i
Winny kept her focus on her painting, pretending not to notice that Sombra was watching her from the entranceway to her study.
She and Nigeq had parted ways without a word spoken between them past the snow-cable dividing the Southeast Spire from the central district. Both knew just what commitment they had now made for each-other, and while Winny was pining dearly to let Nigeq know just how grateful she was, she knew that any gratitude expressed on her part would not be accepted warmly by Nigeq.
No, she could not let any of those feelings show. Not with Sombra as an omnipresent guest to her thoughts and emotions. Once more, she had to be the same passive husk of a mare the moment he entered the room.
When Nigeq had left, Winny was once more thrust into the perilous realm of uncertainty. At least delivering the medication had been something, now she was back to not quite knowing what was going to take place. Opal and Nigeq had become unknown variables towards her safety.
It was draining, Winny thought, to have such unknowns. And so, she instead returned exactly where she had been when Nigeq had first come to collect her. Her most recent brush strokes had since dried, but they had dried in all the wrong ways, leaving long, wayward yellow streams of the sunset crawling down into the snow.
She had cursed quietly, before grabbing the largest brush she had and decimating the entire canvas with white paint. It was unsalvageable, and although the former painting would always exist as a sort of ghostly palimpsest, Sombra would hardly be impressed to see she had wasted another canvas.
With the canvas clear, she began again, and there she kept her mind. When it threatened to stray back to doubt and fear, she forced it back to her painting again, the constant inner battle making her brushstrokes harsh and pronounced.
As conflicted as she felt whilst doing so, painting was still a glorious sort of catharsis. While her nervous, shaking hooves were destroying her attempts at smooth brushstrokes, her mind soon slowed enough that she could hear it properly again.
At the present, her safety rested on a very tiny thread; the restraint of Nigeq. While he had no reason to rouse suspicions, and while Winny doubted he would be put in such a situation, she did not imagine his loyalty for her went nearly far enough to result in much hopes for safety. If Sombra had any bit of suspicions towards Nigeq, she might as well save the poor guard the trouble and tell Sombra herself.
Overtime, such suspicions would likely disappear completely, and things would go back to normal.
And, even if such was the ideal outcome, Winny didn't find a whole lot of comfort in that idea, either.
Ever since Sombra had shown her that sad portrait of the long-dead wife, Winny could recall every line on the mare's face. The small scowl, as though she were tired and annoyed with the demands of whomever was depicting her.
The deceased wife had looked regal, healthy, and yet so, so lifeless. The portrait had been a strange sort of black mirror for Winny. She had only been Sombra's bride for four years, and already the prospect of growing old at his side was impossible to imagine. Before her eyes, every tie towards her past life was cut. Any friends she'd had before now looked with scorn at the whore who had sold herself for a better life while they all stayed squabbling in poverty and disease. One by one, illness and labour took away her father and uncles and brothers, and now only she and her mother remained.
Sombra had said it himself—she meant nothing to him, no more than the forgotten mare in the portrait had.
For a long, long time, Winny had wanted to run. And now, for the first time, she was actually considering it. She was tired of denying the idea to herself. Even long before the nervous breakdown that had brought her running to her mother, she had been denying the idea, and now, in a strange burst, the 'idea' was already twisting into some manner of 'plan.' But where was there to run to? The fishing or mining settlements lost to oceans of Angujaktuat? The mythical Equestria that may or may not even exist?
Part of her didn't care. Part of her would rather freeze to death than become another sad and nameless wife in an ornate portrait.
When she felt Sombra lingering, she instantly cleared her thoughts back to her painting and her painting alone. She hadn't felt him listening in on them, but one could never be too sure. She grabbed a damp rag in her left wing, and dabbed her paint brush softly, before injecting a sliver of blue into the jagged lines of the sky on her canvas.
“You are absent from the castle for nearly two days, and when you return, you hide your snout away in that wretched canvas.” Sombra said from the entranceway of Winny's study, frowning solemnly. “What is it supposed to be?”
Winny winced, for she did not know the Equish word Sombra preferred to hear—only the literal K'anquitut translation. “The… ah, 'demon's lanterns', sir.”
“The auroras.” Sombra swished his tail, his voice a stern growl. “How many times do I need to tell you not to speak that primal snowspeak?”
“I am sorry, sir,” Winny said. “It seems my mind is elsewhere, today.”
“Is that so?” Sombra snorted. “And what is distracting you? What shade of grey to use?”
“No sir,” she said, wincing a little, for the same otherworldly cold was upon her, and she did not need to turn in order to know Sombra was now lurking directly behind her. “You're right, I have no right to complain.”
“Indeed,” Sombra said, sounding distracted. Winny chanced a sideways gaze and saw that he was examining her canvas more closely.
“Like the rest of your paintings, it's lacking any sort of detail,” he noted. “Everything seems too overstated, even the colours, which aren't even mixed properly. There isn't even a clear subject—indeed, I don't even see a single pony in the entire painting. It is merely an aimless depiction of the land. I don't think a single art gallery in the Empire would see much value in it.”
Winny felt some indignant retort bubbling—she hadn't asked for a critique of her art—but it did not make it anywhere beyond silly wishful thinking. Besides, he was more or less correct—her vague, muddy landscape scribblings would hardly have sat comfortably beside the meticulously ornate depictions of mighty, long dead stallions.
“I'm sure I will improve eventually,” Winny said cautiously, although truthfully, she was quite proud of her work.
“After wasting every canvas in the empire, perhaps,” Sombra tutted, raising an eyebrow in faux-annoyance. “I trust everything went smoothly with Nigeq?”
There it was. The faint humming of magic. Winny felt it, like it were some strange itching from within her head.
Sombra had asked her a question, and now he was taking a peek inside of her mind as she answered.
Winny kept her breathing calm and her thoughts on the mundane—on what had indeed happened, minus the extra details she need not describe.
“It went fine. He is a very nice stallion. Did you know his wife is expecting another child?”
The statement had the exact effect Winny had been hoping, for Sombra instantly grimaced in anger.
“Another? They are like rabbits. They should be sterilized, the lot of them.”
Winny said nothing. The itching was still there, and so the wisps of green on the clouds were far more important than any retort she may have had.
“I am retiring to my study,” Sombra announced. As silent as it had began, Winny felt herself be released. “Do not disturb me until the servants have dinner prepared.”
Back in the safety of her own thoughts, Winny listened to his armoured hoofsteps echoing across the empty halls of the Tower.
Then, as she did so, a wild idea came upon her.
Before she had quite convinced herself she was not being suicidal, she found herself trotting after Sombra down the hall.
“Sombra, wait!”
He turned, giving her an impatient backwards glare. “Yes, Winny?”
“Perhaps I can take my canvas into your study!”
He rose an eyebrow—not in suspicion, but seemingly simple curiosity. “And why would you do that?”
“Well, it is as you said! I do not like locking myself away in my study when I could be spending time with you, Sombra! Perhaps we can work mutually, in each other's presence!”
For a long while, Sombra simply regarded her, his expression an unreadable neutral. “This is an unusual request. I have made it quite clear to you I do not like disturbances while I am in my study.”
“Yes sir. You have.” Winny bowed her head. That wretched itching within her head was back, and this time she did not have a canvas to flee to.
“And yet you directly contradict me with this request? Why?”
“I'm sorry, Som—”
“Don't apologize.” Sombra's voice rose suddenly. “Answer!”
She winced at the sudden shift, although her thoughts had become so firmly rooted in terror that she did not imagine Sombra would be able to read much else.
“It was a foolish idea. A foolish, selfish idea. I just thought, since the windows are taller and the view is nicer, my painting may impr—”
Sombra interrupted with a soft laugh. “Yes, yes, I see. I should not have yelled, but you have been acting considerably peculiar. Have a servant help you with your affairs.”
She said she would, but truly she did not bother. She tucked a few brushes behind her ears and a few tubes of oil paint under her wing, and then plucked her canvas free from her easel and set it aside, collapsing the easel upon a brand-new one and slinging the whole affair over her back. It was heavy, but even for the passive maiden she acted as, the blood of a big-boned, arctic-enduring Crystal Pony still flowed through her.
Even if it were someplace she never should have been, Winny knew exactly where to go to find King Sombra's study. It was a route he had taken her down the night prior, after all. This time, she passed the portraits alone, casting fearful glances at them as she passed, half-expecting one to come to life and begin berating her for marrying their husband.
The most recent wife—the youthful one Sombra had singled out, still sent cold shivers down her spine. There were two other portraits—both older than Winny, but only one significantly so. Sombra's second wife could have passed for Winny's peer, but his first seemed to have lived to an age beyond even her mother.
Considering his assertions that he did not carry any value towards his companions—and such seemed to be evidenced by the second and third's and soon to be fourth's youthful demises—it seemed this first wife was an exception.
“Congratulations to you,” she softly growled to the mare in the portrait. She knew it was a stupid, immature thing to say, especially in regards to a mare dead for centuries, but she figured that the proud and self-satisfied smile on this mare was enough to warrant it. 'Congratulations on being even more of a whore than me,” she was tempted to add.
She instead pursed her lips, flaring with immediate shame. Did the rest of the Empire feel the same about her? It made sense. Truthfully, it was rather humorous when she considered it.
The door to Sombra's study lay at the end of the hall, and he had left it ajar in anticipation of Winny's arrival.
Easing it open, she entered without ceremony, for there was absolutely nothing understated about King Sombra's study she needed to compensate for.
Indeed, anypony else in the Empire would have been satisfied with such a 'study' being the entirety of their home, for its vastness easily dwarfed the average Crystal Pony's cheaply constructed two-room homes.
Still, it was perhaps humbler than somepony would have expected from King Sombra, especially considering it was where he spent the greater majority of his time. His absolute rule had meant that his decisions required very little bureaucracy on his part, but Winny knew better than to assume he had a plethora of free time as a result. As curious as she genuinely was regarding his day-to-day life, he dismissed it as details no mare deserved to hear.
He did not allow her entry on her lonesome, and although there was little in place to prevent her from doing so anyways, she knew better than to test the enchantments he had put in place. Still, the ban, as it were, was relatively arbitrary and unenforced, and she had been in the study several times in the past. Entering again, she was unsurprised by how little it had changed.
A great glass window immediately greeted whomever was entering. The window was as tall and wide as the study, and was the only north-facing window Winny had ever seen—the rest of the Tower was restricted, and impossible to reach from the Mansion.
It was a shame, for the view of the Crystal Mountains from such a height was one of the most breathtaking things Winny had seen.
The rest of the study seemed to serve a strictly practical purpose. Much of it was populated by bookshelves—a small library but the largest in the Empire— but the larger percentage was devoted to Sombra's own personal niche: the arcane.
Such was an art the average Crystal Pony regarded with a strange mixture of apathy and intrigue. While pegasus births were uncommon and sporadic, unicorns were a different matter entirely. When they were born, they were born alone to their generation. Sombra himself had told Winny that, himself included, he did not believe there had ever been more than two unicorns in the Empire at any given point in history.
Unicorns typically became Sombra's apprentices, standing beside him over the Empire as some depressing product of his creation.
'Not unlike you,' Winny internally trilled.
The unicorn of Winny's generation had been a miscarriage, and the Empire was thrusted once more into an arcane-blackout. While this had all happened before Winny could recall, her mother had told her the story, as well as the aftermath that was Sombra's fury. An entire line of blood had been purged from the Empire before the day had ended, merely because the would-be mother had, in his eyes, 'failed.'
Still, Sombra's affinity for the arcane arts was clearly and obviously his passion. The study was as much a room for work as it was experimentation and creation. While Winny painted, Sombra expressed himself with his quill held to ancient animal-hide parchment, scribing runes whose meanings she would never know.
Vials and beakers and flasks lined some surfaces, charts and diagrams and maps on others. It was truly the study of a stallion that Death had warranted an exception for.
What those rebels would give for a drop of those vials contents, Winny couldn't begin to imagine.
Shaking her head clear, lest he was listening upon her thoughts, Wind Whistler locked her eyes back upon her canvas and stayed silent. She'd convinced Sombra to not be alarmed by her presence in his study. One major victory would suffice for now.
ii
The week passed, and gradually, Wind Whistler's presence in Sombra's study become less and less of a novelty.
In the past, he had made countless threats against her ever entering, and she had obeyed. While there were no magical wards keeping her out, Sombra had spoken before of his ability to detect a pony's magic stream even days after they had been present—like he were some wolf picking up a scent. Winny didn't doubt him, and didn't doubt the fear such a thought stirred within her.
To her surprise, however, he did not seem to mind her joining him now. They seldom talked, but on occasion Winny would feel him behind her and turn her head slightly to see him silently examining her painting, offering a few cynical observations. When she tried to make conversation, she usually received little in response—sometimes nothing at all. The only notable exception was a question she'd intended to be innocent; as they passed in the hall, Winny had politely asked about the first wife, and how she had passed. She received a prompt scolding and backhoof in return, and so she fell silent for the remainder of the night.
Whilst in the study, she focused her attention on her painting but kept her thoughts occupied with far more important matters. She watched Sombra through sideways glances, ensuring he was as seemingly occupied as she was. At her familiar spot before the great window, she had quickly discovered that she could watch him with near-clarity through the reflection in the glass. His work was visually uninteresting—typically involving him peering at parchment, although truthfully, Winny thought, he was probably reviewing some family's productivity output and deciding whether or not their continued survival was of importance to the Empire.
It was despicable. It seemed as though the entire Empire were his hostage, always worried that whatever they were doing to help the Empire, it wasn't enough. It wasn't their lives on the line, it was that of their families, too, for if they were deemed unneeded, it only produced a few more unneeded mouths to dispose of as well.
Winny had been lucky. Her mother worked as a baker and her father a miner. When an accident had taken her father—hardly uncommon, as shattering at it had been—her mother had been too busy worrying about herself and her children to mourn him properly.
And then, a dozen years later, Sombra had married her daughter. It was funny how fate worked, sometimes.
While Sombra wrote upon his parchments and passed his judgement across the nation, Winny would watch him with feigned disinterest. Her sympathies went out to whoever the ink on the parchment would slay, but truly, there was little she could do to help right now.
Far more relevant to her interests was the crystallized dragon fire that Sombra used to send the parchment off.
There were entire sections of mines devoted to producing this substance, and yet Sombra seemed to hold an exclusive monopoly over it. It's purpose was mundane at best—it's role could be filled by a pony and time, but there was something about watching these scrolls flare into green ashes, only to reappear someplace else entirely, that seemed to intrigue Sombra.
It intrigued Winny, too. It intrigued her so much, that she was tempted to ask the only pony who knew how it worked. Yet, she knew better. Asking would raise suspicion, and heavens knew she had enough of that swirling over her as it was. Sombra would frequently dip into her thoughts at inopportune moments—she would feel him brushing upon them, sometimes whilst in the midst of her scheming, and she would have to forcibly jerk her thoughts to the mundane.
He was suspicious indeed, even if he did not speak such. It was only a matter of time before he would confront her, and she would have no way of defending herself from him when he did.
Nonetheless, she doubted he had traced his suspicions to the dragonfire itself. It was too mundane a thing for him to contemplate his wife caring about.
She ceased her cynical thoughts the moment foreign candlelight danced across her painting. She didn't need to turn her head to know that Sombra was standing behind her. For several seconds, he was silent, simply content watching her paint with newfound nervousness.
“Do you… like it?” Winny ventured.
Sombra ignored her, and went straight for the kill.
“Nigeq is dead.”
Her brush halted, and her mind reeled.
“I thought that would get your attention,” Sombra said softly.
“That's… that's terrible,” Winny managed. “He was such a nice stallion.”
“Yes, I figured your opinion of him would be inflated, considering he lied for you.”
“I… I don't...”
“Oh, don't be facetious, Wind Whistler,” Sombra said. “I trust my own judgement.”
“You killed him,” Winny translated, her blood going cold. “Or… or… had him killed.”
“Of course,” Sombra replied, waving a hoof, as though it were nothing. “Do you think I can allow for insubordination in my Guard?”
“His wife was expecting! Sombra, they had foals!”
“And now, the Empire has less mouths to feed. I lose nothing. It's only natural for a ruler to cut off any and all limbs that may slow down the wheel of progress, you see.”
Winny didn't offer a reply. She simply stared straight ahead at her painting, her head pounding with fury and disgust. Sombra gave her a sly smile—Winny knew he could read her emotions clearly, but he did not comment on them.
“You should think very carefully on what the collateral may be before you think you can betray me, Wind Whistler,” Sombra said. With that, he turned back and left her to her lonesome once again. She had a thousand accusations and curses on her tongue and she did not dare offer a single one as he stalked back to his desk on the other side of the study.
On the last day of the week, Sombra had asked the Empire's district advisors to dinner and cigars. Such was, admittedly, not completely out of the ordinary—he seemed to keep a somewhat friendly relationship with them, if such a bizarre relationship could indeed be called such. Winny imagine it was, in most respects, a more subdued and politically-oriented version of her own relationship to Sombra. He didn't seem to trust anypony enough for anything proper, instead keeping ponies close so that they could fulfill some personal need of his.
With the Empire as subdivided, Sombra kept tabs on the districts through ponies of his choosing—typically ones he thought were of value to their respective sectors.
Whilst they were present, Sombra had her play the part of a hostess—bringing out coffees and trays of desserts when she wasn't sitting silently by his side. He had servants who could do such a task, but part of him seemed to find pleasure in showing off to his friends the mare he had married. He chose her dress for the evening and told her to behave, and she had spent the evening sitting by his side, simply staring at the tablecloth while they talked of affairs she couldn't be bothered by.
In a strange way, though, it was a good evening. She watched through glances as Sombra sipped away at a glass of cognac—a stallion's pleasure, he had growled once—and she had to repress a smile when she noticed his words starting to slur as he asked her to go retrieve his cigar box from their bedroom.
The guards in the hall had heard him as clearly as she did, and so they didn't object when she trotted past them into the hallway, alone. They'd been shadowing her ever since her disappearance, but it seemed they had been doing so on Sombra's orders, for neither of the two made any real move to follow her.
For the first time in the week, she was alone in the halls of the Mansion.
She looked from one end of the long corridor to the other, her brain only now informing her just how significant this was.
A slip in judgement on the part of Sombra, thanks to the plethora of whisky within him.
Some gambit he was playing against her…
She didn't care. It was a chance and it was probably the last one she'd get.
She trotted quickly down the corridor, her hoofbeats echoing against the dark grey crystal-tile floor. The Mansion was a labyrinth of unused space, often breaking off into mighty stairwells to one of the hundred rooms Sombra would probably never go in and would have somepony executed if he found unkempt.
With nothing better to do, she'd memorized the floor plan of the Mansion, but she was sprinting down the corridors long after the servants had extinguished most of the sconces now, the Mansion cast in an unfamiliar half-light that made it feel anew.
Then, she made it as far down the traditional path to their bedroom as she could go, before finally coming upon the proud marble staircase that led to the unsettling corridor of wifes. The Halls of Arkadia, as the blueprints had would have called it. Whatever 'Arkadia' had meant to Sombra, Winny could only guess.
She hesitated before the stairwell.
Sombra may have let his judgement slip, but she had no proof his observation had followed it. He knew as well as she did how long it would took her to retrieve the cigar box, and she had her doubts he wouldn't notice when she took nearly triple the time.
I stopped to talk to a maid.
Winny frowned. Yeah, involve more ponies in your downward spiral. What could go wrong?
Any suspicion would mean mind magic, and she didn't want to bring that approach back.
She took one last glance at the stairwell, before turning and continuing down the corridor towards Sombra's bedroom, all of the urgency gone from her step, shame and guilt dissolving her excitement immediately.
Their conversation halted when she returned into the dining hall, Winny instinctively flinching as her hoofbeats filled the void their conversation had left.
One of Sombra's friends—some discount tyrant Sombra had given the responsibility of a Crystal Mine to—gave a small chuckle when she sat down beside Sombra again and folded her hooves politely.
“Your wife is very well behaved,” the mine owner had observed passively when she had returned, setting the small wooden box down before Sombra, her head swirling with hatred and her face timid and coy.
“Trust me, it took a lot to get her that way,” Sombra replied. “Isn’t that right, Winny?”
Winny smiled shyly, feeling as though she were about to gag. “It is.”
“I wouldn’t mind one like that,” Another one of Sombra’s friends, this stallion different from the last—Winny couldn't recall where his responsibilities lay—piped up. “She for sale, Sombra?”
“Not until I grow bored of her,” Sombra replied, his joke received with mutual laughter. “And if she keeps getting lost in the blizzards, I suppose I won't have to.”
He gave a short laugh, and Winny nearly shivered at the sound as the conversation continued on without her like an impatient dogsled.
It had been subtly veiled, but Sombra's meaning was quite clear—her days were as numbered as they came.
A week had gone by, and she was no closer to Opal Charm and the rest of the Rebels. She was sitting with the roundtable of the rest of the scheming slave drivers; as helpless as a caribou calf in a field of wolves. Day by day, Sombra was closing in upon her—she was past a warning and now in dangerous waters, and she hadn't even been able to outsmart him when he was in a drunken haze!
She felt dizzy, as though she had to flee. Her hooves were trembling, and she felt as though she were about to pass out.
On and on, the stallions prattled. It was white-noise to Winny, her mind a flat-lining drone of dreadful thoughts and predictions clashing for dominance. There truly was no way out—she couldn't even bide her time, not with Sombra always peering into her thoughts, his suspicion growing every time he did so. Some weird survivalist instinct within her was simply begging her to do whatever it took to ease those suspicions, but at the course she was already on, Winny doubted she could. Unless she truly did give herself over to Sombra completely, and such would be impossible with even a trace of eventual betrayal on her mind.
No, she'd already stumbled onto the path she was on. Whether or not it ended with her portrait on the wall next to all the other dead wives, Winny would be damned if she was turning back now.
She waited until Sombra was on his second cigar and the evening's fourth glass of cognac before striking.
“Sir,” Winny folded her ears back as she spoke, willing the dread from her voice and instead keeping it low and in blatant disregard to the conversation she was interrupting. “I am going to retire for the evening, if it’s all the same. I would like to make headway on my painting before bed.”
It was a stupid request, one foolishly leaning onto Sombra's insobriety in order to work, but nonetheless it was a decidedly safe request. Before his friends, Sombra wouldn't draw much attention to the flaws in his well-preserved show-wife, and even so, there was hardly much suspicion to be found in her question.
“She paints?” One stallion blinked, before Sombra could answer.
“Like a child ‘paints,’” Sombra replied. “Very well, Winny. You may be excused.”
Once more in the corridor alone, this time Winny didn't hesitate. She made quick work of the long distance between herself and Sombra's bedroom, shedding a few layers off of her dress and swinging her easel over her shoulder, grabbing a candelabra off Sombra's nightstand and lighting it on a wall sconce.
The guard stationed outside their bedroom watched her exit back into the hall again, frowning at her with urgency, but he didn't question her. Her hooves clacked on the marble stairwell that had halted her first attempt. This time, she didn't stop until she was at the ornate oak door leading into Sombra's study, and even then she pushed it open and then closed it quickly behind her.
All of the sconces in the study were extinguished, the candelabra serving as the only light. The wind was a constant unnerving howl—so much different now that she was alone and her heart was racing, but she was only there for one reason and she had no incentive to overstay her welcome. A week ago, she'd never have even considered such a thing, but a week ago, her magic stream would have stuck out to Sombra like the sky's dancing demon's lanterns.
She shoved her easel off her back the moment she was at Sombra's desk, keeping one ear perked towards the door to catch any hoofbeats that she imagined the carpet would have masked anyways.
Her paints were all organized meticulously, but in a moment she was wrenching the lid off of the lightest jar and dumped its contents into another, using her dress to clear off any of the excess she'd left behind.
The clear florence flask of dragonfire was there, unguarded, sparkling like the Shimmer on a clear summer day. She wrenched the lid off and wasted no time pouring some into her empty paint jar—a generous amount, but hardly enough that she figured Sombra would notice.
Looking around, in awe at the possibilities surrounding her, Winny realized this would likely be the last she'd ever get. There was no way Sombra's judgement would slip again—guards would shadow her until the day she died every moment Sombra wasn't in her presence.
She tucked the paint jar in its spot alongside the others in her easel, unrecognizable as anything out of the ordinary. She opened another paint jar and likewise emptied its contents, before returning to Sombra's mahogany desk.
His working area was unimportant to her. Far more intriguing was a sizable map table. The Mansion had a map-room proper, so it seemed redundant to Winny, but the map in Sombra's study seemed at least as proud. Underneath the table, dozens of older maps lay curled in wooden crates. Winny grabbed several at random, unfurling each onto the table. Seven were simple floor plans, but Winny felt her heart skip a beat when something far broader greeted her on a far older spread of parchment.
A map. An actual map, not the isolated, claustrophobic things Winny had grown up seeing. Mountains, the mining settlements—they were all there! The Empire stood proud in the center, and a heavy expanse of snow stretched on downwards.
And, at the bottom of the map, in the precise hoofwriting of a cartographer:
To Equestria.
Winny didn't think further. She folded the map into as tiny a square as she could manage and stuffed it into the next paint jar. Then, she clapped her easel shut, swiftly cleaned the small mess she had made, and tore back towards the corridor once again.
Her heart was still racing even as she settled into bed, but with her easel laying inconspicuously in the corner, and with Sombra's unsuspecting drunken form settling down beside her an hour later, sleep came more easily to her than she had expected.
iii
The Crystal Tower, for all the tyranny it represented, was a truly remarkable thing, Winny thought.
Watching her husband's stomach rise and fall, listening to the Angujaktuat outside, she stared at the swirling snows out the South-facing window, thinking on affairs that long predated any semblance of relevance.
With Sombra holding such a tight grasp on the Empire's recorded history, it was difficult to tell when it had been constructed or what purpose it had originally had. Winny had asked Sombra once, and he had simply told her such would be information that a mare such as herself 'would have no use for.'
According to Sombra, it had been erected by his hoof, but its architectural skeleton hardly resembled the rest of the Empire that Winny knew he had for certain had a hoof in bringing about. The rest of the Crystal Empire, by Sombra's hoof indeed, was a measure in universal efficiency. The buildings were compact, designed to house as many families as possible in as little space as needed. They were built to withstand the winters, but as a result they had about them a cold and industrial look on their concrete exterior—even if, past the concrete exoskeleton, lay cheaply constructed dwellings housing dreadfully poor ponies.
The Tower, however? It soared proud above them all—some great obsidian monolith driving upwards from the snow. While the Tower long predated any of Winny's relatives, it seemed to exist in most of the Crystal Pony folklore she had been presented as a filly. Folklore condemned by Sombra, for it seemed to offer a glaring contradiction towards his claims that it was yet another product of his glory. There was no way, he claimed, that such a thing could ever have been constructed by some nomadic snow-eating tribe.
Like so many things Sombra had told her, Winny did not suspect it to be true. Still, whatever had come before Sombra's rule was a blur that history had conveniently failed to record, and Winny doubted he looked kindly upon those who bothered to ask.
Still, the Crystal Tower, as glorious as it was, sometimes seemed too glorious. While no peasant had ever set foot within, Winny had seen it herself; that there was a good deal of unoccupied space. Clearly, it had been something more than an oversized mansion for an autonomous king in its past life.
There were so many rooms and stairwells and balconies that had begun to collapse simply from neglect, and Winny had once taken pleasure in exploring these lost areas during her long days alone in the Mansion. When Sombra had heard tell from the Tower guards of Winny's exploration he had very violently made his stance clear, but none of the bruises he had given her had quite wiped the memory of these areas from her head.
Every balcony was an incredible thing to Winny, even if the one outside of Sombra's bedroom was the only one she had proper access to. Perching on the railing of the balcony like a gargoyle, Winny could see the whole South side of the Empire. While so much of it was simply a shifting sheet of white, the pointed peaks of some buildings jutted into view through the Angujaktuat.
If she were to jump off the balcony and spread her wings, muttering prayers to whatever gods were listening, she could glide onto the roofs of the buildings below, and with the Angujaktuat as cover, nopony below would be any wiser. Of course, this meant she herself had to simply jump and pray she landed where she wished—it was just as possible she could end up landing right into the middle of the marketplace—it at least meant she had means to sneak out unnoticed.
Rise, fall.
Winny watched by the light of the fireplace in the corner of the bedroom, her thoughts grinding back noisily upon the present tense.
Rise, fall.
Up, down.
She wondered if the Empire knew that Sombra snored. It was such a silly thought, but silly thoughts kept her calm.
Sombra seemed asleep, and somehow she doubted even Sombra could bring himself to 'fake snore' in order to trick her. It seemed too childish for the prideful ruler. So, she delicately lifted the heavy sealskin blanket off of herself, and crept on the tips of her hooves across the great master bedroom. Her dress lay discarded viciously, in the midst of whatever fit of lust she'd been pretending to be in.
For a moment, she focused on the heavy looking candelabra on Sombra's nightstand, wondering if it would be enough to crack the stallion's skull. The guard on the other side of the door would come rushing in, and he'd find her in some shaking, nervous heap against the bed...
She blinked. Just where the hell had that thought come from?
Then again, she supposed it was better him than her, and she had no doubt it'd be enough to crack hers.
Still, she'd be damned if she was going to be around to find out. Instead, Winny tiptoed across the bedroom to her closet. It bore a dozen dresses—each one as loathsome to her as the last—but, more relevantly to her current interests, a small saddlebag, and the parka she'd worn out with Nigeq. She draped both over her shoulder and made her way to her easel, pinpointing the dragonfire jar and slipping it into the saddlebag along with the parka. Then, with Sombra still snoring alone on the enormous rococo bed in the middle of the room, she eased the balcony door to the Empire open.
The cold wind of the Angujaktuat was staggering, and Winny had to duck onto the old balcony and close the door behind her in one fluid motion, or else risk the cold creeping into the bedroom itself and awaking Sombra from his slumber.
She'd never exposed herself to the full fury of the Angujaktuat before, but without her parka it was nearly enough to stop her in her hooves—she had some comical vision of herself as an ice-sculpture for Sombra to find on his balcony come morning. She kept moving, trotting to the rail and scrambled onto it.
She outstretched long blue wings, testing the winds. Her pegasus brain was swirling with trajectory calculations, such thoughts overpowering whatever logical part of her was insisting she was being reckless and insane.
Drawing in a long breath, feeling her bones already beginning to freeze as the winds seared through her flesh, Winny leaped from the balcony with both hooves.
Everything was white, and so she counted. It didn't matter how much snow was obscuring her vision, with the wind at her back she knew exactly where she was headed.
Provided it stayed constant for long enough.
Fifteen seconds meant five-hundred meters, and so she folded her wings and let herself lose altitude. Tumbling blindly through the blizzard, she did not outstretch them again until the first spire came into view, and even so it was far too late to prevent her from crashing without grace onto the dilapidated roof of one of the communal housing buildings.
She was dazed, but unhurt. More importantly, she was freezing, something she quickly remedied by biting off the clasp to her saddlebag and quickly shuffling into the parka within.
She looked behind her, in the direction of the Crystal Tower, now lost to the snow.
There was no going back now.
It was long past the Empire's curfew, so Winny was hardly surprised to see that the streets were empty. She doubted the rebels would have cared much about the curfew anyways, which would make finding them all the easier.
She remained huddled in the warmth and shadow of a chimney, the fissure-like streets shooting out all around her in their depressingly geometric patterns. Over the hours, the Angujaktuat's fury dimmed, more and more of the Empire revealing itself until she could make out the snow-cable leading back to the Southeast Spire.
With Sombra's remark about 'collateral' dancing in her head, she had half a mind to make her way there and make sure her mother was safe, but such would be suicide and she knew it. Besides, it wasn't her objective and she had to focus.
The occasional sound of somepony's snowshoe'd hooves occasionally caught her attention and she skittered across the roof to get a closer look. All but once they'd been patrolling guards, and a lone husky surely out scavenging.
It was impossible to gauge time, but she knew her hours were ticking by. After the first pinpricks of the ever-elusive sunlight lined the horizon, she would have to give up and return—a terrifying upwards flight to the Tower, and one that would surely not bring her where she intended to be. Still, getting discovered by guard in the Mansion would have far less consequences than being found wandering about in the snow, past curfew no less.
The sound of movement. Winny's ears perked, and she tiptoed over the jangling steel cresting to the edge of the roof. Her hooves clicked lightly as she sidled down the frozen fish scale-shingles, the sound thankfully stolen away by the winds.
Instantly, as she squinted through the snow to make it out, Winny scowled. The same damn husky.
It continued on, but something seemed off. When she'd last seen it, it had been meandering—searching for scraps. Now, though, it walked with purpose, something most certainly foreign to any feral husky Winny had seen.
A guard dog? Most likely, but some part of Winny had her doubts Sombra's guard used husky guard dogs.
It continued deeper into the street, and this time, Winny was intrigued. Following along the fishscale shingles seemed risky considering the loud sound it produced, so Winny paced herself considerably, letting the husky dip just out of sight into the snow before following. Once or twice she had to kick off one roof and glide to another, but the Angujaktuat's winds seemed to have mercy on her.
Her pursuit went unnoticed, and she felt a tinge of optimism when she noticed familiar buildings from her last excursion, as she delved deeper and deeper into the unkempt, ghostly buildings housing the useless peasants that the guards hadn't gotten to yet. With the plague eating away at their population year by year, more and more buildings lay silent, until Winny had gone deep enough to even be past the red X's on the doors of the still dying.
She'd been blindfolded for most of it, but she hadn't been led far. Out of one building, but Winny felt she could recognize most of her surroundings before then. She'd past them at a defeated pace, giving herself plenty of time to take in their depressing forms. This was certainly where she had emerged from.
The husky paused for a moment before a derelict-looking housing complex that the Angujaktuat hadn't been kind to, and then proceeded through where a door surely had once been.
Winny bit her lip and kicked off the roof, flapping her wings several times to slow herself as she fell. The husky's panting echoed through the abandoned structure, and she followed it up two flights of crumbling stairs. Already, she heard voices, and already, she recognized them.
As terrified as she was, Winny heard a crackling fire ahead, too, and part of her didn't give a damn.
“Muktuk looks spooked,” a voice most certainly belonging to Opal Charm was saying.
“Wonder from what. You chasing another weasel, girl?” The younger mare, the one with the cough. To Winny's pride, she sounded considerably better.
“She patrolled a gods-damned graveyard, I don't blame her,” the stallion called Cottonfoot retorted. And then, the response Winny had eventually been expecting: “Wait, hoofbeats. Fox Trot, is that you?”
Winny paused for a moment. The rebels sounded terrified. Winny doubted their week had been much better than the maddeningly silent suspense that hers had been.
“It's Wind Whistler.”
There was no sense delaying. Better to get this part over with.
“The wife,” Winny elaborated. “The one you kidnapped. I'm alone, and I just want to talk.”
A long pause. Then;
“Are you bucking kidding me,” Cottonfoot moaned. Winny continued forwards down the creaking corridor, until a warm glow of firelight beckoned from one of the apartments a flight above.
Opal was standing with a scowl, along with a reddish-white stallion with a light-beige mane.
Winny stopped. For a while, they simply locked gazes.
“You made a mistake following us,” Opal said simply. “You were in the clear, and you had to push your luck. Are you insane?”
“Please, just listen to me,” Winny said, taking a step forwards. “Just hear me out. Put a blindfold on me, take my parka… whatever. I swear I just want to talk.”
“I think we're past the point of blindfolds,” Opal replied. “Take off your saddlebag and parka, and kick them across the corridor to me. Take one step, and you're dead. How many ponies are coming?”
“Nopony is coming. I snuck out.”
“Then they're tailing you.”
“I was careful,” Winny replied, untying her saddlebag and parka and kicking both towards Opal and Cottonfoot. “More careful than you ponies, it seems.”
“Trust me, following us here wasn't careful. You know you're a dead mare now, right? You really think we're going to show you mercy this time?”
“You didn't do that,” Winny replied. It seemed a moot point to object to, but if she was going to get these ponies to listen to her, she'd have to be assertive regardless. “We came to a mutual agreement. You were in just as much danger as I was, and that hasn't changed. So please, let's just talk.”
Opal took a single step forwards, just enough to grab Winny's parka and saddlebag. She gave the latter a shake and passed it to Cottonfoot. “You've got five minutes. I sure hope you can make them count.”
“Okay. Opal… I need your help fleeing the Empire.”
Opal gave a short, cruel laugh, but it tapered into a frown when Winny's glare didn't falter.
“I'm serious,” Winny said. “Sombra is planning on killing me. I know it. If not now, eventually. Either way, I've come to a decision that my days are numbered either way, so I'd like to spend them trying to do something that matters.”
“And that is?”
“Reaching Equestria,” Wind Whistler had more to her statement, and although Opal looked ready to turn tail then and there, she barged forwards nonetheless. “If not Equestria, I want to make it past the Shimmer and try to make contact with them.”
Opal snorted. “Is that right?”
“Yes. Sombra has kept us so isolated from them, and I think I know why. If there really are alicorn princesses, like the legends say… maybe we can ask them for help.”
“You are insane,” Opal tutted. “Betting your life on a fairy tale?”
“Even if it is a fairy tale, there's something to the South,” Winny argued. “I know, because Sombra is afraid. If it was nothing but snow, if he didn't think there was some chance of us reaching them… why have the Shimmer in the first place? Why are there no maps beyond the Frozen North? Opal, I know you believe me, because you and the rest of your friends want to do the same thing as me. You just can't.”
“You don't know what you're talking about.”
“I do. And Opal, I'm going. I think we have a chance of reaching Equestria, one way or another. And I think that doing so is the only way we can free the rest of the Empire.”
“If you're going, then go!” Opal rolled her eyes. “Why follow me? Why the whole production?”
“Because if I go alone, I will be far more likely to fail,” Winny said. “As in… die. With your help, we are all far more likely to… ahem, succeed.”
“More likely,” Cottonfoot repeated. “Well, that’s an encouraging prospect.”
Opal gave an agreeing nod. “...do you really think we'd be willing to follow Sombra's wife into the uncharted Frozen North? Even if you could make it past the Shimmer, then what? The closest settlement to here is a mining colony three hundred klicks due West, and nopony willingly submits themselves to mining labour anyways. Nopony sane, anyways.”
“Aren't you listening to me? I didn't say the closest settlement. I said Equestria.”
“Ah. Which we have absolutely no knowledge even exists.”
“I brought a saddlebag with me,” Winny said simply. “Cottonfoot has it. Open it.”
Casting Winny a wary glare, Opal accept the bag from Cottonfoot without breaking eye contact on the passively sitting mare beside her. Quickly grabbing the saddlebag in trembling hooves, she dumped its contents onto the floor in front of Winny without grace.
The glass jar of dragon fire clattered loudly onto the floor, but a bit of old parchment was certainly the focal of Opal's attention.
“Is this…?!”
“A map to Equestria,” Winny said, nodding as Opal broke off. “And look at the jar. Do you know what that is?”
Opal shook her head slowly, lifting the jar and turning it over and over to watch the sparkling sand tumble and fall.
“Crystallized dragon fire,” Winny said. “I stole both of these from a restricted wing of my husband's mansion. Right now, you are the first Crystal Pony besides myself to hold crystallized dragon fire in their hooves.”
“It's...” Gone was Opal's patronizing tone, in its place barely concealed awe. “Why… why flee the Empire at all? If we have crystallized dragon fire, and a… a scale map to Equestria...”
“The Shimmer,” Winny replied. “It blocks magic. All magic. You can't teleport through it, and dragon fire wouldn't be able to pass through. But if we were to make it through the Shimmer...”
“Could… dragon fire transports… things, right? Letters, books, scrolls?”
“Yeah,” Winny nodded. “And bigger things, if you've got a lot of it.”
“And… and is this a lot?”
Winny frowned. “I'm afraid it isn't. I know what you're thinking, and I'm sorry to say that no, we don't have enough to teleport somepony to Equestria. I don't even know if it works like that. But, we can still send a plea for help to them, if we make it past the Shimmer. That way, when we start our walk to Equestria… at least somepony on the other side will be looking for us.”
“How far is Equestria, from here?”
Winny pointed at the map. “The scale is a little off, I think, but from what I calculated, one thousand two hundred kilometers.”
“The mining colony is much closer.”
“Yes,” Winny agreed. “And the mining colony is where we want to go if we want lives of forced labour. And besides, if we send for help, and if Equestria really is this haven we all want it to be, they will come to us.
“Opal, I brought this stuff to you because I want you to know that I'm not what you think I am. You think I'm some extension of Sombra. Like I'm nothing more than a product of his creation. But the fact of the matter is, I've lived my life without ever having a choice. And even if I am going to my death, at least I won't be dying a slave. And anyways… at the end of the day… what do you have to lose? Sombra's guard is looking for you anyways. Your days are as numbered as mine.”
Opal growled lowly, looking behind her at all of the others now watching.
“I don't think I'll ever trust you,” Opal said. “But you're right about one thing. We were marked for the chopping block the moment we crossed paths with you. Why sit around waiting for that to happen?”