The final room was just as cold and metal as the staircase room leading up to Morena's nursery, great bricks of gray concrete the size of cowering ponies forming the walls. Pipes were everywhere, draped and dangling and never quite straight, woven into a mesh that looked almost organic and partially covered the walls and ceiling. In the center of the room was a square pit, and two golden chains from a winch in a recess in the roof dangled into it, descending out of sight.
"What the...?" Valey gaped. "One, that pit is bad news, and two, this architectural style is..." She swallowed. "Well, it would be pretty cool if it was possible to make without also meaning bad news, but this place gives me the creeps."
"Valey?" Maple shivered, staring around the room at the various exposed chains and gears along the walls. "I think I want to go back..."
"Stay a while and watch," Morena's voice came from behind them, and there was a metallic crunch. Valey whirled to see her hoof on a golden wall switch, freshly thrown, and with a squeal of unoiled steel the gears about the room began to turn. Above, the winch shuddered, and slowly, the chains rose.
Valey kept a healthy distance between herself and the edge of the pit, air rising from it as something moved upward in the depths. Metal clattered and wheels turned, and the chains finally showed their ends, affixed to the top of a giant golden ring that hung upright, stretching from edge to edge of the hole. Inside the ring were two more chains, bound from the top corners toward the center, and when that came into view, she heard Maple gasp.
It was a throne, and the chains were shackles, holding the forelegs of the mare within out sideways, spread like wings. Her hind legs were clamped to the throne's back, leaving her upright, dangling, and barely able to stand, let alone sit... yet still, she was smiling.
"Mama!" the sky-blue earth pony chirped, forelegs spread wide like she wanted a hug. "You brought visitors!"
"What the...?" Valey breathed, staring. The mare looked barely twenty, with a broad, bubbly smile, and made a cheerful attempt to wave that sent her shackles rattling. Strapped against the throne's backboard around her waist, she was imprisoned like a criminal hanging from the wall of a dungeon, yet didn't seem to have a care in the world.
Stone-faced, Morena said nothing, waiting in the background. "...This is your kid?" Valey asked with concern. "The one you and Wallace talked about? Who you had when he met you?"
Still, she got no reply. "Come on, Mama," the mare chained to the ring giggled, smiling with her teeth and refusing to open her eyes. "Introduce me to your friends!"
"Who in Herman's hairy armpit are you?" Valey growled, the platform the ring stood upon filling the hole perfectly and allowing her to walk as close as she dared. "And why are you in there? I don't like this..."
"Hiya," the imprisoned mare replied, perfectly content with her chains. "I'm Puddles. Morena's my mama! Did you come to visit me? It's pretty lonely down here in the dark."
"Puddles, huh?" Valey breathed. "You know, normally I'd say you're pretty cute. Like, exactly my type. It's disconcerting. But I've been smelling something bad all night, this room reeks of it, and you're the only thing here. What's going on, and why are you chained up?"
Puddles drooped slightly, still not opening her eyes. "I have a condition. They say it makes me need to be restrained, but I think the doctors and scientists just don't like me. Will you let me go?"
Bristling, Valey stepped back. "This is a pretty sinister-looking hospital machine for restraining a patient, and probably unethical, too. It looks more like a torture device, or a prison for some monster. So maybe you should tell me more, first, about what you're doing here..."
"Aww." Puddles drooped, then perked back up. "That's what everyone says. Mama won't let me go either, but I know she loves me. But you thought I was cute, though, right?" Her grin widened again, cheerful and innocent. "Wanna give me a hug? I never get to touch anything but this metal, and you look warm and fuzzy."
"Morena..." Maple whined, eyes far too wide. "What is this? What's going on?"
"Yeah, that's what I'd like to know," Valey agreed. "And sorry, but even if your mom wasn't watching, the fact that you can't seem to recognize how unusual this situation is is so suspicious, I wouldn't touch you with a ten-foot pole. Morena! We've seen this girl, so tell us what you wanted to say."
Morena sat by the door, her own eyes closed as well, and finally broke her silence. "That's enough. They clearly have no interest in playing with you."
"Aww, Mama," Puddles sighed. "Well, if you insist..."
Suddenly, with a flash of cold light, the imprisoned mare's eyes split open. Frosty and blue, they had irises but no pupils, and the mere act of being looked at lowered Valey's body temperature by several degrees. "What-!?" She stepped back in alarm, nearly tripping.
"Graaah hah hah..." Puddles laughed, voice suddenly emanating from every corner of the room at once and very definitely not belonging to a mare. "That's too bad. She really does yearn for physical contact beyond the pushing and prodding of curious scientists. But you weren't even willing to play the game long enough for her to get some measure of solace out of it. Too bad she scares everyone who would ever be nice to her away..."
Morena swallowed, watching with an expression almost as cold as Puddles', dormant fury behind her violet eyes.
"So then, visitors," Puddles chuckled, a glacier collapsing somewhere within her new metallic voice and sending out a rumble of thunder that felt like real wind. "The catbird's out of the bag. Surprise? Do you know what I am?" Her head snaked from side to side, the only part of her body that could move despite the chains. "Hate me yet? Or do you blame someone else for doing this to her, and hate them instead? Speak up! I hate carrying this conversation all by myself."
"Bananas," Valey hissed, crouched like she was weathering a gale. "I know where I've smelled you before! In the Sky District, on the night of the storm!"
Maple blinked in realization, standing straighter before the eldritch mare. "You're a windigo..."
"Wrong answer! How dare you be wrong!?" Puddles snarled, straining forward against her chains with a rictus grin. "I'm a sweet little innocent mare possessed by a windigo! Or more accurately, a windigo chained to the empty, soulless husk of the mare that once was Puddles!"
"A windigo? You can talk!?" Starlight gasped, stepping forward.
"Oh, I can talk, alright," Puddles said, leering at her. "You want to know what else I can do? I can hear her wriggling around in this pathetic pony body, screaming wordlessly at you to flee. Get out of here! Run, run away, don't let it turn you against your friends and all you hold dear! Graaah hah hah! So what are you going to do, filly? Leave her here to suffer and save yourself like she wants?"
Valey looked ready to punch her and Maple looked ready to cry, but Starlight pushed past both of them, planting a forehoof on the edge of the chain platform with a crackle of magic and locking the windigo's eyes with her own. "Talk all you want," she hissed, "because you won't be able to for much longer! I've killed far more windigoes than you in a single shot. I don't know where you came from or how you got inside her, but that won't stop me from killing you, too."
"Ooooh, you're spunky," Puddles praised, not needing to move her mouth to form the words. "You hate me already. Delicious. Want to be friends? Talk to your pals over there like that and we'll be in business!"
"You..." Shaking, Maple stepped up as well, eyes harder than Starlight had seen them since her house was destroyed in Riverfall. "Whatever you are..." Snarling, she flung herself at Puddles with her forelimbs outstretched. "Leave her alone!"
"GYAAAAAURRRGH!" Puddles roared, struggling and flailing against her chains as Maple made contact. There was a spark of pink and a crackle of energy, but in less than a second it was gone, and Maple fell back, having nothing more to offer and leaving Puddles limp and hanging.
"Ah..." Morena held her breath, blinking.
"Sorry," Maple murmured, getting back to her hooves. "I was almost out after getting our ship the last few miles to Stormhoof. That's all I had..."
Puddles slumped in her chains, head lolling, looking briefly unconscious. Then she twitched.
"...Mom?" she groaned, lifting her head and blinking, once again speaking with a mare's voice. Her eyes still lacked pupils, but something about her demeanor seemed different. "I'm...?"
"Grrrrr!" She interrupted herself with a snarl, resuming her intensity. "That was a dirty trick! What did you do!?"
"I found out whether there's someone else in there," Maple ground out, meeting the creature's eyes. "And now I know."
Windigo Puddles grinned. "Do you, now? Want to hear my dirty trick?" Winking, she let out a shriek and spasmed again, slowly coming to with a groan.
"It's me," Puddles whispered in her own voice, not managing the strength to lift her head... until she did. "The windigo! Surprise! Grah hah hah hah hah! Want to know a terrible secret?" She rolled her neck around, head flopping from side to side. "There's no one in here but me! It's an empty shell. Too bad. Like my acting? Or do you hate it? And guess which I prefer. Oh, and want to know a better secret?" Her eyes blazed. "That secret isn't terrible at all! It's pretty much the best thing ever! GRAAAAAAAAA-"
Ch-tunkkk! Morena kicked the lever, sending the room rattling as the winch unwound and lowered the platform back into the depths, taking the captive monstrosity with it. She watched it go, just as stone-faced as when they had arrived, but this time it wasn't fooling anyone. Valey sighed, and Starlight and Maple did too.
"That's what you needed to see," Morena whispered, back to them as she opened the exit door. "There's no point in staying further. Come. I'll explain everything where it's more comfortable."
Morena shut the door behind them with a clang, sealing Starlight, Maple, Valey and Jamjars out of the containment room. "Have a seat," she instructed, and Starlight saw that Wallace was there as well.
Her heartrate almost seemed to speed up as the adrenaline faded and the warmer, more welcoming room slid fully into her perception, like it had forgotten to beat while she was in the windigo's presence and only now was catching up. She could finally focus on more than the shackles, the throne and the thing on them, and fell against Maple, head spinning.
"So that was your daughter, huh?" Valey remarked, tone cool and still.
"Was," Morena said. "Once."
Wallace inclined his head, and said nothing.
"Can I ask what happened?" Maple breathed.
"You have every right to know, though it's hardly an inspirational tale," Wallace told her, voice gruff and resigned. "Morena raised her daughter from birth as part of our exploration team. Puddles grew up on the road, and took to it like a glutton to a pancake house. From the moment she could talk, she loved stories, the sky, the horizon, and the thrill of seeing new places. Our way of life meant she could never put down roots and call someplace home, aside from at our sides and the ship we traveled in. She took to that, too, and found joy in hellos rather than sadness in goodbyes."
"As young as five, she was adventuring with us," Morena continued, taking over. "We kept to safer locales, but she was just thrilled to carry her own food and water. By your age, she was smart enough and strong enough to actually contribute instead of being a liability." She nodded at Starlight and Jamjars. "Able to understand and weigh risks, and survive with us in dangerous locations. We started taking her with us on more difficult quests, and she couldn't have liked it more. None of us could have. They were our happiest days as adventurers."
"But then..." Wallace glared at the floor. "We were on an arctic expedition near the edge of the eastern mountains of Yakyakistan, about five or six years ago, and had stopped to dig a mana well and refuel our ship. Puddles left to collect snow that we could use to melt and replenish our water supplies. It should have been a short errand, but she grew later and later, and we became worried. After nearly an hour, she returned, holding her eyes tightly shut. She said she had suffered an accident and refused to talk about it, retreating and locking herself in her room. It was difficult terrain, and we were all concerned."
"I went alone to talk to her, after we were flying again," Morena went on. "She let me in, since I was alone. When I pressed on what had happened, she said Diego caught her while she had her guard down and blinded her with shards of ice, then tried to abandon her. Diego had been off on a different errand while she was away, and he joined our team several years after Wallace and I founded it. Of course he said he didn't do it, but we had known Puddles since birth. Diego was... just like me. A punk off the road Wallace had inspired and given a second chance. We didn't like it, but we made a choice on who to trust, and it was her."
Wallace nodded sadly. "We consulted our instruments and turned south, stranding him in a remote mountainside colony of Yakyakistan left off of official maps and then flying east, hoping to find a qualified doctor in Ironridge to see to her vision. Puddles continued to refuse to show us her eyes, hiding reclusively in her room, and one night when I came to her alone, she confessed she was afraid of Morena too. Her background was not all that different from Diego's, and she, too, had once been set upon a wayward path before being inspired to better heights. However, rather than take hasty action, I shared this with Morena, and she couldn't believe her ears."
"I knew Puddles," Morena growled. "Two adventures before that, a crampon she was using broke because I didn't notice a hairline fracture when checking it. Wallace caught her after a twenty-foot fall, and rather than being terrified or resentful she accepted it instantly as a hazard of adventuring and didn't even realize I had done anything that needed to be forgiven. Her worldview was one that trusted us completely, and while I'm not saying it's impossible to change something like that, doing it would have left her a lot more ungrounded and in search of stability than she was. She told Wallace she trusted him and not me. Why, because I had once done less-than-savory things with my life? Anything that could break her trust in me would break her trust in him as well. We both knew it, and we told her."
"Then right before our eyes, she changed," Wallace choked. "Her voice grew deep and metallic, and seemed to come from everywhere but her throat! She laughed at us and mocked us for not spotting her sooner, and belittled our trust in her for our allowing it to form a rift between ourselves and our companion. When she opened her eyes, they were like you saw in there. We tried to fight her, but even as a mere teenager, she was able to overpower Morena. Her strength was inequine. Fortunately, so is mine, and I was able to subdue her after a lengthy scuffle. We bound her in chain because rope would not hold her, and nothing we did seemed capable of rendering her unconscious."
Closing his own eyes, he went on, mustache completely free of crinkles. "With holes in our hearts, we returned to Yakyakistan to look for Diego. She tried to trick him when we brought him on board, attempting to convince him we had tied her up because she had learned a fell secret and were plotting to do away with them both. Fortunately, we had discussed the situation before, and were able to trick her into outing herself once again. Her effort to tear our team asunder had failed, yet we were still down our most eager and beloved member."
Morena took over, getting up and standing without pacing, a wooden block rolling agitatedly beneath her hoof. "We were at a loss. Going back and searching the area around our well turned up nothing, though it wasn't a very thorough search since we knew something capable of possessing my daughter was nearby. Our search for an answer took us around the world, though wartime Varsidel had no healing and Ironridge only cared about air commerce. It was Yakyakistan or the Empire, and there was one thing here we knew for a fact: win the yearly fighting tournament, and you get a wish granted by Garsheeva herself. Wallace had won it once before, over a decade ago. He'd gotten older, but had a far better cause to fight for, so it was really a question of whether we wanted to gamble that Garsheeva is stronger than whatever's taken over Puddles."
"Entering the tournament isn't a simple business," Wallace continued. "Young Valey, you're doing it through the back door of a Golden Regent, but to some, that's the easy way. Twelve hundred fighters are admitted to round one, one hundred nominations by each of the twelve houses. That's a lot, and yet very little. To compete, you must earn the backing of a noble line. Some sell their sponsorships to the highest bidders. Others hire warriors to fight for them, receiving a wage regardless of their championship but in turn relinquishing the wish to their lord should they succeed. Fortunately, we had star power on our side, and it seemed everyone wanted to cut us a deal even as we kept Puddles and her condition a secret."
"But then we came to Izvaldi," Morena said. "Izvaldi isn't on the map for a lot of the other provinces. It's the backwater, the middle of nowhere, and we hadn't realized just what kinds of public works projects Percival's administration had been working on in our years abroad. Namely, this hospital. We met with Percival and Chauncey, and decided to show them what we had and tell them everything."
"Chauncey in particular was vocal about helping Puddles," Wallace grunted, glancing back at the door to the containment room. "Percival was more interested in the business side of things. He wanted to know if we would fight for Izvaldi and grant his wish if we won, in exchange for the full and financially free weight of every resource he had to offer in restoring Puddles to herself again. His wish is a sensible one: to become a sphinx in the eyes of the law, allowed to continue ruling once his grandfather passes away so that he might continue his work here. It was a choice between two hope-fueled attempts to do the same thing..."
"We accepted Percival's offer," Morena finished, "and Puddles is here now. As a show of faith, Chauncey immediately took a team of scientists and our navigation systems to find the exact spot where the incident occurred, though they returned empty-hooved. They work around the clock to find something that can be done for her, and in return we fight, and act to promote Izvaldi's reputation across the Empire. So there you have it." She folded her forelegs and sighed. "That's what we'd wish for if we won, why we stick with Izvaldi, and why we've never talked about my daughter."
Wallace nodded, rumbling deep in his throat. "Two wishes. To cure my best friend's daughter: the way of love. To repay the greatest debt ever done to me by an administration: the way of honor. Both may someday result in us seeing Puddles' smile again, but should I ever get the chance, I am not looking forward to having to choose. Now you see the things others have to fight for against which your own resolve will be tested."
For several minutes, the room was silent, like Wallace and Morena hadn't really finished. "I'm so sorry," Maple whispered. "Is... Is she still in there at all? When I shocked her..."
"That is something on which we differ," Wallace sadly told her. "I believe so. There is no excuse to give up hope, and until Chauncey's scientists discover otherwise, I refuse to accept it. But Morena..."
"You saw what it was like," Morena sniffed, her iron composure ruined but not yet destroyed. "Talking to it for five minutes. Too much time with that thing can drive even the sturdiest soul insane, and faster if you're alone. It nearly broke apart our own group, and we were forged through the kind of fire that consumes entire countries. If Puddles is in there, suffering and alone with only it for company, I'll sit in that room in solidarity until I lose myself as well. But if she's gone, then nothing matters. And if there's one thing I know about my daughter, it's that she wouldn't approve of me breaking my spirit over her. She's told me to run in the face of danger before. So I do what I have to to survive, and if we all come out on the other side, she'll forgive me for it."
"I'm more curious on your opinions on the matter!" Wallace boomed, vigor suddenly returning. "You are the heroes of Ironridge, are you not? We struggle to save one mare from these things, but you rescued an entire city from their clutches and destroyed them in the process! You are the experts here, not us. So we ask you humbly, as citizens in need of aid: do you think there is hope for young Puddles?"
"I..." Maple swallowed. "I don't know. Both of the times we've used harmonic energy before, it nearly killed us, and right now we're out anyway and would have to go back to Ironridge to get more. I have no idea how it would be possible or whether we could do it, but that thing at least looked hurt when I used the last bit I had to shock it. There might be a chance?" Her face turned up in hope, mixed with the fear of making a promise she couldn't keep.
"Might be?" Starlight stomped. "There is. And we'll find it. I didn't need the crystal palace in Ironridge to kill the windigoes there, just to survive doing it! There were eight then, and there's one now. We can focus energy, or... something. Shinespark will figure something out when she arrives. And I'm going to talk to that windigo again someday. There's more it can tell us about what happened and how to undo it, and it just needs to be tricked into it like you said it could be!"
Morena gave her a wry grin. "There's some optimism for you, kid. No talking to it alone, though; that's a hard rule with no exceptions."
"And how about you, young Valey?" Wallace asked, turning to where the batpony sat hunched. "You haven't said a thing throughout this entire tale! What's your take on it?"
Valey didn't look up, face covered by the shadow of her dangling emerald bang. Both forehooves were wrapped around her chest, touching the center of a golden pendant with a black stone. "Eh, nothing," she whispered, the emotion missing from her voice like a beach missing water that was being sucked out for a tsunami. "Just getting some ideas. I've got a call to make, but I'm pretty sure I know now what I'm really wishing for if I win this tournament."
"Oh?" Wallace's eyebrows rose, intrigued.
"Yeah," Valey breathed, lifting her head until her eyes were barely visible, sharp and green and ready to burn. "I've got one question for you guys, though. This colony you were near when it happened; the one where you stranded Diego... What are the odds it was called Icereach?"