SBMS083
All I could see were shades of white. And not descernable shades of white, painting anything conceivable, but rather just streaks - beiges, and ivories, and yellowing bone, and terrible piercing pure white, painful to look upon. An after-image of a bursting white-petaled flower of flame hung in what had been my field of vision, but it stayed constant before me, no matter how I moved my head or body.
And everything from my poll to my muzzle hurt, horribly. A world of burning pain to replace the one consumed in an instant's flash. I couldn't feel my eyes at all, and that was a very bad sign. I could hear everything, though. And everything included a lot of shouting and screaming. Mostly about fire and not being able to see, so I leave all but the gist of that panicked not-conversation unrecorded for posterity and the sake of the participants' shredded dignity. Until, of course, in her typical voice like thunder -
"BE SILENT, ALL OF YOU!"
"THOU MUST BE STILL!"
"Do you recall why we would be here?"
"When didst we ever recall aught? Tis thee and thou retention that holdst our recollections, madmare. For I, tis always some ancient day, until thine Acolyte calls us forth to gibber and quarrel for the living like ghosts upon a walk."
"I keep telling you, we are not dead, I would remember that. Unimportant! Look at this!"
"Indeed! A necromantic construct, and a mighty one. Observe as it tries even now to reform itself, to wrest itself from - yes, from our grasp!"
"I think not. Accept your defeat, you worm. You've not-lived for long enough. I can smell the death all over you. It's… intoxicating. Come here, morsel."
There was a terrible, messy sound, like a monster gobbling up a child. Which, it turned out, was more or less what happened, from the testimony of those Company ponies lucky enough to be far enough away from the detonation and not coated in the necromantic blood-mage equivalent of flash paper. For those of us with burnt-out eyes, we had to listen, blinded, to the sound of the Nightmare messily devouring the soul of a greater lich.
At least we were spared a second magical explosion.
"Oh, my mad self, that was truly a foul deed. What terrible indigestion will we birth from it? Aigh! Damn you, Nightmare! Do you know what you've done? Now I am hungry! Givest us the scraps!"
"Greedy girl, here is your share. Wouldst you think me such a grasping sibling? Eat well, sister."
"You know full well we are not sisters, Nightmare. Do not call me so."
"This is disconcerting. Thou accent art slipping, Luna. Mine as well."
"Your Majesties have poured a great mass of corrupted energy into your systems, Mistress Nightmare, Lady Luna," interjected the pained voice of Gibblets.
"Pierrot, thou intrudeth in matters from which thou - [hrach, cough, hack] you were banished for infidelity. Know thou, nay, your! place!"
"Nightmare, leave my clown be! Oh, come here, dear Gibblets, your poor eyes. We must be able to do something -"
"Bah. Well, look at the lot of them. We can hardly lead a band of blinded warriors, can we? Rememberst thy spell of reconstruction? Combineth with this feast's great vitality and - "
"Oh! Indeed! Here, I canst easily -"
When it was my turn, a sudden burning scorched my numbed sockets, heralding the return of affronted nerves once burnt away by fire. That burning became a terrible, piercing agony for a long moment. And then the swirling shades of white flushed red, blood-red, and then the red began to grow translucent, and there was a world, dimly, through the thinning haze. And in my rose-tinted glass, I saw the shadows of two great alicornic figures standing not far from my aching, scorched self. They stood over the collapsed forms of a number of my fellows, working and muttering to each other. As I looked around, I found Gibblets squatting nearby, staring at his mistress and her dark shadow with thestral eyes.
"Sawbones, you're back with us. The Princesses are fixing our mess. It's fascinating, but a bit unsettling."
"Call us not princess, thou green-skinned devourer of flies! We art a Queen! If not thine."
"Oh, be quiet Nightmare, it's nostalgic. And attend you to our task. This pony's eyes resists our template."
"That wouldst be because he is nothing of a pony, and caribou were not made to bear a thestral's eye."
"It was the only template I could recall, and dawn is threatening. Quickly! We have two more ere the damnable sun casts us back into our darkness!"
"I would object to your insistence on talking about us as if we're ghosts, but with this junk running through our systems, you might be right as to the effects. Here! Next!"
"Oh, this one is dreadfully burned. At the center of the explosion?"
"For this one, we can spend the time. Did you mark his doubled dedication? This is our new standard-bearer. More brave than he looks, smarter than he sounds, and his constitution - look at that! Like memory-clay, just touch it and it finds its own form. Hrm. And the proper eye structure for a change."
"What, is that how they art supposed to lie? Perhaps we canst replicate that for this last pony, but the skies lighten as we speak."
"No, Lady," said a blurry pegasus-shaped shadow in the pre-dawn gloaming. Tickle Me. "Please, I will take the thestral eye. To honor my ancestors, and our lost heritage."
"As you wish, our little pony." And as the Spirits laboured away over Tickle Me's eyes, my full sight returned with the dawn.
And they were gone.
Everything was too damn bright. I found myself constantly squinting, and realized that we'd need to put out an order for smoked-glass spectacles. I recalled that Throat-Kicker had found a pair for Cherie, and made a mental note to find her source.
The more hale members of the Company had gone over the scene of battle while the Spirits had been engaged in their magical surgery, and Trollbridge was positively crawling with ponies. We had been blessed, but it had been a close-run thing. Without the Spirit, the accident would have taken half the leadership with it, ruined for life. Good for nothing but begging for bits in the street. Using the banner-lance had been a rash act, and I can only blame it on panic and sleep-deprivation.
Eventually, the remains of the Company dead were collected, and a funeral pyre was built on the low ridge overlooking the shattered shell of Trollbridge. The Captain came out to the scene of the battle, and presided over the ceremony. But she was notably withdrawn, and did not initially speak to the rest of us. The other two cohort commanders and Broken Sigil stood with the Spirit-touched, and we behaved scandalously, muttering among ourselves as the flames took in the piled logs and began to consume our fallen comrades.
"It doesn't look like it's going away."
"Permanent?"
"I can live with that."
"You would, most of your ancestors were thestral in the first place. But I better not catch you filing your teeth, it isn't healthy."
"I kind of think they're sharper this morning anyways. Look."
I glanced over, and Tickle Me did seem to have a new set of dentation. I'd have to investigate that later. Not sure how magical eye surgery could have changed her teeth, but there had been a lot of loose magic this morning so far. Even I could feel the ambient buzz.
"Captain isn't herself this morning," muttered Fuller Falchion, the commander of second cohort.
"Hasn't been since the visit." Smooth Draw, third cohort.
"She's taking the loss of the Lieutenant hard," I whispered
"No harder than some," said Gibblets, not bothering to whisper.
"She's the one in charge. We need a new Lieutenant, now," said Falchion, giving up the attempt to be quiet.
"We were going to hold elections today, before, well, this!" responded Smooth Draw.
"This shouldn't stop that. Makes it all the more urgent."
"Shouldn't make decisions in a heated moment," I tried to interject in between the glaring cohort commanders.
"Blast the heated moment, we need a full set of leadership!"
"Look at what we almost lost this morning!"
Having been turned upon by both ground cohort commanders, I found the Captain walking up to us, fully engaged and furious with the lot of us. Or maybe just me. She never did like me much.
"Thrift, thrift Sawbones! The funeral baked goods shall coldly furnish forth the election feast!" gibed Gibblets, in an admirable attempt to divert the wrath of the Captain.
"Make the arrangements for the election, Tickle Me. We'll need ballots from the crew up at the Palisades, and the night-patrols. Who should have been replaced with the day-shift two hours ago. This bagno de sangue is no excuse to let your cohorts to go rottami a relitto! Sawbones, walk with me." She stalked off, pissed as usual. She began as soon as we were out of earshot, if not a little beforehoof.
"What's tonight's damage? Is it gone? What was it? Ten dead, mia Donna! And tens of thousands of deniers in wreckage, at the least."
"Far more than that, if my off-the-fetlock figures are right. And we think it was a lich. Probably the Stump. It's… probably mostly gone."
"What the hay is ‘mostly gone'?"
"The Spirit ate him. At least, I think that's what happened - no eyes at the time. We need to be more careful of the banner-lance, by the by. The Spirit spent half the night repairing the damage caused by our new standard-bearer poking the lich with our magic stick. Not his fault, mine. Swore the colt in, told him where to stick the shaft. Not his fault it was a spectacularly bad idea."
"The Spirit… ate a lich. Our Spirit? That crazy alicorn ghost you all keep talking about?"
"You always manage to not be on scene when they make an appearance, but yes, the Nightmare and the Princess apparently manifested from, I don't know, the excess magic when we popped the Stump's perpetual-regeneration spell with the war-lance. Set off all the gore and blood it had shed all over the scene like a flash-fire in a granary, except with blood and guts instead of flour. Captain, look me in my eyes. See something? I'm not wearing my darksight amulet. It was destroyed in the accident. The Spirit repaired my eyes, as they did everypony blinded in the fire. This is real, and it will be damn hard to cover up."
"You're damn right it'll be hard to cover up. Your Trollbridge is a wreck! Ten dead we can hide easy enough, nopony outside of the Company keeps track of us that closely. But there's twenty of you with what, permanent slit-eyes now? And a ruin on our southern flank to explain."
"We were talking with the Bride about replacing those fortifications entirely. She… might have promised to send us one of her engineers? I don't know, some of the details from that last night got fuzzy after the fifth round."
"Yeah, she did. I have a harder head than you, you mammalucca. I figure we can tear up some of this, pretend it's construction. Will the donkeys in town talk?"
"You know, they don't seem the talkative sort. How often have any of them said boo to you?"
"Not too often. They remind me of the bad old days, like a pack of Sicari paisans. Bocca cucita, yanno?"
And so repairs turned to demolition instead, as Broken Sigil was sent around to conduct the poll for the election. With the Company as scattered about as it was, it took several days to get everypony on record.
Tickle Me became the new Lieutenant. It might have been the long years of service, or her tireless management of the far-flung ghoul clearance campaigns across the length and breadth of the province, but personally?
I kind of suspect it was her new pair of amber slit-pupiled eyes. They made the brotherhood feel lucky, and safe. Like it was the old days returning once again.