The last heavy cable thunked smoothly into its jack, and Live Wire turned it until she heard the satisfying click of the lock engaging. After applying a bit of weatherproof sealant from her back, she flapped her wings and landed on the cloud hovering over the transformers.
Los Pegasus spread before them, lit only with the occasional set of electric lamps and quite a lot of oil. With a slight, satisfied smile, she waved her wing at the stallion next to her. “Let there be light, Mister Mayor.”
Rubbing his hooves together, the older pegasus stallion wearing the sash of office took the big, red lever in hoof and shoved with all his weight, pushing it up and completing the circuit at the main station.
Generators hummed to life, thundering as enchanted dynamos spun in steady power and the big thunder generators muffled in the cloud started sparkling, striking spiny towers.
All across Los Pegasus, newly wired lights flickered on, bringing gasps from groups of waiting citizens, the applause of stamping hooves.
“I can't believe it. Every cloud, every district, and we didn't even need to put a generator in every house.” The mayor turned to her, beaming. “After the whole mess with the alicorn amulet nearly sinking us, I thought L.P. was toast, but you've brought hope back for us. I still can't believe we don't need cables or wires or anything.”
Blushing, Live Wire ducked her head behind a wing. “It's just wireless transmission, with enchanted detectors to make sure no one flies into them and least-cost routing algorithms.” She giggled nervously. “I was just doing my job, Mister Mayor.”
“Well, you've done it beyond satisfaction. Let it never be said that a goblin didn't contribute to our fair city.”
The cheer in Live Wire shriveled up, and she bit back an angry retort, her accent slipping in. “Aye, well... s'pose I'd better get home. Been up late.”
“Of course, of course. The rest of your payment should clear by morning. Congratulations, Live Wire.”
He looked a little offended when she slipped from the cloud without so much as a farewell, but Wire didn't care. She didn’t understand how he could have known, unless maybe he had done a background check on her, but the Princesses had promised her a clean slate so that didn’t seem likely.
It ate at her the whole way, and when she landed on the puffy cloud outside her house, she checked her wings for molting. They were just fine, fluffy and a soft yellow utterly unlike her old mustard color, but it still troubled her as she walked inside.
“Mama!” A little bundle of orange and white slammed into her. “I saw the lights! They were beautiful!”
Laughing, Live Wire scooped in the little bundle of energy and nuzzled between her ears. “Thank you, Kindle. I was thinking of you the whole time, sweetie.”
“That's not true. You were thinking about balancing electrical loads.” Kindle giggled, then frowned as she peered more closely at her mother. “Mama? Your eyes are showing.”
Wire blinked, and took her phone out, checking her reflection in the black mirror of the screen. Sure enough, a pair of slit eyes looked back at her, and she groaned. “Well, there's the mystery of what gave me away solved.”
“Aww... but they're pretty, Mama. I wish I was a goblin.” Kindle kicked the air with her hoof, as if miming kicking a rock.
“I want to be a pony, Kindle. I've been one most of my life now, just like your Auntie Lightning Dust.”
“You were kind of a pony. Mostly a pony.” Kindle headbutted her barrel affectionately. “What's so wrong with being a goblin? Are goblins bad?”
Live Wire did what she did best: wibbled. “We-well, bairn, I mean, no-nothin' really, it's just that it really didn' suit me and I'm happy and accepted here.”
“So if I wanted to be a goblin, that'd be tidy?”
Wire sighed and tucked her in under her chin. “Yes, my wee precious flame. If you really wanted to be a goblin, I'd not be angry.”
Kindle said nothing for a while, hooves tucked up against her mother. “Could I hear a story, Mama? About when you were a goblin?”
Perking her ears, Live Wire smiled. “All right. Did you eat your dinner?” At Kindle's serious nod she nosed her to the stairs. "Go wash up and get ready for bed, then, I'll be right up.”
Live Wire paused in the living room, going over to the picture frames. They shifted through her photos every few minutes, and just then one had settled on a picture of her with the Crusaders in their caps and gowns from Canterlot U. Amelia was there, too, smiling in the form of a pegasus their size instead of an alicorn – even if she hadn't graduated or attended.
With warmth filling her, she trotted upstairs and entered her filly's room in time for her to tuck her damp body up on her fluffy cloud bed. She settled in next to her, smoothing her mane with a hoof.
“I've got the perfect story for you, my wee spark. It's the story of how I saved the world. It all began when I’d parted with Amelia – I know I’ve told you this story, right?”
“Uh huh. You called her a bad word.”
“I did! Now, let’s see…”
As Amelia’s sloop pulled away, my heart sank in my chest. For a terrible instant, I wanted very much to fling myself back up and join her. That was the cowardice talking, the terrible weakness that had plagued my entire bloody life and made me the mockery of everygob I ever knew.
Yet, no matter how much I reminded myself of all the terrible things she’d done to me, no matter how terrified I’d been over every waking minute, I couldn’t help but remember how she’d reached out to me, how she’d trusted me, how she looked at me like I mattered instead of being just another stupid lump choking in the depths of the Wand King’s mines.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I turned and threw myself off the side of the building, lightly beating my wings as I clung to the sloped surface of the Cup Palace ziggurat and prayed to all the gods that they wouldn’t spot me. Above, the storming feet of what seemed to be the entire enraged Cup Court charged through, trying and failing to catch the trailing ropes as Amelia’s little craft rocketed away on its lonely little engine. What flyers could get into the air with their banquet weighing them down took off after her, and the rest shouted in their liquid tongues.
I wished terribly that they would have all gone after her, sprouting wings if need be, but if wishes were horses, I’d have the entire Equestrian army crowding the steps of the palace.
Whatever they were saying, a ringing call from within caught their attention, and they piled back in, yawning and cracking joints. For a brief moment, I stared out at the lights of Mag Mell, its ten hundred spires like bare trees rising from the muck and starry Yggdrasil peering through the clouds. “Oh Odin, oh Zeus, oh Hela and Pluto…” I mumbled as I turned away from that wonderful breath of freedom and flapped back up, flying over to one of the high stone windows and crawling through.
Below, shadows danced in the throne room of King Xerxes, a wicked panoply of form and desire. Fires were banked in the great pits, but it only served to make the glow seem more hellish, the dancers more bizarre as a chant rose. Every thunder of the drums turned my bones further to jelly, and my ears were flat against my skull as I forced myself to stay and not to run as every instinct told me. Flash wouldn’t run, Maille wouldn’t run.
I was neither of those people, but, for once in my life, I had something holding me fast.
The chant grew louder and louder as more and more goblins in, raising their voices to echo off the ceiling, the very room itself a vessel to focus their desires. The statues of the gods built into the walls seemed to leer grotesquely in the flickering shadows, watching as two guards brought forth a struggling guard in black Wand armor, a hard-eyed fighter with boar’s tusks and a stiff bristle of hair. The mare who’d chased them into the building watched with the others, laughing and chanting along with them, completely lost to the magic, and only abject terror kept its influence from seeping into me. It was all I could do to stay put.
Xerxes didn’t say a thing – he didn’t need to. Raising the Cup, the sacred vessel, he tilted it and let wine pour from it, seeping down the steps in a torrent. The liquid leapt with the cries, jittering and dancing, and the Wand soldier struggled to pull away, his fear rising above the court for a brief moment before the wine sloshed about his knees and leapt up, coating him, drowning him in red.
When it subsided, boiling away into nothing, a slender, wobbling cervid trembled there, completely and utterly transformed, their eyes wide. Xerxes tilted his head, as if studying his work, and smiled languidly as the deer-like goblin was led away, another humiliated slave to the Cup.
I stuffed a hoof into my mouth to hide the whimpering, not daring to imagine what he’d turn me into if he found me. Casting my gaze about, I tried to spot the Crusaders, and moaned with relief as I found them watching from the upper gallery, stained with food from the banquet. Of course, that didn’t exactly help me get to them without getting caught, but I kept an eye on them as Xerxes raised his free hand.
But for the roar of the bonfires – and the galloping of my own heart – the room became silent in moments. My Cuptongue was nothing to write home about, but he did me the favor of enunciating clearly for his subjects as he spoke. “My children, my friends – the Wand King grows more arrogant by the decade. Nearly forty years he has been in power, and all has passed as Marduk, my dearly beloved predecessor, foresaw.”
He didn’t even bother to hide his smug smile, not with the Cup’s magic amplifying every word. Even I had trouble not falling into it. Quickly, I started thinking about circuit diagrams, designing them in my head and wishing desperately that I could just go back to soldering stolen chips onto homemade boards.
“We were right to break with the Wand, to cast away the Sword and the Ring. The Water Bearer is coming, and she will shatter Nessus’ crown. Ring and Sword will bow to her. And what of Cup? Cup will give her everything she wishes and more, and in so doing bind her with chains of love and desire. What Nessus thinks to win her through trickery, we shall command her through her own all too human weaknesses.”
A deafening cheer hammered me.
“To Aquarius!” he said, raising the Cup. This time, light poured from it, billowing clouds that filled up the sky. “To the Water-Pourer! Hers is the symbol of the vase, and are we not the vessel? We will be the instrument of the New Age, and reign forever supreme!”
“He’s insane!” I hissed, and quickly stuffed a hoof into my mouth to keep from crying out again. That, or he was so deluded by the Cup he thought it really could happen.
Maybe he was right, though, for all I knew. Amelia would upset the order of the universe once she took up the Bridle, if she was indeed the Water Bearer. I knew it in my bones.
On and on the cheer went. Goblins turned red in the face as they shouted to excess. I couldn’t help but remember my nain telling me about Marduk’s court when I was just a little goblin fluffball, how stately and beautiful it had been, how bright with colors that weren’t just crass reds and golds. A strange pity filled my heart as the rising clouds touched me, and for a moment it were as though I could see boyish Xerxes wrapping a cord again and again about Marduk’s once kindly face, already swollen and purple with death.
Shaking myself, I glanced down in time to see the court disperse and the Crusaders follow the streams of goblins leaving, and swallowed past a lump in my throat. It was now or never, and so I leapt and glided through the cloud, using it for added cover in the already shadowed room as I dropped down and did what I do best: blended into the crowd.
The trick is not to make waves, to subtly reassure everyone around you that you’re exactly where you belong and nothing more. Of course, I was no Amelia, and my teeth chattered and my legs knocked the whole way. Were it not for the fact that they were all drunk as goats, I would never even have dared in the first place.
It was completely barmy, but I was doing it. I felt like a proper tidy Wandie, then.
At least, I did, until I rammed face-first into a tiger.
A huge paw slammed down onto my belly and pinned me flat against the ground, and the thundering growl shook me like a leaf. Spots filled my vision and I squeezed my eyes shut, skin white with panic beneath my sallow coat.
The tiger growled something in Cuptongue, and it was all I could to squeak an apology in response. It growled again, and this time I caught it. “Who are you with?” he demanded.
Trembling, I pointed a hoof at the Crusaders, who had stopped at one of the doors to watch. Bodily dragged across the floor, I stifled my whimpers at each little bump in the stones I hit. The corridor was narrow, tapering to a point at the top, and the walls were covered with sanskrit and paintings of Cup figures that stared down at me disapprovingly.
“Is this yours?” He picked me up by the scruff and shoved me at them.
Hulking Apple Bloom turned her head, a bone-crunching ogre-pony with blood-colored eyes. “Is she?”
The hippogriff-thing that Scootaloo had become shrugged. “Sweetie? Do you remember her?”
“Girls, please,” I mumbled. At least my Cuptongue wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. My Ringtongue was nonexistent, and I’d been told that my Swordtongue sounded like someone dying of a terrible disease.
As the tiger’s eyes narrowed and my heart rose up in my throat to strangle me, Sweetie’s crystalline eyes lit up with an inner glow. “Oh. Right! Yes. She’s ours. I remember now.”
With a disappointed noise, her attacker dropped her from his claws in an unceremonious heap and stomped off. At first, I curled up in a paralyzed little ball, but Sweetie nosed me up and I stammered, “You remember me, Sweetie? What about Ame… Moonlight?”
Saying her name was still too hard.
“Not really,” she said in a strangely aristocratic tone. “That ruffian was getting on my nerves, though, and that was hardly any way to treat a young lady.”
“I suppose you can hang with us for a bit.” Scootaloo shrugged. With surprising strength, she hauled me in by one of my wings. We entered a dormitory marked by the powerful snores of goblins made somnolent by their potent food, and it was all I could do not to pass out from the stench of sweat and stranger fluids.
Just as I'd feared, my friends were totally sunk within the magic of the Cup, and worse, the Cup wholly taken by the will of a madman. If I weren't careful, I'd soon join them in blissful ignorance.
The girls led me to a wide, tree-lined balcony looking out over the city. Apple Bloom kicked a bird goblin with ragged feathers from its nest and claimed it for our own. It had the kind of must that your auntie Lightning Dust would work up after a long day, and the memory of that scent just about made me weep on the spot. Ironically, it wouldn't have given me away – where the Wand goblins under old Nessus were cruel and mocked weakness, the Cup reveled in it, and under Xerxes wallowed in it. I could have sobbed and moaned and rended my coat and mane and at worst I'd get a few critiques on technique, some mild irritation, but for once in my gods-damned life I shut my hole and swallowed my tears.
I'd cry plenty in the days to come, don't you fear none.
“So,” Sweetie said, sliding her serpentine tail about herself as she lay, “what's your name, then, person who claims to know us?” Her scales glittered like diamonds, and I was not one to miss how sharp her horn looked.
Rubbing at the lump in my throat, I let it relax before I spoke. “Wire,” I said, managing not to stutter. “My name is Live Wire. We were- we are friends.”
“Well, Wire,” Scootaloo, flexing her claws in the worn cushions, “why don't we remember you, then?”
Here I had to tread carefully. I didn't know the full extent of what the corrupted Cup had done to them, but I knew enough to guess. Anything that looked like direct disloyalty would rouse their ire, and it would shape their personalities to twisted versions of themselves. That led me to some possibilities, but I would have to be clever.
I'd have to be cunning, just like she had been.
“If I told you outright, it would spoil the fun.”
They turned suspicious stares on me, weighing me like a huckster. Unlike Amelia, I didn't exactly have the ability to effortlessly charm people and lie without a trace. Still, I had to do it, or I’d lose everything I’d come to care for. “Really! I swear it on Helheim itself and my hope of reincarnation, if I gave away the game now, it wouldn’t mean anything. It’d be like peeking at the last page of a book without finishing the rest.”
Scootaloo rattled her feathers. “I always peek at the last page of a book.”
“And I’ll bet you’re always disappointed, ain’t you?”
“Yeah. But reading sucks.”
Sweetie Belle laughed. “Maybe if you’d finish a book for once you’d see the value in it.”
“Well,” Apple Bloom said, snorting, “call me a little skeptical about this one. Go on, then, Live Wire. How’s your story begin?”
Clearing my throat, I moved between them, lifting my wings to shade the light yellow. “It all started when a princess kidnapped me from a dark and terrible castle.”
“Doesn’t that usually go the other way around?” Scootaloo whined.
“Yes, it’s subversive.”
“Ooh, I like subversion.”
“We rode a barrel from the Wand King’s halls, tumbling down the rapids, deep, deep into the Everfree Forest, where the sun has never shone and the night is so dark you can’t see the inside of your eyelids. Princess Moonlight let me free and promised to protect me so long as I remained in her service, and that’s when we ran into you guys.”
“In the Everfree Forest?” The giant Apple Bloom ground a stone into dust under her hoof. “What in tarnation was I doing there? That place is dangerous.”
The story was quickly becoming bloated, but I had their attention now, so I shifted my wings a bit and changed tack. “That’s part of the mystery. See, I don’t actually know why you were there – you never told me. However, I know how to find out.”
“Oh?” Sweetie buffed a claw and examined it. “How’s that, exactly?”
“Your memories have faded, but all know how memory is a part of the Cup’s magic, yes?” They all nodded, the knowledge of the Cup’s ways sunk into their brains. “You know, then, that there’s a healing spring here that can all but restore the dead to life. It can also bring one’s memories back, and then the game can really begin. The rest of the story won’t make sense without the context of what came before.”
The three looked between each other, before they rose. “Fair enough,” Scootaloo said. “I’m too heavy from dinner to fly far and I’m too wired to sleep, anyway.” She punched my leg and grinned with a mouth full of fangs. “Get it? Wired? Hah, I kill myself.”
After she and Apple Bloom stomped away, Sweetie slid up to my side, smirking. “I know you’re up to something – but you’re just so terribly cute that I want to see where this is going anyway.”
I blushed right down to my roots. I hadn’t even had my blood and Sweetie was years younger, but it was like she was channeling some flirtatious side of herself with that strange affectation. I walked out with her, and worried that her claws and scales might be noisy, but was almost more horrified to note that she made no sound that I could detect at all, and these are keen ears your mama has. The thought of her pounding on me in the dark and slicing through my delicate skin with her diamond-sharp claws and horn made me shudder from ear to tail tip. We wound through the mounds of sleeping bodies and made our way back out into the hall, watched over by the carved reliefs of ancient goblins and king.
(“Reliefs?”)
Imagine a carving kind of embossed from the wall, it’s like a slice of a statue, and they peered down at us, eyes really following us as we crept along, past the passed-out forms of sleeping goblins. Some had fallen asleep right at their posts, because the reign of King Xerxes was defined by its sloth as much as its terrible cruelty. I had to strain to remember the way back to the healing spring, which lay at the center of the ziggurat and had been the very feature around which it was built. We got lost along the way, because of course we did. It’s sometimes said that bravery is acting even when you’re scared, and, well, your mama’s one of the bravest folk around, because I was stark terrified the whole way in and out of the Temple, and I scarce could have remembered my own wiring, let alone the passageways in that dark, foreboding place.
It hadn’t always been like this. Old King Marduk would never have had goblins pretending to be walls to trap people, he’d never set up curses and sphinxes to impede folks. The Cup Palace had been a place of healing and joy in his reign, but under Xerxes…
Our first hint that we’d gone the wrong way came when I screamed my little head off. We’d come to a garden, one brushed with moonlight like a painter’s delicate strokes, and were startled to see corpses strewn along the grass, hung off the branches. Their bodies had been rent by burning claws and fangs, and I knew who that was.
“The Mor—” I shoved a hoof in my mouth to keep from saying their name. I knew from my parents’ bedtime stories never to say its full name aloud. Even today, after they’re no longer a monster, I still find it hard to say “The Morgwyn.”
(“What are they really like now?”)
She’s Amelia’s sister now! I don’t know if I quite understand it, but I’m glad she’s not alone. Anyway, Apple Bloom turned my way, giving me a suspicious look. If everyone weren’t dead already, we’d have been had. “Do you know what this is?”
I nodded, mute. Couldn’t speak until we’d gotten out into the hall again. “Th-th-they tried t-t’hurt Moonlight, and its pr-protector killed ‘em. We should go, b’fore anyone else finds this. I think I know how to go from here.”
“I think we should go tell someone,” Sweetie Belle said, her ears pinned back and her tail low. “If there’s a monster loose, someone should know.”
“No! No no no. Even if you did, it wouldn’t matter. This monster? It’s like smoke, it’s like - like a shadow. Ain’t no mortal’s going to bag it.”
“If this Moonlight’s protector is going around killing Cups, and you’re her friend, maybe we should turn you in, too?” Scootaloo brushed a talon against my chin and I squeaked.
“N-n-no!” I waved my hooves. “I swear, I swear on me name, I had naught to do with it!”
Our chatter must have caught someone’s attention, because I heard heavy feet tramping up the nearby stairs, and I dove off with a squeak behind a statue. The others remained as an upright elephant and a human-looking goblin came down the corridor, the two guards glaring at them. “What’s this about, children?” the elephant asked, their tone a bit more tolerant then their irritation suggested.
I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating betrayal.
“There’s bodies over in the garden,” Apple Bloom said after a moment’s delay. “I think there’s some kind of monster loose in the building.”
My eyes opened and I followed their progress in shock as they went to the archway and checked. “Ganapati!” the elephant swore. She turned her head. “Go tell Priyana at once! The Cup Knight must be informed.”
“We were just on our way to see her.” Sweetie said. “I think she said she was at the healing spring, but we got kind of lost.”
The second goblin pointed their directions and poked them with the butt of his spear to get them moving. Shaken, I fell in alongside them, staring at Apple Bloom as we ran. She shrugged her massive shoulders. “I want to know who I am, too. Besides, I thought about turning you in, and it just felt really wrong. I don’t know how to put a hoof on it.”
“That’s proper tidy of you, Apple Bloom. You always were decent.”
“How about me?” Sweetie asked brightly, running shoulder-to-shoulder. Am I proper tidy?”
I seriously didn’t know how to answer that, so I left off. Following the now-familiar corridors down to the heart of the temple, I found myself strangely thrilled through my fear. We rounded a corner and that’s when everything went to hell.
(Kindle gasped. “Did you get caught?”)
No – worse. We passed through a corridor with elaborate reliefs of dancing people, partaking of drugs and alcohol and all kinds of recreation, and that’s when my wee hoof stepped on a plate that didn’t quite hold me up. It ground into the floor, and one of the figures on the wall made a noise like pf-f-ft! I felt a prick on my neck and pulled at it to find a dart.
“Oh, Hel,” I muttered, even as my eyes started to swim, unfocused.
“Wire? Wire!” Apple Bloom caught me, and I slumped against her. It didn’t hurt, the poison. Actually, it felt rather good. I started to see things, the world peeling away, as I found myself back in my mother’s kitchen. She’d been a harsh goblin, your grandmother, a pony who brooked no nonsense and bore scars from defending her house and her children. She hated me for being a coward, or so I thought, so when she looked at me with such love and loss, it stung to my core.
“Ach… where you gotten yourself off to now, my wee canary?” She pulled me into her embrace and stroked my mane back, sighing.
“M-maman?” Weary in every part of my body, I leaned into her, letting her wings close about me as tears welled up at the corners of my eyes. “What do you mean? I’m right here.”
“No y’ain’t. Bangin’ around strange places, getting yourself lost and falling in with danger… it’s so not like you. I wanted to keep you from all of that, little Wire.”
“Because I’m weak, and worthless,” I moaned against her, burning with shame.
“You could stand to be less spineless, sure, but you ain’t worthless, Wire. You got value, in your craft and in your heart.” Mother sighed against my mane. “Losing you… it’s a reminder of just how much of a fool I’ve been. You’re delicate, and precious, and I wanted to protect you, but I just got so angry. I never shoulda yelled at you. All I did was make you more timid, when I should have been kind and helped you work through your fear.”
Sniffling, I started to cry. “I’m sorry…”
“Shh, none of that now. We’ll talk when you get home – even if that won’t be for a while. Take a deep breath, now, Wire.”
“Huh?” I gasped as water enveloped me, bringing me back. More than the shock was the magic. It seeped into my, draining away the poison, and by the time I pulled myself gasping and bedraggled from the water, I could see clearly once again. The Crusaders flopped out with me, and I stared at them in the chamber of the healing spring, cut from the natural rock.
They gasped and sputtered, fighting their way back and spraying us as they shook themselves out. A dripping Sweetie, her scales prisming, gaped at me and pulled me into a sharp-edged hug. “I’m so sorry! It was like I was channeling my sister or something!” She stared down at her shiny leg and frowned. “Wow. Is this really me?”
“For now.” I sniffed and hugged her back. “I missed you girls. We can’t really worry about that right now. We gotta go.”
“Yeah, we should catch up with Moonlight,” Scootaloo said, shaking out her wings.
“What? But I just said she abandoned us! She wouldn’t come back with me to save you guys.”
Apple Bloom nodded. “I believe you, Live Wire - but she’s out there all alone, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders aren’t going to let some filly go. She’s upset and scared, and I ain’t gonna blame her for that.” She bumped her hip against mine – which fair knocked me to the earth – and smiled toothily. “Isn’t that right, fellow Crusader? No one left behind! We’re all scared, right? Maybe she wasn’t cursed like we were, but she needs her friends just like we needed you.”
I gaped at them as they did a little chant, and hesitantly accepted their outstretched hooves. “I… I… o-okay. Yeah.” I sniffed and hugged them. “Thank you for saving me.”
“That’s what friends are for!”
A much older, more mature voice interrupted our group hug, clearing her throat. We turned, cowering in shock as we beheld the Cup Knight herself, Priyana. No goblin she, but a yazata – a Shining One, a semi-divine being with her perfect features and her flawless wings – and when she approached in gilded armor she seemed as implacable as the mountain of her birth. She stared down at us with cool indifference. “Why are you out of bed?” she demanded.
“We were looking for you so we could tell you about these dead bodies in an upstairs garden, and—”
“Liar.”
We quailed as she met each of our eyes, the grip on her ornate cup as much a promise of her retaliation for slights as a religious gesture. “Perhaps there are bodies that I should look into, but you will not deceive me by hiding your ulterior motives.”
It’s funny, really – I’ve harped on about how much of a coward I can be, how I’m scared of everything. Not like you, Kindle. You’re brave, like your daddy, and such things come easily to me. When I’m brave, I can still feel it, every little needle of fear digging into my flesh, but I sort of become lost to it, letting it wash over me as I pressed up trembling in front of the others. “Knight Priyana? I’m sorry, but I’m here because we’re the ones who broke into the Temple earlier, running from those Wand goblins. We didn’t mean to intrude, we just ain’t got nowhere else to go, and I promise we didn’t steal anything or kill anyone, we were just trying to get away and then my friends here were taken in by the magic of the banquet and turned to goblins. I just wanted to help them remember who they are and leave.” I threw myself to the stone before her. “Have mercy, I beg you. All the worlds know you for a good Knight, please, I swear we’ll make no trouble as we go.”
The other stared at me while Priyana gazed down with those eyes of hers, like smooth gems. “There was another with you who did steal an air sloop.”
“Moonlight abandoned us,” I whimpered, hurt as much by the memory of Amelia’s betrayal as by fear. “I came back, even though I could have flown away, because these are the only people I have in all the Nine Worlds who really care about me.”
“Aww, Wire…” Scootaloo murmured. They all huddled in around me, as if in protection, and my poor little heart, racing like a rabbit, swelled.
Priyana gazed between the four of us, giving away nothing. “By my oaths to King Xerxes, I am to turn all intruders over to him,” she said at last. We faltered, but she interrupted our terrified bleats, “Yet, I am bound by older oaths still. In their contradiction, I must judge the proper course of action, and in this moment I judge my obligation to guide and heal the sick and injured to be of greater import.” She pointed with a wing towards a side entrance. “Go – and if you are caught again, I must reassess my feelings. Oh, and you should know… she was taken by the Wand Airship. If you hurry, I’d imagine you can catch them.”
I wept in relief, sniffling. “Oh, oh gods, bless you…” Gathering myself, I started off with the others, then pause. “Knight Priyana? I’m sorry, it’s just… if one of your poison darts gave me a vision, that’s not something that actually happened, is it?”
She met my eyes, her own as still as the pool behind her. “No – but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t real. Hurry, children. The King will consider your unwarranted use of the spring theft, and he will extract that debt most severely.”
Swallowing, I led the way. “Come on. We’re going to need to find a fast airship. The Wand Castle is a lumbering beast and we can catch up with it. I think I know where it’s heading, anyway.”
We raced from the chamber, pausing to listen at corners and let groups of Cup goblins go by. It took some doing, but we snuck out to the entrance. I’d promised Priyana not to cause any more trouble, and I wouldn’t be stealing one of the temple’s ships. No, we’d go to one of the towers and nip one of the ones anchored there. On our way out, I turned my head to stare back up and it, and felt a shiver down my spine. It seemed as if someone was watching me, but I pushed it aside, and galloped away with my friends.
There’s a whole story I can tell of how we caught up to the Wand Castle, how we beat up Fetter during the confusion of the Morgwyn’s attack, and fought with Lyra against the hordes of demons and Wand goblins after we turned Leit Motif into a human, but that’ll have to wait until another night.
Kindle's wide eyes gleamed in the lone night light. “Wow. And that really saved the world?”
“Mmhm.” Wire nodded. “I knew what humans were, so with the Wand we were able to turn Leit Motif into one, and she went and talked Amelia down. I was one of many, but... yeah. I helped save the world.”
Kindle smiled and curled into a little ball, her chin on a pillow. “My mom is so cool. I wish I were a goblin. That'd be tidy.”
Lightning split the air and Wire jumped, but Kindle, a pegasus-born, only shifted, yawned, and went to sleep, lulled by the distant rumbling as a storm cell moved in off the sea.
It was loud enough that she'd tucked her girl's blankets about her withers and made her way to her room before she realized that some of those crashes were the rhythmic pounding of her door knocker. Frowning, wondering who could be visiting at this late hour, she popped down and pulled it open only to look up in surprise at a creme alicorn.
Amelia smiled, her head sheltered in a hood as rain pattered outside. “Hey there, Wire... sorry to bother you so late, but I just got in. I hope I'm not troubling you.”
The sadness in Amelia's eyes always bothered her. She wondered if anyone could see it. In some corner of herself, she missed that manic little girl, even if she'd nearly gotten her killed.
Glancing over at the clock that read eleven, she sighed. “Well, having a filly's made my bedtime a whole heck of a lot earlier than it used to be. Come on in, I'll make you a cuppa. It's not like you to pop in unannounced.”
“Ugh, you're making me sound old.” Amelia laughed and joined her in the kitchen. “I sent a text, but I think it got lost between Mag Mell and Equestria. I should have double-checked on the other side, but I was rushing right here.”
Taking a few scoops, Wire put the tea in the kettle and set it to heat. At Amelia's words, she splayed her ears back. “Now I'm really worried. What is it, Amy?”
“Nothing, I hope. I had a terrible feeling and a nightmare, and when an alicorn has a nightmare it's worth looking into.” She frowned. “If you haven't noticed anything, it's probably fine. It involved Xerxes. I was upside down in a strange hall, and he sat on a chair on the ceiling and grinned down at me, the wound in his chest black. He lifted the Cup towards me and it started pouring blood.”
“Why would that matter to me?”
“Because he said that all debts must be paid, and I felt a terrible sense of danger for those closest to me. Of everyone I really care about, all of them are powerful alicorns – save you.”
Wire stared at her, the tea forgotten.
“It was probably just a nightmare.” Amelia sighed. “He was the first person I ever killed, and even if he probably deserved it, that's a rough thing for a little girl to live…” Her ears pricked forward. “Wire? What's wrong?”
Lightning peeled again outside.
The paralysis in Wire's limbs snapped as a cry bubbled up in her throat. “Kindle! Kindle!”
Darting upstairs, she threw open the door to her daughter's room and sighed in relief. There was a bundle in bed, right where she left it. Amelia came up behind her, hoof raised uncertainly. Then her eyes narrowed. “Wire? Could you please check on your daughter?”
Fear stole back into her, turning her limbs to lead, but she made herself go to Kindle's side and tugged at the blankets. “Kindle? Baby?”
Lightning crashed again and she screamed as a scaly blur lashed out at her, only to be impaled on a beam from Amelia's horn. The sizzling light faded, revealing a snake writhing on its back on the floor, pierced through. Amelia pinned it down and growled in Cuptongue. “Where is she?”
“She belongs to the Cup Reversed!” the snake hissed in kind. “False Bearer, deceiver! Murderer! Wire's debt is paid.”
“Wire? What is it...?”
Wire couldn't speak. She couldn't even cry. Her heart, her spark, had been taken. She met Amelia's eyes.
“I'm sorry,” she murmured. “If I'd gotten here sooner, maybe…” She took a deep breath. “Wire? I'm going to get your daughter back. I promise.”
Looking down at the serpent, watching as it slowly expired, Wire said nothing. Eventually, she turned and went to get her bags packed. Amelia had thrown her cloak back on and was preparing to leave, but Wire found her voice and called to her. “Wait. I'm going, too. I-I’m not afraid.”
Offering her a troubled smile, Amelia brushed her side with her wing. “I wouldn't have it any other way – a foal needs her mother. Let's go. If we should start anywhere, it's the Cup Palace.”
“Oh gods. Okay, okay.” She swallowed. “We should get her father, too. He’ll want to help.”
“Really? Well, if you think he won’t get in the way, sure.”
With that, they closed up. Wire left a message for anyone contacting her, and, spreading their wings, they took off, leaving Los Pegasus behind.