“Hold on,” Avery muttered, her horn glowing for a second. There was a brief flash, a moment of disorientation, and suddenly they were on the bottom floor of the lab.
I’ll never get used to that, Julian thought, pawing at the ground and trying to get the frost off his coat. Teleportation wasn’t so bad when he was “big,” but the cold was much harder on a small body. He shivered for a few seconds and could see Avery was shivering too. You shouldn’t be so afraid of flying you freeze yourself instead of doing it, bird.
The bottom floor of the lab had another phone screen—Avery’s own, which hadn’t been damaged in the crash. Avery could do a few things with it, though all of it had been set up by other Averies. Tinkering with circuitry and code were not talents this shard had retained.
This phone was set up like her computer, set on its side with a homemade keyboard in front and even an IR-sensor wired in like a mouse. Julian could still remember the first time he’d used it, playing a silly card game against her. But the touch-sensor didn’t work anymore, so that was over.
The screen filled with an image of Formenos, taken from a camera mounted in a towering tree. It was a wide enough angle to also display the huge field of dangerous plants that surrounded the city—the last resort against any kind of natural incursion.
“We’re going to get hit by a bus,” Avery repeated, eyes going up. “In the middle of the second apocalypse, while all the giants are fighting a war with a fish.”
“I think… I think it’s a refugee bus. The ponies on it sounded pretty terrified, and they were flopping around like they didn’t know how to move.” Julian frowned, pointing at the image with one hoof. “There. It’s gonna come through right there. It broke through the eastern tower. Must’ve…” he shivered. “Looked like a hundred breezies died in the crash at least. Everyone in the tree.”
And every single one of them were his family, somewhere down the line. He wasn’t in the eastern tower now—Avery’s tree was at the center of the village. Maybe he should’ve felt guilty that he was reassured his favorite was not in danger.
“Probably nothing,” Avery muttered, using the keyboard to zoom the image in on the area in front of the eastern tower. She was probably seeing the same thing that Julian was noticing right now—there were no other large trees for as far as the camera covered. They had initially expected to be planting crops in the east, before they understood that they basically just drank nectar and wildflowers were prolific in their jungle.
“But we should do something just to be sure. Does your nightmare show how far the bus comes from?”
“Uh…” He shook his head. “Mostly just the crash. It’s not fast enough to kill very many ponies aboard, just the driver. They get out, wander around breaking even more and killing a few more breezies who get in the way. Not on purpose… but that’s where it ends.”
Julian felt as though a weight were being lifted from his shoulders—as he usually did when he shared his dreams with Avery. Well, whenever he did the thing that he needed in order to prepare for the disaster they warned of. It just so happened that Avery was often the solution to his troubles.
Or the one to point out that they weren’t going to come true. But she hadn’t said that this time.
“I’ll put something together. It shouldn’t be that hard—forces on the scale of a bus aren’t natural to our world. It won’t trigger on a breezie accidentally and melt them.” Avery gestured, and her manual floated into the air beside her. As it moved, it left diagrams behind, which gradually drifted down to the pages of the workspace behind her.
I swear that book gets smarter every day. It was a shame he couldn’t shrink his down and give it to Lynn. Unfortunately, the charm he wore wasn’t enough to fool it into thinking he was a breezie. Not even Avery’s magic had been able to shrink it for him.
“Whatever you’re doing…” Julian muttered, following her across the lab to the open pad of paper the book was somehow transferring words onto. “Make sure it won’t hurt the ponies on the bus.”
“Why?” Avery asked, not looking up from her work. She’d levitated over a little quill, and was dipping it in ink to write. “They’re going to kill a hundred people, you just said so.”
“They’re refugees,” Julian repeated. “They’re just like us. Remember when we crashed? They’re not a sea monster sending fungus to kill us, they’re innocent people. From our world.”
“From the giant world,” Avery muttered, though Julian could tell the objection was mostly a matter of pride at this point. Her ears had gone flat and her tail had stopped moving—both obvious signs that she was convinced. She scribbled out a few sections of her diagram, and moved over to start writing somewhere else on fresh paper. “Fine, fine. That means we’re going to have some giants to deal with. How… how full was this bus?”
“Maybe… half?” He shrugged. “Like, maybe twenty people. It looked like a regular greyhound. I’m guessing our jungle might be on the inner state somewhere.”
Avery gritted her teeth. “I’ll talk to the mayor about planting some new ironwood trees around the city. But until we can… it’s a good thing we have your dreams.”
Avery worked quickly, and had written them a protection spell in one night. Mayor April listened to her chief of all her advisors, so there were half a dozen breezies out to help prepare. They worked, clearing ground with wyldcraft and lifting chunks of crystals on wooden trusses tied together to support harnesses. Avery’s drawing had been pinned to the bark of the nearest tree, big enough that any breezie who wanted to help could look and see what they were planning.
Julian had come to watch—not because he was terribly good at wyldcraft or planned on being big to move the pieces for them (he wasn’t, and he didn’t). But he wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly for sure until he saw that his nightmares had been put to rest. Once he saw the city protected, he could return to the front.
It was already calling for him. But this was important too. Barren land could wait a little longer for the touch of life. Just not too long.
“I wanna help!” Lynn squeaked into his ear. She was riding on his back just now, though she could fly just fine on her own. He knew her protests about “not being able to fly like Mommy” were entirely fictional. She just wanted to be with him, believing perhaps that if she watched him closely he wouldn’t leave again. “You think if I ask, Mommy will let me help?
Sorry, sweetie. Doesn’t work like that. “You already asked, Lynn. You’ve got lots of practice to do before you’re ready to do what Mommy’s doing. How’s your teleporting going?”
“Uh…” She fell silent, slumping against his back and not complaining again.
Julian hovered high over the construction without too much effort or fear of falling. They’d long since learned that breezies actually didn’t get hurt when they fell. It was something to do with their size—they could jump off trees or even buildings and not take damage when they hit the ground.
Then he saw the explosion up ahead. A flash of magic and light so powerful it physically blasted most of the breezies out from around the construction site. Safety harnesses ripped free of the cargo they were carrying, and chunks of crystal large enough to crush someone alive went plummeting to the ground.
Julian was much sturdier than other breezies—he had a “solidness” that they didn’t, and the sudden onslaught of wind didn’t throw him around. Little Lynn clung desperately to his back, but she wasn’t ripped away.
He already knew what had made the explosion. At the other end of the field—an enormous distance at this size, but growing smaller with every second—he could see the old greyhound bus.
Of the breezies down below, only one other had managed to stay put. Not because she was stronger than the others, but because of the shimmering little shield she conjured, anchoring her unmoving in the air.
They had maybe twenty seconds before the bus arrived. Julian couldn’t see it now, but he already knew—the driver was unconscious in his seat, completely overwhelmed with the new sensations of a pony body. If nothing changed this time, he would not wake up.
There was a painful flash—sudden and violent. Julian felt Lynn yanked right off his back as he was torn through the freezing chill of a teleport. The world returned with an overwhelming assault of sensations.
“Break!” Avery was beside him, hovering in the air next to the unconscious driver. Her shield was gone, though her whole body still glowed. Her manual and her force of will held her still.
Julian didn’t have more strength than any other breezie. But what he did have was a charm around his neck. Julian tore it off in a single surge of strength, blasting through the air towards the pedals. He was already growing by the time he hit the break. At first, he was much too light to make a difference, and was nearly crushed by a fallen boot. He dodged around it though, and the pedal started to go down. He slammed down another second later.
Wheels squealed in protest against dirt and broken stone. He barely fit by the time he’d returned to his regular size, and he had to shove the unconscious driver out of the seat to make room. He could apologize once they lived through this. Yet as he pushed, he felt something strain. A momentary strain on his body, like pressure was building in an organ he couldn’t see. It passed quickly though, and his gesture must’ve worked because he couldn’t feel the bus driver against his back anymore.
It felt like the bus took yearsto finally come to a stop, so close to the east tower that they were over the ring of protective mushrooms. So close to the tower that the grill was practically pressed against the bark of the tree.
I hope you sent Lynn somewhere safe too, Avery. Now where had he put his charm? Julian rolled out from under the aisle, almost tripping over the driver’s empty clothes. Yet there was something else all around him, something he didn’t really know how to process. He did have instincts, instincts honed over years living with Breezies. There were so many of them all around him—a dozen at least, scattered on the ground and around the seats and the cushions.
Julian had made many mistakes, and caused serious damage a few times. He’d never killed a breezie yet, though. He didn’t start now. Refugees are supposed to be random, but where did all these come from? And where’s the driver? There were plenty of other passengers further back, an assortment of giants but mostly ponies. Typical for North America, according to the Survival Guide.
He didn’t see any sign of the pony he’d shoved—maybe Avery had moved him.
A second later and the pink breezie landed on his shoulder, staring into the bus with its terrified passengers.
There were so many of them—an army of giants powerful enough to tear down his entire civilization, if they wanted. “Don’t touch any of them,” Avery whispered into his ear. Her voice now sounded high and squeaky, though it hadn’t moments before. Her whole body still glowed with magic. “Keep them from leaving the bus.” She vanished in a flash, reappearing beside one of the fallen breezies on the floor. He vanished with her, and she continued, returning every few seconds to take another of the delicate fairies away.
“What’s going on?” Someone asked from the front row—a male with a high voice, trapped in a gigantic jacket. Julian could see a scaly face beneath, and tears in the front of the jacket.
“Where are we?” asked someone else. That was more coherent than most of the others. They were just whimpering, or screaming. Most of the passengers appeared to be asleep, or at least they had been. The speed of their near-crash had probably woken many of them.
Julian was mostly scouring the ground for where he’d dropped the charm. It would’ve grown as he did, though it was still dark. A thin steel cable with a dark crystal wrapped in metal at the center. He mostly felt for its familiar magic, not really using his eyes for the process.
He felt blind without his antennae, unable to taste anything about the people here. He didn’t know their species, or their numbers, or their feelings. Well… he could probably guess most of that.
“You were just in an accident,” Julian began. “It was… well, it sucks.” He found the charm on the ground, and he scooped it up with one hoof. He didn’t put it around his neck—not with the beginnings of a mob facing him down.
“Who are you?” asked the little lizard thing. Dragon, maybe? “What are you?”
“You almost crashed into my home.” He gestured through the windshield, where the miniature city with its electric lights from every window were visible. Though most wouldn’t be at the right angle to get a good look. “I saved your lives.”
“No you didn’t!” shouted the second voice, from a few rows back. She stumbled forward, looking angry. An earth pony, staring at him with horror on her face. “I saw you attack the driver! He fucking exploded! You’re standing on his clothes!”
Julian was standing on his clothes, and he couldn’t see the driver anywhere. I just pushed him away so I could stop the bus! What the hell is going on? Of course, there was something painfully familiar about the description this mare had given. Exploded the driver. He knew about at least one other pony who had exploded. Please don’t let that be where those breezies came from. Oh god, not another one…
But how? Julian had never seen one of the Morpheans for himself, but he knew only their power was this great. That had been what cured him in the first place, and split Avery.
“Please don’t get any closer,” he warned, putting up one hoof defensively. “Whoever you are… you really should stay calm. I know how crazy this looks to you right now. I know you’re scared…”
He was the one who was scared. Julian was hyperventilating already. He’d be in full panic-attack mode before long. Julian did not do crowds, certainly not angry crowds that wanted to stomp right past him and start mindlessly killing his family without even seeing them there. Lynn is out there somewhere. I won’t let them hurt her.
“Let us out!” shouted the lizard. “I think I see a city in the distance! We should go out there, where it’s safe! Maybe they know what’s going on!”
“No!” he argued, stepping sideways so he was blocking the way out. “Listen, you can’t leave yet! My mate is… figuring this out. She’ll be back soon with instructions. Probably she’s figuring out a way to get you all to somewhere we left alone for giants, and…”
The earth pony started walking towards him. She had lost most of her clothes, except for a tank-top that hung off her midsection comically. She didn’t seem to notice. “Out of the way, whoever you are. I’m getting off this bus. We all are.”
“No.” Julian spread his wings, taking off and hovering for a few seconds in the aisle. It was a dramatic display, though a difficult one for a pony. Weight was different at this scale—his body wasn’t really built for flying suddenly.
Julian scanned around, searching for a weapon. But he couldn’t see any—not even a knife. He landed, picking up one of the fallen boots and throwing it as hard as he could towards the earth pony.
It hit her in the chest with a thump, but it didn’t stagger her. She charged. A few of the other passengers started stumbling forward too.
Julian whimpered, retreating a few more steps back. The breezies were gone now—Avery had taken them all away, but hadn’t returned herself yet. She didn’t come in time.
The earth pony smashed into Julian with much less force than he was expecting. His skimming of the survival guide suggested they could take bullets without bleeding and bend steel with their hooves, but this one hit about as hard as Avery could when they were the same size.
That wasn’t the only thing he felt, though. There was a brief surge of magic again, and a sudden choking around his heart. Julian nearly fell over as he felt the magic leave him. But he got the better end of the deal by far.
The earth pony seemed to swell for a second, then she burst apart. There was no blood, no organs and guts—only a showering of breezies out in all directions. Most to the sides, though a few into the path of the young dragon behind her, to be crushed as he too smacked into Julian.
Screams sounded through the bus as he exploded, violent enough this time that the rest of the passengers came up short. Clothing and fairies fluttered to the ground in front of Julian, who stood in the entrance like a vengeful god.
Needless to say, the rest of the passengers stopped struggling after that. There were screams as they backed away, retreating into the back rows of the cabin and cowering.
Julian stepped carefully over the breezies, though he could do nothing for the two the dragon had inadvertently killed. They were already dead. “Listen to me!” he called, his voice shaking with the horror of what he’d just seen. The bus fell still.
“I don’t want to hurt you! I told them to stop—and they didn’t listen. Make sure you don’t get close enough to touch me.” He resisted the urge to vomit as he said it, though they’d probably see him gag. Where the hell was Avery? He couldn’t keep this up for much longer! I did it… the same thing I hated… I did it to them and couldn’t stop it.
Julian had never even met a non-breezie before today—not since he’d been cured. Only the sea-monsters and the fungus, neither of which were people. But this… he wasn’t sure Avery would be able to cure this particular nightmare.
Another second later and there was a flash from behind him. He wasn’t even surprised to see Avery appear there. She seemed taken aback by the number of fairies in the bus with them—another twenty at least. “You weren’t supposed to let them touch you.”
“They attacked me,” he muttered, voice very small despite his size. “What do we do, Avery?”
“I need you to open the bus doors. We’ll get help to get all these ponies to safety. Then… then I’ll teleport the bus to the street.”
She meant the street where they’d first appeared, the one they had left alone. A city block’s worth of houses with the shriveled corpse of fungus clinging to them, but otherwise intact. They weren’t salvaged like so many other ruins, but left alone. In case they ever got visitors.
“You can teleport a whole bus? Why didn’t you just do that before?”
Avery glared at him. “It’s a hard spell! I couldn’t have done it in ten seconds, with the bus coming at us that fast, my daughter behind me… no way.”
“Stay there!” Julian called down the aisle. “Some breezies are going to help get these out of here. Then we’ll send you all away to somewhere safe. He lowered his voice as he turned away from the aisle, stepping carefully over fallen breezies as he made his way to the bus door and started shoving at it. “I don’t think I’ll make for a good ambassador after what I did to those people.”
“We’ll come up with something,” Avery replied. “One disaster at a time.”
Julian felt relief wash over him as the bus vanished from in front of the eastern tower. He finally slipped the charm back around his neck then, and felt even better as the world returned to its correct size. Avery was waiting for him on the grass, looking as exhausted as he felt.
“What did I do?” he asked, letting her rest against him as they watched the last of the insensate fairies flown off to the hospital. How many confused breezies could it hold at once? “What the hell did I do?”
But of course, that wasn’t really what he was asking.
Avery seemed to realize that, because she was staring at his chest. His heart, or where it should’ve been. “I think we just learned what all that magic does. I can’t even imagine the power she must’ve sunk into you. That kind of spell… I think it’s excision. That’s Alicorn-level. Ponies aren’t even supposed to live long enough to learn spells like that.”
“I didn’t cast anything,” he muttered. “You have to get it out of me, Avery. I’m… I’m the most dangerous person alive. I just killed those people.”
“No.” She held his shoulder with one hoof, her glare unyielding. “No, Julian, you didn’t. Nobody’s dead. No more than I am. It… it’s not ideal. I hope you don’t do it to anyone else. But they’re still alive. Being in different parts isn’t the same as dying. Unless you’re saying I’m dead.”
“No.” He slouched a little. “Of course not, Avery. I’d never… you know how much I care about you.” He wrapped one hoof around her shoulder for emphasis, though just now it felt like he was the one who needed to be held.
And she did, though she was smaller and weaker and obviously drained from all her spells. Maybe a normal-sized unicorn would’ve been able to do what she had without much difficulty—but in such a small package, seeing her magic was staggering.
Another pony landed beside them a moment later—Mayor April. She nodded once to him, though she was mostly addressing Avery. Julian himself had basically no leadership role in Formenos—entirely through his own choice. The flock of Averies had wanted to make him ruler for life in the first year, but he’d rejected that. He had no desire to lead much of anything.
“We’ll have to do something about the other giants, Avery. Maybe the spell you used to convert the others.”
“NO!” exclaimed Avery and Julian together. Though it was only Avery who continued. “It wasn’t…” But Julian kicked her, and she coughed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to cast it again. Even if I could, it wouldn’t be right. We can’t put others through what we went through.”
“We can’t feed two dozen giants,” April argued in response. “Maybe we could scavenge for one. But not that many.”
“Maybe they could care for themselves?” Avery suggested. “They’re huge. They could plant their own fields, or… whatever giants do.”
“Maybe.” April looked to Julian. “You’re the biggest one here, eldest. What do you think?”
“We…” He shivered, then rose, shaking himself free of Avery’s grip. “We can’t send them away. If they wander the jungle without us they’ll be hunted. If we set them loose… o-outside, the rot will kill them.”
“The preserve has mushrooms around it,” Avery said. “And plenty of cans and stuff inside. They’ll live one night without us, and they won’t get loose and get hurt.” She turned away. “Forgive me, Mayor. I don’t have the energy right now. Sending that bus took all I have.”
“Of course.” April touched her on the shoulder with one hoof, then Julian in turn. “Real heroism, you two. We’ll do a parade or something when this is over.” She flew off.
That didn’t get rid of the many observers—there were dozens of breezies watching now. Gossip was passing between them, Julian could smell it. He was being branded a hero for saving them from the bus. His mystique would only grow after this.
Except for our newest citizens. I bet they won’t be happy with me when they wake up. That earth pony’s probably gonna want to kill me. Of course, he could always take the charm off if she did attack him. It would be very hard for even a large group of determined breezies to hurt a regular pony if they didn’t know any magic.
“I want to go home,” Julian muttered, sounding exhausted. “That’s where you sent Lynn, I hope.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Can’t… send us, though. I’m dry.” She fluttered into the air. “Let’s… just fly back. Before Lynn wanders off on her own and gets lost.”
Julian followed her into the air, dismissing the crowd of well-wishers with a wave of his antennae. He didn’t have the energy for anything more just now.
“We should probably keep you far away from ponies from now on,” Avery muttered, as they landed on the wooden walkway leading up to the massive doors. “Just in case. And I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do with all those giants.”
“You could… make more charms?” Julian suggested. “Can’t be that hard.”
She stopped, her glowering disbelief enough of a signal for just how wrong he was that she didn’t need words. She still used a few. “It took me a month to make yours. There are eighteen people on that bus—I counted before I sent them.”
“I thought you told the mayor you don’t want to think about this right now.”
“You’re right.” She sighed deeply. “I just… know nobody else will. It’s gonna be me who works out what to do, because it’s going to need tons of magic and turning them into animals with wyldcraft would be the same as killing them.” She whined. “I’m gonna need you to go with me to the council tomorrow. I know you’re not on it… but if someone proposes something stupid like turning them into animals, I need you to be there to shut them down. They’ll listen to you if you do.”
“Sure.” He imitated her sigh. “You think you could change those three people I… hurt?”
“Nope.” No hesitation. “That would take Alicorn-level magic to fix. Believe me, I’ve thought about it for… another case.” Her own, obviously. That went without saying. “They’ll just have to get used to it now, like we did. It’s not the end of the world.”
“It is for two of them,” Julian said. “They got crushed.”
Avery stiffened. “Yes, well. I’m sure that wasn’t you.
“It wasn’t.”
They didn’t even finish getting the door open. Another second later, and it swung open on its own, and Lynn emerged, smacking into both of them with a mixture of terrified and ecstatic sounds. “You’re back! You’re okay! What happened, Daddy? You have to tell me what you did! Where’d the metal giant go? Is anyone hurt, will Formenos be okay?”
“Shh.” Avery made a hissing sound. “Not all at once, sweetie. Formenos is fine, but it was hard on Daddy and me. We need to rest.”
Lynn whined a little at the explanation, but didn’t argue with them. She was a perceptive child, and had her antennae to read just how exhausted they felt. It was hard not to sympathize with someone when you could feel their pain firsthand.
“Do you think…” Julian muttered, a few hours later once they’d put Lynn down for bed. A bed that hadn’t been crushed by a rampaging bus. “Do you think you could stop it? The magic I… I used.”
Avery shivered. She was resting against him in their bed, big enough for both of them to share whenever he visited. Instead of leaves like lots of breezies used, Avery had cut a little square of quilt from one of the houses, and made it into something firm and comfortable.
The room was lit with little mushrooms growing in pots near the walls, making it glow evenly blue. Avery lay on her back, looking up at him with concern. “I, uh… I don’t know. I could try, Julian… but I’d have to set up observation spells. I’d have to watch you do it to somebody else if I wanted to come up with a protection spell. It’s… probably better if you just don’t touch anyone for the time being.”
“Anyone who isn’t a breezie,” Julian corrected. “You’re still one person.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Lynn is too, which is the main thing. I’ve already been split. There’s not… there’s not a whole lot smaller you could cut me.”
“I don’t want to do it to anyone else.” Julian slumped onto his side, ignoring Avery’s invitation. The breezie still dealt with stress in a breezie way, one he wasn’t interested in sharing just now. The charm had only changed his body, after all. But those people… I changed them as much as I changed Avery.
“That’s probably better,” Avery muttered, though there was a little disappointment in her voice. “I’ll visit the victims in the hospital tomorrow, see what I can learn.”
“And I’ll come with you,” Julian said. “I want to apologize. Even if… there’s no way to fix what I did. I still want to apologize.”
Avery shrugged, then levitated the sheet up and over her. “If that’s what you want. Probably won’t do anything but make you feel guilty.”
“Maybe. It’s still the right thing to do.”