//------------------------------// // XXII - Do Golems Dream of Magic Sheep? // Story: A Beginner's Guide to Heroism // by LoyalLiar //------------------------------// XXII Do Golems Dream of Magic Sheep? I arrived on the eastern wall with mere moments to spare.  Or, at least, so I assumed.  Honestly, it was hard to tell when I wasn’t carrying an hourglass.  More importantly than time were the figures present: a small bear, a flying rock, and a pegasus mare in exactly the sort of heavy traveling cloak that would make one appear suspicious, if it weren’t so damn cold outside. “Blizzard, I hadn’t actually meant for you to leave with me on this trip.  I’m going to have to come back through River Rock once I’m done with the dragons and Clover.” Blizzard’s response was to firmly shake her head.  “I don’t mean to sound rude, Morty, but I don’t think I have an option, so I need to leave now.  After what you said to Father, I don’t really think you’re going to be able to stop here on the way back.  And he’s going to be distracted talking to Gale.  I can get out now before he or any of the guards realize I’m gone.  Hopefully he won’t notice long enough that the snow will cover our tracks.” “Hopefully?  Where the alternative is that he tracks me down with an army for kidnapping his daughter?” “Well… also, I know where Clover actually is.”  It wasn’t hard to guess that she felt like she was threatening me, or that she felt guilty about it. I did my best to cheer her up.  “You’re right; I really could use your help.  Well played.”  I wandered over to the very edge of the castle wall, where I looked down on a massive snowbank some thirty feet below.  “Shall we head off?” “We are going to have to sneak down to the gate…” That was as much of Blizzard’s warning as I heard before I flung myself over the edge of the castle wall and into the snow. Snow, how do I hate thee?  I would count the ways, but as I stated in my introduction, I have no intention of letting this book get big enough to be used as a murder weapon. “Beaaar!” Graargh shouted, laughing, as he followed my example.  I pulled myself from the snow just in time to see the little cub dig his own way out and rush over to me.  “Morty, that fun! We do again?” “Sorry, Graargh, not today.”  Or ever, if I could help it.  “We need to get moving.”  I turned to the east, and immediately felt a prodding at my flank. “Master Coil, that was most unwise.  Being buried so deeply in snow has no doubt put you at risk of freezing.” “I’m fine, mother,” I answered the rock, before realizing whom I was talking to. Angel rushed up to my face.  “Master, I’m not Miss Scratch.  Oh, dear me, the cold has you hallucinating.  Here, I’ll fetch help!” “Angel, get back here and shut up.  I’m fine.  That was sarcasm, not a hallucination.” “Sarcasm?  Forgive me, but I’m unfamiliar with that condition, Master.  Is it serious?” I barely heard Blizzard’s wings before she landed beside me, delicate as a feather on the surface of the snow.  I mean that more literally than the metaphor would imply; she stood evenly on its surface instead of sinking in. I briefly envied the magic of the pegasi. Blizzard smiled at my golem and chuckled.  “Oh, yes…  Angel, was it?  I… don’t know much myself, but I have heard… Sarcasm is a horrible disease.  I’m afraid if we don’t…” At that point, she had to suppress a giggle with her wing.  “We don’t have long to get Morty to the dragons, or he’s not going to make it.  Don’t you see how pale he is?” “It’s a perfectly healthy pale,” I protested, though my words fell on deafened ears. The reason for the deafening came in the form of Graargh’s abrupt shout.  “No wait!  We go now!  We save Morty!”  And, satisfied that he had made his point clear not just for us, but for the whole population of River Rock, the tiny bear broke into an awkward loping sprint across the snow drifts to the east. “Well… that’s one way to get him moving,” I muttered to Blizzard. She chuckled.  “Now I almost feel bad for misleading him.  We should get moving before he gets too far ahead.” And with that agreement, Blizzard, Angel, and I broke off into the snow and ice. We made good time on a fairly boring and miserable journey, just talking and tromping through the snowbanks and slowly explaining to Graargh that I wasn’t actually going to die of the obscure disease that sarcasm had become.  I told Blizzard about my adventures with Gale thus far, to which she laughed and smiled and nodded along with a sort of empathetic wisdom I’ve since learned is a truly rare gift amongst ponies.  Blizzard really listened, breaking focus only when Graargh interrupted to add his own rendition of the events, usually to our amusement. While sarcasm was no danger of killing me, I very nearly died laughing at the story of ‘fish pony’. Through the whole story, Blizzard only spoke up once.  It was to interrupt me with a hoof against my shoulder.  I stopped in place and when I turned, I saw her right wing pointed into the sky.  Overhead, amidst the perpetual snowstorm with its howling winds and pelting snow, my squinting eyes caught glimpse of a chariot pulled by two pegasi.  Reclining in the back was a single pure black figure. “Is that…” “Grandfather,” Blizzard replied with a nod.  “Coming back to take Gale home.” I froze.  There he was, just above me.  Hurricane the Butcher.  The monster under every crystal foal’s bed, wrapped in armor of gleaming black void crystal that would laugh off even the strongest of my spells like as much hot air.  I could see the black crest on his helmet, silhouetted against the midday storm above.  And as I watched, he turned down at us. Piercing magenta eyes stared back.  I don’t know why they stood out so clearly; I could hardly tell his coat apart from his armor at that distance, but I knew he looked square at me.  I felt it.  What all Cyclone’s fire and fury couldn’t do a leg’s reach away, the elder pegasus achieved from a mile overhead with nothing more than a cold glance. It was only a moment, and the chariot didn’t so much as slow, let alone turn toward us.  But for the first time in our trip, even under the pile of furs we’d been given and my coat, I felt the cold. Blizzard’s wing over my back shook me out of my stupor.  “Is something wrong?” When I shook my head to clear my thoughts, a pile of snow toppled off my mane and ears.  “I’ll be alright.” “You’re afraid of Grandfather?” Blizzard asked. I took a moment to build up the courage to nod. “Why?  He’s much nicer than Father, and you stood up to his fire just fine.” I gestured forward with my horn, and we all started walking before I spoke up again.  “You have to remember, Blizzard, I’m from the Crystal Union.” “You already told her that in your story, Master Coil.” I glared at Angel and the flying rock floated over to Graargh. “Before we were born, back before the eternal storm started,” I glanced up at the stormclouds again, “the crystal ponies were divided into tribes.  ‘Barbarians’ is the word you probably hear used; they used to attack and pillage earth pony and unicorn towns.” “Father told us those stories,” Blizzard nodded.  “When Grandfather and the other pegasi escaped the griffons and Emperor Magnus in Cirra, they offered service against the barbarians in exchange for land and food.” “Well, then, you ought to know why ‘Hurricane the Butcher’ terrifies me.” “But those were barbarians he was fighting!  I mean, not that I think fighting them at all is better than peace, but… well, they weren’t Queen Jade’s tribe, right?” I stopped mid step.  “Blizzard, did you think Queen Jade just slaughtered all of the other tribes that came to her when your grandfather defeated them?” “That would be horrible!” “Yes, it would.  And to be fair, these days Jade is insane enough that if you told her slaughtering a thousand ponies would cure Smart Cookie, she’d probably do it.”  At Blizzard’s incredulous look, I gave a firm nod.  “Let me put it this way: if she were just a little bit crazier, and made a little bit less sense, she’d probably be called a prophet.  But her present lack of a functioning mind notwithstanding, the Crystal Union is mostly ‘barbarians’, and not Jade’s ‘friendly’ crystal ponies.  Nearly every grown pony I ever met as a foal had fought Hurricane’s army some time or other.”  I shook my head, discarding a few snowflakes that seemed to have been doing their best to infiltrate my coat and freeze my brain.  “And ponies love to claim they survived fighting him one-on-one.  Which is, of course, ridiculous.” “Why would that be ridiculous?  He’s just a pony—” “A pony wearing armor that renders him invulnerable to magic, and who himself wields the ability to buck bolts of real lightning at his enemies?  And that’s to say nothing of his magic sword, which he hoof-crafted, that puts even King Malachite’s warhammer to shame…” “Morty?” “And now, not only have I attacked his grandson with a fish in public, but I outright foalnapped his granddaughter.” “Are these the symptoms of sarcasm?” Angel asked, a touch of concern in his artificial voice. Graargh nodded.  “Morty sick.  We help!” “Both of you, he’s going to be fine.”  Blizzard rolled her eyes as she approached me, and slung a wing over my shoulders.  “Look, Morty, I swear he’s a lot nicer than my dad.  Even if he did come down here, which you can see he didn’t, nothing bad would happen.” I leaned into Blizzard as I watched the silhouette disappear into the gray and snowy sky. We walked for days, shivering under piles of furs over a sea of white, toward a wall of jagged black thrusting up into a sky of gray.  Dialogue mostly died to the chill; Blizzard proved an excellent listener, but not the best at starting conversation.  I had no interest in letting the inside of my mouth freeze as much as the outside had.  By day, we marched, huddled in a single furry mass.  By night, Graargh’s ursine claws dug us shelter under the snow and Blizzard’s ice magic gave us a solid roof to our cramped but pleasantly warm shelter. I spent those nights preparing for a battle I wasn’t sure I believed in.  Angel’s halos filled with my magic.  Amethysts set into ancient unicorn candelabras were pried loose.   That was one of the few things that broke our silence: Blizzard staring as I destroyed the trappings of her lifelong home. “Gems hold magic,” I explained, when her raised brow failed to open her mouth.  “I can cast spells into these, and if I break the gem, the spell comes out.” “Why not just cast with your horn?” Blizzard asked. I tapped my horn with a hoof before continuing my work.  “I can only cast a few spells a day before I get worn out.  Every unicorn gets tired eventually.”  I neglected to mention how harsh my own limit was.  “This lets me put in effort ahead of time.  I can’t do it often, since getting the magic out destroys the gems, and I have to choose the spell to cast now instead of when I actually want it.” “Couldn’t you just store your raw magic, without making it a spell?” Angel elected to field that question, floating slightly closer to Blizzard and orienting his halos to show her their gem-set interiors.  “Storing raw mana is not as easy as a formed spell.  Master Coil and Master Wintershimmer spent a very long time engraving my halos to be able to maintain magic—otherwise, without the structure of a spell, it would degrade quickly.  As Master Coil said, even a formed spell degrades in a gemstone fairly quickly.  He has perhaps a week to use those he is making now.” “Oh…” Blizzard turned from Angel to watch me.  “So what are you casting in these?  Something to help Clover?” “Something like that…”  I swallowed heavily. In brutal honesty, my mind wasn’t in my work.  As Blizzard settled down to sleep, I kept flitting to the question of whether or not what I was going to do was right.  It felt so cold, so calculating, and so utterly unheroic.  And yet whenever I came to the point of abandoning my path, I remembered what Wintershimmer had shown me.  I remembered that Clover, a trained mage, had lied to Hurricane to spare the windigo.  That conclusion was inescapable.  Thousands of ponies had frozen to death because of that single choice. Still, my stomach churned and twisted.  Still, I hesitated.  And, on the verge of crossing the spine of mountains that separated River Rock from the homeland of the dragons, I stepped away from our shelter on the excuse of needing some space for my work.  Once Blizzard closed her eyes again, I gave Angel a silent nod.  He seemed to get the message, and followed without speaking. When I emerged beneath the open sky, looking up at the mountains of the dragons, I spoke to my golem.  “What do I do?” Angel rotated itself slightly, as a dog might cock its head when confused by an elaborate instruction.  “Master, are you certain you’re quite well?  You’ve never once consulted me for direction—” “I’m fine… Well, I’m healthy.  I don’t know what to do with Clover.  Wintershimmer says I should just walk up, challenge her, and then kill her before she gets a spell off.” “That certainly seems like Master Wintershimmer’s style.  Is your concern that it isn’t yours?” I frowned into the wind.  “That’s one way to put it.” “In that case, Master Coil, I suggest you stop worrying about magic, and focus on finding some clever way to insult Clover to her face.” “Angel!”  I rubbed a hoof at the base of my horn.  “That isn’t going to help.” “No, I suppose not.  Your usual bluntness certainly hurt your cause with Gale.” I raised an eyebrow at Angel.  “Really?” “Is my understanding of events incorrect?  My apologies, Master Coil.”  Angel sunk slightly in the air.  “You know what Master Wintershimmer would want, and what he would do.  You’ve followed his directions more or less exactly, even with his passing.  Though you have disagreed with him in the past, Master Coil, you have never struck me as terribly disloyal.  What has changed?” It took me a long breath of cold air to find my answer.  “He never asked me to do anything I thought was wrong.” “Hmm… That is not my memory of your relationship.”  Angel rotated again, with that curious cock of his ‘head’.  “I remember several times you and he fought over whether he was in the right to punish somepony in his way, or rip out the soul of a political rival.” “Yes, but those were things he did.” “Does objecting to him not count as doing something?  Forgive me again, Master Coil; I believe I again have failed to understand the way you speak.” “No, Angel.  Don’t apologize.  That’s surprisingly helpful.” Angel’s halo’s whirled around his body, a sign of glee at the small praise.  “Oh, I’m glad to help however I can.  Tell me, is that all you need?” The question left me with a tired sigh.  “I still don’t know what I’m going to do.” “Perhaps it might help to consider why Master Wintershimmer gave you this task in the first place.” I shivered, and pulled my jacket’s collar closer to my neck.  The wind had only grown more fierce, and Angel floated closer to me to more clearly hear. “She’s the reason for the storm.” “This storm?  The one around us?” I nodded.  “She spared the last Windigo.  She tricked Hurricane into letting it go, by claiming it was innocent, and afraid.” “You intend to kill her for a mistake?  Even by Master Wintershimmer’s standards, that seems harsh.” I shook my head.  “A mage’s most important job is protecting against spirits.  Every wizard knows spirits can’t change.  A windigo is literally made of hatred.  And Clover is an archmage.  She knows that.” “So she kept the storm on purpose?  I fail to see the point.” I nodded.  “In the past, there have been wizards who went against their duty.  Warlocks.  Ponies who wanted the power of a spirit and tried to control them.  It even works, for a time, but eventually the spirit always wins.” “Do you believe Clover is a warlock?” “I can’t think of any other reason to spare the windigo.  But for all I know, she had another reason, or it really was just a phenomenally stupid mistake.  Walking up and just killing her might be something Wintershimmer was comfortable with, but I don’t know if I can do that.” “And you can’t trust her enough to ask her?” I nodded.  “If she is a warlock, she would lie to me.” “And you can’t read her mind to know the truth.” “Angel, you know I can’t even…”  I bit back the last of a shout.  “I’m sorry, Angel.” “It’s quite alright.  I had assumed ‘reading the mind’ was an idiom.   Are pony dreams usually words?  Or images?” “Thoughts are words.  Images usually come out of memories—and that’s more a part of a pony’s soul than their mind.”  I rose to my hooves, shivering.  “You’ve been very helpful.  It’s freezing out here, Angel.  Let’s go back to the others.” “As you wish.” “And thank you, Angel.”