//------------------------------// // Chapter 24: The Eyes of the Curse // Story: Fools and Drunks // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// Ruby led Snips and Snails up the side of the hill by a path that led up to the south, wending dangerously close to Sunney Towne. "This be far from safe," the ghost girl admitted. "As we do draw nearer the village, my kin wax mightier and if they pass close to thee, they may scent thy life. But Roneo closes from the north and Gladstone from the south; Starlet holds the east, but she cannot watch all the ways across the hill. They are all aware of my battle with Roneo and his thralls, and those were to the north. By hastening southeast, we may still slip my sister's snare, and win ye safe and free and home." Snails thought it seemed very dangerous too, but he could not think of any better plan. Snips was similarly stymied. So, step by step along the hillside trail, they approached closer to Sunney Towne. Ruby urged them to stick close to the hillside, and avoid the edge; both for the mundane reason that she feared they might fall off, and for fear that Grey Hoof might spy them. "As Master-Wraith," she explained, "he is stronger and has senses subtler than any of us, even mine own self. We all should be hidden from him by the Sun-glare, but I can nay be sure, and he would only have to glimpse ye once for all to be lost." Snails was chilled by this thought, and even Snips was notably silent after receiving this ominous warning. So they stayed on the inside, and did not try to lean over to get a glimpse of storied, fear-shadowed Sunney-Towne. However, at times the winding of the way gave them a straight line of sight down the valley to the south, and at points the trail narrowed until there was no longer any way to avoid standing toward the outside. More than once, Snails found himself looking straight into the forbidden zone. In one sense, there was nothing to see. The fog thickened and rose; the clouds thickened and fell, until they met at the southern end of the valley. At that end, the murk was impenetrable; there was nothing but total blackness. Nothing to see. In another sense, there was much to see, and all of it terrifying. As Snails rounded the closest point of the trail to Sunney Towne, where it climbed and turned the other way back north, he found himself staring right into those black clouds, and the dark-gray formations surrounding them. The whole mass seemed to be somehow swirling, though he could not quite make out the motion. It was as if the clouds were some great ground-bound storm, or the inflow of some gigantic drain, from this world into another. Now, why did he think that last part? What was more, the darkness was not truly dark. It seemed dark to normal sight, but if the observer was Snails and Glittershell at the same time, it was clear that it was in some indefinable way glowing, a sickly greenish-yellow glow, like fungi on the face of a decaying corpse. There was something else within the darkness -- Snails focused in some indefinable way on it, and Glittershell could see lots of little yellow un-lights blinking at her -- no, looking at her -- they were eyes, hateful yellow eyes, and they were drawing her in -- Suddenly, the darkness and the hateful blinking eyes were replaced in Glittershell's field of view by Ruby's familiar gray face and golden eyes, so dear and friendly, especially compared to the horror she had seen. Snails blinked, and realized that Ruby had put herself physically between himself and Sunney Towne. Something was wrong with that. The path was too narrow. Indeed, it was too narrow for the position in which he was standing. For this to work, Ruby would have to be completely and himself partially ... He looked down. The ghost girl was floating in midair, her hooves positioned as if standing on an invisible platform. One forehoof reached out, gently touching Snails' breastbone, keeping him from falling. Ruby's frog was cool, but not unpleasantly so, as she supported his front half. His own forehooves were dangling over the empty air, and Snails saw with utter fright that there was nothing but the pressure being exerted by Ruby that was preventing him from plummeting a hundred hooves or more down into the misty abyss. Snails gasped, and desperately backpedaled with all of his hooves. Ruby matched his motion, so that instead of falling, he managed to get back firmly on the ledge. He felt something grabbing his right hind leg, helping to pull him back onto the path. "Snailsy!" cried Snips with relief, gripping him tightly. Glittershell liked when Snips touched her, and she could not fault the sentiment. She leaned back gratefully against him and asked "What -- what happened?" "You kind of zoned out," Snips said, "staring into those dark clouds, and then you started to walk right off the cliff! Lucky I was here!" Ruby raised an eyebrow at the short blue stallion. "She helped too," Snips allowed. "Why did I do that?" Snails wondered aloud. "Thou didst gaze into the Curse," said Ruby. "From up here, it is possible to perceive the shape of the whole, fell dweomer. And I think it started to gaze back into thee." "Oh," said Snails, automatically trying to see what she was talking about. "Don't look at it again!" said Ruby firmly, interposing her head between him and the dangerously-interesting dark cloud. "Sorry, Miss Ruby," said Snails. "Why was it drawing me in like that?" "The Curse ever hungers," Ruby explained, continuing to float on the outside of Snails' path. "The hunger of we Wraiths for life is but a pale shadow of the hunger of the Curse itself. It wants to eat all Life, all Light -- to consume all of Creation." "You talk like it's alive," said Snips, casting a worried glance over his shoulder as they walked away from it. "Is it alive?" Ruby asked rhetorically. "Am I? Or any of my kin?" She drifted back onto the trail, walked more normally, this time behind Snips and Snails. "I think, and act, and feel. For many practical purposes, I might as well be alive, which is why I call myself 'undead.' I am of a certain not unliving in the manner of a rock, or a corpse. "And the Curse, as a whole, also does act, and seems to feel, and may well think. I do not know -- 'tis rare that one can see the Curse as a whole, and from the outside, as we can from this distance. "It was a lot like what I saw from your dad," Glittershell commented. "The eyes -- those scary yellow eyes ..." "The Curse centers on my father," said Ruby, "and it expresses itself most strongly through him. I, too, have seen the dead stars, the cold realm, the hateful yellow eyes. I am not sure what they mean, but I fear that all the murthers, and the Curse of Nightmare Moon, has summoned something from beyond our world, something that hates all Ponykind. And, as it and we Wraiths are both bound in the Curse, those things -- those Shadows -- affect us. They change us into something monstrous." "Well, yeah," pointed out Snips. "You're Pony-eating ghosts." "'Tis deeper than that," said Ruby. "Ye both did meet Roneo earlier. He was, once, the sweetest stallion ye might imagine. He is, still, not the foulest. Yet he has become evil, full well happy to murther and enslave Ponies. Even Three Leaf, who was friendly to us, at one time did the same. And mine own mother --" she looked at Snails, her ears drooping sadly. "-- she near did devour thee. After granting thee guest-right. The old Mitta Gift would ne'er have turned on a guest. She was the very soul of hospitality!" "I don't remember --" began Snips. "You were asleep for that part," explained Snails. "I am one deep sleeper!" Snips seemed almost proud of this fact. "Nay," said Ruby, floating up ahead of them so that she now led them along the trail again, "the Curse changes us. It corrupts us, to put it plain. For some reason -- mayhaps that I took it on my self of mine own free will, that I might redeem my kin from damnation -- I resist this corrupton better than some, but even I can feel it gnawing at the back of my mind, ever striving to turn me onto a darker path. I have of needs grown good at denying its demands, but I must stay ever vigilant, or I might fall. And if I fall --" she pursed her lip, "-- so falls the best hope for all our salvation. I must not fail!" She smiled at them. "Knowing this helps firm me to stand fast." Their way continued up the hill. As the trail rose, they put Sunney Towne behind them again, and rose above the thinning mists. Ruby moved more heavily, punished by the wan sunlight; but the spirits of Snips and Snails grew lighter as the world brightened around them. They both wished that they could stay on this hill, and Snips said so. "Alas," said Ruby, "ye can no more stay on this hill than on mine, and for the same reasons. Indeed, your position here is even more perilous, since ye have not the choice of returning to my Sanctum. And we must hie from here in a hurry, if I am to help ye, for in not too long a time I shall have to return to Sunney Towne, to play my part in our daily Feast. And I do much fear that, without my aid, ye might lose your way in the Mist, and fall to my kin. That sobered up the two young stallions, and sped their hooves along the way. They paused at only one point, and for a good reason. At the saddle of the pass over the hill, there was a place where scree had fallen from one of the crests, creating an area covered by numerous small round stones. "Wow," said Snips. "We sure coulda used these when we fought Backbreaker and Sandwren." "Yes," agreed Snails. "We could have thrown them with our magic." "Why not collect some now?" suggested Ruby. "Very quickly." Snips and Snails each gathered up a dozen or so stones, and put them in their bags. "These'll hurt those thralls if we run into any more of 'em," Snips said with some satisfaction. "Beware," cautioned Ruby. "The thralls do not like to be damaged -- they recover slow compared to we Wraiths -- but they do not feel pain like the living. Still, with hard-flung stones, ye may damage them, or cause them to flinch from fear of further harm." "Would they work on Wraiths?" Snips asked. "Not very well," replied Ruby. "Material missiles can but disrupt our Aspects, which we swift re-form. If those stones were blessed, they would hurt us more. Alas, ye must make do with what ye can find!" "Miss Ruby?" asked Snails. "What if we have to fight a Wraith?" Snails asked. "What should we do?" Ruby bowed her head. "Run," she advised, "if ye can. If ye can nay --" she closed her eyes. "-- Try not to let them touch ye. If a Wraith touches ye, she caan drain your life -- it would feel to you like a painful chilling cold, like the worst winter ye can imagine. Even a short touch would pain and weaken ye; a longer one leave ye wracked with agony, wounded and perhaps maimed. Given enough time the Wraith would have your life, and ye would rise as their helpless thralls, bound to do their bidding. So, if ye can forfend it, do not let them touch ye." Snips and Snails cringed at the explanation. "But be of good cheer, friends," said Ruby, smiling back at them. If we make haste, we may full well avoid mine erring sister and her thralls. So come! With luck, we need not fight!" They made their way rapidly over the saddle and started down the eastern side of the hill.