eyes. “Where’s my son?”

Elsewhere, the night was falling over the cloud-shrouded Greycairns. Through the sky, at heights where the air was too thin for a pegasus to breath, a figure of fire cut a lazy route in no particular direction.

Plans could wait. For now, the freedom of the sky was all there was.

His initial boiling-over fury had subsided. The starlight and open air had robbed it clean away, and given his mind the space it needed to think. To be exacting and rational about the whole business. Part of that rationality was now telling him that he maybe shouldn’t have scoured that underhold off the face of the planet or burned that corvid. He dismissed it; those could hardly be helped now. The venting of destructive magic may have even done his head some good. At least it confirmed he still had the capacity, even after nine hundred years.

Nine hundred years! Nine hundred years spent screaming in silence for the space to stretch paralysed pinions, to move trapped legs. Nine hundred years spent choking on the same pathetic pocket of air breathed a million times before. Nine hundred years with nothing but a slew of memories to rage at, nothing but ghosts from memory to gnaw and weep at, nothing to consider but all he could have won and all he’d been denied. Nothing to measure the years by but the rasp of his breath against the stone, the only thing he ever heard in that space under the mountain.

Madness must have surely found him during that time. Maybe he was mad now, and this was nothing but a magical delusion he’d plunged himself into, mind and soul both.

So what if it was?

He summoned fire, casting it forth in loops and curves of brightly burning beauty against the black sky. An artist’s strokes, a flexing of the muscles he’d had once, while he let himself think.

Celestia and Luna, the broodmares both, would have to wait. He would have to recover his form, muster a measure of strength again. He tentatively reached out to the stars, an oft-repeated action in the last few days.

Nothing. He would have to do this again the hard way, then.

Recover his form. Gather information and interrogate who he could. Stay as discrete as possible. Gather his strength, gather whoever and whatever he could under his banner. And when the time was right, he’d cast the die once more…

But he could wait. Until he had something in his corner, and until freedom had lost its savour.

He sniffed the air. He reached out with his magic, briefly losing himself in the happy sensation of simply feeling things once again before he actually focused.

A wyld storm had passed this way recently, the magic and weather below still in turmoil. Its path was long and broad, and questing examination and rough calculations based on where he guessed his current location to be – the Central Greycairns, northeast of the Capric Satraps of old - gave a promising answer for its termination.

Equestria. Good. Let there be a bit of havoc before his return in force. Let there be chaos and confusion that his subjects would cry out for deliverance from.

Tendril-lines of magic ran back from it, back into the North. They smacked of the residue of teleportation, of atoms and Base Magic left flurried by arcane projection.

“What artefact hast thou delivered, Equestria?” he purred to himself.

Perhaps he should venture a peek. See if whatever had been teleported his way was still intact. Learn from it. Break it apart. Mould it, use it, interrogate it, whatever would be applicable. What else could he do for the meantime?

Wings swerved, and he shifted course, his flight as yet unhurried. To the North once more.

Skewbald first became aware of the early-morning light as a mounting bright pressure on his eyelids, rousing him gradually from unconsciousness. He grudgingly opened one, hoping against hope that the events he remembered before sleeping were just some concussion-induced fever dream, and that he wouldn’t see an ebbing campfire, a clearing, an expanse of forest, and a respectively doltish and pathetic earth pony and pegasus.

He opened his eyes and saw an ebbing campfire, a clearing, an expanse of forest, a doltish earth pony, and proceeded to groan faintly and heartfeltedly before staggering to his feet.

“Morning,” said the slightly-drained looking Chevalier, still clad in his armour, lying beside the dead fire’s ashes. “Sleep well?”

“No,” replied Skewbald. The bed of damp grass and the conspiracy of the fire and Northern air to leave his body split between too-warm and freezing-cold had accounted for part of that. His dreams accounted for another.

Unicorns were especially sensitive to the magical currents in the world, as Skewbald knew and was customarily proud of. When unconscious, the magical energies and forces all about them would intrude on their minds in semi-coherent form. They could allow skilled unicorns to assess their surroundings even when unconscious, and even forewarn them of any magical maladies they may be suffering from. In Equestria, Celestia’s own domain, this usually produced little but deep and blissful sleeps. Luna’s return had improved these, for reasons nopony had yet guessed.

No such blissful deep sleep occurred here in the North. Here, his mental dreamscape had been a constant clash of arcane images and ideas, multihued and harsh and ever-shifting. Various magical beasts and flora burned like brief and bright candles all around. Background magic formed a constant static. From far away, one great unknown beacon had all but blazed with power. No great pattern to be deduced or warnings to be gleaned. Ugly chaos abounded on all sides.

All except for one constant sensation. Beneath it all, a bleak emptiness had pervaded. Mindless, cold, and hollow as the Abyss. No foundation beyond a perfect void, no sensation but a gnawing and angry hunger.

And that would have been bad enough, but expected - there was no shielding Princess at hand. But in the dream’s last moments, Skewbald would have sworn that he was trying to examine that emptiness, and it was looking back -

- And now he was awake, and talking to Chevalier, and all things considered he wondered what had been so bad about the dreams in the first place.

“The grass here is good for grazing, though I’m not sure about the nearby shrubs,” said Chevalier. “There’s a stream nearby, though we probably shouldn’t split off on our own to drink or anything else. Zephyr’s up in the sky, getting some of the lay of the land. He woke before you. I don’t think he slept at all.”

“Don’t imagine so,” grunted Skewbald, turning his head to try and spit out the early-morning taste of his mouth as best he could. Failing that, he stooped to begin grazing.

Chevalier waited a moment before speaking. “Look, before we begin planning a route and start to walk, I’d just like to say something. We seemed to get off on the wrong hoof in Fort Livery, though I’m not sure why. If I said or did something to offend you, tell me what and I’ll apologise.”

Skewbald didn’t respond immediately, still chewing on the stringy and moist grass. Chevalier continued, filling the silence.

“It’s patent nonsense, what’s happened to us. We’re going to have to hang close, know we can rely on each other for … well, for what’s up ahead. Let’s try and get along. Not make this any more of a miserable ordeal than it has to be.”

Skewbald finished chewing, swallowed, and looked up to face Chevalier. “You can rely on me to offer my magical talents and mind, and contribute to our collective survival. You don’t need more than that. Pray to Celestia or cuddle Zephyr if you want warmth.”

Chevalier’s jaw set. “I want us to be a team. To actually care about each other’s survival and chances, and to know that each other cares.” Skewbald didn’t respond, and Chevalier continued. “Look, is it something about me personally that sets your back up? You may as well speak plainly now, so we both know what we have to work with.”

“It’s not about you,” replied Skewbald. “I don’t care about you. If you’re intent on looking for a non-existent problem, then maybe that’s it.”

Chevalier opened his mouth, and then slammed it shut. His expression was unreadable. “Well,” he said in a low tone. “So long as we know where we stand.”

A motion from above caught Skewbald’s attention, a distraction he welcomed in that moment. He looked up to see Zephyr flying down from the sky, a bright piece of green against the morass of chalk-grey clouds. The pegasus looked breathless, his wings flapping ten to the dozen, and his descent to the ground wasn’t so much a landing as a vaguely controlled impact.

“Oof. That was educational,” he muttered, before taking several steadying breaths and looking at the pair with a slightly brighter expression. “Morning, Skewbald. I, ah, did a bit of scouting.”

“And what did you find?” asked Skewbald. He summoned the map once more, pleased to find that his horn had fully recovered from the previous day’s exertions. A moment’s concentration, and the green outlines of mountains and as many rivers and lakes Skewbald could remember sprang to life across it.

He’d seen various maps of the continent and secured them in his memory, and if the variations in them when it came to the North were any indication, there came a point where cartographers just gave up trying to extrapolate from the accounts of half-maddened explorers and just began filling in spaces at random. But what else was there to go by?

Zephyr took another breath before beginning. “Okay. From what I saw, the water here’s almost certainly the edge of a sea, and the coast runs on a little further south-west before it begins to run into what looks like a large bay – I went just below the cloud cover and I could just see the other side of it from our own.”

Skewbald glanced over his map, and saw a likely culprit around the area Chevalier had pointed out – a short and comparatively small bay stabbing into the continent’s side like a stiletto, variously labelled in the maps he’d read and gleaned memories of as either Blackwards Bay, Hackamore’s Bight, or Seriously, Just Turn Back Now, You’ve Suffered Enough Bay.

Among the few explorers he’d heard of, Literal Minded had been always Skewbald’s favourite. Regardless, Blackwards Bay was scribed across his map.

“Alright,” said Chevalier, nodding his head. “What’s on our side of the bay?”

“South-west of us, sticking to our side of the bay, the forest looks like it continues for a while, getting more and more rugged before the terrain becomes all mountainous. If we stuck to a more southerly than westerly course, then it looks like we’d bypass the worst of it, but it looks like we’ll have to do some amount of mountaineering in the near future.”

“Alright for some,” muttered Skewbald, glancing at Zephyr’s wings before marking down what looked to either be the Scunner Peaks or the Yet More Bloody Mountains Range. “What’s north of us? Mountains and precious little else?”

“Mountains and precious little else. If there’s any easy way to go from here, it looks like we’ve got to go between them and the bay.”

“Were you able to get any sense of the terrain beyond that? Or is it out of your range as yet?” said Chevalier.

“A bit out of range, yes. I tried going higher, above the cloud cover, just in case there were any gaps I could peer down, but – there’s flocks of things up there. I didn’t get that close to them. I don’t think I was noticed.”

“Ah. What were they?”

“I don’t know their species name, or even if they have one. But imagine something like a huge leathery kite with teeth. They didn’t look pleasant.”

“Mantaghasts. Or depending on whose account you read, Horrible Flying Bastards That Prove The World Is Basically Horrible,” said Skewbald absently. “Wise to not go too near them or get noticed. Apparently, they make cloud-eyries at high altitudes. Paralyse their prey and keep them alive there as long as possible.”

“Ah. Nice to know in retrospect,” said Zephyr in a slightly higher tone. “So … thoughts? On the terrain, not the mantaghasts.”

“Going by what you say, then we stick to a straight south-westerly course for now. Hug the side of the bay when we come to it, and try and pick the least terrifying stretch of mountains when we come to them.” Chevalier frowned. “Did you see any larger streams or rivers in the forest? Just so we’ve got potential drinking spots and forewarned of any obstacles.”

“There seemed to be a few streams where the tree cover was particularly thin. I didn’t notice any rivers.”

“Good. If we do find one, then we’ll figure out a way around.” Chevalier glanced around. “Anything else we need to do here? Anything anypony needs to collect? I’ve got everything I came with on me already. Zephyr, have you got your farrier’s bag?”

“Yes,” said Zephyr, patting it where it sat on the ground and stooping to heave it onto his back. “It’s fairly full as well, and nothing looks broken inside. Yourself, Skewbald?”

“Glasses and saddlebags. All the latter’s got is an empty thermos.”

“Fill that at the next water source we come to. I’ll collect firewood as we go, and see if I can remember any of the shelter-building techniques the Colt Scouts taught me. Or tried to teach me, at least.” Chevalier ventured a grin. Skewbald didn’t return, instead dispelling the map. Zephyr was preoccupied sending nervous glance after nervous glance towards the clouds.

“We’ll stick close together as we walk. No going out of eyesight or hearing distance from the other two. If anypony has to excuse themselves to attend to whatever in a bush, then make sure the others know and can hang around at a socially-respectable distance. We’ll walk for a few hours, take a rest, and walk a little further before bunkering down. Keep movement to daylight hours, and stay as fresh and alert in the evenings as we can. Sound fair?”

“Fair enough,” said Skewbald, while Zephyr nodded.

Chevalier looked them both over, and then ventured another grin. “And if we’re ever losing morale, just sit back and think about the parade we’ll get once we’re back in Equestria. We’ll have to pick ticker tape out of our manes for weeks.”

Zephyr returned a weak smile. Skewbald said, “Inspiring, truly. Shall we start walking now?”

“No sense in delaying it any further,” replied Chevalier. He looked around the campsite, and at the remains of the fire. “Any sense in clearing this up before we go, do you think?”

“What’s the point?” said Skewbald, already trotting. “It’s not as if we’re going to be followed.”

Working In Groups

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That first morning, Chevalier took the lead in forging a path through the forest. A drizzle had swept down from the sullen sky during the night, and each slap from a damp branch was a brief jolt to his fatigued-dulled senses. His armour was dripping after a few minutes, and his hooves and steel shoes filthy from where he'd stamped down undergrowth to create a clearer passage for Skewbald and Zephyr at his back.

From time to time, whenever the trees thinned out sufficiently to permit it, Chevalier would hear Zephyr taking to the air below the canopy to hover for a spell, taking some of the accumulating strain off his legs. Skewbald had no such luxury however, and the small unicorn's quick hoofsteps to keep pace with the others came coupled with gradually heavier breathing. Chevalier glanced back often to be sure Skewbald wasn't falling behind. The attention was rewarded with a frosty glower each time.

Chevalier, who'd made cross-country trots a habit ever since the Colt Scouts, swore he'd call for a break soon. The first few days would be the hardest for the three. But everypony, even the unathletic farrier and academic, would find themselves being physically conditioned for the trail by simple virtue of walking it. They'd learn to work together. It would get better soon.

He hoped it would get better soon.

The forest ran on, the trees becoming fewer and fewer as the ground beneath their hooves turned to damp undergrowth and countless coursing little streams. From all around them, there came the sounds of the forest: birdsong and angry high-pitched chattering from the sky and branches above, the scuffs and low barks of Northern wildlife in motion – skvader and smaller creatures that moved too quickly to be identified darted across their path often. The noise of the sea, hidden past the trees, was a constant churning presence at their side. Tide after tide whispered on and off distant sand and crashed upon rocks.

Nothing was trying to kill them. The murder-tree was long-distant. This wasn't quite as unrelentingly hostile as Chevalier had built up the North to be in his head, but every disruption in the current serenity threatened to lurch him away from the thin hope that it wasn't so bad after all. Every especially loud noise or flurry of motion, every instance in which an unusual hush fell across the animal life surrounding them, each moment set Chevalier's heart to pounding and his gaze flickering to every point before him where a predator might spring from.

He tried to not show it, of course. The other two didn't need to see him on edge. He just had to remain controlled and in charge – for he was in charge, for all that this little company had a leader, that much was plain. Letting his discomfort show could come later, when it wouldn't affect anypony else.

It was the De Gendarme way, on a relatively small scale. And if you wouldn't remain a De Gendarme in the darkest wilderness, then there was no point in being one anywhere.

They walked on, and the air grew colder as the sky remained overcast. Whenever Chevalier glimpsed the sea past the trees, the islands out in the water were lost to sight behind a thin wall of sea mist. Distant grey waters dimly shimmered and pounded against the shore rocks. Gulls keened, and Chevalier looked around for them, finally catching sight of one as it swooped briefly down into the forest.

Rather than the sleek white creatures Chevalier dimly recalled from a foalhood visit to the seaside, this gull was about half the size of a pony at the withers, coated in shaggy brown feathers, and with a second beady-eyed head where its tail ought to be. The second head stared impassively backwards as the gull flew down, until a sudden and subtle shift mid-air where it grew alert. Bones in the broad wings bent abruptly backwards with an unpleasant crack, feathers reversed right through the membrane of the wing, and the gull's whole body suddenly swooped in the direction the secondary head was facing.

This came at the expense of a solitary skvader grooming itself on the forest floor of damp dirt and mouldering leaves. There came a paired set of keens and a brief struggle, and the gull took off into the thin canopy once more, its screeching prey in its claws.

"Well, would you look at that," said Chevalier softly, watching the gull fly away with mixed parts fascination and disgust.

"I'm looking," replied Skewbald. "The Creator really gave them the worst position in the whole food chain, didn't It?"

"Not the skvader. The gull. I've not seen any like that before, have you?"

"Once. Stuffed, behind a glass case, and in a museum. I think I preferred it to that one there."

"I think I know the one you're talking about," said Zephyr, who had taken to his wings again, and whose voice had the same note of revolted fascination Chevalier recognised in his own. "Was it the one in the Canterlot Museum's Nature Wing? The one poised so it looked like it was swooping down on the jackalopes?"

"I think so," said Skewbald hesitantly. "It was a while ago."

"Ah. Same situation as me, then? Family going on a visit to the city across the country when you were a colt, going to see all the landmarks, the museum, the airyards, the palace, all that sort of exciting stuff?"

"No. I lived in the city." Skewbald's tone had found a cold edge.

Zephyr hadn't seemed to notice or he wanted to work past it, Chevalier couldn't tell which. "You know, I couldn't help but notice a bit of a Coltsburgh influence in your accent. Do you have a parent from there, or did you move from there to - ?"

"That's none of your business," said Skewbald, in a tone as sharp and cold as a knife in an ice-bucket.

Zephyr fell silent for a few minutes then, and eventually broke it quietly with, "I only asked because I've got family in -"

"Well, keep trotting quietly. We'll be less likely to attract something. You might even get to see your family again that way."

They trotted on in silence. This time, it lasted.

It would get better, Chevalier told himself. He tried to put aside the pleasant mental image of Skewbald getting a hoof to the muzzle in favour of focusing on the terrain ahead. The sun rose ever onwards through the sky, climbing to a peak.

The forest grew thinner and thinner, the trees growing wider and wider apart. Little streams snaked around them like strands in a spiderweb, as if a river had given up and disintegrated just before hitting the shore. The ground squelched underhoof, insects buzzed past their ears, and a sudden humidity had somehow insinuated itself into this little pocket of the forest, as if it wanted to be a swamp when it grew up.

Chevalier could feel the moisture gathering under his armour. His own legs were starting to ache, which combined with the buzz of insects and his sleeplessness to do no wonders for his mood. He cast his gaze around, and saw a hillock rising from the forest floor, several small trees sprouting from its sides. He waved a hoof in its direction. "Let's break there. We'll lie under the trees and get our breath back. Bound to be a little dryer than anywhere else nearby."

"You had me at 'lie under the trees'," said Zephyr, gliding towards the hillock. Skewbald followed him at a canter, with Chevalier taking the rear. He glanced backwards as he joined the other two, back to where they had started walking from.

It was hard to tell past the trees and the gently rising and falling terrain, but he was sure they'd covered several, maybe half a dozen miles. Not bad going for the first half of the first day.

"We'll give ourselves ten minutes," said Chevalier, turning back to the others. "Then we'll keep on trotting until the daylight starts to go or one of us reaches their limit, whichever comes first. Skewbald, if you keep track of the distance we've … Zephyr?"

Zephyr had paused where he had alighted, and was regarding something on the ground between the trees with all-but-concealed revulsion. "Come look at this," he said quietly.

Chevalier trotted over to see what had revolted the farrier. Amongst the undergrowth, the body of a small creature. In life, it might have looked like a large mole rat with spindly limbs and insectoid mandibles where most self-respecting mammals would have been happy to have a mouth. In death, it looked pinched and withered, the skin drawn tight across bones and an interior that seemed to have been made entirely hollow. A ragged and dry hole had been made in its abdomen, as if something had clawed a way in or burst out. Several disinterested flies crawled across it.

"Ick," said Chevalier, drawing up close beside Zephyr. "Handy to have the reminder that there's still predators about." He glanced at the grass around the creature, and noticed something odd. "Huh. It doesn't look old, or especially … decomposed."

"Yes?" said Zephyr.

"You'd expect there to be tracks around it, whether from it or whatever's hunted it, if it was recent. And you'd expect more of it to be eaten."

"It could have fallen from the trees," said Zephyr, looking up. "Some sort of … organ-draining hunting bird or something like that? I hate the North for not making that unfeasible."

"It could have come from further than that," said Skewbald, trotting up and abruptly poking himself in between Chevalier and Zephyr. He leaned in for a closer look, and Chevalier saw faint disgust join the unicorn's emotional repertoire of impassivity, annoyance, icy anger, and scorn. "Pegasi aren't the only ones who make homes in clouds."

"Like those beasts you mentioned earlier, that I'd seen. Mantaghasts?" Zephyr looked down at the torn-open creature. "I don't suppose this is their handiwork?"

"Don't know enough of their feeding behaviour to say. Maybe." Skewbald turned away, leaving Chevalier and Zephyr standing and still looking down.

"We're probably safe," reassured Chevalier. "It looks like they go after prey that's smaller than us."

It was a temptation to append 'at least, most of us' while glancing back at Skewbald. Chevalier shrugged it off. He had to be a leader, remember? If he wanted to coax the unicorn's better instincts to the fore, he'd have to lead by example.

"Maybe," said Zephyr. The pegasus looked a moment longer at the creature, and then ventured a hopeful grin up at Chevalier. "They shouldn't be too much bother, then?"

The sight of Zephyr's trusting smile buoyed Chevalier's spirits. Of course he could lead this strange and motley group through the worst the North had to offer them. And Tartarus take whatever stood in his way.

"Not even a little," he said with the most confident smile in his arsenal, offering Zephyr that universal symbol of friendship and reassurance between stallions, a solid punch to the withers. "Hang close and keep our eyes open, and we'll be drinking streetside coffees in Canterlot before we know it. They'll give us our own stained glass window in the Palace for being awesome."

"Touch of exaggeration in those last couple of sentences, I'm sure," Zephyr said, the smile persisting as he let himself collapse to the grass with a grateful groan.

"We'll be paraded through the streets. Mares and stallions alike shall swoon at the very glimpse of us. The Element Bearer who does these Sonic Rainboom things will do half-a-dozen in our honour, and that'll all be before Princess Celestia anoints us three as new Princes."

"Aaaaand now you're not even trying to be -"

"Verily, the constellations themselves shall descend from the Darkness Beyond to offer their homage -"

"Princesses above," came Skewbald's mutter. "Mute him. Deafen me. Scour the North with lightning. I'm not fussy."

Chevalier settled as he sank to the ground for his few minutes of rest. The grass here, while somewhat damp and with a faint piquancy of mud, had a better taste than the grass in the initial clearing. They might even bump into some edible shrubs along the walk. Ponykind couldn't live on forages alone, but they could go a while yet without supplements.

The sky started to clear overhead. Chevalier took it as a good omen.

In the wake of the storm, reports were assembled by Guard ponies picking through the rubble. Examinations of the lightning-struck tower were conducted thrice for surety's sake. When nothing was found, there was only one sad conclusion that could be reached.

Letters would have to be sent.

The first of them lurched into the depths of the Equestrian Postal Service by messaging-fire, skychariot, and pegasus courier, and was spat out again in the direction of Trottingham.

In a large greenhouse at the back of a compact and comfortable home in the heart of the green and sprawling city, Anemoi fussed over a bonsai.

"What's wrong with your graft, you wee bugger?" the pastel-green earth pony mare muttered. "Getting fussy, are we?"

The bonsai looked supremely unmoved by the invective. It was one of several on a single workbench, which were in turn a few amongst hundreds in the greenhouse. Most had already been wrapped with tags attached. This one had elected to start disintegrating before Anemoi had had a chance to send it off, however.

"Don't think I'm going to take sympathy just because you're ailing." Anemoi fixed it with a turquoise glower. "Lady Redwood requested a well-proportioned informal-upright specimen, and she's getting one even if I have to cannibalise you for parts."

The bonsai stood stalwart against the threat and the unconscious earth pony magic she provided it with. A grafted-on branch fell off with a thunk of defiant finality.

"Have it your way." Anemoi shrugged and looked around for where she'd laid her patented absurdly small shears. "Hope you're ready to meet the Creator, because that's -"

There came the sound of a key turning and of the home's front door opening, and Anemoi brushed her hooves off on a cloth before briskly trotting back into the main building, narrowly missing tripping over an abandoned set of roller-skates as she did so.

"Boreas, Eurus?" she called out, glancing at the face of a battered grandfather clock as she passed it by. "Hurly-Burly? Some miscreant's back home early, whoever it may be."

"I allus wanted t'be a miscreant," came the familiar Trottingham Dales voice of her husband. She emerged into the hallway to see Hurly-Burly, a big, lean pegasus stallion whose golden coat was hidden, as always at each homecoming, beneath an impenetrable wall of coal-dust. He looked up from where he was stamping some of it off his hooves onto the welcoming mat to grin crookedly at Anemoi. "How do, love?"

"Directing invective at miniature arboreal specimens, the usual. You're home awfully early."

"Pit's still closed," said Hurly-Burly, stepping off the mat onto the dark carpeting. "Nopony's gettin' back in for work, nopony, till the Guard's finished their look-through for whatever the storm might have sprung on us."

"And yet you return covered in coal dust regardless."

"One o' life's mysteries." Hurly-Burly opened one wing, revealing a tan-coloured, black-smeared letter that had been pressed against his side. He deftly caught it with his teeth and flicked it over to the ground at Anemoi's hooves. "Bumped into the postie on my way back."

"Oh, that's good," said Anemoi absently, not recognising the envelope paper beyond that it looked official. Maybe some missive from the Duchess about the storm clean-up efforts. "That reminds me, we'll have to write to Zephyr. Remind him that he'll have to write us back and tell us how he's getting on in his placement."

"Give the sprog time. If he's anything like his da, then he'll get round to it sure as the sun turns rump over teats. Might be we'll both of us be wearing cobwebs by then, but he'll deliver."

"Betimes I forget the grace of your poetry in mere spoken prose."

"Flatterer." Hurly-Burly trotted past her, stopping only to give her a quick and mischievous sooty peck on the cheek before she could protest. "I'll have a bath and a sup o' summat, and I'll pick the lads up from school after. Ya finish what ya need to with yer trees, love."

Anemoi grudgingly smiled as the stallion trotted past her and towards the bathroom. Looking down at the letter, she frowned as she recognised a wax seal with the insignia of the Equestrian Guard. She broke it deftly with a hoof and scooped out the slip of paper within.

The same Guard seal was emblazoned at the top, and the text started:

Dear Mr Hurly-Burly, Mrs Anemoi,

It is with deepest regret that we inform you that your son, Zephyr Gauze…

"…Hurly?" stammered Anemoi, trying to not raise her voice as she stared unblinkingly at the rest of the black text, trying to swallow down the cold dread that coiled in her gut and made breathing hard. "Hurly, please come and see this."

It was a fake, clearly it was. Some vile joke, come clad in crisp government paper and meticulous lettering and the proud seal of the Equestrian Guard.

The sound of running water from the bathroom blocked out her speaking voice. Paralysed to the spot, her composure slipped away as she pitched her suddenly-hoarse voice that little bit higher. "…Hurly?"

Skewbald was contemplating ways he might be able to magically dull sensation throughout his aching legs by the time Chevalier's call came from the front of the group. "We'll stop here!"

About time. The sun had all but sunk into the west, down through a clear indigo sky that blazed a steady golden-red across the horizon. The trees were starting to grow taller once they had left the damp terrain behind, with the shadows beneath the high canopies growing ever darker. Boulders loomed in their midst.

The location Chevalier had apparently chosen as that day's stopping point was a thin stretch of clearing that sloped up from the trees on either side, forming a tapering hillock that seemed to have been scraped down to a ridge of stone running along its summit. It ran south where it abruptly ended at a cliff descending sharply down to the forested hinterland between them and the distantly booming sea.

Small blue and purple flowers were strewn like jewels throughout the dark and coarse grass covering the ridge, shining in the dusk's dying light. Skewbald sank down amongst them, trying not to groan with relief at the weight taken off his legs.

Chevalier inclined his back, letting another load of dry wood roll off it. He'd found a dead and dried-out tree a few minutes before stopping here, and had spent what seemed to be a happy few minutes kicking it into usable chunks. Well, good for him. Simple pleasures for matching minds, and all that.

Zephyr flew up beside Chevalier, and the two of them kicked and poked the wood pile into something resembling a sensible fire. Once finished, Chevalier looked up from it to Skewbald and gave a brief nod.

Skewbald felt an extravagant impulse. Fire blossomed to life in the heart of the pile, a plume of it flaring out of the top and briefly taking the approximate shape of an alicorn with outspread wings. A wave of heat raced through Skewbald, dispelling a chill he had all but gotten used to. The fire died down the next instant, but the aftereffect of it remained in the twilight air.

Zephyr trotted backwards, letting out a whoop as he did so. A great, gleaming grin plastered itself across Chevalier's features. "Sol In-freaking-victus," he murmured.

"Tip your entertainer afterwards," said Skewbald, suddenly remembering the existence of creatures that might have been attracted by that burst of flame. Too late to do anything about that now, though, and he didn't let his expression betray his sudden recollection. He focused his magic again, and the map sprung to life in the air before him. "Let's see where we are."

"I'm not the best at estimating distance, and in this case, I might overestimate," said Zephyr, as Skewbald pared down and expanded the green-glowing map of the continent, focusing on their section of the North. "I think we might have come about fifteen miles today."

"Close. I'd put us at twelve miles in total, though it could have felt like more considering the roughness of the terrain and all." Chevalier looked out towards the sea, and frowned. "Call it twelve miles west by south."

Skewbald nodded, gauged a proper scale, and summoned a small glowing point where they had approximately started, on the north side of Blackwards Bay. Then he moved it to the left by a couple of millimetres, where it remained still.

Zephyr's cautious grin drooped into a frown. "Oh," he said. "That's … not much."

"It's good going for a first day," said Chevalier reassuringly. "Nopony said this wouldn't take a while. But we'll improve our pace."

"I suppose," said Zephyr. "But there's going to be mountains up ahead, aren't there?"

"At least one range, most likely two, before we reach Corva." Skewbald's gaze flicked from point to point on the map. "And they'll be surrounded by twisting foothills and rivers we'll have to cross too."

"We'll cross those bridges – metaphorically speaking – when we come to them," said Chevalier. "We have a pegasus. Worst case scenario, he can just carry both of us over the mountain."

"I can … what? I could maybe carry Skewbald for a stretch, but not for especially long … and you're joking."

"If my weight's an issue, then I'll take the armour off and put it in a saddlebag. You can just make a return journey for it." Chevalier offered a grin, and Zephyr returned a weak one. Skewbald dispelled the map.

For a few moments, they lay there in silence at the world's edge, next to the warmth and crackle of the fire. The sun passed down below the horizon, and the stars brightened to life one by one across the vastness of the darkening sky. A steady wind whistled overhead, stirring the trees around them to a gentle and continuous whispering. The tide kept track like the greatest heartbeat in the world.

"Come on," said Chevalier, rising to his hooves with a sigh. "We'll get some forage in ourselves and Skewbald can pass around his water thermos. After that, we'll sort out tonight's watch and …"

"… And?" Skewbald prompted after a moment of silence.

"… And appreciate silver linings." Chevalier's voice had grown quieter, had found a note of reverent awe. Skewbald twisted his head around and rose to his hooves to see what the cadet was seeing, aware of Zephyr doing the same.

Over the black expanse of ocean, great sheets of light undulated through the sky. Green and red, blue and gold, all shimmered as if stars had been caught in their weaves and all faded softly into the blackness at their edges. They flickered and pulsed against one another as if gods were playing with fire, yet did so in silence. Bolder ribbons of colour and the ghost-lights of orbs drifted through their midst like ships on the tide. All of it was reflected within the dark water, each broken mirror image a brightly-shimmering echo of the sky above.

For a long moment, the three stood and watched.

Skewbald found himself trying to track and decipher patterns into the movement of the light, but gave up. There was too much of it, and probably too little time for it.

"Is this one of Princess Luna's auroras?" whispered Chevalier after a few minutes had passed.

"Not exactly," said Skewbald, his own tone also quiet. "It's ghost-fire. Wild magic in the lower atmosphere and the sea can ascend or descend depending on the movement of the sun and moon. If a descending quantity ever meets an ascending quantity, then … ghost-fire happens."

"Can't remember where I read it, I must have been a colt," said Zephyr, his voice oddly choked, "But others say it's the souls of the seaponies, keeping watch over sailors and land creatures lost on the ocean. Emerging to help them. Guiding them to land."

"Well, if you're going to be fanciful about this …"

"Shut up, both of you," said Chevalier, no rancour in his voice.

A hush fell once again, and with the whispering of the trees and the crash of the tide as their music, the lights danced across the sky.

A shadow flitted in front of them.

Skewbald frowned. "What was -" he started.

And at that point, a lightning bolt slammed straight into Chevalier's back.

Skewbald blinked and staggered to one side, briefly blinded and half-deafened by the eruption of light and noise to his side. Chevalier crumpled like a puppet with its strings slashed, and as if from a great distance, he heard the panicked cry of Zephyr as well.

His focus was all but shattered, his world seeming to move in slow motion. Skewbald twisted his body around, seeing two great shadows coming swooping down upon them. One swooping down on him in particular, a low chittering coming from its depths.

No time for thought. Reflexes hammered into him through the magical self-defence classes at the School rose to the fore, and with an action born of pure reflexive alarm and cogitation that only brushed briefly at the level of conscious thought, Skewbald closed his eyes, focused …

… And teleported to just behind the oncoming shadow, a swift flash-step through the air and out the other side of whatever creature this was. Every unicorn capable of teleportation had their own take on the experience, and Skewbald's was the sensation of a helium balloon swelling in his gut.

He opened his eyes, released a high-pitched hiccup, and turned towards the creature he had teleported behind. His gaze burned into its back, and every mental resource he could muster was diverted towards the details of surviving, planning and blowing whatever this intrusion was apart.

From the back, the creature resembled a broad kite of dark and pitted leather. Its body flattened at the spread-out edges, forming two great wings that were broader than a pony was long, with a long and serpentine tail lashing behind it. A mantaghast. That stood to reason. The mantaghast flapped awkwardly as it drove forwards, deprived of prey and seeking to correct its course.

Skewbald didn't give it the chance. A heartbeat after he teleported, he gathered his magic, lowered his horn, and let fly with a battery of every basic combative blast he knew in rapid-fire succession. Green blast after green blast hammered into the mantaghast's back. A low, chittering rasp came from the creature as its flight stumbled and faltered through the air, burns and scars and plumes of smoke blistering across its back.

Skewbald breathed in and took a step back, adopting a more stable stance on the ground. He flicked his gaze around, taking in how the others were faring.

Zephyr had been caught off guard by the mantaghast that had plummeted down upon him, barely scrabbling to stay ahead of it with frantic flaps of his wing. He made for the cliff edge at a mad gallop, his wings buzzing blurs in the air that brought him aloft an inch shy of the sheer descent.

The mantaghast plunged after him, the air no defence against it. It caught a buoyant current as it cleared the cliff's edge as well, sweeping up at Zephyr in a headlong rush for which the pegasus had no answer beyond screaming and desperately raising his hooves to try and swat it away.

And in that instance, the mantaghast stopped short in the air, as if suddenly hooked from behind.

Where he lay, and where he was struggling to rise, Chevalier had clamped his teeth around the mantaghast's tail. His hooves scrabbled and clawed at the ground as he fought to rise, red dribbled down from the edges of the armour on his back in a dozen different places, and his red eyes burned with a berserk inner fire.

The mantaghast chittered and tried to pull forwards, but Chevalier had managed to rise and plant his hooves like trees in the earth. His muscles bunched as he pulled in turn, and a muffled rasp that was part battle-cry and part pained scream escaped him as he furiously yanked the mantaghast back. Between its furious flaps and Chevalier's pulling, it managed to swing through the air like an upside-down pendulum, coming crashing down upon the campfire with an explosion of sparks and flying wood.

Skewbald saw Chevalier springing after it; he saw Zephyr flapping back down onto the ground. Then he saw a flash of dark leather in the edge of his vision, and turned his attention back to his own problems.

An angry black stormcloud hung low in the air, the likely source of the lightning bolt earlier, brought here and manipulated by the mantaghasts. Beside it, another mantaghast spread its wings in the sky over Skewbald, giving him a view of its front. Shrouded by the vast wings, segmented black eyes gleamed like cut jet stones. Claws writhed and wriggled down its front like the legs of a centipede, each coming to a wickedly sharp point.

In silence, it descended towards Skewbald.

In the corner of his field of vision, a boulder. Grass and dimly-glowing flowers ran out beneath his hooves.

A plan etched across his mind like living lightning, and a wordless instant later, he had the Arcane Summaries for a random flower and the boulder both. His magic spread out to encompass them both as the mantaghast came rushing down.

Next, a single spell binding, to be maintained. Skewbald held the Arcane Summaries in mind, and Transposed the Property of Weight. Magic surged out of him, more than he expected, and he fought to keep the spell-energies in control as the flower before him sunk suddenly into the grass. There was more to come.

He maintained the Transposition, splitting off a part of his concentration to keep it going. With another part of his will and magic, he levitated the boulder off the ground. Quite gently, and quite easily. It only weighed as much as a flower, after all. So easily, in fact, that it was no great trouble to suddenly sink in the magic required to send the boulder rapidly flying straight up at the descending mantaghast.

Before it impacted, he released the Transposition.

The flower bobbed out of the grass. From above, there came several sickening cracks and a cut-off rasp of agony. The boulder crashed to the ground a few seconds later, and the lifeless, boneless form of the mantaghast drifted gently on top of it.

"Who's a clever pony?" muttered Skewbald with relief, turning back towards the rest of the battlefield. "You is -"

And in that instant, a dark weight blindsided him from his left, snatching him right off the ground and turning his world to blackness.

Skewbald screamed and struggled and tried to gather his magic, his orientation lost amidst the loss of his grounding and vision. He was aware of sharp and painful clutching in his sides, undoubtedly the claws of a mantaghast stabbing into him and holding him tight. His legs were pinned tight, and he kicked them in their limited range of movement to feeble effect against what he guessed was the front of the mantaghast. He willed magical energy to his horn that he may blast his way free, but every movement jolted his horn sharply against the surface of the beast and dissipated whatever paltry amount he had brought to bear.

He could feel the ascent, though. He could feel cold winds building beneath him, hear the sounds of far below growing fainter.

And he felt something stab suddenly into the front of his chest, a stinger from some hidden orifice of the mantaghast's. He gasped with the pain, and winced at the appalling coldness building around the area that had been jabbed.

Images and words came to him. Speculation from the grim accounts of Borealis and Literal Minded, comparisons with parasitic wasps and the known subspecies of vampire. The drained and dry body of some small forgotten creature, fallen from far above after something had burrowed its way out.

His heart hammered, and Skewbald fought like he'd never fought before. "Let me out!" he screamed, slamming his hooves forwards with every ounce of strength he had, punching his horn forwards and jabbing and goring at whatever he could reach, clawing for a space to break free. "Let me out! Let me out, let me outoutoutoutout - "

A hoof smacked into the joint of a claw. His horn plunged into something soft that might have been a segmented eye. With a chitter, the mantaghast's grip released, and Skewbald found himself in freefall through the dark. Glorious, beautiful freefall.

For the second time in as many days, he fell through the blackness, too disorientated to think properly. And as before, his fall was arrested by a tree branch, and then another tree branch, and then the branch of a neighbouring tree, which sprung him into a magnificent bellyflop onto a thicker branch near the tree's base.

There he rested for a moment, quietly hating the universe and everything in it, before raising his head and turning his bleary gaze upon the battlefield. By the sounds of it, he was still nearby.

Chevalier was still atop the mantaghast amidst the ruins of the campfire, bringing his steel-shoed forehooves down upon it again and again, screaming with every plunge and drawing back with a shudder of effort with every crunch from the mantaghast below. The mantaghast flailed, and then twitched, and when it stopped moving altogether, only then did Chevalier let himself roll off it. He flopped to his side in the dirt, red mixing from his coat with the mud. His eyes bulged and he released short and pained little gasps, as if he hurt too much to do anything else.

And Zephyr …

Zephyr was frantically spinning on the spot, surrounded by what looked to be a blazing halo of lightning. Two mantaghasts circled him, one of which Skewbald recognised as his spell-scarred own from earlier. The other looked to be the newly-cyclopic one Skewbald had been seized by.

Pegasi could capture static electricity on their wingtips, couldn't they? Had that been how this started? A frantic spin in place meeting with unexpected success when the attacking mantaghast withdrew after a nasty shock, forming a defensive habit that was proving hard to break.

Skewbald watched the pegasus frantically rotate on the spot, a lightning bolt chasing around his outstretched wings, and yelled, "Release it! You can take one of them out!"

"I'm not sure how!" screamed Zephyr, his eyes wide and brimming with terror both at the mantaghast and the explosive weapon now held by his own body.

"For skyfire's sake!" Skewbald forced the uncooperative pieces of his brain that had had enough thinking for one evening back into furious cogitation. Observe the lightning, observe the trail it took relative to Zephyr's right pinion, observe the position of the mantaghasts.

Wait for harmony.

"Now," growled Skewbald, and one telekinetic jolt swept Zephyr off his hooves and sent the lightning bolt flashing out to meet a mantaghast face-first.

There was a brief and ghastly eruption mid-air. Various organic components pattered down around Zephyr, who sprawled in the dirt covered with liquid that had previously been circulating around a mantaghast.

The remaining mantaghast, who bore the scars from Skewbald's encounter, seemed to take stock of the situation and its three obliterated compatriots, suddenly remembered a pressing appointment elsewhere, and glided away at a smart pace, becoming lost in the blackness of the sky.

The light of the ghost-fire played as if in mockery over the pieces of mantaghast, over the glimmering ashes and smouldering remains of the campfire, over the ponies bearing witness to it all.

And until a few minutes later, when Skewbald was finally able to wriggle off the tree branch and kick Zephyr out of shock, there wasn't a sound to be heard except the whisper of the wind through the trees, the pound of the sea upon the shore, and the pained meeps and heavy breathing from three sets of pony throats.

Recovery

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It took some time to clean up the campsite.

Skewbald, as luck would have it, knew a simple sweeping spell that didn't seem to discriminate between the differing weights of the fallen mantaghasts, smaller components thereof, and strewn cinders. A dark and unpleasantly glistening pile now sat a short distance downwind, set afire and vomiting smoke into the black sky.

The same spell had only prompted yelling from Zephyr and Chevalier when he tried to use it to sweep the stricken cadet into a more convenient position, however, but you couldn't expect ponies to be sensible and reasonable about everything, thought Skewbald. That was only how you set yourself up for disappointment.

Now Skewbald had collapsed to his haunches with a sudden exhaustion and a cold tremor that had seemed to jump right out his gut and down all of his limbs. He lay still on the wet grass, watching the other two in the light of the dying ghost-fire and the inferno at his back.

Chevalier had barely moved since finishing off his own mantaghast, beyond forcing himself into an approximately upright lying posture, his forehooves digging into the ground before him and his head raised. Thin lines of blood trickled down from beneath the armour plates covering his neck and back. His expression beneath his helmet was drawn, his teeth clenching and his eyes screwing shut whenever he moved so much as a millimetre. He met Skewbald's gaze only briefly and offered up a tight and weary smile.

Zephyr, on the other hand, seemed to have moved past shock and into some calm lagoon on the far side of it, busying himself with opening his farrier's bag and drawing apparatus from it, screwing on some tight ring holding sockets and protruding needles and other devices around his hoof. Maybe it was the farrier training, maybe it was a chance to prove himself where his skills were vital, maybe it was simple considered awareness of the situation's gravity and the conscious overcoming of his panic.

Maybe it was the light kick or two to his kidneys Skewbald had delivered. That was probably it.

"Relax if you can," said Zephyr, finishing setting up his hoofring and turning to Chevalier. His tone sounded odd, absent any customary hesitation or benign flummoxedness. "Tell me where it hurts, and how much."

"Down across … ah … across my neck and back," said Chevalier in a hushed and strained tone. "Doesn't hurt too much … as much … when I'm still. Hurts when I shift around. I can feel the armour rub against whatever it is."

"Stay still. Are you allergic either to drowsethistle solution or lockwood extract?"

"Don't think I am."

"That's good. Drowsethistle acts as a painkiller and mild sedative in smaller doses. Lockwood encourages hemostasis, so you're not at risk of bleeding out. Your armour's putting pressure on the injury already, which was commendable foresight on your part, well done, but there's no harm in a belt-and-braces approach." Zephyr produced a small jar of large, liquorice-coloured tablets from within his bag, popped it open, and inserted one into an indent in the hoofring. An injection needle on the ring sparkled briefly, and filled from the bottom-up with a murky-coloured liquid in which red motes glimmered.

Even in his pained state, Chevalier eyed the needle with what looked to be entirely unwarranted nervousness. Skewbald snickered at the sight.

"Needle anxiety?" asked Zephyr, catching the look.

Chevalier managed to look sheepish. "Well … not anxiety, per se. I can cope, but … "

"That's quite alright. Make charming conversation with Skewbald, for want of a better adjective, and I'll arrange a different delivery method."

"You don't have to go to … " started Chevalier, his protests fading when Zephyr trotted around him. The cadet breathed out, some measure of relief entering his expression. He looked up and met Skewbald's gaze.

"It might have been the delirium and adrenaline talking," he said, "But I'm sure I saw you smack one of them right out of the sky with a boulder out the corner of my eye."

"You saw correct," replied Skewbald, who had just noticed Zephyr's movements and was trying not to stare and laugh. It was hard not to. His impulses had acquired an oddly stronger quality, his self-control had slipped as a faint muzziness had inveigled around the edges of his senses. He had been stung by one of the mantaghasts. Was something setting in? Why wasn't his mind getting as concerned about this as it ought to be?

Tartarus take whatever idiot Creator had decided to let the entire foundation of the sophisticated sapient mind still be built from uncontrollable, unconscious reactions that an Eohippus would proudly recognise. Tartarus take every single idiot ancestral Eohippus as well, for spite's sake.

Spite was growing harder. Skewbald let himself be content with the Creator and every Eohippus as Tartarus's share. Mantaghasts suddenly occurred. They could all go to the Cold Fire as well. They should have come first in the tally, now he thought about it.
Chevalier was still talking for some reason. Skewbald had forgotten what he'd been talking about.

" … probably pulled our flanks out of the fire there, with the boulder-flinging and directing Zephyr's lightning," Chevalier continued from some unknown starting point. A grim smile passed across his features. "We owe you one."

"Um," said Skewbald (Um? Um? Since when did he ever say um?!), trying to unravel the conversation. "Yes."

"All our past terseness aside -" Chevalier started before yelping in pain as Zephyr stuck a needle into the back of his hind leg. His pained whisper was briefly forgotten. "Gah! That … that isn't a different delivery method!"

"Sneaky injections are different from overt injections. Take your farrier's word for it." Zephyr smoothly trotted to Chevalier's front. "Stay still while that takes effect. I'll just check on Skewbald, and then I'll see about taking that armour off to inspect the injury."

"Despise … you."

"That's a common reaction. You'll get over it." Zephyr moved towards Skewbald's own prone position. "Let me get a look at you."

"Cuts on my side where one seized me, some bruising where I bounced off a few branches while escaping from it. Nothing serious there," Skewbald said quickly. He had never been fond of close attention. A numbing wave shivered out from his gut to the ends of his limbs, while his brain felt as if it were being ever-further smothered in cotton wool. "I was stung with some sort of venom, though. I think it's doing something to me."

"I'll be the judge on the cuts and bruises. Tell me about what the venom seems to be doing to you," said Zephyr, his expression briefly sharp and questioning as he made eye contact with Skewbald. He trotted round to Skewbald's side, examining the cuts left by the mantaghast and muttering to himself as Skewbald spoke.

"My limbs feel numb at the extremities. I can move them and balance on them, but it feels awkward to do so. It's done something to my thought process as well. It's like trying to think while sleep-deprived – hss!" Skewbald drew in breath as the cold pain of iodine being swabbed across a cut came from his side. He craned his neck to look at Zephyr, who rotated the hoofring to spread a sticking plaster across the cut he'd just cleaned.

"Nothing's deep enough to warrant stitches. No sense in risking infection, though. Keep talking while I work." The farrier continued to clean and cover the cuts on that side, flapping directly over Skewbald to his other side after a few painful moments had passed.

Skewbald, for his part, tried to describe the curious sensation of the toxin seemingly pressing a pillow over his mind and his physical sensations, but found his thoughts drifting. Each swab of iodine was a little shock back to reality, but only a brief one.

When was the last time he'd ever had to have a cut cleaned and dressed? Was it in Canterlot? Coltsburgh? One of the homes, certainly, but he couldn't recall the incident that prompted it.

Hang on, no; it had last been at the School for Gifted Unicorns, during his first year there. Another student's backfiring spell had flung Skewbald into an old set of pony armour, complete with gratuitous spikes all over the barding.

"…Skewbald? Still with me?" Zephyr was speaking as if from the other side of the continent.

"Always hated group work," murmured Skewbald before his now-feeble executive function was able to jam its spurs in. "Hmm? What is it?"

"Your cuts are fine, and nothing looks like it was broken by the mantaghast or your fall. And the toxin can be addressed as well. We're probably lucky you're not the size of a skvader, or it could have been nastier." Zephyr pushed a jar containing a few large yellow pills along the ground towards Skewbald. His stern expression slipped to betray wry concern. "One of these will patch you up. But they're not particularly fun to take. I'd stand in a bush while you took it."

"Oh. Why's that?"

"To cut through reams of medical jargon, this'll essentially hunt out wherever the toxin's meddling with your nervous system and unbind any instances of it from your body. It'll quickly collect into a non-lethal form within your body. That'll be when your body has to discharge it."

"Okay," replied Skewbald.

"You gather what I mean by 'discha-'"

"Yes, yes, whatever makes me able to think again," said Skewbald past clouds of cotton wool. He picked a pill up with telekinesis, and rose with some effort to his hooves, glancing around for a convenient bush.

"Take your water thermos as well. You'll need to rehydrate. I'll be with Chevalier. Call for me if you have any problems."

"Yes, yes," said Skewbald airily (airily? He would choke on these pills if that was what it took.) as he trotted over to the bush. He wobbled as he made his way, the ground seeming like sky under his hooves. Stepping into the bush and trampling down what parts impeded him, he stood stock-still and casually gulped down the pill.

After a second, he chased it down with a swig of water. Nothing seemed to have much taste anymore.

And then, a few seconds after that, he woke up again, the effect all but instantaneous. A daybreak in swift and furious motion. Lightning seemed to crackle down his limbs, taste returned to his mouth, the world suddenly exploded with the vibrant colours that had slowly slid out of his vision. His mind lunged into action once more like one of the mighty diesel-fuelled engines he'd seen blaze across experimental tracks in Canterlot's yards. By all that was glorious under Celestia's sun, he was himself again…

His stomach shivered. Something clenched in his throat. Zephyr's advice regarding the pill came back to Skewbald.

"Oh, Tartarus," he whispered, just before his world turned to concentrated indignity.

Several torturous moments later, he'd managed to raise his body from where it had buckled nearly to the ground (though without actually touching it, thank Celestia), sobbed out one last empty retch, and discovered that breathing through one's mouth as opposed to the nose didn't so much minimise the sensational unpleasantness as it did redistribute it. He scouted around for his thermos, swished the first swig furiously around his mouth, spat it out, and then guzzled water like there was nothing else in the world worth doing. With another part of his magic, he plucked a patch of dock leaves to conduct whatever wiping-off of parts needed doing.

Oh, for some running water and soap. His horn for some soap.

He looked blearily up at Chevalier and Zephyr. The farrier looked concerned even past his professional decorum. The cadet winced, seemingly not just because of his own pain.

"For whatever my sympathy's worth, that looked outright awful to go through," said Chevalier, whose helmet had been removed at some point during these moments. Blood matted his mane at the sides Skewbald could see.

Skewbald tried to retort, but the acid lining his throat made him break down into rasping coughs.

His horn and his favourite limb for some toothpaste, for that matter.

"Attend me for a moment," he was aware of Zephyr saying to Chevalier. "I suspect that if I took your barding off, I'd find a burn left by the lightning, running down your neck and across your back. It's chafing against the metal."

"Seen pictures," murmured Chevalier, still trying to inject more levity into his tone than he had any right to feel. "Fern-shaped scars. Very pretty, depending on your perspective."

"Yes. It'll come out silver upon your coat once it's healed up, I expect. Something to show off to mares once we're home and dry, eh?"

"Prefer stallions myself."

"Beg your pardon. But that happy eventuality will have to wait until I've taken your armour off and treated it. Both of these will hurt. More than you may wish to experience." Zephyr drew in a breath. "I can administer an anaesthetic. Concentrated drowsethistle extract. It'll knock you out cold for a couple hours, in which time I can treat and dress the burn, and you'll be left in a deep sleep for the rest of the night."

Chevalier closed his eyes then, letting out a long and low breath before he opened them again. "How many doses of the anaesthetic do you have in that farrier's bag?"

"Just one." Zephyr looked briefly apologetic. "The bag was packed for a single quick evening's emergency work. Some excess and spares of some things, precious little of others."

"I'd rather not take the anaesthetic, then, if you're not exactly working with unlimited supplies. Best to save it for a rainy day, when one of us might be in real pain. That painkiller earlier will be enough for me."

"No, it really won't," said Zephyr with a sigh. "I won't give you the anaesthetic if you don't consent. But I do strongly advise taking it. This will hurt."

"For the sake of a future rainy day, consider my consent withheld. I'll just bite down on a branch or something if I need to control myself." Chevalier ventured a grin up at Zephyr.

Zephyr sighed, composed the farrier's expression once more, and leaned down towards the back of Chevalier's armour. "You're an idiot."

"Please, a 'De Gendarme' if you would. It sounds more dashing."

Both of Zephyr's hooves latched around the first section of barding, covering Chevalier's neck and lower back. Firmly, smoothly, he began to prise it off.

The first time the barding shifted before apparently clinging to something beneath, an involuntary gasp escaped Chevalier and his hooves ground short furrows into the dirt. His teeth clenched shut, and he leaned his head forward as if preparing for a charge.

Zephyr pulled again, and this time a faint yet horrible wet noise came from between the barding and Chevalier's back. Zephyr hesitated at that, while his patient remained stock-still. Every part of Chevalier seemed to have tensed, and liquid crept out from between his clenched-shut eyes.

The third time, the barding was lifted a centimetre or so off Chevalier's back. There was the same wet sound of something becoming unstuck.

Then Chevalier screamed, convulsing forwards and away from Zephyr. Zephyr himself released the barding amidst a sudden frantic flapping, jolting another cry of pain from Chevalier as it slapped back down.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Chevalier wretchedly babbled between feeble gasps. "I can't, I need, please, the anaesthetic, not again, I'm sorry, I'm sorry -"

"Hush, hush," said Zephyr, his own eyes wide with horror and panic, his farrier's composure destroyed beyond recovery. He groped in his nearby bag for a vial, hooves trembling wildly as he tried to secure it on his hoofring. "It's alright, it'll be alright."

The screams and gasps from both of them stabbed into Skewbald's tender senses like a flurry of blades. An impatient desire to end it would have sufficed to try and help Zephyr's fumbling efforts to secure the vial. But even as he reached out with his magic and did exactly that, there was some other strange feeling prickling at the back of his motivation.

No time for contemplating it. He watched the farrier – Zephyr, rather, for there was nothing of the farrier about him any longer apart from the tools he groped uncertainly with – settle Chevalier with shushes and stammered exhortations, saw him gently place a syringe's point at the cadet's side. It didn't seem to go noticed.

"C - count to ten with me," said Zephyr. "One, t - two, three, four -"

"Five, I'm sorry, six, I tried, sev – sev…"

After a long moment, Chevalier slumped forward. Zephyr drew in a long and rattling breath, glanced uncomprehendingly at Skewbald, and then cautiously returned to the business of taking off the barding.

Skewbald paid little attention to the process of removing the armour and treating the red mess underneath. Sterilised cloth and pastes and more of these good recuperative bandages were produced in a solid half-hour's continuous work. At the end of it all Zephyr stepped back and regarded the soundly-sleeping cadet, whose torso was now all but entirely wrapped around with shimmering bandages.

"Need to … need to give him the full night," Zephyr said, as if in a dream, his voice thick and trembling as he wiped his hooves clean. "Split the watch between us? I … if you could please take the first watch, I can get a rest now. Wake me up when it's my time. That way, I'll be up when he wakes. I can see to the bandages. If that's alright -"

His talking was an irritant. "Yes, yes, go to sleep," snapped Skewbald. "One of these days, we'll manage a proper watch rota, I'm sure."

Zephyr nodded feebly, lay down and rooted around briefly, presumably for a comfortable position. Skewbald assumed he found it, as he soon settled down. The night sky drew his attention. The ghost-fire had faded, leaving only a broad wash of stars against the clear black sky.

He considered the Arcane Summaries for the stars, as from beside him there came Chevalier's gentle snores and what seemed like Zephyr trying to hide the sound of crying himself to sleep.

Quicksilver worked an afternoon mail route in Coltsburgh, along the side of the river. It was always best around that time, when the initial delivery boats had moored or sailed off to leave the river relatively quiet. The old pegasus mare loved the city more than anything, but she dearly adored the hushes in between its customary bustle and thunder.

It looked to be a good day as well. Her satchel was light across her shoulders. The weather teams had clearly been busting their haunches, and the sun shone down through a smokeless sky. Ducks and river birds quacked and chirped as she flew past them. Sweet smells came from the front gardens of the row of small houses here, with nearly every small garden boasting an outsized collection of vividly coloured flowers.

It was a lovely street in a lovely city, and Quicksilver believed she had the best job in the whole world.

There was one house in particular she had to deliver a letter to, make notable by the lack of flowers in its front garden. The grass was bare, all the way up to the house's drab walls and ever-dark windows.

She even saw the house's sole occupant out tending that garden, holding a small knife aloft with unicorn magic and paring the grass down to an even level. The patchwork-coated unicorn didn't seem to notice her as she flew nearer.

"Mr Oddbald?" she chirped as she dipped into the satchel with her mouth and rummaged for his mail. "Letter for you."

The middle-aged, powerfully-built unicorn, who Quicksilver could only assume came into the world with a grim, emotionless expression and who presumably intended to leave it that way too, turned to face her. Deep blue eyes that were nearly as dark as a shark's regarded her from behind rimless glasses.

"From?" he said, wiping the knife clean on his coat.

"Not sure, Mr Oddbald. Looks like official mail to me. Could be a Guard letter."

One brow rose an imperceptible amount, and Oddbald wordlessly plucked the letter away from her with his magic. The knife was brandished and neatly slit open the envelope's top, flicking out the piece of paper within. The unicorn caught it and started to read it.

Partway through, his expression shifted slightly, an event like the cracking of a landscape. Something … complicated passed beneath the stoic outlook.

"Good news, Mr Oddbald?" ventured Quicksilver.

Oddbald read through the letter once more, holding his silence for a moment longer. He then glanced back at Quicksilver, his normal expression returned once more.

"News," he said with a shrug, and tossed the paper through the dark open door of his house.

The doors to Celestia's bedchambers edged gently open when Luna pushed upon them. Two Dayguard turned to face her from where they stood at attention on the inner side of the door. She paid them little attention.

"Celestia?" she called.

"Come in," came the feeble voice of the figure smungled under blankets on the room’s huge bed. A single window high above permitted a single ray of sunlight, casting the large room mostly into dimness. The royal regalia glittered faintly on a stand near the back. "Give us some time alone, Sir Stratus, Sir Berserkergang."

The two Dayguard stiffly nodded, one sleek-looking pegasus, one hirsute-looking earth pony, and just as stiffly marched past either side of Luna and out of the bedchamber. Luna stepped forward, bearing some papers at her back. The door was shut behind her.

Luna turned to face the ailing Celestia with a look of no little reproach.

"Thou art a gigantic idiot," she said.

"I love you too, my sister," came the answering hoarse chuckle from Celestia. The Sun Princess wriggled her head out from underneath the blankets. Her eyes had lost some of their lustre, her horn's spiral groove seemed to have become a curving scorch-marked line. A faint smile flickered around the edges of her mouth. "So. Sixty settlements at once. I think I did rather well, myself."

"I think thou art an idiot."

"We've covered this. You have to say nice things about the heroic invalid now."

"A self-sure, forgetful, conceited idiot who forgets that she isn't all-powerful!" Luna strode towards the bed. "Exhausting thyself! Spreading thyself and thy power thin! And collapsing only on the instant each town under thou declares the all-clear. Let us bow to the gracious and moderate wisdom of Ever-Resplendent Celestia, for it is truly unequalled on this vast earth."

"…Worth it," Celestia said after a few moments, a wry grin edging its way into her tone. "Didn't lose a single one. Good day's work. Should strive for more like it."

"Don't scare me like that!" Luna shouted. The Royal Canterlot Voice threatened, and her voice dropped and trembled. "I … I was still in Cloudsdale battling the storm there when word came from Canterlot that thou had appeared and collapsed. A full hour I had to remain at my post till the skies had cleared, and every second -"

"Shh," said Celestia gently, pushing back the blanket and, with effort, raising one wing as if in invitation. "Come here."

Luna paused mid-gulp, and then crept closer. Heaving herself up onto the bed, she lay down and let Celestia's great wing envelop her. She felt the warmth of the feathers around her, felt the strong and slow heartbeat against her ear, heard Celestia's wearied but gentle breaths next to her. For a moment, they were fillies in the forest once again.

"I'm sorry I scared you," she heard Celestia say. "I truly am. I should have been wiser."

Luna moved her head to venture a smile up at Celestia's tired expression. "Th'art alive. As is Equestria. That's all that's important at the end of the day, I suppose."

"The first part is especially something of a comfort," said Celestia. "I may have to ask you to fill in for my stead in court for a time. Until I am back on form."

"I can manage it," said Luna. "I am up to speed on the law and thine own record of deliberations and decisions. I'm sure I'll find room for improvement along the way as well."

Celestia chuckled. "I may have to postpone the upcoming state tour as well." Her voice grew briefly somber. "It may have to be cancelled altogether."

"Postpone it to a month hence, no more," said Luna. "By that time, thou will at least be well enough to sit in court and Parliament and enjoy all they have to offer. I can take thy place in the tour."

Celestia hesitated then. "I suppose the other heads of state will be curious to make your acquaintance," she said at last.

"I'll even take the Nocturna," said Luna. "It might even fly by that time, who knows."

The words And I'll attend to certain other things didn't need to be spoken.

"You had papers when you entered," prompted Celestia after a comfortable while. "Matters for my attention?"

Luna sighed. "Yes. I crossed paths with Minister Fancy Pants on my way here, and he requested that I pass them on. Not pleasant reading for the most part, I fear." She floated the first one around until it rested before them on the bed. "A preliminary sum of damages to infrastructure in the storm's wake."

Celestia scanned it briefly. "The Disaster Relief Fund should be enough to cover that. If not, I know certain nobleponies and businesses that have been remiss on their duty to the national revenue. I can wave a donation tin in quite a threatening manner when I am pressed. What else?"

Luna put the paper away and drew forth the next one. "A plea for aid from the Asinial Parliament. Their seawalls were ruined in spite of minimal damage elsewhere, and they'll struggle to rebuild them before the autumn floods threaten Asincittà itself."

"I doubt they'll object too much to the deployment of Equestrian troops on their soil, but I'll … you, rather, will send the formal requests for passage regardless. A Legion's complement of engineers should speed the process considerably."

Luna drew forth the last piece of paper. "Lastly, for now, this. A sum of all casualties at this stage."

Celestia's gentle expression fell grim, and she looked down at the neat lines of writing. "Five," she said, a note of bitterness entering her voice.

"Once upon a time, we would have been relieved had it been as few as a hundred times that number," said Luna.

"That was once upon a time. We must strive to improve. Always improve." Celestia put the paper aside. "Read me their names."

"What good will it possibly do?" Luna said softly.

"Luna," said Celestia, turning to her, "Please."

Luna held still for a moment, then cleared her throat and turned to the paper and the names and details therein. "Sun-Dapple and Mahogany, a farmer couple in the countryside outside Baltimare. They were old. They probably refused to evacuate when alerted by the Guard. They were found this morning in their bed. The storm had set their house afire and then doused it under rainwater, but not before their bedroom was choked in fumes."

Celestia nodded, her expression far away. Luna continued.

"In Fort Livery, Zephyr Gauze, Chevalier De Gendarme, and Skewbald Doul." It was an odd and bitter thing to still see a De Gendarme haunt a list of casualties even after all this time. The last name poked at Luna's memory as well, and she suddenly recalled the student who had been mentioned in the meeting a few scant days before. She turned to Celestia's own expression and saw a carefully-presented blankness. "A farrier student, a Guard cadet, and the unicorn who helmed the nullifier. They were seen trying to correct the fallen nullifier just as the storm struck. They succeeded. The town's fort was undamaged. But they … well."

Celestia's blank mask fell away. No tears followed. She just looked infinitely and impossibly tired. Luna, after a further moment's hesitation, gently nuzzled her.

"I hope thou aren't doing anything so foolish as blaming thyself for what happened," she said. "To any of them. They went knowingly to risk, the student volunteered for the duty. Thou couldn't have known -"

"No. I'm past that stage of leadership of pointless self-loathing." Celestia sighed, and weakly returned the nuzzle and dipped her head back onto a pillow. "The road to perfection's just a long one to walk. One day, it'll be perfect. No more illness, no more death, no more ponies dying or being hurt by cruel chance in a cruel world. One day."

Luna broke the silence after a while of it hanging heavy in the still air. "We'll meet that day together when it comes, sister. It'll come." She kissed the top of Celestia's head, and picked her way out from underneath her wing and off the bed. "I'll let thou get to thine rest. I'll be back soon. Cadance will almost certainly come by, if she hasn't been here already."

Celestia nodded vaguely, and closed her eyes as she sunk further into the pillow and blankets.
"Sleep well," murmured Luna, trotting to the door.

The room was silent in her wake.

Mire

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That night, Zephyr slept poorly. When dreaming came to him at last, all he could hear were the screams of a patient under his hooves. Blood spotted Zephyr's tools, Zephyr's coat, and coated the patient under crimson, and the only thing that punctuated the screams were short gasps for breath. He'd delve into his farrier's bag and find it zipped tight and shut, he'd tear it open with champing teeth and find it empty, and he could do nothing.

When wakefulness came at last at the prodding hoof of a contemptuous-looking Skewbald, he found that he'd flurried the grass and detritus around him with thrashing. In the dim light given by a dying campfire, he attended to the still Chevalier. His hooves brushed skittishly and lightly across the cadet's bandages, and his heart caught in his mouth each time he had to peel one wetly back. A farrier caused no harm. A farrier caused no pain.

When his own turn came, Skewbald slept poorly. When dreaming found him, it came on like a black and cold shroud. The underlying magic of the world all around brushed across his mind, as overwhelmingly dark and gnawing and pitiless as before. Amidst its inchoate tangles and shadows, it wasn't impossible to believe something was moving. Was watching back.

Skewbald, even half-conscious, tried to sound that unsounded dark with a brief flourish of arcane percept. He might as well have tried to light the middle of an ocean with a candle.

Chevalier slept like a log. Drowsethistle and forty hours without sleep will do that to a pony.

It'll also leave their mouth tasting like well-salted mud when they awaken, as Chevalier discovered when consciousness finally reared its ugly head.

His armour was the first thing to greet his eyes, lying in a haphazard pile. The criniere and back plates had been left lying upside-down, washed clean by some rainfall during the night. Skewbald was curled up in a bay-and-white ball just past them, snoring gently.

The scent of damp vegetation and the aroma of burnt mantaghast hit Chevalier's sky was dull, the weak sunlight veiled by a pall of a grey clouds. The day was cold; the same drizzle that had washed Chevalier's armour had left his coat clammy and damp. He shivered, winced and felt his bandage-swathed back and neck prickle with the familiar ache of scars on the mend.

"Glaaaaah," Chevalier said, opening his mouth to let some freshness in. On the other side of the campfire's ashes, he saw Zephyr rhythmically zipping his farrier's bag open and shut. Zephyr turned round to see Chevalier. His weary expression shifted into a wan smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, red with what Chevalier presumed to be lack of sleep.

"Rise and shine, patient of mine. How are you feeling?"

"Not at my best, but not at my worst. Thank you for asking," croaked Chevalier.

"Very helpful. How's your back? Does it hurt? Can you move it?"

Chevalier shifted, and was rewarded with the blessed absence of the same pain that had crippled him last night. His back and neck itched, as if a mass of healing tissue were still shifting and trying to find its place in the world, but that was all. The resounding lack of an injury that had left him all but motionless and mindless with agony was the most liberating feeling in all the world, banishing the early-morning cobwebs in his mind and all but cracking his face in half with grinning. Seized by the feeling, he abruptly stood before Zephyr could object. The cool morning breeze beat off his damp coat.

"It doesn't hurt much at all!" said Chevalier with a delighted laugh, trotting in a quick circle and turning back to face Zephyr. "You know your work, farrier."

"I suppose several years and many sleepless nights of study had to leave some sort of impression," replied Zephyr with a weak chuckle.

Chevalier frowned and peered closer at Zephyr. "Are you alright?"

Zephyr didn't respond immediately, waving one hoof in a circle before stammering, "No, it's alright. Not much sleep last night, that's all. That's probably going to become a running theme out here."

Chevalier grinned and opened his mouth to offer a few reassuring words. Just then, his back prickled again. The memories of last night and what he'd done, what he'd tried to insist on, came crashing back like a sledgehammer.

For a moment, he stood there and tried to look anywhere other than into Zephyr's eyes. What had he been thinking?

But he had to look up eventually. You couldn't call yourself a De Gendarme if you didn't fight the difficult battles.

"I'm sorry for putting you through that stupid pride of mine yesterday," Chevalier said quietly. "I should have known better."

Zephyr seemed taken aback. "That's quite alright," he said hesitantly. "You were just trying to save our supplies. That was a good thing to do. No hard feelings for the attempt."

"No, it … it was pride. It wasn't just trying to save our supplies. That probably wasn't even most of it. Not even a majority of it." Chevalier sighed and gestured vaguely with a hoof. "I could have saved us both what happened. I should have known what I was capable of. Next time, I'll listen to you. I promise."

"Well, I … I suppose that's gratifying to hear. But really, you did have the right to refuse the treatment, and I won't hold it against you." Zephyr shifted his weight from hoof to hoof. "For that matter, though I can't recall it all that well, I'm reasonably sure you saved my life at least once yesterday. Just call it even?"

Chevalier grinned. "Even." He extended a hoof for Zephyr to bump.

Zephyr moved hesitantly in, and Chevalier went for the bump. Zephyr tried to shake it, and the resulting confusion eventually resulted in a vigorous hoof-shake and a laugh from each of them.

"Oh, good. We're bonding," came the acerbic voice of Skewbald, the instant after they'd finished laughing. "Does it have to happen when ponies are trying to sleep?"

"Not many more sleeping hours ahead anyway, for whatever comfort that's worth," said Chevalier. "The sun's up. We've got another day's march ahead of us. If I'm any judge, two more solid days should put the bay at our back and bring us up to the mountains."

"Here I must interject," said Zephyr. "You're both convalescents. I'd want to keep you both here and still for another day until I can be sure you're back in fighting form. Straining yourselves won't do either of you any good."

"Yes. Let us injured ponies stick around in this exposed place where we've already been attacked by predators. There's a plan that's good for our health." Skewbald stood up, his mouth swishing and a grimace spreading across his narrow features. He spat at the ground. "Uck. I need fresh water. And to refill my thermos. And to graze."

He stalked off towards a small burn that burbled at the edge of the trees. Chevalier caught Zephyr's brief and irritated huff.

"Delivered as it may have been in his usual sweet-natured manner -" said Chevalier in a low tone.

"I heard that," came the distant voice of Skewbald.

"- He's not technically wrong. Standing here would make us sitting ducks for anything that wandered round. More mantaghasts, a timberwolf pack, whatever other awful things the North has to offer. We have to keep going. After a graze and a drink, of course."

"We're not exactly going to avoid the nastier elements if we keep on walking. We'll just be more likely to encounter new ones," said Zephyr.

"True. But this area already stinks of battle, and since we burned the mantaghasts, their scent's in the wind. Other creatures will come to investigate. We wouldn't enjoy the experience." Zephyr frowned, and Chevalier pitched his voice a shade gentler. "We can take it easy, though. No sense in straining ourselves, you're right. If you call a halt, I'll listen and make sure Skewbald does as well."

There came an amused snort from the direction of the unicorn. Zephyr's brow furrowed.

"It's a compromise I can live with," he sighed. "Hopefully, it's one we can all survive with, for that matter. Now eat some grass and drink your fill of streamwater before we start trotting. Farrier's orders."

'Take it easy' was a fine plan in conception. In the North, it emerged stillborn.

The forest running along the bay plunged down into a mess of entwined pines and tangles of thorned undergrowth. Zephyr flew where he could find the space beneath the low canopy; Chevalier, his armour awkwardly worn atop his bandages, bludgeoned a path flat for Skewbald in his wake. The terrain grew damper as it descended, steeper and steeper yet. Tumbling was a constant risk, and where the thorn bushes grew particularly high and dense, it was too easy to imagine falling into one and remaining hopelessly trapped.

Eventually, the ground flattened as they neared the shoreline. An expanse of brackish wetland awaited them, the whole terrain a slurry of mud, little streams, and pools of foul-smelling water, pockmarked by huge, pale willows. Dark fruit dangled from their low-hanging tendrils, glistening in the paltry light. Clouds of flies hovered this way and that, their buzzing a constant background drone.

"Watch your step," said Chevalier as he ventured out of the wooded descent and onto the marsh's edge. His shod foot crashed through one of the muddles, and slime adhered to it when he drew it out. "This seems like a place for quicksand. Or a deep pool of mud that would have much the same effect. Keep flying, Zephyr. Be ready to teleport yourself clear, Skewbald."

"And what will you be doing?" asked Zephyr.

"Thinking happy thoughts and hoping for the aid of my stout companions should it be needed."

The flies then discovered the nice big warm-blooded mammals stomping their way through the marsh, and the happy thoughts vanished shortly after.

Chevalier, like most Equestrians, didn't especially believe in any deity, instead putting his stock in veneration of the two Princesses and acknowledgement of some initial, dispassionate, and inscrutable Creator. But in that moment, he found himself wishing he did follow some more personal Creator like the Bovish did, just so he could make a point of cursing it.

"Change of plans," he said, as Zephyr flew past at one point. "We keep walking. We keep walking through this swamp until it's far behind us, or until we're too tired to care about anything other than flopping down and sleeping on the spot."

"I find myself hard-pressed to object," said Zephyr. "Gah, why does it have to have mist as well?"

A sea-mist had swept in as they trotted, turning anything past a hundred feet to an indistinct wall of damp whiteness. Willows loomed out like rotting hulks from a shroud, their tendrils whispering on the tops of pools as a gentle wind blew through them.

"It's nice to get out and about in a swamp once in a while," Chevalier remarked as they passed by a willow, the tendrils brushing briefly across his back. "You so rarely get the chance in Equestria, and it makes you appreciate every other kind of terrain so much more."

"We do have some swamps somewhere. There's a Froggy Bottom Bog near Ponyville, I think. And others in that vicinity," said Zephyr.

"That's right on the edge of the Everfree, though. Stands to reason." Chevalier shook his head admiringly. "Hah. I thought Fort Livery was a pretty hardcore place. And then I found out about Ponyville."

"Living next to the Everfree. Idiots, all of them," said Skewbald.

"'Magnificent lunatics' is the polite term ..." Chevalier trailed off when he noticed the others giving him revolted looks. "What?"

"Check your back," said Zephyr, his eyes wide and staring.

Chevalier craned around as far as he could, wincing with the itching pain of the stretch. One of the dark fruits had detached from the willow and had clung to his back, blackly glistening and as roughly large and plump as a hedgehog. Red specks glinted like tiny jewels over its body, little crab-like claws clacked upon his armour. A sucking mouthpart at one end clung onto his backplate, seemingly unsure of what to make of the metal.

Chevalier hissed with disgust, and he knocked the strange leech off with one sharp hoof. It toppled into a pool and vanished with a few bubbles breaching the surface.

"I'm not sure why so many make something of how good it is to have something or someone cling to you with their lips," Skewbald remarked. "It never seems to bode well in nature." He took a step forward, and cursed as his hoof plunged through a thin layer of vegetation and into a stagnant pool.

When he drew it out, something black and glistening gummed at his fetlocks.

Skewbald's own revolted bark pealed around the swamp. He swung his hoof up to send the leech flying into the air, and his bark was almost outdone in volume by the follow-up arcane blast that scattered the leech over a wide area of the swamp.

"For shame. It probably had a family to support," said Chevalier as the last of the leech particles pattered into nearby pools

"Good. Let them starve."

The leeches weren't the only creatures Chevalier sighted as he walked. The same double-headed gulls he'd seen yesterday keened overhead, brief shadows past the overhanging mist. Tiny frogs hopped from pool to stream, easy pickings for the unnaturally large dragonfly nymphs that stalked the same waters restlessly. An unnaturally large adult specimen droned listlessly past at one point as well, its wingspan comparable to that of a pegasus foal; a brief flash of electric-blue that promptly vanished into the grey pall.

At one point, they passed by a tall stork-like bird that seemed to shimmer faintly. They drew nearer and Chevalier saw that its feathers and stiff, upright body gleamed a soft and lustrous grey, as if carved from fine quartz. Some crystalline cousin to phoenixes? Chevalier wanted a closer look.

The bird stepped forwards daintily to impale a passing frog on its beak, revealing massive raptor-like claws on its feet that seemed up to the task of eviscerating any brief annoyance. Chevalier decided to give it a polite berth, and they continued onwards.

The day only got notionally brighter, the sun's light struggling to penetrate the sea mist. At one point when it seemed brightest, presumably mid-day (a notion supported by Skewbald, who seemed to have a little clock hidden amongst whatever was going on in his machine-like brain), a bare hillock rose before them, offering dry elevation out of the swamp. Standing room only, but Chevalier would take what he could get.

"We'll have a break here," he announced, and was met with no dissent. The three clambered out of the clammy wetness and onto the marginally less damp hill. Chevalier let himself collapse to the grass, the fading ache along his neck and back flaring up once more. He cropped at the grass and screwed his face up as he tried to chew and force the thick, bitter stuff down. Skewbald slumped next to him, bit at the grass, and immediately spat his mouthful to one side.

"We could stop here for the day," said Zephyr, flapping in the air just above them. "Make sure you're not straining yourselves."

"I know I said I'd follow my farrier's orders," Chevalier hesitantly replied, "But I don't think this is anything like the right sort of place to dig in for the night. It's not sheltered, there's no firewood, there's hardly room for the three of us to lie down."

"The first two to sleep would freeze to death where they lay, and the first on watch would be carried off by some unspecified but undoubtedly horrible bog-monster. Assuming eating this grass doesn't kill us first," said Skewbald. "We press on through the swamp and find better ground. That's the only sensible course."

"Problem is, we don't know how far away that might be," said Zephyr. He looked speculatively skywards. "I could fly up. Try and breach the mist, take a look around."

"No," said Chevalier. "You'd be out of sight and out of our ability to help. What if there's another mantaghast pack?"

"They won't be a worry, they're crepuscular and nocturnal hunters for the most part," said Skewbald. "They'll be most likely to come for us while we're settling in for the evening. Or when we're sleeping."

"...Good to know. But the point stands. It'd be like ..." Chevalier screwed up his face as he tried to think of a light-hearted example. "Did you ever read any Daring Do books? It'd be like in Daring Do and the Crown of Shadows, where they make camp one night -"

"Make camp in the Cold Claw Hills, Short Stuff wanders off and gets snatched away by a skin-trotter, Daring and the rest split off one by one to find him, they get hoovered up by Palomino who's in cahoots with the skin-trotter and get imprisoned in his air-ship … yeah, I read more than my share of Daring Do." Zephyr's brief blush was outshone by a grin. "Not my personal favourite in the series, that one, but I get your point. No wandering off lest I get captured by a skin-trotter."

"Really? I loved that one, even if it was just for the whole fight scene on the air ship when it's circling Mount Shadow at the climax. I wanted my own air ship after reading that. Annoyed my mom and dad about it for days after. But, ah, yes. Exactly. We wouldn't be able to save you in any case, since we'd have lost our closest Daring Do equivalent."

"Heh. I'm not that much of a Daring Do. Though I'll tell you the truth, and this passes no further than the immediate company, I did once dress up as Scalpel Edge when I was a foal, when my school had a dressing-up day. He was probably far too formative for my own good."

"...Wasn't he the mad farrier she had to outwit in The Sea of Chaos?"

"Hey, he had good intentions." Zephyr glanced towards Skewbald. "Are you much of a Daring fan as well?"

"I don't even have the faintest comprehension of whatever you're both blithering about, and I intend to live a long and happy life keeping it that way." A sneer spread across Skewbald's face "Isn't that a foal's series?"

"Young adult!" assured Zephyr. "When the writing's as good as it is -"

"Let's not start a fellowship-destroying argument over Daring Do. That would be a terrible thing to have inscribed on our tombstones," interjected Chevalier. He paused, and then added, "Though seriously, if you didn't read any of it, then you had one heck of a misspent foalhood, Skewbald."

Skewbald didn't reply, instead turning away with a derisive snort. Zephyr flapped down to eat his own share of the grass, and expressed his opinion on its quality shortly afterwards by doing his damnedest to not throw up.

They broke that makeshift camp shortly after, pressing on eastwards. The swamp grew damper, the streams wider and deeper, the pools deeper and less stagnant. The sun shifted in the sky and the mist receded at one point. The way ahead curved out of sight past a craggy cliff-face. Pines flourished from its top and sprouted in isolation up its sides, overlooking the swamp and the waters of the bay.

Other creatures were revealed by the receding mist. Chains of rocks rose near the shore like the serrated edges of a saw breaching the water, black and barnacle-encrusted. Atop several of them, creatures like cousins to hydras lay lazily in the cool day. Their broad green-black bodies supported clusters of comically long necks topped with tiny heads, which continually dipped into the water and emerged with mouthfuls of seized fish. One head of one of the creatures turned to regard the three as they passed, beady black eyes glinting above a snaggle-toothed mouth dripping with fish guts.

"Come to the sunny North if you're tired of life," muttered Chevalier as they kept on trotting, his back itching with the constant motion. "Experience its hospitality. Swim in the beautiful waters. Interact with the magnificent wildlife. Bring your family – the inhabitants are always hungry for fresh company."

There was a brief moment of relative excitement when one of the long-necked heads plunged into the water, and was discouraged in its egress by the intervention of a small shark. Chevalier watched wide-eyed as the creature's other heads trumpeted in alarm, as the seized neck was drawn tight into the water amidst a growing stain in the water. Zephyr balked when the neck abruptly flopped back, red spraying from the stump where its head used to be. Skewbald regarded the dark fin moving through the water with a detached expression and a slightly tilted head, until he was encouraged to move on via prodding.

The mist drew back in as the day wore on and the three kept walking; Chevalier was hard-pressed to see more than a few metres in front of them. Deep and hidden streams threatened to trip them over at every step, and thickening mud made taking these steps a trial. Sweat beaded his brow, an unwelcome companion that quickly caught the cold air and made him shiver past his exertion.

The sky was getting darker as well, the mist more of a shroud than ever before. Chevalier by now had settled into that frame of mind that fed the pain mounting in his limbs as fuel to a bull-headed drive to see the job done. He knew he could keep trotting until they found better ground to sleep on, and he would – but the others couldn't. Zephyr had the luxury of alternating between his wings and his hooves, but both were beginning to tire. Skewbald was worse off yet, his small frame demanding more energy to keep up the pace. He'd fallen into a pool of mud in his fatigue, and when Chevalier had whirled round to help, the unicorn had struggled briefly and had then teleported himself free with a eye-splitting blast of nigh-uncontrolled magic. He trotted past Chevalier without a sideways glance, dripping stinking mud all the way.

It was dark, they were dead on their hooves, and there was no end to the swamp. But Chevalier sighted another grassy rise, and he knew that would have to do.

"We'll stop there," he called out, his voice surprising himself with its hoarseness. Zephyr offered up a weak "Huzzah." Skewbald didn't respond.

They half-trotted, half-crawled up onto the knoll, which had a little bit more lying room than the previous one. Zephyr and Skewbald slumped down almost immediately, Chevalier stopped to regard the world around the rise. A few metres of dark, dank grass and water on all sides, and past them, grey nothingness.

He shivered where he stood. But there was nothing to burn, and their unicorn was probably out of commission.

"I'll take first watch," Chevalier said. "Then Zephyr. Then Skewbald. Skewbald, if there's anything you can do to produce any lasting heat throughout the night – anything at all -"

The unicorn looked up with dull eyes, apparently lacking so much as a barbed remark. "Stand aside," he muttered eventually.

Chevalier did so, and Skewbald's gaze acquired some degree of focus as he looked where Chevalier had been standing. Green flickered around his horn in shifting, complex patterns, and after a few moments of twitching and muttering, a plate-sized orb of blazing green light flared to life. It hung suspended like a will-o'-wisp, shedding flickering green light and a steady warmth. Nothing like a campfire's comfort, but it would have to serve.

"An hour," said Skewbald, his voice vague with tiredness. A curl of smoke trickled up from the tip of his horn. "That's as long as we're getting. Might be able to renew it when my watch starts. Now let me sleep." He rolled over, green light spilling across his muddy back, and he shortly began to snore. Zephyr joined him soon after.

Chevalier took his armour off, and cleaned it as best he could with a grimy cloth drawn out from a compartment in the metal. He passed his watch with one eye on the skies and one on the marsh around, expecting and seeing nothing.

He woke up in the morning barely recovered and utterly frozen, and found the mist gone. Skewbald and Zephyr were united for once in staring at a cleared point with wrathful disgust. The swamp ended and the forest rose some twenty metres distant from their position.

Chevalier joined them. It was something they could all bond over.

The forest rose, up into what was a rippling series of foothills before the beginning of the mountains. It was a hard ascent up merely the one hill, its sides steep and thick with trees and trailing roots eager to trip up unsuspecting ponies. Patches of thickly-growing bracken and grey-and-purple heather provided obstacles or mouth-holds, most often the former. Rocks slipped underneath their hooves, small animals darted past while screeching their adorable and irritatingly kickable heads off, and branches alternated between whipping at their sides and looming immovably in their path; all uphill, all the way.

But amongst its virtues was this, it wasn't a swamp.

At the hill's summit, they stopped and took stock. West of them, the mountains rose like a great grey wall, dark clouds pulsing around their distant peaks. South of them, past the narrowing waters of Blackwards Bay, the horizon had grown to fill a good quarter of their field of vision. Individual trees and boulders were visible. If there'd been a rival trio on the other side, they would have stood a good chance of noticing them and being able to wave across.

"One more day," said Chevalier. "One more day of trotting and we'll reach the furthest tip of the bay. Then it'll be a matter of crossing the mountains through whatever handy gap presents itself."

"And after that?" said Skewbald archly.

"And after that, we shall be miraculously happened upon by a flight of friendly griffons, who shall wine and dine us in their mead halls and beseech us for tales of our journey thus far, and who will then fly us back to Equestria and a warm hero's welcome there."

Silence ensued.

"I'll be the first to admit that plan-making is not an exact science, but – alright, fine. Zephyr, could you fly up for a moment? Don't go too far, just enough to see if there's anything like a clear trail from here to the edge of the mountains."

Zephyr looked up into the sky, closed his eyes briefly and swallowed, and said, "Okay. I can do that."

"If you'd rather -" Chevalier started, only to be interrupted by Zephyr taking off. He flew straight up until he was a speck against the furrowed fields of clouds and pale blue sky far above. Chevalier saw him fly to and fro, shifting his position.

After several minutes, Zephyr flew back down. "I think there's a trail," he said, shaking off his wings. "If we go down the other side of this hill and stick to the low ground, it's marginally clearer and easier to trot through. It winds all the way up to what looks like a gap between the mountains. I can keep flying up, make sure we're on the right track."

"Excellent!" Chevalier turned to face the mountains with a grin. "Five minutes to crop here. Then we march until the bay's just something we can look down on from afar."

"An astonishingly agreeable series of words," said Skewbald. "Keep that habit up."

It was still hardly easy going, through the twisting and dense little gullies that ran between the foothills. Streams coursed down their centres, and brambles and thorn bushes grew thick and fast. Timberwolves shared the terrain, though the few the three saw seemed to decide to steer clear of any group in favour of easier pickings.

But they persevered as the shadows lengthened and the sun drifted down through the sky. One last ascent, before the blue-and-white of the sky darkened into indigo-and-orange twilight, and they were done.

Below, at one side, Blackwards Bay stretched out like an expanse of shimmering copper under the darkening sky, flanked by rocky hills and a dank coastline. On the other side, mountains rose past sight, threatening the stars themselves.

Chevalier, as he took off his armour and let Zephyr fuss over and remove his bandages, couldn't help but heave a sigh of relief. A foul beginning was behind them. The mountains lay ahead.

On dark wings, the figure glided down through the darker sky. He had followed the wake of the storm for such a distance – a vast distance, by most normal measures. Several days and nights of leisurely but unbroken flight had been enough to take him all the way.

The strange, encumbered arcane trails of the storm led here, to this little jag of land at the absolute east. A bay swept in beneath it, like a little hungry mouth swallowing seawater at the land's edge.

It was an apt comparison. He knew the entity that haunted this place. It was always hungry, in its own twisted manner.

He sniffed twice, hunting around for the termination of the trails, for the residue of that final burst of magic. There – just below him in the air, a little to his left as he swept down. A exit point in mid-air, the invisible energies swirling around it not yet dispersed by the latent wild magic. There were two others nearby, likewise all mid-air, all showing a similar magical yield.

A hardly desirable exit point, if the cargo was alive and unable to fly, but it trumped a termination somewhere beneath the earth's surface.

He flew down into the forest beneath the exit point, hunting around for any signs of whatever had been carried this far away from Equestria. If it had been something inert – a suit of pony-armour or a hearthstone, something of that nature – then he'd find its shattered ruins. If it had been something alive, then he'd either find nothing or a skeleton picked clean and scattered.

He found nothing, save for the remains of some hoofprints in the undergrowth that hadn't yet been entirely swept away by rain. Teeth bared in an approximation of a smile.

He followed the hoofprints, finding them doubled next to the remains of a tree stump seemingly yanked free of the ground. The new set left a heavy impression, as if the wearer were wearing shoes. The twin sets led to a cluster of pines that had knotted themselves together. In the ground at their bases, a third set of hoof prints, somewhere between the heaviness of the first and second sets, had alighted briefly.

One light set of hoofprints, one heavy set, and one set that could take off from the ground at will. The figure's smile sharpened. This was promising.

Onwards through the forest they ran, and onwards he pursued them. Strange wee rabbit-creatures hopped out of his way or were flattened under his hooves. The trees thinned, and he came to a clearing. A new kind of tree stood alone, and a short distance away from it, the remains of a campfire lay strewn across the damp ground.

The figure did laugh then, a brief bark that emerged from his ruined throat like a cough. No need to glamour it, nobody was around to hear.

"What fine gifts, to be sent so far from home," he murmured to himself. "They shall be sought and appreciated, have no fear."

They only had one way to go. He looked west, along the edge of the bay. He could find them without much difficulty, assuming they were still alive. The campfire looked several days old. But if they were, and he found them … then observation. Interrogation. Whatever suited his purposes. Let him see what Equestria and Equestrians had made of themselves over nine hundred years of his absence.

Some rest first, though. He wasn't as strong as he'd once been, and while the feeling rankled, it wouldn't be productive to deny it..

There was a tickling sensation on his leg, and he looked down to see one of the tree's thin branches coiling around his knee. It pulled, with all the success of a ant pulling at a mountain.

The figure rolled his eyes before focusing on the tree. A heartbeat passed, and then every exposed inch of the tree blazed amidst a sudden inferno. Leaves crackled and fell apart in black fragments, flames coiled up and around branches, and the expanding pressures at the tree's heart made the wood creak and groan, made the tree all but scream.

The figure lay down beside, casually nibbling at the grass as he did so. The burning tree beat a warm heat upon his hide. It was good to be warm again.

Tinder

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A timber wolf howled in the dusk, the sound faint as if carried by the wind. A second's delay, and then two more joined it in a remote chorus. The sounds of a pack moving, if Zephyr was any judge.

Considering the circumstances, he acknowledged he should perhaps be a little more practical and concerned about the sound being in their proximity at all. But it was hard not to thrill to it as well. A natural song for the scenery about him.

Zephyr stood next to the campfire, letting the warmth suffuse through him and relax his weary muscles. He looked up at the mountains, their craggy ridges running like a spine across the top of the world. Rose-pink sunlight peeked past them and blended into a darkening violet sky. The first stars appeared amidst that expanse, one by one.

"What did you say the name of these mountains was?"

"They've got several. For the sake of convenience, I'm giving them the name Dawn Chaser gave them. The Scunner Peaks." Skewbald lay by the fire, holding his map in the air above him. Zephyr saw their line of travel had shifted westwards incrementally. Only a small change since he'd seen it last, but the comfort of the fire after having gone through the swamp was all but enough to banish any sour thoughts.

It was another step home, another step closer to Trottingham. To his little brothers. To his mum and dad. To the smell of flowers in window-boxes and red-tiled roofs under cool grey skies.

"Queer name," said Chevalier, breaking Zephyr's brief wistful line of thought. The cadet was sitting with his back to the fire, looking out and over the bay as he cleaned his armour. The scarring on his back, Zephyr was pleased to see, had healed nicely. Only faint silver lines remained under his white coat.

"It's Auld Corvic, or something like that," replied Skewbald. "Dawn Chaser passed through there on her way to explore this part of the North."

"How long ago was that?" asked Chevalier.

"Eighty-seven years. Why?"

"Hah. Just after the Corvid Incursion then." Chevalier spat on his helmet and scrubbed a gleam into the dirty metal. "Brave mare. Skilled as well, if she survived the journey in and the journey out. Or daft as a brush."

"She did her research before she went," said Skewbald, a note of approval briefly entering his tone. He glanced once more over the map and vanished it away. "Some clans would be friendlier to her than others, the ones hugging the edge of the Greycairns proper most of all. They weren't friendly with the old Cormaer when he decided to declare war on the whole continent at once."

"Political differences and attitudes aside, they still generally suffer from being a collective pack of foal-eating savages." Chevalier frowned at where a spot of muck on the cloth had spread across the helmet and scrubbed with renewed vigour. "Bad enough we share a landmass with them already. There's no need to spread their language around as well."

Zephyr raised his brows. "That's … a little harsh."

"Yes, well, when your family lost several ponies at Dream Valley and the survivors of that generation made sure to pass down the stories of what they saw, what they experienced … then harshness is a little deserved. If you care about defending Equestria, then you have to remember what happened before. You have to be ready for it happening again."

"Yes," remarked Skewbald. "Surely we must never dismiss the ever-present importance of that one battle that happened over a century ago. Who knows, maybe any second the corvids will come flying back over the hills to get their tail-feathers resoundingly kicked once again. Let the new Element of Paranoia be our touchstone."

"Better ponies than you or I died doing that tail-kicking," snapped Chevalier. He shook his head and looked back out to the dusk-shrouded waters of the bay. "Look, never mind. The North's not treating us too badly at the moment. Let's talk about something more cheerful."

"Let's," Zephyr said quickly, jumping at the chance to turn the discussion around him down a less combative route. "Having a plan for tomorrow seems sensible. There's a gap up through the mountains that goes between two of the lower peaks, as far as I can tell. We can walk up to it – there seems to be a curving route that goes around a lot of the steeper bits, I'll show it to you both in the morning once there's more light to see by. We take it up to the gap, and with any luck, we'll find a similar trail going down the other side. I'd suggest I fly on ahead to be sure -"

"- But you know we need to be safe in a group. We can learn something from mantaghasts," said Chevalier with a grim smile that grew sunnier. "But that sounds excellent. A straightforward walk up and hopefully the same down on the other side. Any idea of what's on the other side, Skewbald?"

"Forests and hills and the odd lake, according to most accounts," Skewbald replied. "The mountains break down into a mess of wooded foothills and streams. Literal Minded speaks about a river that flows down from this side into a lake, and on the other side of that lake there's the mouth of a river that leads up to the next range of mountains we'll have to cross. Keep an eye out for that, and if we're lucky, we can have a smooth journey walking by its side. Or as smooth as you can get in the North anyway. There's apparently a large elemental density in these parts."

"Elementals?" said Zephyr. "I assume we're not talking about the harmonious, Equestria-saving variety."

"No. Wild magic can get into things, distort their properties. Make them behave indecently. Rocks can float. Rivers made to flow upstream. Sometimes, once in every thousand instances, the magic randomly assembles something like a mind in an object. And in one in a thousand of these cases, the object can act upon it."

"Give us a nice life-threatening example," said Zephyr, settling down by the fire. A strange, almost joyful light had switched on behind Skewbald's eyes when he'd started talking. Whatever could draw him out of his sour shell was worth cultivating.

"Volcanoes," said Skewbald. "That's the name that's become attached to mountain elementals. No moving forces under the earth like the old myths say, no last Fires of Creation still burning or any of that nonsense. They're living mountains, and they think. They move, albeit slowly. And they dig into the ground for their energy, consume it in whatever passes for their respiration, and blast the waste out when they've had their fill."

"That ..." started Chevalier. "That … adds a distinctly undignified dimension to the whole of the Burning Mountains. You know, where the dragons live past the Sea of Smoke -"

"They made their mountains that way, using their own strange magic. Something religious about it for them, apparently." Skewbald shrugged. "You get a few mountain elementals in the North as well. Luckily for us, they'll be pretty spread out, so it'll be easy to avoid them."

"That's good," said Zephyr.

"Of course, their eruptions are hard to predict, and they're hardly doing it all the time. So it's entirely possible that we'll walk over a peaceful mountain and have it erupt right underneath us. Unlikely, but possible."

"... That's less good."

"We could try avoiding blasted landscapes, but the time interval between eruptions for a given elemental means -"

"We'll cross that explosive, death-dealing bridge if we come to it," Chevalier said hastily. "Again, a cheerier topic to discuss than fiery death or corvids would be much appreciated."

A hush fell over the group. Sparks spat up from the campfire and trailed into the darkness. From a distance, the tide pounded upon the shore of the bay. Inspiration, fuelled by a sudden wash of memories and nostalgia, hit Zephyr at that moment.

"Stories," he said aloud, and quickly sought about for a sane-sounding elaboration. "Were either of you ever in the Colt Scouts?"

"Yes," Chevalier immediately replied, a grin flashing across his face. "I get you. Should have thought of that myself."

"Creator's quill, no," Skewbald said.

"Well, I was thinking we could just tell stories around the campfire. Quaint, I know, but -" Zephyr blinked. "You weren't in the Colt Scouts?"

Skewbald snorted. "I lived in cities, not in some backwater surrounded by wilderness and muck. What would have been the point?"

"No Daring Do, no Colt Scouts." Chevalier shook his head. "What sort of foalhood did you even have?"

"An educational one," replied Skewbald stiffly. "But let's change the subject away from your undoubtedly vast list of petty criticisms. Why did Zephyr just blurt out 'stories' as if it was meant to mean something?"

"Excellent," breathed Chevalier. "A chance to educate."

Sparks spat up into the darkening sky. Blackwards Bay yawned open at their backs, jagged horns of land curling around it like the head and tail of a coiled predator. Between the horns, where the twilight sky brushed across the horizon, black ocean waters glimmered.

Chevalier's white coat burned orange in the firelight. His red eyes gleamed as he looked from the rapt Zephyr to the unconvinced-looking Skewbald. He cleared his throat, and began.

"There was a pegasus explorer a hundred and fifty years ago, Tumbleweed. And he was about as close to a real-life Daring Do as you can get. He crossed the Sea of Smoke and the Burning Mountains and bartered with the Queen of Dragonkind in her own hall. He ventured into the Greycairns, sounded out sites for new Diamond Dog underholds, and came home richer than the King of Zebrica. He set new records for the furthest ever ventured North. He'd seen it all, and just about done it all."

The fire sparked and crackled. The sea pounded softly on the rocks far below. The cadet raised his gaze, looking towards the horizon.

"And one day, he decided that he'd do what nonpony had ever done before. He was going to circumnavigate the world for the first time in all of history. He'd cross the Black Ocean with a whole expeditionary squadron, and come home to tell the tale."

"I've heard of this," said Skewbald, looking up from where he'd been letting himself fall into stupor. "It all ends with -"

"Yes, yes, shut up. Story in progress. Anyway." Chevalier drew in a breath. "There was every preparation you can think of. Tumbleweed even hired an island from a corvid clan as an embarking point for the ships – this was back before the Incursion. Three great wooden windjammers were built from scratch and stuffed to the ballistawales with every provision they could need, with sails that looked like clouds skimming across the sea. The Spirit of Adventure, Celestia's Wing, and the Beauty of Baltimare. Veteran teams of earth pony sailors on each one, unicorn astronomers to plot their course and to keep them in touch with Equestria, pegasi flight teams to keep the winds in their favour and settle any storms. Expert volunteers from Asinia, Capra, even a couple of corvid outfliers."

"So they set off from their hired island the minute they had everything in order. Celestia herself gave Tumbleweed her blessing, and the last anypony saw of them was Tumbleweed himself waving farewell from the top of a mast on the Spirit of Adventure."

"A month passed, and Equestria kept in touch with the squadron. Steady progress, apart from a couple of ocean squalls. Nothing but open water, but they had enough food stocked to last a couple of years. They'd be fine."

"Another month. Communications begin to slip, but that's to be expected across a distance."

"Integral decay," said Skewbald. "When you send a magical message, then it's going to run into wild magic in the air and inevitably degrade."

"Yes, thank you, that happened. So by the third month, when the squadron's unicorns fell silent for good, nobody was surprised. They were surely just sailing on. No cause for concern."

Chevalier settled into silence. The ocean continued to whisper.

"And then?" Zephyr prompted.

"Two years later," said Chevalier, "A scouting party of Zebrican pegasi were flying over the Cheval Sea when they noticed a ship passing by, coming from the empty Western Ocean."

"They flew down to investigate, and found the Beauty of Baltimare completely empty. Battered and rough around the edges, like you might expect from a ship that's been through a storm or two, but nothing else. No bloodstains. No signs of a struggle. Nothing apart from the personal effects aboard to suggest that there'd ever been a crew aboard."

"Nothing apart from one thing. As the zebras were preparing to fly home to report the strange appearance of the ship, they heard somepony crying in the lookout's nest. They flew up and found a mare, one of the earth pony sailors. Skinny with lack of food, though there was still a hold half-full of provisions. Delirious with thirst, even though there were water barrels on the deck below her. She tried to hide from the zebras, and only babbled the same thing over and over at them no matter what they said to her."

"'I can't stop them! I can't stop them! Sounding out in every thought at every time, and I can't stop them! I can't stop them! I can't stop them!'"

"They tried to calm her, but she never stopped repeating that. She didn't stop when they delivered her and the Beauty of Baltimare home to Equestria. And she didn't stop until she died in an asylum three years later. They didn't find anything else aboard the ship. No diaries, no captain's log, no records of any sort to suggest what had happened out there."

"Nothing apart from one sentence scratched into the wood of an underdeck. Make it stop."

Silence fell like a shroud. Chevalier contemplated the horizon, while Zephyr glanced with a shiver at Skewbald.

"Yes, a strange business, all things considered," said Skewbald after a while. "Why tell it?"

"It came to mind," admitted Chevalier. "And I suppose it's possible at a stretch to interpret something upbeat from it. No matter where we are, we could be somewhere much worse. Right?"

"Next time, I set the tone for the stories," said Zephyr.

"Oh, good. A next time," said Skewbald to himself.

"Well, I thought it was good tales-around-the-campfire material," muttered Chevalier. "In the meantime, I'll take first watch. Skewbald can go after me, followed by Zephyr. Dream up good stories, now."

It was the first relatively decent night's sleep Zephyr had gotten in the North. Sheer physical fatigue overwhelmed any restlessness, the campfire's warmth was enough to drive out any lingering chill from the swamp, and no feverish nightmares tormented him. Up until Skewbald poked him awake for his own turn at the watch, it was as close to serenity as he could get out here.

And even the early rise was no trouble. It meant he could wait to watch the sun rise over Blackwards Bay, while the others were quiet and still.

In the darkness, in swamp mist, on the march, the North only ever loomed from behind an hard and imposing veil. Memories of home were a fire that kept it at bay. But when it caught daylight...

Zephyr looked out over the edge of the world, and watched the reflection of the rising sun forge a shimmering gold line across the dark waters. Clouds higher than the mountain-tops cut pale pink furrows across the belly of the sky, darkening as they neared the eastwards horizon.

Below them, the outstretched arms of the land ran rugged and verdant under the dawn. Deep splits in the sides of rocky cliffs made black, inviting portals. The forest ran above and below the cliff faces. Thick clusters formed whorls in the green canopy, accented by the impenetrable shadows beneath.

Take a look, urged a little voice in the back of Zephyr's skull. Who knows what you'll find there?

Zephyr stood upon the precipice, his body so still it almost seemed to shiver. Had any pony looked from here below? Had the few explorers who had made it this far looked from this exact point, seen this exact view? Would he ever have the chance to venture here again?

Chevalier and Skewbald stirred behind him, but was he necessarily tethered to them? He could just be gone a few minutes, no more time than would be necessary to relieve himself in the bushes. They'd be safe, surely.

One hoof came to rest on the absolute edge. Something new and oddly familiar and wildly blazing in his soul keened for it, to take that plunge and fly back down into the tumult of the North. He licked his lips as the vague impression grew into his head, became an idea, became, for a fleeting and dizzying moment, a plan …

And when it did so, memories hammered hard at its hooves. Struggling and whimpering in the darkness, disorientated and upside-down, trying not to wet himself with terror as jaws snapped closed mere inches from his face again and again.

He closed his eyes. The fire that had blossomed briefly dampened abruptly, becoming mere embers. He looked up and away from the trees. Back towards the clouds.

Fly to them. Brush your wingtips through clouds no pegasus has ever touched before, whispered the voice. Home's thousands of miles away. Spread your wings when you have the chance.

Daring Do and Tall Tale and Munchorsen wouldn't hesitate. His colthood heroes would lunge for these alien skies head- and heartfirst. The air currents were strange here. How liberating would it be to glide upon them? Where would they take him? What could he make of them?

One cloud at the absolute edge of his vision uncoiled. In its depths, dark specks shifted.

They might have been anything other than mantaghasts. But why take the chance?

The embers crumbled into ash. Zephyr turned away from the cliffside and clouds and wilderness, his head downcast.

There came an answering grunt, and Zephyr looked down. In his sleep, Skewbald stirred as if troubled by a nightmare. His legs intermittently kicked and his eyes flickered. Little wild bursts of magic gathered around his horn's base and sparked off the tip.

Zephyr regarded the unicorn and bit his lip. It was all but the rising hour for all of them, and so he gently nudged Skewbald with his hoof. "Hey," he said. "Are you alright?"

Skewbald's trembling ceased, and his eyes slowly cracked open to fix Zephyr with a befuddled glower. He fumbled for and donned his glasses, and his gaze sharpened. "What?" he demanded.

"You looked like you were having a nightmare. Sorry if I -"

"Not a nightmare. Not exactly." Skewbald rolled over onto his belly and shrugged himself up onto his hindlegs. A questing feeler of magic found the thermos, and he swigged water from it. A wary frown hovered on his face.

"Are you alright?" Zephyr pressed.

"I'm alright, here and now." Skewbald hesitated.

Zephyr patiently gestured for elaboration, and eventually got it. "We may not be."

"Um. What do you mean?"

"It's … there's something out there I'm detecting. No Celestial aegis, nothing between us and all the wild magic in the North. I can feel the larger things. They leave ripples, send tides out, leave marks." Skewbald drew breath. "There's something big moving around us. I think it's watching us."

Zephyr routinely disliked mornings, and this one was proving to be no exception. "We're being watched? Do you know anything about whatever's doing it? Are they dangerous?"

"They're … big." Zephyr opened his mouth, and Skewbald cut him off. "That's as accurate an impression I can get. Taking the ripples and tides metaphor further, we're floating on the surface of the sea. Somewhere in the cold darkness under our hooves, there's something else. Circling. Watching. It could be a shark scenting for blood. It could just be a curious whale. It could be one of those hideous things you hear about deep-sea fisherponies accidentally dredging up and which Celestia has to personally dispatch."

Zephyr closed his eyes and took a moment to regret waking up. He forced a grin. "You do hear about landwhales in Dactylia, lumbering across the savannahs. Getting some of their sustenance from any plants in their path, and getting the rest from the sunlight hitting the forests on their back. If the universe loves us, it's going by that metaphor and putting one of those in the North to follow us."

"What?" Skewbald's expression swithered between confusion and frosty contempt. "No, don't be stupid. The whale's a metaphor."

"Well, if you listen to some of the Gazellen philosophers, maybe. Depending on which one you listen to, the landwhale's a metaphor for time, their God, or itself."

"What?"

"The landwhale." Zephyr contrived to look innocent. "It is a metaphor in a lot of Gazellen literature as well as an actual animal. Unless you were talking about your own example. Can you even have a metaphor of a metaphor?"

Zephyr ventured his best friendly-inane-joshing smile. It bounced clean off Skewbald, whose mouth opened and closed a few times before he said, "What are you dribbling about?"

"I heard metaphors mentioned. It's too early in the morning for those," came the befuddled mutter from Chevalier. He yawned and unsteadily rose to his hooves beside the two. "Both of you sleep well?"

Zephyr nodded sharply, and then glanced at Skewbald. Skewbald returned the glance and then heaved a sigh.

"I'll explain how I slept," he said. "Start an inane tangent and I will set somepony on fire."

The morning sun slowly rose before hiding itself behind a high screen of encroaching grey-black clouds. The three broke their fast on grass and wiry shrubs speckled with bright flowers, Zephyr keeping an ear open as Skewbald explained this latest promising development to Chevalier.

Chevalier considered it in silence as he chewed. Eventually, he asked, "Can you glean anything more about it?"

"No. Focusing that sort of attention while sleeping is like trying to stack a house of cards with one hoof, on stilts, and in a thunderstorm. One wrong move on your or anything else's part and you'll just get a rude awakening and a hornache for your troubles."

"Any guesses as to what it might be?"

Skewbald's mouth narrowed and his expression darkened. He shrugged, as if the motion was physically painful.

"Is there anything we can do about it, then?"

"...Not as such."

Chevalier breathed out, and patted Skewbald's shoulder. "Well then. We'll keep our eyes open and deal with it if it comes. It can't be too much worse than what we've been through so far."

"Feh." Skewbald turned away, radiating disgruntlement. At whom wasn't apparent to Zephyr's eyes. "Fine. It can join the queue of things that wish to dispute our survival."

"That's the spirit," said Chevalier, returning to his own grazing. One bramble bush was heavy with gleaming black berries, and he nipped off and swallowed one after another.

Once all three of them were approximately functioning ponies, they set off once more up the mountainside. Overhead, the darkening skies rumbled.

Rain began to fall. It was refreshing for a while, where under the remains of the tree canopy a few heavy droplets intermittently fell. The arduous tasks of stamping through heavy, scratching undergrowth and manoeuvring between tight tree trunks were made cooler.

But soon enough, the slope steepened and the canopy began to fade, offering no protection from the deluge. Skewbald was quick to summon a faintly-glowing protective hemisphere over his own head, but silently declined to extend it to the others. Chevalier soldiered on, seeming to withdraw into the paltry shelter offered by his armour.

Zephyr, now having the room to fly for short periods, spread his wings wide. Raindrops shivered across them and coursed off their tips. A constant patter, a tiny harmonious sequence that gave him some instinctive inkling of the great clash and sweep of the sky's own forces far above. It was easy to get lost in, where you didn't know the pattern or any of its sources. A pegasus could lose track and fly into things trying to sort out the intoxicating chaos of it all.

Luckily, Chevalier was only bemused and sympathetic when he flew into a tree, and Skewbald only rolled his eyes and snickered a little. After that, Zephyr stuck to trotting.

A few hours in, the forest had disintegrated altogether into solitary trees and odd copses rising out of the forty-five-degree slope of rock and heather. Boulders and spurs of rock broke from it like seafoam from a tide, and it was underneath a rocky overhang that the three took their daily breather.

It was one spent mostly in silence, broken only by the odd snort as one of them sneezed water from their dripping muzzles. Zephyr craned his head out from around the overhang's side to get a sense of their path.

Beyond, where the mountain continued to rise, the way was all but hidden behind a shroud of rain. Zephyr still fancied he could make out the vague outlines of the mountains. They were still on course for the gap between two of them, a formidable rise a fair distance away in itself. Nothing insurmountable, though, and he expressed such to the others.

"There's good news, at least," replied Chevalier.

Whether from a great distance, or whether partially muffled by the driving rain and growling thunder, a timberwolf's howl sounded.

"And there's a counterbalance," said Skewbald in the echoing silence that followed.

They looked at one another. Chevalier cleared his throat. "We press on," he said. "We'll get as high as we can for the day and hunker down. We'll see what happens. If they're not after us, well and good. If they are, we don't make it easy for them. We outpace them, however we can."

"And if they outpace us?"

"Turn around, buck their teeth out, and hope fate loves us." The rainfall began to thin, and Chevalier poked his head out from under the overhang. "But that's our last resort. Let's move."

Eventually, the trees vanished altogether. Scree slopes, crowding boulders, and sheer vertical expanses of rock made forging an increasingly steep and winding path harder and harder. Grey skies above continued to send drizzle down upon the grey terrain, and Skewbald and Chevalier frequently slipped on the wet rocks.

Zephyr flew overhead constantly, watching the trail ahead like a hawk. There had to be a path through the mountains, but nearly all he examined led to dead ends. Rock faces sat grim and immovable at the end of promising routes, scree slopes descended into sudden chasms. One path led to the mouth of a large cave. Claw marks and dark brown stains covered the entry and ground before it, and in the darkness, what seemed like the fragments of massive bones glistened.

Zephyr led the other two in a different direction, and resolved to finish this journey over the Scunner Peaks if it killed him. This wasn't the most auspicious resolution he'd ever made to himself.

At least the rain was letting up. The drizzle had diminished to a general grey clamminess, and the sky above was fading closer to something that could be considered blue. The further they went, the more Zephyr could make out a great expanse of thin clouds on the other side of the mountains. They seemed strangely vivid, given a faint but persistent orange undertone. Dusk must have been coming in more quickly than he thought.

Eventually, they came to the only thing like their desired route. A trail that ended at a relatively short vertical rise of rock. Beyond that, the ridge rose gently to a stop. Beyond, the path could only lead downhill.

"Vines," he said aloud. Skewbald and Chevalier looked up at him.

"I can just fly up there, but the same's not true for you two. I don't know if there are any vines growing wild here, though I'd guess there's going to be some sort of tendrily foliage clinging on somewhere. If I find some and dangle them down ..."

Skewbald rolled his eyes, gathered green energy around his horn, and teleported both himself and Chevalier to the top of the rise in a flash of light.

Zephyr paused, muttered, "Or that, that works," and flew after them. He found Chevalier wobbling on his hooves, looking disorientated. Skewbald stood by his side, wobbling even more alarmingly. His face was screwed up with discomfort, and he reached up to his gently smoking horn with a hoof.

"Ah," he managed. "Agh, next time we -" His sentence was truncated by an almighty hiccup, which finished the job of knocking him off his hooves. Chevalier offered a hoof to help him up, which was grudgingly accepted.

"What was that? Are you alright?" asked Chevalier.

"Next time, the pegasus flies your armour up separately," growled Skewbald. "Or you just find a way to climb. That's too much mass to fling around at any one time for my liki –" Another hiccup ballooned out of him. "Star's sake."

"Drink from your thermos," Zephyr said. He alighted beside them and began to trot towards to the ridge.

He stopped short as a howl pierced through the world behind him. He turned back towards the cliff edge. Down in the grey mirk, shadowy figures bounded and milled. Pairs of green eyes, more than Zephyr cared to estimate, cut through the pall like torches.

"Looks like that was a timely teleport," said Chevalier, only a tiny note of tremble in his voice.

"I'm inclined to ag -" A hiccup. Skewbald hissed with irritation. He attended to retrieving his thermos from his saddlebags and waved a hoof dismissively in the direction of the timberwolf pack. "Scat, the lot of you! You missed your chance!"

"Here's hoping," murmured Zephyr, turning away from the indistinct figures in the mist. He flapped up into the air and towards the ridge. Another view would do his nerves some good.

He crested the ridge's summit, and hung still in the air, only held aloft by the gentlest of flaps. A strangled noise escaped his throat.

"Zephyr? What's the other side like?" asked Chevalier. He got no answer.

Zephyr saw fire as far as the eye could see.

Sparks

View Online

Before Zephyr's eyes, a forest burned.

Thin blue-red flames curled around and up from branches, crisped leaves, coiled around trunks like entwining serpents. Tendrils sprung and danced in the wide spaces between the sparsely-scattered trees. Each tree was black on the surface, covered by a thin layer of charred bark that came off in gently floating flakes each time one of the countless interlinked fires shifted.

Zephyr stared, entranced. The smoky air above the burning forest shimmered in the heat and drew a distorting veil over it all. Past it, where the forest was nothing but a crimson sea, it was possible – no, easy - for patterns to bloom amidst the chaos of fire, waves of fiery movement, strangely purposeful surges and leaps from one tree to another.

Vertigo almost made him sway right out of the sky. He hurriedly corrected his flapping, but kept on staring. It was almost as if the fire lived.

He was barely aware of Chevalier stepping up to the ground at his left. A low exhalation escaped the cadet's nostrils. To his right, Skewbald trotted up and stood tremblingly still.

The words that escaped the unicorn were said with the closest approximation to happy awe Zephyr had ever yet heard from him. “Oh, would you look at that.”

Zephyr swallowed. “And what is that?”

“Fire elementals. A whole clutch of them, more than probably exist anywhere outside the Burning Mountains.” Skewbald took another step forwards. Zephyr looked down and was taken aback by the purely, unambiguously, delighted smile Skewbald sported. “Clever things. Look at what they're doing.”

Zephyr turned back to the burning forest and squinted harder at the blazing tendrils that writhed out from the trees. He now noted the purpose behind each one, as if a mind lurked in its depths. Red motes of light flickered brightly where the fires were fiercest, like little gimlet eyes.

In the nearest string of trees, one tree stood untouched by one of the elementals. The fires surrounding two nearby trees flared briefly, and then both uncoiled and arced towards the tree, pulling the whole weight of their flame with them in great flapping gouts. The two different fires met in mid-air, flurried briefly and violently, and then one settled on the new tree while the other slid back to its original tree. Both subsided, and the flames engulfing their hosts settled down to a thin pall.

“They're feeding,” said Skewbald. “They're being smart about it as well, chewing off a little at a time rather than eating up their whole source. See? They're ebbing low enough to only sustain themselves on the outer bark and damaging the leaves as little as possible. They keep the tree alive, damage it no more than it can keep on recovering from, and if they do need to exert themselves, they can dig that little bit deeper.”

“Makes sense,” said Chevalier, his tone dubious. “When farmers buck apples down, they don't destroy the tree to get the crop. When we commission wool from sheep, we don't ask that they slash their throats to give us all they've got at once. Same principle.”

“Approximately so, yes.” Skewbald sighed. “You read about this sort of thing, half-described and buried under tedious accounts of life-or-death flights and avalanches and suchlike, and when you actually see it in the waking daylight …”

Silence pervaded until Chevalier coughed. “Well,” he said, “They do look nice from a distance, I'll admit. But we've got to pass through them, don't we? And our hides are regrettably flammable.”

Skewbald's benign smile shifted back into a comfortably sour grimace. “Ah. Yes.” His gaze flicked from side to side, taking in the whole span of burning forest between the girding mountains. “Creator's quill, we're going to have to backtrack.”

A crack sounded from behind them. Zephyr turned sharply. A thin fissure had opened in the stone, and a wooden root writhed its way clear. The stone split further to admit more roots, which wound themselves into the shape of a timber wolf paw. Green glinted up from the depths.

Before Zephyr could react, before he could shout a warning, Chevalier was already moving. He cantered up to the fissure and slammed his steel-shod hoof down on the paw with a resounding crunch. A piteous yelp sounded, and the fragments of root quickly slithered away. Chevalier snorted and kicked loose dirt and pebbles down after it.

Another crack sounded to his left, and he whirled to face it. In that instant, two more fissures cracked open to his left. From the way they'd came, and muffled from the ground beneath they hooves, there came a savage and continuous baying.

“Run,” said Chevalier, turning to face Zephyr and Skewbald. “No backtracking now. To the forest. Put distance between us and them, as much as possible. Fight only if we're cornered.”

“To the forest? To the elementals?” Zephyr forced the memories of treating burn wounds to one side.

“Skirt the forest's edge if we can, go between it and the mountains. Keep close and run!” Three more distinct cracks rang out. “At the gallop!”

They took the descending mountainside at a breakneck gallop, cold winds slashing across their back and growing warmer the further they ran down the slope. Zephyr flew above, and his gaze darted across the meandering alleyways of rock in search of swift routes.

“Left! Sharp left!” he cried out. “Between the two boulders and down the slope! Keep galloping!”

It could have been the wind's piercing cry, it could have been howls that rang upon his ears. He didn't turn around to check; his attention was fixed on the two ponies below him.

Chevalier ran at a swift and steady pace, and constantly checked to make sure Skewbald was keeping up. The unicorn was managing, alternating a ferocious gallop with intermittent teleportation. Where boulders rose and slopes sharply descended, he disappeared and reappeared at the other side in a flash of green light; obstacles which Chevalier simply leapt straight over or skidded down.

The flaming forest grew ever larger before them. A cacophony of what couldn't be mistaken for anything but howls broke out anew at their backs, and Zephyr glanced round.

Lean, dark-bodied, green-eyed wolfish shapes pelted after them in a swarm – a dozen, two dozen, some distressing amount that seemed to flow down the mountainside like water. Pale wooden teeth gleamed like stained daggers.

Zephyr's heartbeat hammered in his ears like a drum. “Straight on, straight on!” he cried. “No obstacles between us and the bottom. Keep running straight on!”

“And when we reach the bottom, we veer right! Mountains on our right flank, the forest on our left!” called back Chevalier. He grunted with exertion as he burst straight into a running leap over a stretch of high rock. Ahead of him, Skewbald flashed back into step. Smoke curled faintly up from his horn, and his breaths ran ragged.

Chevalier lost no time. He simply ducked underneath Skewbald as he ran and hoisted the startled unicorn up across his back once more, his pace hardly changing with the added weight. “Save your magic!” yelled Chevalier. “We'll need it if they corner us!”

“Gl – gah – bu – grk!” retorted Skewbald as his belly bounced off Chevalier's saddle again and again with the cadet's furious gait, his eyes livid and staring.

Onwards, onwards the hard trail ran. The constant slope downwards began to flatten, the rocks peppered with grass and heather. Only charred stumps grew up from the ground. The way down to the forest was clear. The air grew thicker, hotter, enough to coax out even more sweat to lather Zephyr's sides.

They broke from the mountain's slopes at last, into the rugged stretch of grassland ringing the burning forest, blistered with strewn boulders and ridges and the charred remains of tree stumps. The iron-grey sky growled high above them, threatening thunder. Orange light spilled up into it, etching out the dark outlines of descending clouds. A thin pall of smoke gathered about the three.

Where did the fire go, Zephyr thought with a mad delirium, when it rained? Did it hide beneath the branches and wait for the storm to lift? Did it blaze all the fiercer to hold its own?

“Right!” yelled Chevalier, with Skewbald echoing “Rk!” They turned sharply into the rough land, skirting the first few boulders to rise before, recovering their pace.

Just in time for the first two timberwolves to come pelting down and to lunge at Chevalier's side.

Chevalier whirled around, not before Skewbald issued a warning cry and let fly with a violent arc of green flame. It slashed down upon one of the timberwolves and wrapped it around with fire. It fell howling to the ground, and continued to howl.

Its packmate turned briefly, and Chevalier plunged on it in that instant. One hoof smashed across its jaw, bowling its entire body to one side. The other hoof slammed down upon a now-unguarded wooden leg, cracking it all but clean in half. The second one fell and Chevalier immediately whirled back upon his original course as if there'd never been a delay.

“More of them coming!” Zephyr cried, and mentally smacked himself for the vagueness of the advice the moment after. More timberwolves were coming, fanning out from their original approach to try and cut off the route ahead. “Up ahead! Up ahead!”

“Nightmare's teeth,” hissed Chevalier as his gaze darted towards the lean shapes pelting alongside them. He swerved away from them and nearer to the forest. The fires churned furiously, as if in welcome. Zephyr could swear he saw shapes forming amidst it, spindly shapes with grasping claws. The air blasted at him as if released from an open furnace, crisping his mane and coat. Carmine light spattered the land all around them, and the roar of the flames competed with the howl of the nearing pack for volume.

He knew he should have been terrified. A strange light-headedness filled him instead, and he felt like a speck of dust carried in the breeze. The world was a wolf-filled, red-spattered morass of chaos. He looked down to where Chevalier, with Skewbald still splayed across his back, wove around boulders.

He sprung past one, and a timberwolf blindsided him, flying out as if released from a coiled spring. It crashed into the side of Chevalier's armoured neck, and he stumbled with a pained shout. His face slammed side-on into the boulder with an audible crack. Skewbald cried out as he tumbled from Chevalier's back and sprawled across the ground.

Chevalier slumped against the boulder's side, his exposed eye unfocused. The timberwolf advanced on him, its teeth bared and hackles raised. A low growl escaped it like the promise of a storm.

It opened its jaws, and in that same instant, a line of green fire uncoiled through the air and into its gullet. An agonised squeal escaped the wolf and it fell, green and orange flame vomiting from its mouth.

Zephyr, transfixed, looked to where Skewbald had staggered upwards. Magic blazed around his horn and brought the green fire back to hover his shoulder, a fine and incandescent point ready to be hurled out again. His teeth were bared in nothing like a smile.

“Yes! Who's next!” he demanded, and flicked the fire back out at where the shadows of wolves circled them past the boulders and smoke. They scattered briefly and Skewbald laughed. “Come on! Why run? Come eat your prey! Come on!”

Zephyr looked all around. The pack had formed a smoothly-flowing encirclement once he and the others had been stopped, weaving around the boulders and drawing constantly tighter like a noose. Closer and closer they came, their eyes blazing green points that matched the fire.

“Get up onto the boulder!” yelled Zephyr. “Save your breath and get yourself and Chevalier out of harm's way!” The cadet looked as though he was getting his faculties back together from where Zephyr hovered. One part of him itched to fly down and be sure he was alright. Another part recoiled from the prospect of putting himself down where the wolves prowled ever-closer.

Call yourself a farrier? he raged at himself. Call yourself a pegasus? Go down there and help him!

But his breath fell heavy in his lungs, and he hung in the air. Teeth and fire reached up and tore his heroism to shreds.

Skewbald took the decision out of his hooves, when green fire billowed up around Chevalier and manifested him at the flat top of the boulder. The cadet fell over with the surprise relocation, barely missing Skewbald who teleported in a split-second later. The unicorn slumped slightly, his horn producing faint smoke-trails and his breathing heavy.

Zephyr released the breath he hadn't released he'd been holding, and flew down to alight on the boulder beside them. There was just enough room to hold all of them standing. He knelt down to Chevalier. “Are you -?”

“I'm fine,” grunted Chevalier, shrugging himself upright and shaking himself off. “Feh. What's the situation?”

Zephyr glanced to his rear. The noose had drawn tighter. The circling pack was only several metres distant from the base of the boulder. Dozens of eyes glinted up at them, countless pale teeth were bared. Yips and bays from amidst them seemed to keep them in order, impose direction and purpose.

“Surrounded,” he said quietly as he turned back. “We're surrounded. There's lots of them. Maybe twenty or so.”

“Right,” said Chevalier. He closed his eyes. “Skewbald, how far can you teleport us?”

“Both of us? Not far enough,” said Skewbald with a bitter laugh. “A couple of boulders along, if I didn't mind exhausting myself. Half-a-dozen, if I didn't mind doing myself an injury.”

Chevalier opened his eyes once more and regarded the coiling pack, as if gauging their movement. “One of us?”

“Ten along at the utmost for yourself, twelve if you shed that armour. Fifteen myself. Mass cost increases exponentially if you-”

“Even fifteen would be dicing it,” muttered Chevalier, before closing his eyes again and saying, “Okay. Okay, if you teleport yourself that far, and if Zephyr follows your lead, then keep going around the forest. I'll set a slower pace -”

“But,” started Zephyr, uncomprehending, “But if we separate and you fall behind -”

There came the scuff of paws behind him. Something closed around his tail and pulled hard; Zephyr was tugged off his hoofs and fell backwards before he could so much as cry out in alarm. The world yawned in slow-motion all around him, and all he heard was the baying of wolves from all around.

His wings refused any motion out of sheer bowel-opening terror, and all he could force from his stupid, useless mind was a litany of internal weeping and cursing. His life whirled before his eyes as he skidded off the boulder's side, and he'd never see any of its familiar sights again -

And from his front, two miracles the size and shapes of Chevalier and Skewbald rose. Emerald fire flew from Skewbald's horn and over Zephyr's shoulder. The pressure on his tail abruptly released with a hideous yelp and a sudden scorched smell. Chevalier descended and clamped his teeth down upon Zephyr's mane; with one heave mightier than the biting force that had been pulling him down, he pulled Zephyr clear and up onto the boulder's top. Zephyr sobbed, partly out of pure astonished relief and partly because of the pain throbbing up from his tail; clumps of hair there had been torn free.

Chevalier's mouth moved as he set Zephyr down; Zephyr didn't hear the words that were spoken. All he could see were the two sets of wooden claws that had emerged on different sides of the boulder. He gesticulated at them and yelled something he hoped was a warning. Skewbald glanced around, and in the next instant, his point of fire neatly flew up and slashed down into one set. Chevalier whirled around and simply brought his two forehooves down with a bone-shattering crash upon the other set.

Two more howls spilled out as the claws slipped back from the edge. Skewbald slumped further, his breathing even heavier. Chevalier still stood tall and straight-limbed. His eyes had acquired their own inner fire as he glared down at the baying pack. “Eh bien!? C’est tout?” he blazed suddenly. “Vous n’avez rien d’autre!?”

Zephyr staggered back to his hooves just as another timberwolf came flying up from another side of the boulder. Chevalier spun where he stood and planted a buck right on its neck, and it fell away with a resounding and sickening crack.

His gaze caught Zephyr. The fire dimmed, and the hard lines of his face softened for a second. “Get aloft, Zephyr,” he said. “Out of clawing distance seems a good place to be right now.”

Zephyr mutely nodded, and his wings responded as if they'd merely been waiting for permission. He brought his wings sharply down and lifted himself sharply up and into the air. He would just be a liability down there, he told himself.

Two more timberwolves sprung up at Skewbald's side of the boulder, and the green fire described a blazing arc that slapped against both of their eyes. They fell back into the horde, furious bays greeting their descent.

Another wolf threw itself up into the space Zephyr had just vacated, and scrabbled to gain a foothold. Just for a moment. Chevalier's hoof flew out, and the wolf reflexively seized it with its jaws. Chevalier snorted and sharply twisted the hoof, forcing the wolf's head down at an awkward angle. He slammed down a headbutt at its exposed neck, his helmet connecting with an explosive crack. The wolf slumped, and Chevalier shrugged its lifeless form off the boulder's edge with a grunt of exertion.

Red light and hot winds gusted from the direction of the forest, to Zephyr's right. He glanced around, and his jaw dropped.

The forest burned all the brighter, solid sheets of furious red motion that billowed off heat growing out of the wisps of flame that had curled around the branches earlier. They roared as they grew and sucked in air. Sections burned brighter, gaps fluttered briefly, giving Zephyr the disorientating impression of a thousand shrieking faces amidst the fire. Branches blackened, shriveled, cracked and fell. Their vague skeletons faded, leaving the whole world red.

Zephyr could only watch, the fires dancing in his wide eyes, before the first tendrils of flame snapped out. One flew straight at him, crossing the many metres between the forest and him in an eye's blink, and only the most desperate of reflexive lunges to one side saved him. Another snaked out across the ground and dived into the timberwolf pack; sending one pelting out and shrieking as flames hungrily devoured it.

Skewbald glanced around, just in time to curse and raise a thin shield of gleaming force that knocked an incoming fire-tendril out of the sky. Chevalier could only turn one armoured flank to the flames, and growled as one glanced off the steel.

“Keep the elementals off us, Skewbald!” he roared. “I'll keep the wolves busy! Venez donc vous battre, bande de caniches!”

Some of the pack had already opted to flee from the flames, running back for the safety of the mountains. But far too many remained, two of which responded to Chevalier's challenge and sprung up at his side of the boulder. They met two furious hoof-strikes in quick succession, sending one of them skidding back to the ground and sending the other down on its side. With a battle-cry, Chevalier slammed down on its torso with the edges of his shoes, and splinters and ichor sprayed with a piteous yelp.

Skewbald, for his part, turned to the forest. Great uncoiling tendrils of pure fire closed in around the boulder like grasping claws, several of which diverted to ignite timberwolves on the ground. Their howls mingled with the cacophony of the flames. Skewbald closed his eyes, and each incoming tendril was met at its tip with a blazing point of emerald fire.

“You will not win,” said the unicorn quietly.

The tendrils pressed down upon the green blockers, which blazed all the more fiercely in response to the challenge. Great streamers of fire poured forth from the forest and buckled and arced against the blockers like bunching muscles. Sweat poured down from Skewbald's forehead and smoke tricked up from the spiralling gaps in his horn. “You will not win.”

Zephyr looked on, paralysed. He caught sight of another tendril that lazily cut through the air towards him, and shot up hurriedly to avoid it. Safe, his mind hammered again and again like a drumbeat, safe, safe …

Searing pain ripped across his right hindleg, and he cried out as he realised the tendril had clipped him. He shoved himself further up into the air, riding the heat that gave buoyancy to his frantic wing-beat. His gaze whirled down.

Skewbald's legs trembled as he stared the fire down. No words escaped him, only a pained hiss as he raised another blocker to stop a new tendril in its tracks. Chevalier was hard-pressed. Three more timberwolves had hurled themselves up at him, whether in a mad effort to escape the flames and their burning brethren on the ground or simple blood-fury. One of them joined its smashed kin on the boulder, one snarled as it clung on like grim death to his left forehoof, and one smaller one had managed to spring onto his back. It straddled his back plating, jaws tearing at the armour and mail that covered his neck. Chevalier tore off the wolf on his hoof with a furious motion that elicited pained cries from both wolf and Chevalier; sending it skidding down the face of the boulder. He flipped his head forward violently in the next instant, catapulting the wolf on his back free. Its clinging teeth tore several chainmail rings loose, glittering in an arc through the air amidst splatters of blood.

Chevalier breathed heavily and looked up to meet Zephyr's gaze. His eyes were pools of exhaustion and pain. “Go, Zephyr,” he said. “No sense in risking yourself. We've got this. Go.”

“But ...” Zephyr trailed off with a wince as pained roiled up from his burned leg. He looked around. A few mad wolves, the few that hadn't fled or weren't burning, were still circling. The fires showed no sign of tiring. Chevalier was weary, Skewbald probably even more so. What could he do?

“Go!” screamed Chevalier, pain lancing through the exclamation and hardening its edge. “Get home to Equestria, promise us that!”

Zephyr flapped slowly backwards, the world blurring around him. It was good advise, he dully recognised on some level. He'd no business here, about as much business as a duckling had in a dragon's den. All he could do, all he'd ever been able to do, was leave the actual heroes to scream and burn...

His gaze rotated up. Above the screaming red wall of the forest, a great thunderhead pulsed through the sky like a fist. Thunder rolled, and lightning simmered in its depths.

Like clockwork. Like pieces sliding into alignment and powerful motion. A channel of thought was thrown open, and it filled him. Terror was shouldered to one side, and his jaw tightened.

There was something he could do.

“Skewbald?” croaked Zephyr. He spoke again, loud enough to get the unicorn's attention. “Use as little magic as you can to hold off the fire. I'll be right back.”

“What?” said Skewbald too late. Zephyr was already moving.

The initial flurry of wing beats to seize hold of the rising heat beneath him and to gather momentum – that was easy. So long as he kept his gaze high and at the storm. What followed after was the longer, slower and more powerful wing beats once he had his momentum.

Those were difficult. Because they took him directly over the forest.

He tucked his legs in, for it was all he could do. He had to keep the arrow-straight route without thinking, without thinking, without thinking. The fire would rise no matter what. His only hope was straight ahead.

Past the pounding heartbeat and the adrenaline that filled his veins like lightning, he only dully registered the first lash across a hindleg. Something gusted across his savaged tail, and the heat that built at his back drew some notice.

And then one whip-thin and ferocious tendril of flame scored a black line into his left forehoof, and only then did Zephyr scream. Agony throbbed up from that leg, and tears streamed from his face as he flew. It hurt more than anything had ever done, and his flight wobbled. He pitched himself into straightening it and redoubling his effort, even though the pain only grew from there. Don't think, don't think, don't think.

Like the face of the Creator Itself, the mountain-sized stormcloud rose before him, dwarfing him utterly. A speck on its surface, he tore in and grabbed at it with his one good forehoof. He sharply pivoted up, driving his aching and burned hindlegs up and around into the base of the section he'd alighted on. Moisture doused his burning tail and soothed his wounds.

A large section broke free, and lightning sizzled in the gaps. Zephyr wafted it towards him with a mighty wing-beat, and hopped onto its top. He realigned himself atop it, resting his forehoof on it and catching his breath for a moment. Just a moment.

He rose up, still pressing on the cloud segment with his hoof as he angled his body – and the cloud – back down to the ground.

First the small wingbeats. And then the greater. Like thunder after lightning, like the storm that roared at his back.

The descent was a blur, and where the rising hot air pushed against him and his light cargo, Zephyr hammered his wings all the harder. Pain was converted into anger, anger at the fire and the wolves. The boiling red rush that painted the inner cracks of his skull made it impossible to focus on anything but forwards.

Fire stroked at the cloud-shield under him, and Zephyr flew through steam. He heard howls as he descended, and flew down upon them. Shouts greeted him, and he angled himself as best he could in their direction.

He found the boulder, and an exhausted and baffled-looking Chevalier and Skewbald waiting for him there.

“Cloud-walking!” Zephyr said, the worlds coming out in a rush. “On yourself and Chevalier now!” He didn't want to stop for too long now. Lightning filled his blood, and it demanded motion.

Skewbald, his head swaying and his eyes red-rimmed, staggered forward even as magic blossomed around his smoking horn. Both he and Chevalier glowed briefly, and they hopped on top of the cloud with barely a word. Only expressions of pure astonishment, mingled with giddy relief.

Zephyr braced himself against the underside of the cloud, and bore them into the sky. Fire screamed at their backs, and grew fainter as they rose into the belly of the sky.

Many miles distant, a figure looked up from a burnt pile of mantaghast remains. The horizon was burning.

“Curious,” he said, drawing out the word. He stepped away from the ash-pile and regarded the distant sky. “What might ye be up to, my little runaways?”

His smile sharpened, and one stroke down from his vast wingspan brought him back up into the air.

“And how might I become involved?”

From a thousand shadowed rock-faces, from countless cracks, from the darkness under rocks and fallen leaves and bones, from the thinnest reaches of the sky and dark pits, a cloud's ascent was watched.

It was a sour note amidst the churning, seething tide of the North. An intrusion. An anomaly, that failed to obey the primal rules that governed here. They were prey. All things were prey, whether devourers or the devoured.

Lesser things did not set themselves against the tide and live. And these things would not.

From the thousand fluttering scraps of darkness that watched from this part of the North, something twisted into existence.

It set its endless sight on the little ponies far, far above, and followed.

And later that evening, three weary little ponies rested upon a grassy ledge protruding from a mountainside. A stray cloud bobbed next to them in a gentle breeze. Far from them, on one side, a forest burned. On their other side, a dark green expanse of forest rested under the darkening and quiet dusk. A lake shimmered in the distance.

Skewbald shifted, and gingerly rechecked the ointments that had been applied to his horn. They soothed the pain, though he'd still have to be circumspect with his magic for the next few days. Next to him, Chevalier was content to sit still and look out upon the vast world beneath them. Bandages swathed his neck and one of his legs.

Beside them, Zephyr slept. His tail was a scorched stump, and all but one of his legs were bandaged. His eyelids fluttered, and in his sleep, he smiled.

Skewbald looked out over the world, and found it wanting.

“So if it's my turn tonight for storytelling,” he said, breaking the silence, “There was once this magical forest infested by fire elementals, which a bold group of -”

“Yes, you're very clever. Shut up,” said Chevalier.

The Devil's Details

by Carabas

Falling Pebbles

The Long-Term View

Crossing Points

Introductions

Darkening Horizons

Simple Expectations

The Storm's Victory

Interlude: The North

Here Be ...

Trailblazing

Working In Groups

Recovery

Mire

Tinder

Sparks