The sun had passed its apex, they were still trotting, and yet Catskill had never felt better. Amanita must’ve had some serious mojo for the healing to work that well. Her legs were feeling a bit numb and her stomach felt like it was going to start eating her intestines, but the former might just be the cold and she ignored the latter. Catskill felt like she could’ve kept running for days, even with the bandage around her trunk. Except-
“Can we- take- a break?” hacked Amanita from some yards behind. “I’m- I’m starving- and- my lungs- are on fire- and-”
“You’re sure you wanna risk the other ponies catching up?”
Cough cough. “Ye-es!”
Stupid not-earth-pony endurance. “Alright. Another minute, okay?”
“Fine.”
They slowed and settled to a stop beneath a huge pine. Catskill glanced up, half-hoping for a raven — they were one of the smarter birds — but didn’t see anything. Catskill leaned easily, casually against the tree, but Amanita was wheezing like a broken bellows and had to brace herself on the tree. She didn’t sit down so much as collapse. Odd that somepony out here would be in that bad of physical shape. Catskill felt the need to make a joke about it, but brushed the thought away. Trotting for miles had given her an outlet for her earlier anger.
Amanita held a hoof on her chest and she took deep, gulping breaths. In absence of making a joke about her, Catskill simply sat and waited for her to get her body under control; she could almost see Amanita’s heart beating her way out of her ribcage. But it wasn’t long before sitting up stopped being such an effort for her and she was rummaging through her saddlebags. She pulled out a flattish loaf of blackish bread and wolfed a bite down without even chewing. After a moment, Amanita tore the loaf in two and levitated half over to Catskill. “You hungry? Try it.”
Normally, Catskill would’ve eaten from her own supplies, but she was never one to pass up free food. “Sure.” She plucked the bread from the air and sniffed tentatively at it. Seemed unassuming enough. “What kind of bread is this?”
“Unleavened rye.”
“Unleavened rye? Why?”
“Well, it-” Amanita shuffled and flicked her tail. “It bakes faster and takes up less space.”
“Hmm.” Catskill tore off a chunk and chewed. And chewed. And chewed. When she was finally able to swallow, she said, “Not bad. Not something I’d want all the time, but it’s alright for traveling food.” The taste was a bit strange and the texture was flat, but she’d eaten far worse. Maybe she ought to try making regular rye bread sometime. She ripped away another chunk.
“Don’t eat too much,” cautioned Amanita. “It’s a lot more filling than it looks.”
The bread was sitting solidly in her stomach. Definitely something to look into. Catskill pulled the chunk in two pieces and started chewing on the smaller one. “Goh sumfin to drin?” she asked.
Amanita tilted her head. “Um, I don’t know what you’re- Oh, yeah, here.” She pulled a flask from her bag and tossed it over.
Catskill unscrewed the cap, took a deep swig, and promptly spat it and the bread out. That was not water. She stared at the flask. “Is this… grape juice?”
“Uh, yeah, sorry,” said Amanita, rubbing her face down. “I, uh, forgot to… mention that…” She wilted under Catskill’s stare. “I like grape juice, okay?!” she snapped.
“Well, so do I, it’s just- A little warning would’ve been nice.” Why take along grape juice when water was easier to come by and lasted longer? Whatever. Something to drink was something to drink. Catskill stuffed the unspat piece of bread into her mouth and washed it down with the juice. The combined taste was bizarrely pleasant. She screwed the cap back on and gave the flask back to Amanita. “Still want to rest?”
“A few more minutes,” said Amanita. She took her own drink; it was a bit sloppy, with a few drops dribbling down her chin. She wiped her mouth and continued, “I don’t have half the endurance you do.”
“Right.” Obviously. Catskill glanced the way they came. No unusual movement. Yet. “So what do you do for work? Doctor?”
Amanita twitched and coughed on a piece of bread. She managed to swallow and coughed out, “It’s- I’m a- I’m just… good at healing magic, not exactly a doctor. I’m more of a-”
“Hold up.” Some things, Catskill’s brain simply refused to accept. That was one of them. “How could you not be a doctor? You brought me back from the brink of death in less than an hour.” It was the sort of thing that got ponies turned into alicorns. If there was a Princess of Love and a Princess of Friendship, why not a Princess of Lifesaving?
“I needed a magic circle for it,” said Amanita, “and doctors don’t usually… use… magic circles.” She looked like she was ready to start squirming.
“So now you’ve invented a new type of healing magic,” said Catskill tonelessly, “and you’re still not a doctor?”
Amanita flinched slightly and looked away. “It- It wasn’t easy,” she mumbled. “I was- I was lucky I was carrying the right ingredients, and I messed up the circle a few times, but-”
“So charge lots of money for it so you don’t need to do it as often. Teach it to surgeons and charge them lots of money for the teaching. It’s still near-complete recovery after just an hour. Doctors would kill for that kind of healing magic done that easily.”
“I’m- still working out the kinks,” said Amanita, looking away.
The bottom suddenly dropped out of Catskill’s stomach and she felt a chill all the way down to her frogs. She swallowed. Her throat was dry. “The… The kinks?” she said, her ears folded back. Kinks in healing magic. Great.
“You, you’re fine!” said Amanita quickly. “It’s just- it’s a lot more magically involved than current magical surgery, and I, I had to, spend a lot of time just making sure that, uh, for example, your bone healed properly and didn’t make too much bone and, you know, stuff like that.” She looked down and ruffled her mane. “It needs a lot more skill in magic than most unicorns have.”
Catskill rolled her shoulders. As the anxiety ebbed away, she had to admit that she hadn’t felt any kinks yet… “Really? I don’t remember any bad dreams or anything between blacking out and waking up.”
“Well, how would you know how your healing went? You were unconscious for most of it.”
Catskill laughed a little. “So, what, did you get kicked out of the practice for fringe magic?”
“Yes,” said Amanita quickly. She paused. “Not really.” Pause. “Kinda. It’s…” She started talking much more quickly. “It’s complicated and I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Gotcha.” For all their preaching about open-mindedness, Catskill had noticed that scientists had an occasional stingy-conservative nature about them. If it looked weird but could be used to benefit ponies in some way, scientists seemed to accept it wholeheartedly, while if it looked weird but was just weird, they rejected it. Then again, a fine example of the latter was the belief that water could remember things that had been dissolved in it. Every now and then, the stingy conservatives proved to be right. But magic circles were in the weirder branches of magic that most ponies didn’t like to look at; Amanita had probably gotten unjustly laughed out of some university and still felt shame at the memory of it.
And even if that wasn’t the case, Catskill wasn’t going to force the pony who’d saved her life to pick at old wounds.
“So, uh, you said you on the run because of a mare?”
So much for not picking at old wounds. Catskill almost punched herself.
But Amanita just shrugged. “It’s… complicated,” she said. “Short version, flirted with a mare who was actually the mare of a very jealous pony, and now she chas- — ‘she’ being the, uh, jealous pony, not the, not the first mare — she’s chasing me for revenge. I didn’t even kiss her.” She snorted. “Some ponies, right?”
“Yeah.” Although to Catskill, it seemed a little… too easy. Too simple. Yes, of course her significant other was crazy, jealous, and clingy. Not my fault. Nope. There was probably something else somewhere in the story, even if Amanita’s story was true in broad strokes. Time for another subject change. “What brought you up here, anyway?”
Amanita cleared her throat. “‘Amanita, Freelance Arcane Specialist’,” she said dramatically. “‘Big jobs or small, rain, snow, or shine, if you’ve got the bits, then I’ve got the time! Your one-stop witch for all your magical needs!’ Or, in Normal Pony, I take temporary jobs that require a magic specialist who might not live out here. I had a cartful of instruments, but had to leave it when… Yeah.” She shuffled her hooves and looked away. “I kept the most valuable or useful things, which is why I had the right ingredients on hoof for the circle.”
Catskill took a small bite of bread. “And you came this far north because…?”
“I looked at a map and kept saying, ‘So what’s the nearest town I haven’t been to yet?’ And when I ran out of towns more to the south, I didn’t think, so…” Amanita shrugged. “I made some mistakes, yeah.”
Chew chew. “Eh. There are worse ways to wind up this far north.” Catskill swallowed. That was all she could think of at the moment, so she said, “Lemme know when you want to get going again. We shouldn’t dawdle too long.”
“Actually, I think I’m good now.” Amanita stood up and flexed her legs. “I’ve rested a little, I’ve eaten… Yeah, we can go. Same pace.”
Catskill ran a few numbers, and… yeah, keeping up the same pace was perfect. “Good.” Assuming the blizzard cooperated. What was it doing, anyway? She couldn’t see it from ground level at the moment. “Start packing, but I need to check the weather first. Be back in a minute.” She leaped up to one of the pine’s lower branches and clambered up the tree, shoving aside branches and getting coated with needles and sap. She vaguely noted that she’d managed to go the whole trip so far without sniping at Amanita, but brushed the thought away. Maybe she just had some aggressive energy in her system that the hard pace had gotten out. Definitely wouldn’t be the first time.
When she was swinging to and fro in the wind at the top of the tree, Catskill looked north. The blizzard clouds were still up on the mountains, maybe a bit bigger than the last time she’d seen them. On the one hoof, they were still there, but on the other, they hadn’t moved. Well, she could dream. No changes to the route yet.
She monkeyed her way back down the trunk. Amanita looked worried, but Catskill spoke before she could say anything. “No problems,” Catskill said reassuringly as she dropped from the lowest branches. “There’s a blizzard to the north, but it doesn’t look like it’s coming towards us at the moment.”
“Blizzard. Up here. Greaaaaaaat.” Amanita’s laugh was so forced it was hard to tell it was supposed to be a laugh at all.
“We’ll be fine,” said Catskill, surprising herself with how reassuring she sounded. “We’re heading towards some shelter anyway. If the blizzard hits, we can wait it out there.”
“Wait it out?” Amanita chewed her lip. “With, with other ponies chasing us?”
“They’ll have to wait it out, too. You don’t go out in blizzards up here. Period.” Just how long had Amanita been up here? “Don’t go out in blizzards” was something every foal knew, thanks to a mixture of parental wisdom and common sense.
“Oh.” Amanita looked in the general direction of north, although the trees hid the mountain from view. “Windigoes?”
“Worse. Just the brutal fury of unthinking nature. At least you can drive off windigoes.”
“You and me, summoning the Fire of Friendship together?” Amanita rolled her eyes. “Not likely.”
Catskill chuckled. “Let’s not stick around to find out, then.”
Eventually, Trace found Amanita’s trail again. Eventually.
“Two hours,” muttered Artemis. “Took you two sunblasted hours t’find footprints.”
“You didn’t find them at all,” said Trace, her nose to the ground. “And considering the trail had been thoroughly trampled by what appeared to be every single animal from here to the horizon, it’s a sunblasted miracle — a genuine, honest-to-Celestia miracle — it didn’t take me longer.”
“Two. Hours.”
Trace raised her head, but Bitterroot was already talking. “Will you shut up?” she snapped. “You’ve been ragging on her for the past five minutes, and she’s doing her best, so-”
“ ’Er best ain’t good ’nough!” yelled Artemis. “Are you f’rgettin’ Amanita’s a necromancer? She gets to the Crystal Empire, we’ll never find ’er! An’ she’s-” She jabbed a hoof at Trace. “-wastin’ time, lookin’ for-” She groaned and facehooved. “Sorry, sorry,” she mumbled. “ ’S jus’… Big target, big reward, an’ it’s jus’ slippin’ away.”
“Well, don’t take it out Trace! She needs to focus! Just-” Bitterroot searched for the right words for a second before blurting, “Take it out on me.”
“…You,” Artemis said, tilting her head.
“Me!” repeated Bitterroot. Why am I saying this? I don’t want her yelling at me. “As long as you keep out of Trace’s way. Because as long as you’re not distracting her, she can follow the trail. She’s the most important pony here right now, and- and what have you done?” she blurted.
The air temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Artemis’s face turned expressionless except for a tightening of the jaw. “Say that again,” she whispered.
Already, Bitterroot was regretting what she’d said. But she’d said it, so she plowed on. “What have you done?” she asked again. “You’ve just been following her, and-”
“I’m the one ’oo brought us all t’gether!” yelled Artemis. “Y’wouldn’t be out ’ere if I didn’t ask you!”
“A bear chased Amanita here, by the way,” said Trace.
“Oh, so that means it’s okay for you to moan and whine when things don’t go your way?” Bitterroot snorted. “Give me a break. How long have you been a bounty hunter?”
“Cliff ahead,” said Trace.
“I- I been one for long ’nough,” spluttered Artemis. “It ain’t like I start cryin’ the second I-”
“Oh, look, there’s another set of pony tracks here,” said Trace.
“You’re sure about that? Because when we burned that bear-”
“Aaaaand shield,” said Trace. BONK.
Bitterroot and Artemis both yelped as they walked headlong into a shield thrown up by Trace. Bitterroot rubbed her temple, and Artemis her muzzle, while Trace looked bemusedly at them. “You two are worse than my big sister and I were,” she said. “When I was eight. You would’ve walked right off the cliff, wouldn’t you?”
“Cliff?” asked Bitterroot. She looked ahead. They were at the top of a large cliff, maybe thirty feet tall, with a rocky shelf at the bottom. “Oh. That cliff.”
“And you missed the wrecked tree, didn’t you?”
“Tree?” Artemis looked back.
“Oh, for the love of…” Trace planted her face in her hoof and pulled down. “At some point, Amanita was chased by a bear, probably the same that chased us. It pulled down a tree to get to her. Meanwhile, I also saw the tracks of some pony while following Amanita’s trail. Where that pony is now, I don’t know. Come.” She turned and walked along the ridgeline.
Bitterroot and Artemis collectively stewed as they followed Trace, not saying a word even as Trace pointed out that several sets of tracks vanishing meant that the bear and one of the ponies had fallen off the cliff, nor as Trace led them down the ridge to the rocks below.
Blood had splattered on the ground at the cliff base and bear fur was scattered everywhere. Trace examined a hair closely, then tossed it away. “Bear was probably killed here. Magic, maybe?” Her horn started glowing and she immediately gagged, muttering, “Oh, Celestia.” She coughed and put a hoof to her mouth.
“What’s up?” asked Bitterroot, glad to have something besides Artemis to talk about. She looked around. She couldn’t see anything, but now that she was paying attention, there was something about this place — something slimy, something that felt like she was pushing through a chest-deep pool of pus.
“Black magic,” said Trace. Her voice was strained, forced. “Horrible black magic, the worst I’ve felt. Bear not just killed here, but enthralled here, I think.” Her horn winked out and she gasped. “Sweet Luna, that felt terrible.”
Artemis walked up to Trace, licking her lips nervously. “And… It’s def’nitely an enthrallment? You sure?”
“I cannot say I am sure,” admitted Trace. “But the magic here is so… utterly vile, it’s hard to say it could be anything else.”
Artemis nodded and flicked her ears. “Right, right,” she said. “Can y’track Am’nita ’erself by ’er magic? ’Cause she’s-”
“Not unless she has used extensive magic to change her very body,” Trace said, shaking her head. “See, magic-detection spells like that work by-”
Bitterroot wished she had something to add, but the only thing running through her head was speculation. “Gonna examine the area a bit,” she muttered to Gale. “If they ask, you can let them know, right?”
Gale nodded.
Bitterroot took a few steps away, trying to think. She wanted to feel useful for this hunt, but it seemed like all she was doing was acting as mediator for Trace and Artemis. And sometime punching bag. Thanks to the forest, she couldn’t even do much scouting, the one thing she was really good at. She sighed. It didn’t help that she wasn’t particularly fond of the North, even leaving aside the pervasive cold; towns were few and far between and violent, the air tasted funny, the weather was uncontrollable, and-
Bitterroot stopped breathing. The air tasted funny? That wasn’t normal. She raised her nose and sniffed.
There was something there, something on the edge of her sense of smell (olfaction?). She sniffed again. Something… burnt? One more time. Yes, the smell was sulfurous and vaguely urinous. Gunsmoke. This was where the blunderbuss had been fired. Had the shot killed the bear?
As Trace and Artemis kept discussing the bear and magic, Bitterroot followed her nose through trial and error. Another smell soon overpowered the gunsmoke and it wasn’t long before she found several smaller blood splatters on the rocks, particularly on a pointy, upward-facing one. Not too far away, a pool of blood was almost dry. Smears indicated whatever body had been there had been moved. None of it looked like the bear’s and the smear didn’t lead back to Trace and Artemis, where the bear had probably died. Examining the rock more closely, Bitterroot found a few violet hairs caught in cracks on the pointy rock. She looked up. They weren’t far from the cliff; had the fallen pony landed here?
She called the others over. Trace was particularly interested in the blood. “Bah bah bah,” she whispered. “No body, obviously. Taken for necromancy, no doubt. Shame.” She looked up the cliff and made a few awkward flailing motions that Bitterroot guessed help her imagine the fall. “No brains, so she didn’t land on her head, thank Celestia. And you mentioned gunsmoke?” She sniffed. “Ah, yes, I can smell it. You didn’t think Amanita had a firearm, right, Artemis?”
“I know she didn’t,” Artemis responded.
“The other pony was probably some sort of ranger, then, an ecosystems manager. You know the kind. After all, who else is out here? Besides that one pony in the pass,” Trace added quickly.
Bitterroot wiggled a few of the hairs from the rock. They still looked intact. “Trace, any chance you can make a tracking spell from these? If Amanita moved the body, maybe we can use the body to track her.” She’d heard stories about unicorns forming such spells from a bit of blood or hair of the pony they wanted to track. Something about the body part’s intrinsic connection to its source or some weird mumbo-jumbo.
“Not… in the manner you’re thinking,” Trace said sheepishly. She rubbed one leg against another and looked away. “My, ah, talents mostly lie in the physical domain of tracking, not along those lines.”
“Speakin’ o’ trackin’, we best be goin’,” said Artemis. “Can’t waste time wond’rin’ ’bout some other dead pony. C’mon.”
It took a bit more searching to find Amanita’s trail again, but Artemis seemed more forgiving of Trace. Trace herself said the tracks themselves were more easily visible. “They’re deeper, see?” she said to the other hunters, who didn’t. “She’s carrying something, most likely the ranger’s body. It’s slowing her down, too.”
With a clearer trail, the group could move faster, and it wasn’t long before Trace pulled them aside to the bottom of a small ridge. “A little temporary campsite,” she said. A bit unnecessarily, as there was no mistaking the ashen remains of a fire or a patch of dirt artificially cleared of snow. “Perhaps she did something here with the other pony.” Her horn started glowing and she paced around the site.
“Won’t take long, will it?” Artemis asked. Thirty minutes ago, Bitterroot would’ve supposed Artemis would’ve spat the phrase out like it was some terrible curse, but now, the question was devoid of any malice.
“A minute at most,” Trace said, waving a hoof dismissively at Artemis. “This is merely for- A-ha…” She stopped walking and pointed her hoof at the bare spot of ground; outlines of… something Bitterroot couldn’t make out glowed faintly. “Huh. Okay, this… is strange,” muttered Trace. “I am really unsure of what kind of magic was used here.”
“Necromantic magic, obviously,” scoffed Artemis.
“No,” Trace said, shaking her head. “No, it isn’t. Back at the cliff? That was necromantic magic. I felt sick to my stomach before I’d even analyzed it. But this? This is something else. Feels like…” Her horn began pulsing as she fell silent.
For several long seconds, no one said anything, and the only thing that disturbed the scene was the wind in the trees. Trace remained quiet for longer and longer; Bitterroot was soon ready to prompt Trace to continue, but Artemis beat her to the punch with a cleared throat.
“I don’t know what it feels like,” admitted Trace. “A magic circle was used here, and those are a bit outside my domain. Hard to properly scan, those are.”
“A magic circle,” Artemis muttered. “Why, why, why…”
“But… as best I can tell…” continued Trace. “I think it’s some sort of healing ritual. The little, ah, remnants of the spell feel like that. Perhaps the other pony didn’t die at the cliff.”
“But y’could be wrong,” said Artemis. Bitterroot wasn’t sure whether it was a statement or a question.
“Oh, absolutely, I could potentially be completely wrong,” confirmed Trace. “So staggeringly wrong that the other pony wasn’t healed, but ritualistically slaughtered for some necromantic spell.”
“Hmm.” Artemis began digging through the remains of the firepit. “Mebbe,” she muttered, “mebbe, mebbe, mebbe… Magic circles us’ally need stuff to help ’em work,” she added for the uncomprehending Bitterroot and Trace. “I’m lookin’ t’see if any ’scaped the fire, see if’n we can tell what she did.”
Unfortunately, after less than a minute, Artemis stood up in disgust. “Nothin’,” she spat. “Not a single scrap o’ parchment. Figures.”
Bitterroot crouched down and peered at the ground. She could see vague chalk hints of a circle, the angular shapes of erased runes, but nothing distinct. Already, this was one of the strangest bounty hunts she’d ever been on. A necromancer was one thing, but all she’d seen in the last… two days, already, was just bizarre icing on the strangeness cake.
“In all honesty,” said Trace, “I actually think she healed the pony. Why, I can’t say. Perhaps an enthrallment would have taken too long. She had already enslaved the bear, remember. But why not just let the pony die?”
“Mebbe she got tired o’ carryin’ ’er own stuff,” said Artemis. “Raise a pony, force ’er to be ’er pack animal through threats.”
Trace’s ears suddenly went up and she stood a bit taller. “And if she tied the pony’s life force to her own in some way,” she said, “then that would make an effective leash.”
“Or,” Bitterroot said, following a brainwave, “Amanita was the one the ritual was performed on and she was the one wounded back there, maybe in trying to kill and enslave the bear. Think about it: a ranger saves some poor, wounded traveler on the brink of death. The traveler somehow talks the ranger into performing a healing ritual and provides the instructions. But the ritual is some dark magic actually transfers some of the ranger’s life to Amanita, enough to get her back on her feet, and now the ranger has to stick with Amanita or she’ll die.” A bit of stretch, Bitterroot admitted, but she didn’t know anything about necromancy. And how willing would a ranger be to perform a strange ritual? One that a stranger claimed would save her life?
Silence fell. Trace and Gale nodded slowly and Artemis tapped her chin. “Not bad, not bad,” she muttered. “ ’Splains why ’t’d be done ’t all. ’Ow many sets o’ footprints are leadin’ away from ’ere?”
Trace quickly scoured the perimeter. “Ah… two, it would seem. Look, here. Nothing out of the ordinary for either, although I can’t tell which belongs to whom. No blood.”
“Hrrng. Better ’ope they stick t’gether, else we’ll ’ave t’guess which one t’follow.”
“Can’t you tell them apart?” Bitterroot asked Trace. “You could tell Amanita and that other mare apart.”
“They were far more different,” said Trace. She set off from the camp, muzzle to the ground, and the other hunters followed. “And, in any case, while the tracks here are quite distinguishable, I cannot exactly remember the kind of tracks Amanita left. I don’t know if hers are these, with the notched hoof, or these, with the scar on the frogs.”
Bitterroot tried to walk with a new spring in her step, but once she got over finding the trail again, it was hard to deny that there was still tension between Trace and Artemis. On Trace’s side, at least; Artemis walked like she was the boss, while Trace’s ears were back a little more than usual and she was flicking her tail a lot. She’d broken up their fight after the bear, so Bitterroot decided there was no harm in pushing her role as mediator a little further. She cleared her throat. “You know, I bet Trace would appreciate an apology,” Bitterroot muttered. Am I seriously doing this? This is what you say to kindergarteners.
Artemis cocked her head. “Eh?”
“For earlier. When you practically cursed her out for not working fast enough.”
“Pfah. She’ll be fine. She’s fine now. Why bother?”
Bitterroot grunted noncommittally. Artemis was one of those people, who never turned from their beliefs and felt the need to control everything. A narcissist: death before dishonor. Arguing with her would only bring up the same petty gripes she’d had with Trace. And if she couldn’t even put herself in some other pony’s hooves, then Artemis would never see the effect she was having on Trace. It was only a matter of time before the two of them started squabbling again.
If this went on for too long, their little band wouldn’t last a week.