Valey crested another ridge, trudging onward with Maple on her back, her own issues forced to the back of her mind in the name of getting her friends and getting out of the still-cooling wasteland she found herself trapped in. The eastern valley was outside the Ironridge crater, and it apparently lacked whatever weather phenomenon kept the city core warm and tropical, letting cold mountaintop winds race down the ruined walls and sweep through her mane with a force that would have torn her hat away had she not lost it already. It didn't help that the ground was gone; bedrock that had likely gone without sunlight since the dawn of time was now exposed to her hooves, and everything had recently been covered by a deluge of glacial water. Or maybe the water had warmed things up, since it being water at least implied it wasn't frozen.
At the rate her legs were shaking, she'd get to test the coldness with her face sooner or later.
"Sorry..." she huffed, sitting down, taking care not to let Maple slide off her back. "We're almost there... just... gotta rest..."
Ahead, the ground dropped away into a sunken trough, a somewhat-cylindrical core of rock sticking out of the center like a leaning, truncated tower not even as high as a house. She could see water flowing around it like a moat, a stream splitting and rushing past on both sides before recombining in its journey to the new Sosan sea. There were several clefts in the sides, places where a stranded pony might take shelter from the wind. From the biggest one, she could smell Starlight.
Swooooosh!
Valey jumped; she hadn't been watching the sky! Legs protesting, she tried to fall into a fighting stance, not sure if she could even manage a single hit in her state. Why hadn't her mark warned her? Why hadn't she been paying-
"At last," Gerardo Guillaume gasped, shaking ice from his feathers. "I've been searching this blasted wasteland back and forth in the vain hope that even one of you survived..."
Valey nearly tipped over from relief, still ticked at herself for being snuck up on. "Birdo! Don't scare me like that. This place is spooky enough as it is, and..." She blinked. "Hold up, you can fly?"
"Barely." Ruefully, Gerardo looked at his wings. "Let's say it is the product of intestinal fortitude, careful pacing, and a great deal of climbing to high points and gliding off. I fear I'm going to need some way to properly defrost before I can so much as get off the ground without jumping from a cliff." His eyes brightened. "But I've found at least two of you! I don't suppose... erm... Starlight's fate is still undetermined?"
"She's in there." Valey shrugged, pointed, and almost lost her balance, forgetting that one forehoof was even weaker than the other from being burned. "Alive. Dunno by how much. So's Maple, even though she doesn't really look like it."
Gerardo hung his head, then looked squarely at her, and Valey propped her head up with a wing so she could look back. "I'm... terribly sorry about all this," he admitted, wilting. "I had intended to part ways with you after tampering with the power at Copsewood so that I could fly past the Yak Embassy, the Defense Force base, and other places to do my part in advancing our agenda while you waited for Valey, but I was sluggish in my departure. Had I left before we were all captured, my sword would not have parted ways with me, and would not have found itself in Herman's diabolical hooves. So, in a way, the fault is mine that you were-"
With a clatter of stone against steel, the black sword dropped out of nowhere, landing on the ground next to Maple.
Gerardo's eyes widened. "You held onto it!? Even with your brand in such a state...?"
A silence passed. "Well, I thank you," he sighed, picking the instrument up with a talon. "I can't say how much good it will do us, exactly. Perchance we will find the opportunity to use it against Herman, though I imagine that would only lead to a repeat of this tragedy..."
"You saw how easily he trashed you guys," Valey grumbled. "I dunno if it's about vengeance or honor or what, but I really don't think looking for a rematch with him is the best way to go. Especially since I'm apparently on a losing streak now. Seriously, he was letting us go! We could have just forgotten about Sparky and bailed..."
"All the same," Gerardo murmured, caressing and sheathing the blade. "At least it will be better off in our possession than floating around for anyone to find. Though that doesn't change how sorry I am that this happened to you." He stared at Maple. "I've never been impaled by it myself, but I'm told it is a terrible experience. A profound and otherworldly sense of weakness, being unable to so much as move a muscle, like nothing anyone has ever felt before. They say the totality of it is... ah." He drooped.
"Buh?" Valey raised an eyebrow.
"She can't even meet my eyes." Gerardo hung his head. "I understand, of course. If another's folly had reduced me so, I would have an undeniable degree of upsetness."
Valey blinked. "Oh, that? She can move her eyes, so left means yes and right means no. It's not the best way of being able to talk, but there's really not much better we could do."
Gerardo squinted, looking back at Maple. "My right, I presume?"
"Uh, no. Hers." Valey glanced as far towards Maple as she could. "I hope?"
"No, then...?" Gerardo hummed, holding his chin. "You disagree with what I said? What part of it did you take issue with? Well, perhaps my blaming of myself, of course, but-"
"Hold on," Valey interrupted. "Maple. Left if you've been using your left for yes this whole time. Your left, not Birdo's."
Gerardo met her gaze. "Right..." he mused, then jumped. "Er, no, left! Her left! My apologies; yes she has."
Valey let out a breath. "Cool. And you did just disagree with part of what Birdo said there?"
"Left," Gerardo narrated. "So that would be a yes."
"...Huh." Valey shrugged. "You know, here's what we're going to do. The two of you get to stay here, and you can have your own little chat. Up means I don't know, by the way. See what you can figure out. I recommend hugging her, since she's apparently got some weird magic going on that might be able to help defrost you and also apparently just likes that. Meanwhile, I'm going to go check out that cave, see how Starlight's doing, and hope she doesn't have some reason to try punching my face in because knowing my luck today, she totally does. Savvy?"
Gerardo nodded, and when she set Maple down, the earth pony's eyes went left. Valey kept her upright until Gerardo was steadying her, making sure she wouldn't have to lay on the cold rock any more than necessary, then shrugged, limbering up and taking several steps away. As tired as she was, no longer having to carry a deadweight mare meant she at least felt capable of a normal range of motion.
She rolled her wings in their sockets. Still sore? Yeah, kind of. Compared to the rest of her body? Business as usual. The only issue was that she was exhausted, and while she could walk as slowly as she pleased, there was a certain amount of continuous effort required to stay airborne. Much more than was needed to remain standing, and since falling on her face was already a concern, she wasn't about to trust herself in the air. Even if there was a good chance her wings felt better than her legs...
Halfway down the next cliff face, well out of sight of Gerardo and Maple and within gliding distance of the rock core where Starlight waited, she had a change of heart. There was another river to cross, looking far nastier than the one she had opted to swim in, and that dip would likely have killed her if not for Maple and the tree magic. What had she been thinking, if anything at all?
...Right. Maple had been sinking, and she hadn't had time to think. Well, this water wasn't rising, courtesy of a waterfall just within her sight around the next bend carrying it lower and toward the sea, so this time, she did. Flexing her wings, she stretched them out. Ow. Better to glide than to swim.
The wind ripped at her as she flew, forcing her to flap to stay on course. Her wings protested, her body sagged, and she nearly fell anyway before managing a crash landing on the far bank, the rough, jagged rock acting like a cheese grater against her fuzzy coat. Again, ow. At least it was cold enough that she didn't feel the new cuts and bruises added to her existing ones... which, in hindsight, probably came mostly from her first landing when Starlight's shield had broken. Standing up, trying not to fall back over, she clenched her teeth and wandered out of the wind and into the cave.
It wasn't completely dark... which wasn't saying much when she had exceptional night vision, but still. There were cracks in the ceiling allowing the faintest amount of light through, and a dim grayness ahead suggested that the cave opened back up on the other side of the stone. A slight incline led her hooves upward, and a breeze traced its way through the tunnel, apparently not as good a shelter from the wind as it had appeared.
Then the tunnel opened up, giving a paintinglike view of the stormy sky above and the Sosan sea below, the height allowing Valey to see over the river beyond. Past that, only a short wall and the next cliff separated her from the newest holding place of the dark water of the reservoir. The ruins of Sosa stood like ghostly monuments above and below the surface, the occasional leaning tower or shard of broken wall piercing the wind-tossed ocean. For a brief space, the tunnel floor was flat and its walls open, as if fate itself had appointed it as the viewpoint for the devastation.
Completing the picture, silhouetted there against the sea and the city, a short-maned unicorn lay on her side, looking out, unable even to lift her head from the cold stone floor, shaking with uncontrolled sobs. Atop her side, on the only perch separated from the warmth-sucking stone, Starlight lay, her horn dull and her eyes covered by her mane. She bounced up and down as the other unicorn's chest heaved for breath, but made no motion of her own.
"Oh, bananas..." Valey swallowed inwardly, unable to keep from smirking at the misfortune of what she was about to have to deal with alone. "Hey, Starlight. Hey, Sparky."