XLIV
An Old Frenemy
XLIV
An Old Frenemy
Solemn Vow’s mansion was a stately, impressively restrained affair in the middle of a street flooded with opulent, ostentatious manor houses that occasionally bordered on castles. A pair of sturdy wooden doors opened into the home from a porch with a few aged but not yet rotting pieces of wooden furniture, protected from the elements by a wide awning. Overhead, a few sizeable bay windows watched the street.
Blizzard pulled us down on Hurricane’s chariot to the level of the city street. Wealthy ponies were numerous enough here to create something of a crowd, but they all milled away from Vow’s brilliant green lawn as though it were haunted. Given that Vow had been dead for my entire lifetime, the fact that he had a green lawn certainly supported that hypothesis.
“Okay, this is the place?” Blizzard asked, panting. “And you’re sure you need me?”
“It’ll be fine,” Gale answered. “We haven’t died yet, right? Besides… it’s not that haunted.”
“I beg your pardon, what?. Not ‘that’ haunted?” I frowned. “I thought you were joking. Are there actually spirits in this home?”
“I dunno.” Gale gave me a shrug. “I mean, the place is supposed to be empty, but it still gets taken care of, obviously.” She gestured to the reasonably well maintained facade. “Sometimes little foals dare each other in there, and they usually come out screaming when something moves on its own.”
“Spirits…” I swallowed. “Wonderful. And I only have one spell.”
“One spell?” Blizzard asked. “I thought you knew lots of spells, Morty.”
“Yes, but I can only cast three a day. The third one will knock me out. And I already spent one helping Gale down from Diadem’s roof.”
Blizzard gave Gale an incredulous look. Gale rolled her eyes and nodded.
“If there’s spirits here, we need to wait for Celestia to get my message.”
As if she had been scrying me in a crystal ball or a water basin, a burst of golden light issued from the street nearby.
In this case, I was, at least until the enchantments on Vow’s home obscured him from my magic. I was worried about him.
As the glow faded, I saw Graargh in his miniature bear form and Angel laying on the street, in various expressions of shock.
“Well… that wasn’t exactly what I expected,” Gale admitted. “Where’s Aunt Celestia?”
Instead of even pretending to offer an answer, Graargh hopped up to his paws and rushed torward us. “Morty! Gale! You back! Yay!”
I knew enough to brace myself for the literal bear hug. Despite my trepidation, and the distinctly eau naturale scent he carried, I found the feel of Graargh’s fur and his substantial body heat pleasant. I hadn’t realized how much he’d been a constant presence in my journey until that moment.
Gale took it on herself to walk forward and throw her forelegs around both of us. Graargh answered the hug by nuzzling into her neck. “Graargh is happy! You smell is flowers, Gale.”
“Sorry,” she muttered with a lighthearted laugh. “Perfume. I’ll wash it off later.”
“Is nice,” Graargh replied, before finally releasing us. “Graargh family back!”
I set aside the growing realization of just how much of Everfree City’s nobility was watching us like a house of circus freaks, instead turning to Angel. “Where’s Celestia?”
“It is good to see you too, Master Coil. Don’t worry, I don’t desire a hug. You might unset one of my gems.” The smart tone took me aback, such that I couldn’t find anything to say as the golem rose from the street to hover at eye level.
“You’re joking me…” I muttered. Then I stepped forward, briefly attempting to figure out just how to wrap a foreleg around the flying rock and his two golden halos.
Angel drew back. “You are correct, Master Coil; I was in fact joking you. Though a greeting would not have gone amiss. Lady Celestia instructed that I convey to you this message: if she had come herself, you would receive untoward attention from certain interested parties. I suspect it was as an afterthought that she added ‘paternal’ parties, though I do not know who she means. Would you perhaps settle for Lady Luna? She was most interested in me, so perhaps I could have persuaded her—”
“No” I interrupted in a hiss. “Angel, we’ll be fine. Let me try and make this short for everypo—everybody. This house belonged to Solemn Vow, who was Wintershimmer’s student before me. Supposedly, his body is still in here somewhere. Wintershimmer wants Vow’s horn, so we should expect a candlecorn in there. I want everypony to stay close, speak up fast if you feel your neck get cold, and above all else, keep your eyes peeled. Graargh, if anything scares you, get big.”
Graargh gave a very small but very confident roar.
“Alright. No goddesses, no magic sword… Let’s do this.”
“Ensis might be magic,” Gale countered as we walked toward Vow’s front doors. “It has a name. That’s what you made a huge deal about back in Lübuck.”
“‘Sword’ is not a name. It’s barely a category. That’s like a wizard’s staff named ‘stick’. Your father at least knew what he was doing. ‘The Sword of Storms’; that’s a name for a magic sword.”
“Give Finder more credit. He…” Gale’s words trailed off as we stepped onto Vow’s porch. Driven by no visible force whatsoever, both of the dead warlock’s double doors drew open, beckoning us into a well ordered, though poorly lit sitting room. “Okay, I don’t think that ever happened as a foal.”
“Right…” I swallowed back an ever increasing worry and set one foot over Vow’s threshold.
The sheer nothing that followed was astounding.
“Alright, Morty, you proved the floor’s safe.” Gale walked straight into the room, lighting her horn to cast light across all the places where the natural light of the outside street was blocked by towering shelves or the gossamer silhouette of parchment-colored curtains. “I don’t see anything in here so far.”
“No smell,” Graargh contributed, pacing into the room and putting a claw on a well-upholstered chaise couch. A small puff of dust rose from the weight of the limb, and Graargh sneezed heavily, making the problem substantially worse. “Now smell. Blegh.”
My focus wasn’t on the furniture or the dark corners, but the exits to the room. A pair of matched curling staircases in front of me led up to some upper hall, between them a large grand piano sat in the place of honor in the room. I had to imagine a quite compelling haunting refrain could be added to each corner of our investigation, were somepony to sit behind the keys. Off to my left and right were paired hallways leading deeper into the other portions of the house; I had to imagine that they either ended in stairs or turned fairly quickly, as the facade of the manor wasn’t terribly deep.
Then again, Vow could very well have made his house bigger on the inside, like my wardrobe back in the Crystal Union. Hopefully he hadn’t, or barring that, that he had the restraint to stop before the extreme I had reached with that ill advised experiment. I definitely should have stopped when my wardrobe developed its own climate and started to snow on my jackets, but it wasn’t until I found an obviously hoof-made iron lamppost I had not installed that I came to my senses and abandoned the project entirely.
“Okay… Gale, you said we’re looking for the basement, right?”
Gale nodded, looking away from her investigation. “But I don’t have a damn clue where that would be.”
“Did you ever find the kitchen as a foal?” Blizzard asked, still exercising quite a bit of trepidation with her snowflake cutie mark still safely on the outside of the house’s threshold. “Because lots of big houses in River Rock have big wine cellars and store rooms.”
“Good thinking, Blizzard.” Gale drew Ensis and spun it idly in her telekinetic grip, making me just a bit nervous to approach her. Her gaze swiveled across the stairs above the piano, and then back and forth between the two level hallways. “Damn, it has been a long time since I used to run around in here. Dad would always get pissed. I think it’s this way.”
I extended a hoof with a flourish. “Lead the way.”
“Are you sure you need—”
I groaned, if only to cut her off. “Graargh, you have a new job. Keep Blizzard safe. Got it?”
Graargh nodded enthusiastically, then bounded toward the mare. Before Blizzard could really react, the bear cub had scrambled his way up onto her back, letting his forelegs wrap around her neck. “We hunt scary,” he told her. “If see bad, I big.”
“That’s the idea.” I smiled in Blizzard’s direction, and she reluctantly set off after Gale, and I took up a place beside her, with Angel floating near my shoulder.
The left side hallway of Vow’s home turned quickly after just a single door that sat mostly open on a powder room, alleviating my fears of an infinite magical labyrinth or a pocket plane. Instead, after a single right turn, we found ourselves gathered at the beginning of a long and ill-lit hallway, cast in an unsettling dim red glow by Gale’s horn. Our first steps reminded us of the age of the place; though most of the small side tables in the hall were surprisingly dust free, the withered corpses of flowers sat in a number of small vases, and the floorboards creaked under our hooves.
“Where to, Gale?”
She pointed to a door seemingly at random. The walk toward it was filled with a number of creaks and groans. A few strides away, her magic wrapped around the doorknob.
The door rattled, but it didn’t budge.
“Fucking… seriously?” Gale asked, yanking a few more times. When her telekinesis failed, Gale walked up to the door, reared up on her hind legs, and bucked it full-force.
An explosion of splinters rebounded somewhat dramatically in a small broom closet.
“Fuck,” Gale told the push broom and the mop that collapsed toward her, fumbling to shove them back into the room as gravity contested the motion. At least, in growing irritation, she slashed through their handles with Ensis.
“Be careful. Mop was a powerful weapon of Archmage Sanitary the—” I jumped back laughing as Gale took a swing at me with her hoof.
“Can we please not fight in here…?” Blizzard protested. “Come on, let’s just look in these next couple of doors.”
As we approached the next door, the floorboards creaked louder still beneath our every step. Gale pulled open doors to a small library full of colorful covers that reminded me of my sour experience with Diadem and Luna. The next room was some sort of conservatory, full of withered plants that seemed surprisingly recognizable for lacking twenty years of gardening expertise. As we approached the door after that, Graargh made a show of lifting his head from Blizzard’s back and sniffing.
“Something up, squirt?” Gale asked, turning toward him. Her horn ripped open the door, and she frowned. “Chalk, maybe? It’s a billiards parlor.”
Graargh shook his head. “Stink food. There.”
As Graargh pointed to a door some ways further down the hall, the slightest sound of metal tapping against metal reached our ears.
“Did you all…?” Blizzard asked.
“It is not your imagination,” Angel responded. “I am proud to report my hearing is not susceptible to that sort of self-deception.”
“You aren’t supposed to be getting smarter either, Angel,” I noted. “But I heard it too, so he’s probably right.” I swallowed, walking forward to stand beside Gale. “Remember, you feel cold, you say something fast. I’m quicker to cast a spell than Wintershimmer was even in his real body, so I can beat a Candlecorn easy.”
We creaked our way down the hall, step after step, all eyes locked on the door Graargh had identified. Only when I could reach out to touch it with a hoof did we stop.
The creaking didn’t.
“Fuck!” Graargh shouted in his deep, no-longer-adolescent voice, and a flash of green overrode the red glow on the walls. Before anypony else could react, we were all thrown against the walls by the mass of an adult bear. Blizzard made a particularly sympathy-inducing crunch when she was smashed against the floor, though thankfully Graargh’s paws kept him from laying his full weight on her. “Who there?”
“I...mmmpph.” I don’t recall exactly what I had been trying to say, as the latter portion of that sentence came from my lungs being compressed forcibly by an adult grizzly who felt the need to turn around in a hallway somewhat narrower than his length from tail to muzzle.
“Be here!” Graargh demanded. “Bad fuck! You come out now!” Graargh was answered by silence. “You afraid? Graargh family get you!”
“Graargh, it’s okay…” I cautioned, finally able to see past him to the empty hall. “It’s probably just the floor.”
Gale drew in a breath of her own, and then broke down into laughter. “Bad fuck? Stars, Graargh, you’re the best.”
“Don’t encourage him to say that!” I told her, before turning to the veritable hairy mountain that was my ward. “Graargh, that word isn’t good.”
“Not good? But Gale says lots!”
“You can ignore Morty,” Gale replied between laughs. “You’re fine, Graargh. Say whatever you want.”
“Gale!” Blizzard protested, squirming her way out from underneath the bear. “He’s a foal.”
“Am bear!”
“A cub,” Blizzard corrected. “At least wait until he can understand what it means before you start teaching him… those words.”
“Alright.” Gale reached up to pat Graargh on his shoulder. “When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much—”
At that point, I grabbed onto the front of Gale’s muzzle with my magic. “Ahem. Graargh, go ahead and be small again. We’re safe. Gale and I are going to have a talk about words later on but for right now, we aren’t going to worry about it. Let’s focus on finding Vow before Wintershimmer does.”
Only after that did I release Gale’s muzzle. She rolled her eyes and stepped up to the kitchen door again. “See who gets a hornjob in court now.”
“I’d honestly rather not have a hornjob in anywhere public,” I answered.
Gale shook her head in disappointment as she tried the door handle, eventually tearing it open. “For somepony whose been fucking everywhere, Morty, you have no sense of adventure.”
Inside the room, just as Graargh had anticipated, was a kitchen. Further, it wasn’t a large formal kitchen for a staff to prepare lavish meals for the wealthy owner of a manor. Instead, though well stocked, it was a fairly cramped and humble place where perhaps two ponies might work side by side. Were it not for the slight rusting on several of the pots and pans hanging from hooks on a wall, it might have even been inviting. A large cauldron sat beneath a chimney, and beside it, smaller metal grates supported the weight of a couple more reasonably sized pots and pans. Two knife blocks offered everything a pony might need to prepare any number of vegetables or grains. A basin long since dried presumably had once held water, given the spigot and pump jutting from the wall above it.
And in the corner opposite us, a door hung ever so subtly ajar, revealing a mass of darkness.
“Well… that’s obvious,” Gale noted, walking forward.
“And ominous,” Blizzard added.
I shook my head. “It’s probably just a wine cellar. Anypony with a secret evil basement full of magic isn’t going to have the entrance be just some stairs in their kitchen. You’ve got play some crazy notes on a piano, or twist the head of a bust or something.”
“Is that really true?” Gale asked, opening the door to the darkness with the creaking sigh of ill-oiled hinges. “You used to live in a place like that?”
I chuckled. “No. Wintershimmer was so much crazier than that about his secrets. The door to his warehouse would only open if you recited how a specific unicorn archmage died. And it changed every day of the week.”
Gale stopped in her tracks, leaving me to take the first few steps down the stairs. “You’re serious?”
“As the grave. Remember, this is a pony who never taught me to read because he was afraid I’d read his spellbook behind his back.”
“Or he was just an asshole.” Gale lit her horn brighter, giving me enough light to navigate the old wooden steps.
“We do have a lot more evidence for that theory,” I agreed. The steps creaked even worse than the hallway, but I only navigated eight of them before I reached a layer of rough but worked rock. A wodden rack on my right glistened with Gale’s magic, though darkness still dominated my left, blocked from Gale’s light by the wall of the stairs. “Yeah, it’s a wine cellar.”
Behind us, something creaked. Everypony turned, but nopony was to be seen.
“Not like,” Graargh announced from the top of the stairs, waving a paw toward us as he watched the kitchen. “Is bad fuck. Blizzard go first.”
“Graargh, we can’t let a little kid stay up here,” Blizzard replied.
“Am big” Graargh countered, forcefully and resolutely. “And better smell. You go. Graargh follow.”
Though Graargh was hardly the kind of orator most would hope for, his diplomatic skills nonetheless saw Blizzard rush down the steps to join us. A moment later, Graargh followed, pausing to shut the door. Again, it’s hinges protested to the tune of a metallic shriek. “We hear,” he announced.
“Smart thinking,” Gale affirmed, before turning her gaze around the edge of the staircase wall to observe the rest of the darkened room. “Alright, what are we looking at down here?”
Solemn Vow’s wine cellar was, for the house of a noble and a powerful warlock, something of a modest affair. He only had two walls and two alcoves full of wine, and most of the bottles I glanced at were boring, safe sauvignon blancs and ports and similarly mundane varietals. Much more interesting than his taste in wine was the thin layer of frost taking the place of dust on several of the bottles.
“We’re getting close,” I observed, holding up one of the bottles in a little of my own magic. “Typhoon’s ice. I wonder what she did to make it last twenty years.”
“Pegasus magic comes from emotion,” Blizzard noted. “If she was especially sad, the ice would last a long time.”
“She was afraid she was going to lose Tempest, I think,” Gale noted. “Though she’s not exactly interested in telling me about it.” Gale ran a hoof along the boards of the shelving, then paused. “It’s colder here. Like there’s a draft. I think this is the spot.”
“Graargh smash?” Graargh asked.
“No,” I warned, holding up a hoof. “If there’s a draft, it’s probably a hidden door rather than just being the wall back to back with another room.” I glared up at my horn for a second, probably appearing quite cross-eyed. “Gale, let’s see if I can teach you something useful. Feel that shelf with your magic, and search for something… tingly.”
Thankfully, Gale only gave me a sideways glance, instead of saying something I would regret Graargh hearing. “Okay… so what am I looking for?”
“Magic doesn’t usually leave signs behind after it’s done, but if a spell is ongoing and you contact it with your magic, you can usually feel it. We’re seeing if Vow did some sort of magic to hide a handle, or if the door needs a special phrase to open.”
“And if not?”
“Then there’s a mechanical secret. A wine bottle we have to twist, or a gap in wood with a lever you can only pull with magic. If we get to that point, Graargh can rip it off the wall.” I nodded to Graargh, who like any self-respecting eight year old colt would, smiled at the prospect of being encouraged to engage in reckless destruction by his elders.
We waited a few moments for Gale to feel around the shelf before she broke into a smile. “I feel something. Um… Right here, at this pole.”
“Great. Stun it.”
“Stun the wood?” Gale turned to stare at me. “Are you drinking this wine behind my back?”
“The spell doesn’t matter, Gale. We just need to throw magic at it. Your stunning charm is probably your most potent burst of mana, and right now, we’re trying to avoid me using a spell.”
“My gems are still full, Master Coil, in case you are in need of a few more spells today.”
I nodded. “Better to save that for dueling Wintershimmer if it comes to that. Remember, I can beat a Candlecorn by brute force.”
“You aren’t prone to let us forget things like that,” Angel observed, leading me to quirk a brow.
Before I could offer comment, Gale’s spell flashed from her horn, and upon colliding with the wine shelf, the entire wall shifted backward in a mighty lurch, at last pulling away into an alcove on the side of a narrow, frosted stone hallway descending into darkness.
“Well, that’s something,” Gale observed. “You can get past a door like that that easily?”
“Most ponies don’t go around stunning other ponies walls,” I answered. “Come on, let’s—”
At the groaning of the door above the wine cellar stairs, I whirled toward the stairs. A distinctly equine silhouette could be seen, backlit by some glow in the upstairs hall… perhaps a candle. “All of you, in. Gale, take the lead. I’m right behind you.”
A familiar feminine laugh rang from up the stairs.
“Bad pony!” Graargh announced in recognition.
I shook my head. “The candlecorn’s still shaped like her. Wintershimmer, get down here! Face me.”
What followed was the sound of a surge of magic, and then the pop of a teleportation. The silhouette on the wall vanished.
“Fuck!” Gale announced. “What now, Morty?”
“We move. Wintershimmer can teleport around all he wants, but he’ll have to stop to grab Vow’s body. We need to find it first.” I turned back to my friends. “Gale, light up your horn and start searching. Make sure you can always see somepony else.” I got a chorus of nods I didn’t actually want, and groaned as I pushed my way past Blizzard and Graargh to stand next to Gale. “Go!”
The stone floor here was frigid under my hooves and slippery, and growing ice reflected a grim rose light from Gale’s horn. There were few side passages to glance into, and none were large enough to hide a grown stallion’s corpse. We passed a small alchemy lab, ice having frozen some distillation midway down the long glass neck off an elaborate alembic. In another room, Vow kept a much smaller library full of much older tomes; judging from the number of gaps on the shelves, the Equestrians had already picked through the space for anything dangerous.
Ahead, I saw a crumbling bridge over some sort of looming chasm deep into the earth, and I held out a hoof to slow Gale. Her hooves skidded a bit on the frosty floor, but we both came to a stop well before the gap. Ahead, only perhaps a hoof’s width of usable bridge remained, and that was crusted with a veneer of glistening rime.
“We can’t cross that,” Gale noted. “It’s slippery as fuck, and I don’t trust it not to crumble if I try to jump.”
“Blizzard can carry Graargh.” I nodded back toward the two in question. “Angel flies on his own.”
“So that just leaves us. The only two of us who can actually be trusted to stab that fucker. Great plan, Morty.”
“Ever teleport with somepony else before?” I asked, wrapping a hoof around Gale’s shoulders.
She stared at the second head I had obviously grown. “I don’t have the best aim in the world, Morty, in case you forgot. You’re the crazy wizard.”
“And we need my spells,” I answered. Then, on a whim I wouldn’t fully understand until years later, I gave her a peck on the cheek. Despite having literally received a hornjob in public from the mare, my affection still got Gale to blush. “I trust you with my life.”
“Both our funerals…” Gale muttered, but her horn lit up.
A moment later, I was falling to my death. Various shouts of “Morty” and “Gale” and “Master” rang overhead, but my focus was much more on my impending death and my one hope to prevent it. I lit up my horn, biting into my cheek to the point that I drew blood as I fought off the fatigue of my second spell. My vision blurred, which only made my aim for the right side of the bridge over the chasm all the harder.
The sickening tug of freefall in my stomach gave way to the disorenting twirling of teleportation.
Then Gale landed on me, knocking the wind out of me.
“You fucking lunatic,” Gale muttered. “Told you you shouldn’t have trusted me.”
After she stood up and let me draw in a breath, I made my way to my hooves. “I’m about to do it again. Angel, get over here. I need your magic now.”
As Angel, Blizzard, and Graaargh joined us, I turned my attention to the hallway on the far side of the chasm. The ice was far denser there, and spikier too. Deadly icicles jutted from the walls and ceiling, and I could envision how terribly easy it would be to lose my traction and slam into one fatally.
Angel’s stored mana rushed into my system like a warm cup of cocoa after a long day in the snow, returning feeling to my hooves and refocusing my vision from my drained mana. Though I was still feeling fatigue at the corners of my eyes, I steeled myself. “We’re almost there. Careful steps.”
Nopony answered. We just progressed. Step after nervous step, wondering whether our cautious urgency would get us to an early death on an icicle, or see us too late to stop Wintershimmer’s plot.
But then, at last, we came to an enormous cavern. It had to be natural, I reasoned, given how hard it would be for Vow to move so much stone unnoticed. Easily a hundred feed across, the roughly hemispherical cave had been decorated by a massive ritual circle, most of which was covered in jagged ice. We entered onto a small balcony a few dozen feet up from the main floor, and the rough stone curled in a ramp around the perimeter to bring a pony down to the main level.
In the center of the room, just off from the perfect center of the ritual circle, Solemn Vow’s corpse was frozen in a solid block of ice, his face wrapped in horror and shock as he lifted a hoof to shield himself. Within the ice, I could see two separate icicles; one had pierced his raised leg, and another jagged spear had run through the breast of his red-trimmed black jacket and straight into his heart.
Beside him, pacing slowly, was Silhouette. She still wore her form-fitting boiled black leather, and in place of her missing right foreleg, something metal glistened. It moved like a flesh-and-blood limb, and it ended in a vicious, avian claw that took notches out of the floor as she moved.
“Wintershimmer!” Gale shouted. “You son of a bitch! Get up here and fight us like a stallion!”
“The old stallion?” Silhouette chuckled, shaking her head. “Why would Master put himself in danger here? Why don’t you come down here, Princess? We can finish what we started in Lübuck.”
Gale flourished Ensis. “We know about you possessing the wax ponies, old stallion. Don’t—”
I put a hoof on Gale’s shoulder. “No. I think it’s really her.”
“Bad pony?” Graargh asked, walking up to the doorway beside us. “But she help!”
“This is dark magic,” I told him. “He’s bound her soul to his will completely. It’s smarter than using a candlecorn.”
“Because we can’t kill her…” Blizzard noted. “Morty, can you do something with magic?”
I nodded. “But it isn’t easy. We’ve got to restrain her.”
“Easy enough,” Gale announced, leaping onto the frosted ramp and skidding on her hooves toward the floor of the cavern.
“Gale, wait!” My extended hoof was, of course, too late to catch her by that point. And even if she had been inclined to heed my advice, the ramp down was too icy to climb. “Graargh, stay up here until I know if Wintershimmer has anything else here.” And with that, I leapt straight forward off the front of the balcony, sliding on the far steeper slope of the side of the ramp and reaching the ground much quicker.
That left Silhouette between Gale and I.
“Well?” She asked. “Come on, Coil.” Her strange, armored claw-hoof rose from the floor, and its talons beckoned me toward her.
“Morty,” I corrected, pacing forward. “My name is Morty, Silhouette. And I’m sorry if this hurts.”
“Please, Coil.” She actually knickered in lieu of laughing. “I’ve beaten you down every time we’ve crossed paths. What makes you think this is going to end any better?”
“Wow…” Gale muttered, matching my approach from Silhouette’s opposite side. “Wintershimmer’s petty if he’s making you be this much of an asshole.”
“That’s not how it works; when you bend somepony’s soul to your will, it overrides their motivations, not their actions. It’s still her mind and her personality. She just wants to help Wintershimmer now.”
“Ugh, so much ranting.” Gale flicked her armored foreleg out toward me, and I gasped as it stretched and rippled toward me. Jumping to the side, I rolled on the icy floor as the suddenly yards long limb dug three deep trenches in the frosty stone floow where I’d been standing. Underneath me, jagged icicles tore at my coat, and my hooves slid as I tried to stand up.
The limb that seemed to be made of silver liquid lifted up from the floor, rotating unnaturally to point toward me again. This time, without my footing, I knew I wouldn’t be able to leap clear.
Gale let out a ferocious battlecry as she rushed forward, holding Ensis aloft, and that distraction at least saved me. Silhouette spun, driving her crystal hooves into the ice by stomping in order to keep her balance, and her liquid limb became a buckler, parrying Gale’s blow. Gale yanked away at Ensis, but the liquid surface of Silhouette’s enchanted prosthetic grabbed onto the blade, holding it fast. Then a spike of the same strange substance shot out of the side of the limb, and Gale was forced to abandon her sword as she leapt backwards.
Silhouette’s leg then returned to its bird claw shape, and she held the sword in clear view of Gale as she pressed a hoof against the flat of the blade. Obviously, she was trying to shatter the weapon, but her taunting expression turned to confusion, and then frustration, when the blade wouldn’t budge.
“It’s magic,” Gale noted.
Silhouette snorted her ire, and then whirled and flung the blade straight into Solemn Vow; Ensis sheathed itself in the ice all the way up to the hilt, and a loud crack of steel and ice echoed around the room. “Alright, now what? Are you going to use your horn, Coil?”
“Fight him, Silhouette,” I told her in reply, but I lit my horn as she’d asked regardless. I wasn’t hopeful she could overthrow Wintershimmer’s power.
Silhouette’s leg molded itself into a long curved blade, almost like a shovel blade stretched like taffy. “No more toying.”
She dug the blade into the ice below her, and used the torque of the action to fling herself toward me. The limb stretched as she flew, briefly taking on a shape like a vaulter’s pole, before resuming its taloned state as she descended on me.
Descending through the air, though, she had no way to dodge my magic. In the exhilaration and terror of battle, it was trivial to ignore the drain of my third spell of the day. A bolt of stunning power that would have easily dropped an elephant flew from my horn straight into Silhouette’s chest, and the sheer force of the blow arrested her flight a nearly three yards away from me. She tumbled out of the air and rolled in a ball of limbs, stopping nearly at me front hooves.
“Well, that was—” Gale’s announcement was cut short when Silhouette sat bolt upright, wrapping her talons around my neck and muzzle and digging into my cheeks. The frigid semi-liquid of her limb ran through the coat on my face and neck as I tried to scream; the overwhelming smell left me drowsy and dizzy.
A roar came from overhead. “Morty!” Graargh shouted in his deepest voice, and though I couldn’t turn my head to see, the resonating slam made it quite clear that a grown grizzly bear had just leapt to the cave floor.
Silhouette released me, and then retreated a step. Her hoof once again took its shovel-like blade form, and as Graargh advanced, she lunged. Graargh batted away her body, but he roared in pain as her leg dug into his shoulder, casting out a horrifying splash of blood and bear fur. In exchange, she rolled on the floor from the blow, hopping back to her hooves with an obvious loss of coordination.
“He’s a fucking kid!” Gale shouted, launching a salvo of her own stunning spells. Most hit Silhouette square on; she was in no position to dodge, and she made no effort. Instead, she seemed to shrug them off entirely. “How are you still standing, bitch?”
“Coil told us all how it works in Platinum’s Landing. Right before he betrayed me. Shame you weren’t there.”
I groaned on my hooves, but the sickening, dizzying smell refused to relent in my nose. “If you can make a dead pony walk, a stunned pony is easy…” I shouted the first few words, though it was hard to hold that strength. “Her arm’s quicksilver. Blizzard… help us.”
“Me?” the pegasus shouted overhead. “What can I do?”
“Die, if you come down here,” Silhouette answered, rounding on Gale. “Just like the useless princess.”
As Gale and Silhouette launched into a battle of diving and blasting of spells and feral kicks, I waved down Blizzard. When she was within earshot, I nodded. “Mercury freezes when it gets very cold; it will be hard, but I hope your ice magic can do what we need.” At her confusion, I sighed. “Another name for quicksilver.”
“But I can’t… I just make ice in drinks, or snowballs. I’m not like Aunt Typhoon.”
Gale’s horn kept glowing at the far side of the room as I watched the two blurry figures that were my oldest enemy and perhaps my closest friend. Nevertheless, rather than magic, Gale lunged in and out of range with Silhouette, focusing her attacks on punching the larger, stronger mare. Over and over I watched her stagger as she took a blow from Silhouette’s natural hoof to avoid being impaled by her freakish metal limb.
“We are going to die,” I snapped, squinting as I tried to fight off the dizziness of the pure quicksilver fumes. “So if you feel like trying the worst that will happen is that nothing changes. I’ll try and hold her still. Graargh, you okay?”
“Am pissed,” Graargh answered, limping forward. I noticed that, will still not scabbed over, the wound on his shoulder seemed to have closed rather quickly. “Bad fuck get smash.”
“Graargh…” I sighed, giving up on correcting him mid-battle. “I’ll try and hold her magic arm with my magic. Maybe rip it off completely. You just tackle her and pin her down, okay?”
Graargh roared and charged.
Silhouette seemed unprepared for the bear to have re-entered the fight so quickly, and took one of Gale’s hooves square to the jaw when she turned in surprise at the sudden noise. Silhouette’s hoof took its claw form again, and lashed out at Gale’s jaw. The semi-liquid metal stopped short when Gale’s magic raised Ensis to parry.
“Sneaky,” Silhouette observed, then turned again to watch Graargh. The grizzly leapt to pounce on her, and rather than jumping away, Silhouette threw herself onto the floor toward him. The icy stone made it easy for her to slide beneath Graargh’s claws, and she rose to her hooves easily by digging an avian talon into the ice.
I saw my opening, and lit my horn. Silhouette desperately hurled herself at my face, but I knew I was faster.
“It’s cold!” Blizzard shouted overhead. “Morty!”
I won’t pretend my perception slowed down, or that I saw my life flash before my eyes. If you decide to pursue the path of a hero, you’ll realize fairly quickly those are mostly storytelling tricks. It isn’t in the heat of battle, on the verge of death, when you make a choice for sacrifice that you see your life flash before your eyes. It’s after the choice is made.
I closed my eyes and turned my magic to the room.
Blocking Wintershimmer’s spell in an area like the large cavern was simple, if you knew what to do. The trick was the power it took. Most ponies try and practice illusion like artists with paint brushes, not pouring out the entire paint can on the canvas. They think of illusion in terms of sight and sound, or if they’re clever, smell and touch and taste. But there are so many more senses to fool. Saturate a room with illusions of attachment, like the bond between a group of good friends trying to save the world in some haunted cave, and Wintershimmer’s spell will mistake the illusion for real souls. Grabbing the soul out of a pony’s body becomes near impossible.
In this case, perhaps more than any other in this story thus far, friendship was literally my magic.
I put so much of myself into the spell that the whole of my left side grew numb. I felt a few pricks as Silhouette’s claw entered my flesh, but I had expected that.
Somewhere above and behind me, I heard an altogether too familiar stallion’s voice. “Leave them!” Wintershimmer ordered. “Take Vow.”
“Over my dead body!” Gale shouted.
I opened my eyes… or rather, just my right; my left, it seems, refused me. Looking down my muzzle, I saw why.
Blizzard’s magic had finally shown up, raising a block of ice around half my body and most of Silhouette’s claw. She’d only barely grazed me. Growling, Silhouette yanked her foreleg, and with a ripple and a crack, her limb came free.
“Graargh,” I called. “Stop her!”
Above and behind me, where I could not turn to look with half my body frozen, Wintershimmer spoke. “I am growing tired of your interference, Coil. This will be your tomb.”
While I couldn’t see him directly, I could see overhead. I saw Wintershimmer’s golden magic fly from what had to be a candlecorn body straight up to the ceiling.
I saw the stone crack and groan.
Silhouette rushed over to Vow’s frozen body, and with brutal blows, she hacked at the ice. Soon, the dead wizard had been reduced to a mass that could be carried, and Wintershimmer’s golden magic lifted him from the floor. Both the corpse and Silhouette disappeared in flashes of Wintershimmer’s magic, just as the first few pony-sized stones dropped from the cave ceiling.
“Blizzard, let him go!” Gale ordered, looking at me.
“There’s no time!”
“Fuck that!” Gale shouted, sliding to a stop next to me. Her hoof smashed the ice off of my face—in practice, punching me in the face—and she went to work on my side. “I’m not putting up with any self-sacrifice shit right now. We’ve gotta catch Wintershimmer.”
“Teleport me,” I told her. “You don’t need to break the ice.”
“You sure?”
“Just do it.”
Gale lit her horn, and one pop later, we were both standing up on top of the ramp leading out of the cavern. An enormous, cottage sized stone smashed into the center of the ritual circle below us. “Come on!”
“But Graargh—” My protest was proven worthless when the bear scraped his claws onto the steep wall of the ramp, using it to run straight up the almost vertical wall and reach us. “We run!”
“Quite, Master Coil,” Angel agreed. As we all started sprinting with Angel and Blizzard hovering overhead in the increasingly narrow tunnel that shuddered around us. “How do you cross the broken bridge?”
“I don’t know!” I answered, sprinting headlong toward the gap somewhere ahead anyway. “Graagh, go back to being small again. Let Blizzard carry you. If we have to, I’ll teleport Gale and I across.”
“That would be your third spell after I refilled your mana, Master Coil.”
“I can count, Angel. But unless you have a better option—”
“Not get small,” Graargh announced. “Morty, Gale on back now. Jump.”
I turned to Gale, who shrugged even as she ran. We both skidded to a halt, and Graargh lowered his scratched shoulder to let us on. I had to put my chin all the way against his fur not to scrape my head on the ceiling of the tunnel at that point, but I was impressed to see just how fast a grizzly could sprint when he set his mind to it.
Compared to the buildup, I barely noticed the jump. Graargh came at it like a demon, bounding along at a full on sprint, and ran out onto the crumbling spur of the ruined bridge before he jumped. Though the weight of all three of us destroyed the stonework, it held long enough to send us soaring through the open air over the deep chasm, and a moment later, we lurched to a stop on the far side.
As Graargh panted with exertion, a horrible crack issued from behind us. When we turned, the tunnel we had just escaped on the far side of the chasm collapsed completely onto itself.
“You saved us, Graargh,” I told him as I slipped off his back.
“Family do,” Graargh answered, shrinking down to a more comfortable size. “Tired now.”
“You fucking deserve it, kid,” Gale agreed, patting him on the back. “Where the hell did Wintershimmer and Silhouette go?”
“Down the chasm, I’d bet,” I told her, staring into the abyss below us. “He can’t exactly run out on the street carrying a frozen war criminal.”
“But that fall would kill anypony.” Blizzard nervously hovered by the edge.
I nodded. “If you let gravity point the way it’s supposed to. But Wintershimmer was the one who taught me how to change gravity’s direction. He might as well have just slid down the wall, or even walked. Whatever it is, we can’t follow.”
“So what now?” Gale asked.
“I think we should get out of here,” Blizzard said. “That’s more than enough danger for one day for me. Sorry for panicking there.”
“It’s fine,” I told her. “You came through when it counted. But I can’t leave.”
“Why not?” Graargh asked. “Morty chase on rope?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t get any evidence Wintershimmer was here. Typhoon’s going to point this at me. And you all aren’t exactly going to convince her otherwise.”
“Fuck my sister,” Gale muttered to herself. “Okay. I know a couple places you can hide out for a bit, but Pathfinder knows most of them. And if Ty asks, he’ll probably lead her straight to you.”
“I pretend,” Graargh offered.
“How is that going to…” My voice trailed off as I remembered exactly what those words meant. “Graargh, are you serious?”
He nodded. “I pretend Morty good.”
“Master Coil is a good stallion,” Angel countered. “There’s no need to pretend that.”
“No,” Graargh answered, shaking his head. Then he stepped back from the group and smiled. Green flames wrapped around his body.
And then, standing before me, I saw the most handsome stallion who has ever lived. Sparkling blue eyes and a white-toothed grin that would entrance anypony with a functioning set of eyes decorated a frosty coat and a pale blue mane.
“Holy shit,” Gale muttered. “You can turn into other ponies?”
“You should see him do Celestia.” I nodded. “That’s pretty good, Graargh.”
“Not Graargh,” a suave controlled voice replied. “Morty.”
“Right, grammar.” I rubbed a hoof against my temple.
Gale chuckled to herself. “Graargh, that’s pretty good, but you have to smile cockier. Like you’ve just taken a huge bite of your own shit, and you actually like the taste.”
“Gale!” I protested.
The corner of Graargh’s lips nevertheless rose into a passable imitation of my best grin.
Blizzard stepped forward. “Now use some big words. Even if they’re made up. Make sure everypony knows you’re smarter than they are.”
I felt my mouth hang open at the brutal assault. “Blizzard, really?”
“Loquaciousness,” Graargh muttered to himself, and then smiled. “Am most important. Am hero.”
That stung more than I was willing to admit at the time.
Angel hovered closer to the colt. “Now all you need to do is mock somepony else whenever you need to hide one of your own insecurities.”
I very calmly walked to the side of the tunnel, where I proceeded to hit my face against the stone wall. “My own golem…”
“He your golem,” Graargh noted in my perfect voice. “But you his bitch.”
“Oh shit!” Gale wrapped a foreleg around Graargh’s back. “Kid, you’re a better Morty than he is! Nice!”
“He still can’t speak Equiish…” I pointed out.
“He’ll be fine,” Gale told me. “Here, give him your vest and that shirt. That should get Typhoon off your back for a day or two while you figure out where Wintershimmer went.”
“I know exactly where he went.” I sighed, slipping off my close and handing them to my dopplegänger. “The only place even worse for me than Everfree City right now. He’ll need his workshop, in the Crystal Union. We’ll need to sneak in.”
“Oh. Shit. Um… okay.” Gale nodded, seemingly to convince herself that her plan made sense. “I’ll see if I can pull a few favors, and I’ll talk to Aunt Celestia. She believes you, and she’ll believe me, even if we have to keep the plan secret from Mom and Dad and Ty. I’ll get you a room at an inn, and then I’ll come get you once things are figured out. Blizzard can bring Graargh back to the palace; hopefully he won’t give himself away too fast.”
I replied with a nod of my own, though I fear it might not have been the most confident I ever offered. “That sounds like the best plan we have. But remember, we need to hurry. Once Wintershimmer gets back with Silhouette, we’ll only have a day or so before he takes over her body, and I don’t know what he’ll do with her soul when it’s no longer useful.”
Blizzard nodded to me, and wrapped a wing over my back. “Stay safe, Morty.”
“I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything.” I matcher her hug, then turned to Graargh. Stars, he was handsome like that. I had to shake my head to remind myself he was still a foal. Instead, I put a hoof on his now vested shoulder. “Good luck. Remember, if they do decide to execute me, don’t keep up the act. I don’t want you dying for me.”
“Not need luck,” Graargh answered. “I Morty.”
Everypony laughed at that for a good few seconds, and when it was done, I felt like I could take a deep breath again for the first time since our battle. “Angel?”
“Yes, Master Coil?”
“Help him be me as best you can. I don’t have the time or the magic to refill you, or I’d take you with me.”
“All the same, Master Coil, I’m glad. I always feel so vulnerable facing off against that inequine monstrosity without a body of my own. Blizzard, Gr—er, Master Coil, shall we go?”
“We go,” Graargh answered.
I watched my three companions wander into the depths of the tunnel together, leaving Gale and I alone at the edge of the abyss. I sighed, glancing toward her.
Gale kissed me, square on the lips, and held the embrace for a few long moments of restraint before I felt her tongue pushing forward. I was so shocked I just let her work, though it only lasted a few seconds longer. She smiled as she broke away. “Alright, let’s see what I can do.”
I’ll spare you an account of the next few hours, as they were mostly rather dull. Gale checked me in to a room at a nearby inn and then rushed off before we could really talk about anything. The next day, in lieu of personally arriving, I was woken by a knock at the door and a young colt carrying a short letter. Of course, this was terribly useless to me, but the innkeeper was able to read me its directions. After a few trips down wrong streets, I reached a small coach house.
Gale was waiting for me, leaning against the outside door in a surprisingly formal gown.
“Good morning, Morty. Sleep well?”
“I’ve been better” I told her, following her gesture to follow. “You?”
Gale brushed a hoof across her chest—and it was then I realized that she was wearing a surprisingly formal gown despite her protests about the garments from the previous evening. “Shitty.”
“Did Graargh get caught?” I asked nervously.
“No! Well, sort of… but Aunt Luna’s going along with the act.”
“What? Is he safe?”
“Just give me one second,” Gale ordered, gesturing into the coach house door. Then, abruptly, she turned and ran down the street. With no better plan, I stepped through the door after her.
Commander Typhoon’s personal skywagon sat in front of me, midway through the process of being attached to leads and tack. Polished wood and skysteel accents made for a formidable display of military might that seemed unlikely to pass unnoticed if we landed it outside the city and snuck our way past the walls.
“Oh, joy. Morty. So you’re who they’re trading in.” Tempest ran a wing down his cheek, massaging his temple. “Well, that explains why Mom and Lady Celestia were being so coy. If this trip ends in me chasing you and Gale across half of Equestria again, I’m going to kill you.”
“Wait, what? Tempest?” I frowned at the tired stallion, who just rolled his eyes at my response. “I’m surprised you’re coming with us.”
“Orders are orders,” he replied, making me raise a brow. His wing extended toward the pegasi in armor slowly preparing to hitch themselves into formation at the head of the wagon. “Here, meet the rest of the crew. That’s my marefriend, Wallflower, in the left lead position.”
The timid, silver-maned mare smiled at me, and I wondered if she knew that Tempest had cheated on her with Silhouette. “Hello.”
“Mortal Coil, at your service. But my friends call me Morty.”
Tempest groaned. “Behind her, that’s Gray Rain. The big mare next to him is Shimmering Rain. You know Blizzard, of course.”
At the mention of her name, Cyclone’s daughter briefly stopped fiddling with the chin strap of her helmet and looked up at me. “Oh. Hi, Morty!”
“You’re coming with us?”
“I wanted to see the Crystal Union, and Aunt Typhoon said it was okay.”
“Typhoon—” I bit my tongue before pressing for any further information; whatever Typhoon knew, it was obvious Gale had lied to her about the intentions of our journey. “Alright, fair enough.”
“And last, the old guy in the corner there, that’s Dusk Watch."
"The one with the warhammer?"
"Yeah... Wait, what?” Tempest spun. “Damn it, Dusk, I told you no weapons."
"Boy, you and your marefriend up there might be good wingponies when I'm looking for a mare or two at the bar, but I’ve been fighting crystals since before I was your age. If you think I'm going into their capital unarmed you've got another thing coming."
Whatever greeting I might have offered was cut off pretty quickly when Gale returned to the room, panting. “Alright, Tempest, she’ll be here in a minute or two. Come on, Morty.” And with that incredibly brief explanation she hopped into the wagon. I cast a brief glance to Tempest, who shrugged unhelpfully. Answering with a shrug of my own, I then proceeded to climb up into the familiar cushioned cabin of the wagon.
Gale nervously fiddled with some sort of brooch on the collar of her jacket. When I took a seat opposite her, she shut the door with her magic.
“How are you proposing we sneak eight ponies and a full size carriage into the Crystal Union?” I demanded, leaning forward.
“Well, that’s not how it worked out.” Gale sighed. “And it’s a fucking miracle I got away with what I did. Apparently, I’m now Equestria’s ambassador to the Crystal Union. As far as Mom and Ty know, we’re returning Silhouette’s body. Which means I have to smile for Queen Jade and say sorry about everything that happened, and wear this fucking awful dress.”
“You really hate dresses, don’t you?”
“I also hate wasting time saying obvious shit.” Gale groaned and let go of the brooch. “Fuck it, I’ll never get this shit comfortable. But yeah, we’re going to actually get into the city proper. So I got you some legionary armor. If you lift up the cushion of the seat you’re sitting on, it’s under there. Hopefully that covers you up enough that Queen Jade won’t notice.”
“Or literally anypony else? Remember, I was kind of a big deal in the Union.”
Gale stared at me blankly for a moment before shaking her head. “Are you deaf to your own fucking voice? Who says that with a straight face?”
“That’s not what I meant. My point is I was almost hung publicly there. Literally everypony on the street will recognize me. Even with a helmet, a handsome face is fairly distinct.”
Gale groaned, though her next curse-laden complaint was prevented by the door to the wagon swinging open.
“I’m sorry I took so long; ‘Cane insisted on offering me a salad and some of his homebrewed ale before I left the villa, and I can never seem to say no to him.”
The goddess Celestia stepped into the wagon, notably shifting its balance. She was clad in a flowing garment somewhere between a dress and a a jacket, and I noted that beneath it she wore a shimmering golden peytral so wide as to border on a breastplate. Before I could even express my shock, her horn set a long slender bundle on the seat cushion beside me. “I have Procellarum there for you, Gale. When your father asks, you stole it again. I wasn’t involved. Hopefully that’s enough for whatever you’re planning.”
I just stared at her, slack jawed, as Celestia took her seat beside Gale (along with a sizable portion of Gale’s seat). Finally, quirking a brow, she addressed me directly. “Something wrong, Morty? Did you think Luna and I were just for decoration?”