Julian woke trapped. He was inside something, wrapped up in slime and something like silk. There was nothing but darkness all around him, constricting his movements. He called out, but his voice was drowned in some kind of slime that surrounded him. It rushed down his throat, starting to suffocate him.
He began to kick, and he felt his containment give a little. He focused there with both of his hind legs, shoving as hard as he could. Something tore. Fluid poured out from the opening, and he realized he was hanging vertically. He’d made a hole in whatever kept him trapped near the bottom, and as he did so all the slime began to trickle out.
Julian remained still, taking a few hacking breaths and letting the slime drain from his lungs. He didn’t feel that different—didn’t feel different at all, in fact. But it was still dark in whatever had trapped him. How had he gotten out again? He couldn’t remember. He had gone into the valley to talk to Janus. He’d been… but how was he here?
None of it made sense. But there wasn’t exactly someone to argue with. I need to get out. Even in the jungle, I probably look like food hanging up like this. The problems were his wings. They still felt damp, and he knew that wet wings couldn’t fly. If he fell he wouldn’t die as he would’ve at his proper size, but he might tear something on his way down. Being on the ground anywhere was unsafe, even in Formenos.
He did his best to widen the hole, without moving so fast that he would get dislodged from the thing holding him and dumped. He could see moonlight through the crack as it widened, and his weight started pulling him through. He struggled for a few more seconds, gripping the side with his legs as he did so. One more kick, and the whole thing tore open.
Julian squealed as he went tumbling forward, but he didn’t have very far to fall. Not whole stories up the side of a tree, only about two body-lengths above the mossy ground. It wasn’t a tree at all, but a thick flower. Of course, he didn’t get a particularly good look as he went tumbling, not until after he landed in a soggy heap on the floor and rolled onto his back.
“Spread out your wings,” said a voice from beside him. Emily, resting on the moss. “You don’t want them to dry out all crumpled. It hurts.”
Julian obeyed instinctively, even if the command didn’t make much sense. Breezie wings were flexible, but that was mostly just a way to resist damage. They could only be opened and closed. Julian rolled onto his belly, shaking out his wings a little until they didn’t feel cramped anymore. He felt a little light-headed as they spread, like he had shrunken a little. He didn’t look back, just felt instinctively for the charm around his neck.
There was nothing there.
He squeaked in protest, rising suddenly. “Oh god, I’m so screwed. I lost it… Avery’s gonna kill me. I’m screwed…”
He felt a foot on his shoulder, and looked down to see Emily standing there. Emily was standing there. Not standing on his shoulder, standing on the moss. She looked a few inches shorter, which were obviously much less in reality. Still, the meaning was obvious. Julian wasn’t a giant anymore. “He didn’t kill me.”
Should he have been more upset? Janus had taken a useful tool away—his giantness had made Formenos possible, in a way. It had protected them many times. I wonder if I still explode people. That mystery would hopefully remain a mystery forever. Even the two giants who wanted to join their society were going to use the charms, not his method.
“Nope.” Emily hugged him, though her hooves were gentle around his back. Not touching his wings. “I told you, your desires were good. That’s exactly the kind of promises he likes. He wasn’t going to kill you.” She broke away from him. Her fluffy antennae moved in a way he’d never seen them move before—not since she’d been transformed. It was appreciation, interest.
“I know what you want. I hope you’ll tell me how we’re going to get it.”
“We,” Julian repeated. He retreated a step—not because he was afraid of her, exactly, but because he’d never seen such a reaction from Emily before. She was always so flighty these days, and never physically affectionate with him. “We’re going to change the city. Change everyone… well, mostly the kids. Not the Averies. We need them the way they are. Their kids too, hopefully.”
“How?”
Julian didn’t feel like his wings were weighing him down as much anymore. He moved them experimentally, and found that flapping them had become much harder. Yet with a single push, he stumbled into the air, legs kicking and struggling out under him for a few seconds. He didn’t move them again though, and touched back down a moment later. He could feel the moss under his hooves, more clearly than he had before. Was that taste? He wrinkled his nose. “Ugh. I hate moss.”
Emily grinned at him. “Now you know why I only land on flowers.”
It clicked. Julian glanced over his shoulder, and was only a little surprised by his huge wings, spotted with a pair of crystal blue eyes. They looked exactly like Janus’s eyes, one seeming to look forward and another back. Watching him, even now.
And those weren’t the only changes. There was fluff around his chest, and his hooves weren’t hooves at all. Julian wasn’t a breezie anymore. Makes sense. Only a moth could cast the spell.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Emily urged. “You, uh… got distracted. I can’t blame you. Just wait until you try landing on something made of steel. Don’t.”
Julian stashed that away—he’d never known Emily to exaggerate or to say anything she didn’t mean. “Moths don’t get so…” He gestured with his huge wings. “They care more. And I have the spell to make as many of us as we want. To change breezies… We can start with the army, teach the spell… then track down all the little colonies that got away. Janus… I think he showed me the future. Showed me that the moths won’t go all ambivalent like breezies do. There’s just the one problem with it… I think you know what it is. But we can get around that.”
Emily nodded. “I do. You must not plan on changing everyone.”
“Not everyone,” he agreed. “Not anyone who seems like they aren’t going to lose their minds. It would be good to have a lot of breezies, but even if we only have the Averies and the second generations, that could still be a huge number. It could be thousands if we don’t get crushed by rocks, or eaten by bats, or anything else.”
“It wouldn’t be easy to convince them,” Emily said. “Except… the only ones who care enough to vote are also the ones you aren’t asking to do anything. I’d be more worried about losing the ones we have down the road. I know I would get tired of being different, if I was. I’d be willing to give up having more children for that. Guess I… already did that, though. Decision is easy for me, since It’s already made.”
“I’ll tell Avery about it,” he said. “She’ll be able to make sure the spell is safe. We’ll have to find a volunteer. My grandkids won’t fight us, I’m sure of it. They don’t care about anything… as long as we make it seem like a fun game, they’ll be excited about it. Once they do it, they’ll all thank us.”
“Maybe.” Emily didn’t sound convinced. “It isn’t like I don’t agree with you that it’s important, Julian… but they aren’t going to forget the way they thought before. They’re not going to forget how carefree they were, how happy. They might curse you for waking them from that dream. How do you think it was for Adam and Eve?”
Julian took off. He moved jerkily, unsteadily in the air. But he didn’t crash into anything, and he was learning quickly. It was really the same basic principles of flight here, just with bigger wings and less flapping. It felt as though it had gotten much harder, as though he were missing something he’d always depended on.
But Julian could adapt to that. He would be asking the breezies to adapt, even if they wouldn’t understand the decision they made while they made it. And in some ways, he couldn’t give them a choice, exactly. If something happened to convince most of them to refuse, they would still outbreed the village and they’d be back with the same problem as before. They had to use the army. They had to make sure this magic spread.
I wonder what would happen if we tried it on regular ponies. Those two who want to join… they might not need charms after all. They’d be safer not to have them, anyway. What if they got mad and took them off, then hurt someone?
There were so many possibilities open to him. It was almost like Janus had opened his eyes through time, just a crack. Every new choice unfolded an entire chain of events. All he had to do was keep searching until he found the one that ended with civilization. It couldn’t be that hard.
“I knew something was wrong,” Avery said, as she opened the door to her little house. He heard lots of little mechanical sounds from the other side, and was grateful that the paths here were only made of wood. Wood wasn’t the worst taste in the world. “I locked everything down, just to be safe, I…” The door swung open, and Avery froze. She stared at him, horn glowing very faintly as she did so.
Julian grinned at her. “Hey, bird. Like the new wings?”
Avery remained silent for another few seconds. She glanced behind her, obviously looking for Lynn, but it was probably past her bedtime by now. The child needed as much sleep as a pony kid, not the few hours a breezie got away with.
“What… what did you do?” she asked. She hadn’t gotten out of his way yet, and he could see a stiffness in her posture that had almost never been there lately. “You shouldn’t have… you didn’t… you aren’t wearing the charm.”
“I’m not a giant anymore, bird.” He hoped she would hear his relief. He tried to touch her antennae, to show her how he felt, but she tucked hers behind her head, dodging him. That hurt more than her posture, more than her tone.
“You aren’t… a few things… anymore,” she eventually said. She stumbled backward, into the hall beyond. “Why?”
“I can explain it,” he said, taking advantage of the open doorway and following her inside. Not too close, though—she was obviously frightened. She would adjust to this, but forcing himself on her would not help.
“You’ll understand once you hear. I know this seems a little crazy. It was crazy to me, too. But I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. It’s important, and it didn’t even cost as much as I thought it did. Let me explain.”
Avery did. They sat together in her kitchen, and he told her everything he’d been thinking about. Everything he’d seen. She shared his pain about the later generations—even if she had no eggs of her own, and no descendants who went through their lives like butterflies, she knew about them. Her sisters were all experiencing it, and Averies talked.
“I went to Janus… that’s the god in the forest…” He wasn’t sure Janus was in the forest, at least not in terms of the physical world they were living in. Moths could… Emily had taken him somewhere else with her magic. He wasn’t sure how, but it didn’t matter for the sake of explaining this.
“Well, he showed me the future. He showed me how to wake them all up, how to give them the minds they would’ve had if they’d been born to us as ponies. We won’t have to pay much. I know you’ll agree with me about how worthwhile it is.”
He explained his vision for their culture—for the society they would establish, once they had tracked down and changed all the breezie colonies that had flown off. She could make tracking spells, it would be easy. He explained how their new society would change all breezies as soon as they grew up, before they wandered off. Explained the spell itself.
“I…” Avery stumbled when he had finally finished, expression still dark, pained. “I’m not sure… that’s such a good idea. Offering it as a possibility is one thing, Julian… but doesn’t it seem wrong to force them? We were forced, and we hated it. Won’t they hate it too?”
“No!” He rose from his chair, spreading his wings for her. “It’s just like being a breezie, Avery! Basically just more colors and different hooves. We’re practically the same!” Not quite true. Their magic was a different flavor. The jungle would have a different character when moths made it instead of breezies. But he didn’t have to volunteer the little things if she didn’t ask.
Plus, there was the other part of the cost, the one he hadn’t mentioned. The one he was hoping to take naturally, so that she’d never even need to know it had been paid. It was such a little thing…
“You could be the first one,” he continued, hoping it sounded natural. “You could experience the spell. Then you’ll know how safe it is, and we’ll have an example for all the others.” And besides, you can’t have eggs. We already have Lynn, and she’s immortal. One is enough.
Avery didn’t react the way he hoped. She shook her head vigorously, resting one hoof on the little satchel she always wore. The one with her manual in it. “No. Julian, there’s… no. I’m not changing again. I’ve already lost my whole life twice. I’m not gonna do it a third time. Maybe it’s great for those fairies we’ve almost lost, the ones that barely seem awake. But not me. I wouldn’t be me if I was someone else.”
Julian acted as though it didn’t matter to him. It wouldn’t have, a little earlier. Sure, it hurt that his favorite Avery, the one who still had her name, rejected the magic he had won for them. Even if she didn’t actually argue against using it for the village, she refused to take it herself.
But Julian hadn’t got to choose the terms of the deal. Now that it was made, he didn’t have a choice about whether or not he would follow it. It was a little like falling down a tunnel—once he started, down was the only direction he could go. He couldn’t even feel sad about it. Regret, maybe. But not sadness.
He joined Avery to sleep that night, though there was nothing else between them. Avery barely wanted to touch him right now, let alone anything else.
But that wouldn’t last much longer.
Staying awake longer than a wizard with insomnia was not an easy task, except that Julian was now nocturnal. Eventually she slept, and he could cast his spell.
It was so easy. Just touch their antennae together, say a few words… she didn’t even have to be awake.
For the rest of his life, Julian would swear he didn’t make the bed creak on purpose. He had just been moving over to her, that was all. It was the truth, obviously. Because he had to pay the price Janus asked.
Avery’s eyes opened when he was about halfway through the spell. Bright blue energy swirled around her, enough power that one of her four wings had already changed to match his, even if it was one of her smaller ones.
Avery reacted like a bullet. Her eyes snapped wide open, taking in the situation in a second. She drew one hoof through the air, and her manual fell into it out of nothing.
For a fraction of a second, the fairy met his eyes. Julian would never forget her pain—not then, and not ever. The betrayal on her face was far worse than any agony he could’ve imagined.
Avery vanished in a flash of light, and his spell imploded. Julian screamed as he was thrown against the wall, and the bed itself was torn to pieces. Shreds of cloth went everywhere, and he was nearly knocked unconscious by the blow.
By the time he came round, Avery was gone. He wandered through the house, first to Lynn’s room. She hadn’t been part of the price—he might never have come out of Janus’s domain if she had been—but he was still worried about her.
She was gone, along with a handful of her belongings. There was a note on her bed, written in Lynn’s stationary, but in Avery’s dense script. “I know you don’t want to. I love you.”
Julian cried. Not just because of what he was reading, but because he had to keep looking for her. Even if he had many moths searching, even if he became a mighty wizard in his own right, he somehow knew he’d never find her.
Janus’s vision came about much as he’d seen it. The joy of seeing his descendants wake from their dream was enough to make up for a little of the suffering he had experienced.
Not everything went quite to plan, though. The breezie colonies they converted became more cooperative once they became moths, and many reported losing a few of their smartest members before the army arrived. Some of them even reported strange stories of a mysterious pair of fairies with powers they’d only heard about in school.
Julian never found out what had happened to them. He looked, but not too carefully. The “army” was not some despotic force, bent on domination. Once converted, the colonies could go right back to living the way they had, if they wanted.
Sometime later.
Avery winked into existence without a pop or a flash. Teleportation had become so second-nature to her after all this time that she didn’t even think about it anymore—placeness was variable and ever-shifting. It was the only way she had escaped so long.
Her daughter was her height now, and prettier than she was. Lynn generally stayed with the airship, since there weren’t any others aboard who could use magic like theirs, but considering the danger of the place they were visiting…
It had been a long time since Avery had seen this fungus. They moved by day, since even the most determined moth scouts would be asleep by the time noon arrived. They just weren’t worth looking for. Most of them didn’t even understand why the Eldest wanted her captured so badly.
A few spiders moved in the gloom, emerging from the pale carpet of a dilapidated building. Avery lifted a hoof, and tore them in pieces. As they walked through the city, a few larger things rose up. This place was important to some distant enemy, a lotus of power. She could see the crystal spire glittering in the sun, however encrusted with slime it was now.
Avery no longer cared what the sea-demon wanted. When a monstrous creature the size of a whale tore itself free near the base of the tower, she showed it a nice view of the moon.
Cleaning off the tower would be harder, since she couldn’t just teleport the slime all off of it.
“You think that’s everything?” Lynn asked from behind her, wearing thick boots and a bandana over her face to keep out the spores. Avery had the boots, though she used a little shield instead of anything on her mouth. Keeping up multiple spells at once wasn’t really hard anymore.
“Everything that’s dangerous.” She could see the airship high above, though descending rapidly. It was a lot like a breezie—extremely delicate. It was gigantic from their size, so big she could hardly take in the whole thing at once when it was close. A swept, elegant zeppelin, big enough to hold fifty ponies. That was quite a bit more in breezie terms, as it turned out.
“Get up there and tell them to drop the napalm. I’ll join you before it lands.”
Lynn nodded, vanishing with a flash of light. You’ll get it, sweetie.
Avery sat at the base of the tower, watching the airship approach. The jungle hadn’t grown nearly as much in the time since she left, but it would eventually reach this far. She needed somewhere for her refugees that could keep it back. Somewhere with the magical defenses to fight a god, if she had to.
It had apparently been important, once. The capital of several ancient countries, and the workshop of the greatest pony wizard who ever lived. He was gone now, but his laboratory remained. Her lab, if she could find it. She had some good ideas about where to look.
I’ll find a way to set you free, Julian. One day.
In the meantime, at least there were the fireworks.