Hinterlands

by Rambling Writer


6 - Campfire Tales

By the time the sun was slipping below some of the taller mountains, the blizzard clouds hadn’t moved much, if at all, which Catskill took as a good sign. Of course, it was possible that they’d descend on her and Amanita during the night, which… yeah. Luckily, they weren’t far from some strong shelter.

“Watch your step,” Catskill said as she clambered down a rocky downward slope thick with trees. “It’s slipperier than it looks.”

“ ’Kay,” said Amanita. She didn’t sound that great. Tired and beaten, maybe.

Catskill surprised herself by asking, “Want some help?”

“Not yet. How much longer’re we gonna walk?” Amanita lowered herself down the slope with all the caution of an earth pony balancing a glass sculpture on an ice-skating rink.

Catskill reached the bottom of the slope and looked at the ground. She brushed away some of the snow; a grid of large, square rocks stared up at her. Good sign. She overestimated. “Twenty minutes. Thirty, max.”

“Really?” Amanita managed to stay upright as she deliberately slid the last few feet. “What’s out here?”

“See for yourself.” Catskill pushed through the trees and swept out a hoof. When Amanita arrived and looked, her jaw dropped.

They were standing on a ledge at the top of a massive, bowl-like valley. The far end was open, but all the bounding “walls” were steep and lined with twisting ridges, sparsely dotted by a few trees. On the valley floor was a town, ruined and abandoned, the houses falling apart or due to collapse at any moment. It covered most of the ground and was split in two with a river rushing through the center. Trees grew freely in the few open spaces. Decorated with snow, it looked gray and desolate, a place nopony wanted to think about again. Nothing had damaged the houses beyond erosion and time; the ponies living there had just packed up and left one day long ago.

“What…” whispered Amanita. “What did this?”

“The Crystal Empire.”

Amanita stared at Catskill, then at the ruined town, then back at Catskill. “The- Crystal Empire did-”

“Not with armies or anything. Not even deliberately. Pure economics.” Catskill set off down the remains of a wide path that clung to the valley wall, now overgrown with ferns and grasses. “Five, six years ago, this was Mystic, one of the larger mining towns in the area. Relatively speaking, anyway. It had a pretty good business in silver, iron, and copper, plus some gems. Look, you can even see one of the old mines over there.” She pointed across the valley, towards where a dark hole yawned from the wall. “It wasn’t struggling at all. Then the Crystal Empire returned and everything changed.”

The path broadened a little; cobblestones were now easily visible. “See, because it was so isolated, Mystic mostly attracted hardy ponies who knew full well how tough life out here could be. But once the Empire was back, Mystic suddenly wasn’t far from a major trading hub. And that meant a lot of stupid ponies looked at small mining towns like this and immediately saw bit signs. They swamped Mystic, so sure they’d strike it rich. Rapid expansion and bad business practices meant the mines weren’t always well-maintained, and there was a cave-in within months. Almost two dozen ponies killed.”

“Dang,” whispered Amanita. “That’s… dang.”

“And since so many ponies were mining,” continued Catskill, “metals were flooding the market and the price was dropping like crazy. Most of the ponies just got up and moved to the Empire. It was warmer there, anyway. Six months after the Empire was back, Mystic’s population had more than doubled. Another year later, and it was less than a quarter of what it had been. Now, there’s only one pony who still lives here.”

“She’s not some crazy, murderous hermit, is she?” Amanita laughed nervously.

“Only a little. You should know, you’ve spent the last several hours talking to her.”

The path down to the valley floor took Catskill and Amanita right up to the remains of a decorative gate into town, flanked by a decaying fence. A sign was hanging from the top of the gate’s arch, but one of the chains had snapped a while ago and the sign creaked as it twisted slowly in the wind. If anything, Mystic looked worse up close; distance had hid the subtler, more personal signs of decay. The cheery paint of a motel’s sign, advertising room for weary travelers, had worn away. Intricately decorated street signs had been blown over. Coarse grass pushed through the paved roads. Snow spilled from the broken front window of a toy store. One wall of the post office had caved in. And when they crossed the fast-running river in the center of Mystic, the lower half of a mill’s waterwheel had rotted away and been destroyed by the rapids. Everything that could move away had done so.

Amanita took a quick detour to glance inside a broken house and quickly trotted back, shivering in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature. “You live here?”

“‘Live’ probably isn’t the right word.” Catskill knew Mystic so well she could navigate it blindfolded and didn’t even look at the landmarks. “‘Hole up’ would probably be better. Or ‘subsist’. The Crown ships me supplies every few months, always to here. My choice.”

“But… why in a place like this?”

“It’s decent shelter,” said Catskill distantly. “Hard to come by out here.” She looked up at the mine again, lingering on it. She wrenched her gaze away. “And I’m a ranger, so I need to live out here anyway…”

“Wow. I, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

Catskill led them through the streets until she found her house. The top floor had some large holes in it, but the ground floor looked like the soundest thing in Mystic. The front door had been repaired, if crudely, sometime recently (a few weeks ago, to be precise), the walls had been reinforced, the floor was mostly clear of snow and plants, a cabinet was standing in the corner, and a pile of wood was stacked by the fireplace. But all the other furniture had been pushed aside, most of it falling apart, none of the windows had glass in them, and the walls were bare. It was shelter, but it wasn’t a home.

Neither of them spoke as Catskill unrolled their sleeping bags or Amanita got the fire working. The atmosphere of the place weighed too heavily on them. When Amanita asked if Catskill wanted rye toast and Catskill agreed, or when Catskill explained that the cabinet had food that was still good and Amanita could have what she wanted, they spoke tersely, unwilling to disrupt the silence too much. At least the toast was good.

The blizzard hadn’t started moving yet, but the wind outside picked up. It howled through the broken panes, sounding disturbingly like the echo of a wailing pony. Catskill held out her hooves to the fire. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“No,” Amanita said with surprising resolve. “They can’t exist.”

Raising an eyebrow, Catskill said, “Okay… Did I hit a nerve or something? You sound…”

“Hoo boy.” Amanita ran a hoof through her mane. “I’m probably going to sound pretentious, but whatever. Have you ever heard of the mind-body problem?”

“Yeah. Whether the mind came from the body’s physical processes, or was something separate, like a soul. Then souls were proven to exist, and… Yeah.”

“Well, some years after I graduated, I started thinking about it a bit more deeply. I… still don’t know why. And eventually I thought that body and soul are like lock and key. Technically, they can exist separately, but they only really have meaning together. It’s why most versions of the afterlife give you some form of body. Maybe.” Amanita shrugged.

“So what’s that got to do with ghosts?”

“Once somepony’s dead, their soul is gone from this world. Their souls don’t belong here, so they go to…” Amanita waved a hoof away. “Whatever the afterlife is. A soul just can’t stick around without a physical body to anchor it. It’s a weird thing to have a strong opinion on, yeah, but ”

“And if you’re wrong?”

Amanita shrugged. “Then I’m wrong, aren’t I? It’s not like this is some big worldview I’ve got. Just ghosts.”

“Yeah.”

The wind howled again. The fire crackled. Catskill chewed on her bread. Amanita said, “Any reason you’re asking that? Or just the town?”

Catskill flinched. “I-it’s nothing. Really. You’d probably be bored.”

“We’ve got nothing to do. Is it… personal, or…?”

“No, it’s… it’s silly.”

“I won’t laugh. Promise. Cross my heart, hope to die.”

“Alright. Remember how I mentioned a bunch of ponies died in a mine collapse?” Catskill took a deep breath. “My husband, Taconic, was one of them.”

“Oh, geez,” said Amanita quietly. “I, I’m sorry.” She looked down and kneaded the ground beneath her hooves. She took a deep breath, like she was going to say something, then let it out, shaking her head.

“Sometimes,” Catskill said, staring deep into the dancing fire, “I think I… I stay here just, just so I can maybe, maybe see him one last time and say goodbye. Just once.” One single time would be fine. It’d all been so sudden.

Amanita opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again, like she kept flip-flopping on what she wanted to say. Finally, she asked, “Do you… have… anything emotionally tied to him? Like a… his favorite pickaxe, or a coat of his, or something he got you?”

“Not anymore. I sold it all off years ago. We weren’t really material ponies, anyway. I’ve got all I need, right up in here.” Catskill tapped one of her temples. And although that sounded like she was trying to downplay her loss, it was true. Objects held memories, but so did her head, and her head was better at it. “Why?”

“Just… curious,” mumbled Amanita.

It didn’t take a genius to know that Amanita was hiding something. That question had been awfully specific. But as Catskill stopped by the cabinet to dig out a loaf of leavened wheat bread (she needed something fluffy that wasn’t snow), she found she didn’t really care. Everypony deserved to have a few secrets. They’d part ways in a day or so, anyway. It’d be stupid to think Amanita would just open up that much after knowing somepony for only a few hours.

Although maybe it was possible to tease the answer from her. Catskill settled back down and held out half of the loaf of wheat bread to Amanita. “Want some?”

Amanita looked at the loaf, looked at Catskill, twitched, and looked away. “No, thanks.”

Catskill shrugged and dug into the bread. “It’s a shame if ghosts don’t exist,” she said casually after the first few bites. “You could make a lot of money talking to the dead. Clarifying wills, solving murder cases, getting advice from ancestors, just having time for a last goodbye-”

“Angering religious groups, annoying historians, and Celestia knows what else,” Amanita said with a snort. “And that’s assuming you’re not executed for necromancy.”

“Ooo. Yeah.” Catskill chewed some more on her bread. For some reason, it didn’t taste as good as the rye. “Still, if I could talk to the dead — legally, at least — I would.”

“Pass,” said Amanita quickly. “Too much pressure.”

“Eh.” Catskill shrugged. She patrolled the surrounding thirty miles singlehoofedly; she was used to pressure. “I think the pros outweigh the cons, personally.”

“On, on a societal level, maybe, but in the end, it’d just be more trouble than it’s worth for you, personally. You’d still have a lot of ponies angry at you.”

“Well, I don’t know. If you have the power to change the world for the better, no strings attached, and the only reason you don’t is because you can’t make everyone happy… what’s that say about you?”

Silence from Amanita. Eventually, she said, “No offense, but all this philosophy’s wearing me out. I’m heading to sleep.” She loped over to her sleeping bag and wiggled in.

“Alright,” said Catskill, suddenly acutely aware of how much emptier the room would feel. “Night.” Maybe she’d pushed the issue a bit too hard.

“Night,” mumbled Amanita. “You can keep the fire lit.” Her horn sparked and a cocoon of darkness surrounded her.

And so Catskill was left alone, staring into the fire, lost in distant hopes of ghosts.


When the bounty hunters finally broke for camp, none of them was particularly thrilled. Between the bear and temporarily losing the trail and the whole weirdness with the (possible) healing ritual, the day had been stressful without accomplishing anything, the absolute worst kind of day. Bitterroot, at least, was looking forward to just plain eating and sleeping. She travelled light through the back of beyond, but she kept a few indulgences. One of them she brought out once camp had been set up, pawing through her saddlebags until she found a tin. She opened it and offered some of the contents to Trace.

Trace stared at the gift, then raised an eyebrow. “Homemade chocolate chip cookies?” she asked. “Why in the world would you bring those out here?”

“Because they’re homemade chocolate chip cookies,” Bitterroot explained.

Trace stared, then laughed. “Oh, right, right. You know, what the hay.” She scooped a larger one from the tin and took a bite. After a moment of chewing, she said, “Not bad. Cold’s made them a touch tough, but they taste alright.” Chew chew. “More than alright, actually.”

“Made them myself.”

“Keep it up.” Chew. “I’d love to try these in warmer climes.”

Bitterroot nodded and held the tin out to Artemis. Artemis looked at the tin, then curled her lip at Bitterroot. “Cookies? Really?” She snorted. “I ain’t a filly.”

“So?”

“I don’t eat cookies anymore. It’s so foalish.” Artemis pulled out a flattish loaf of dark bread from her bags and ripped a part off.

“A simple ‘no thanks’ would be fine,” Bitterroot said. She didn’t even consider asking Gale, so she put the lid back on the tin and tossed it into her bags. “What kinda mare’s so insecure,” she grunted, “that they can’t enjoy homemade chocolate chip cookies?”

“A foalish one,” said Trace. She licked a crumb off her hoof. “She’s obsessed with being quite growed up and mature and serious and menacing, and that’s really something only foals do.” She smacked her lips. “Mmm. Quite good cookies.”

“Y’need to take this seriously, y’know. We’re chasin’ a sunblasted necromancer.”

“What makes you think I am not taking this seriously? See, unlike you, I have an emotional range, which means I can-”

Bitterroot scooped up a rock from the ground. “Shut it or I’ll hit you. You’re creating a bad-”

“And she’s got an emotional range! She can offer me cookies one moment, then threaten to bean me with a boulder when I’m being annoying as-”

Bitterroot beaned Trace with a boulder. Right in the face, too. Trace tumbled into the snow. From her back, she poked a hoof into the air. “And then she backs up her words, to boot!” She pulled herself back into a sitting position, holding her nose and grinning broadly. “I must say, Arty, you have got to be one of the most narrowly grouchy ponies I have ever met. Lighten up, would you please?”

Artemis snorted. “Would it kill ya t’be a li’l nicer?”

“Please. Nicer?” Trace laughed. “I’m only here for the money. I said that the moment I agreed to work with you. I never said a sunblasted thing about being nice to you. Bitterroot’s given me reason to be nice to her, what with her actual conversation and general lack of being always grim and serious all the time. You most certainly have not given me reason to be nice to you, and so I fail to see why I should.”

“And I never said a sunblasted thing ’bout bein’ ‘nice’. Jus’ ‘nicer’. Y’don’t need t’fawn over me, jus’-”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Trace stood up and jabbed a hoof at Artemis. “However, you have done nothing but follow me and belittle me this entire trip. I am merely giving what I receive. You do realize that the paper-thin ‘everypony sucks’ philosophy you inherited from Cobbes includes you, yes?”

Artemis shot Trace a stinkeye and spat into the fire. The flames sizzled. Bitterroot moved a little closer to Gale. “Is Artemis always like this?” she whispered.

Gale twitched, made a face, and nodded.

“I am so sorry.”

“But I’ll tell you what, Arty,” said Trace, sitting back down. “You cool it with your adolescent bit-store nihilism, and I’ll cool it with my own jabs. Deal?”

“It ain’t ‘bit-store’, it’s the truth,” snarled Artemis. “I been a boun’y hun’er a good long time, and I’ve seen nothin’ but crap in this job. Ponies ain’t real good people.”

“Well, of course you see nothing but crap,” Trace said, rolling her eyes. “Your job is to wallow in it: you’re a bounty hunter, as you so kindly reminded us. You’re like one of culture’s plumbers. You really shouldn’t complain about the heat if you climbed into the fire in the first place.”

Bitterroot grabbed a branch and prodded the logs, stoking the fire. Embers spiraled lazily upwards, losing themselves among the stars. Heat washed over the campsite like water. Flames danced from log to log, stick to stick. And yet she still couldn’t block out Trace and Artemis.

“Y’remember Amanita’s boun’y, right?” Artemis said, pointing in their direction of travel. “Six hunnerd thousand bits. Big boun’y, y’know? That don’t ’xactly speak of a good pony.”

“Yes, and you know why her bounty’s so large? She’s the exception rather than the rule. If everypony was as much of a scumbag as her, she’d barely have a bounty to begin with. You don’t-”

SO, HOW ’BOUT THAT WEATHER, HUH?” yelled Bitterroot.

Trace and Artemis both jumped, and a flock of birds took to the air, squawking. Artemis tumbled off of her log and Trace smacked her ear. “Smoooooooth,” whispered Trace. “Yell louder, I doubt they heard you over in Zebrabwe.”

“No, seriously,” said Bitterroot. “You both saw the blizzard to the north, right?”

Trace and Artemis looked at each other, then folded their ears back and began making similar muttered apologies.

“What about you?” Bitterroot asked Gale.

Gale shook her head, grinned nervously, and shrugged.

“Hoo boy,” Bitterroot said, facehooving. Were Trace and Artemis really so caught up in sniping that they couldn’t even look around themselves? “Alright. There was a blizzard several miles north, up on a mountain.” She pointed off into the darkness. “It didn’t look like it was moving much today, but we won’t be able to travel if it hits us. Should we get up early tomorrow for some traveling, just in case?”

“Eh. Sure,” Artemis said with a shrug.

“I say we ought to wait until morning to see what the blizzard is like,” said Trace. “I wouldn’t like to take down the tents only to have to put them back up again ten seconds later.”

“Right. Gale, wake me up early, would you please?”

Gale nodded.

“That being said,” continued Trace, “I still ought to be able to track Amanita after the blizzard passes. Ponies leave more traces than they are aware of, not just footprints.” She looked around at everypony else’s dumbstruck faces. “Trust me. It’s my talent.”

The camp lapsed into an awkward silence after that. Whenever Trace or Artemis looked like they were about to say something to the other, Bitterroot glared at them and they shut up. Still, the tension was thick enough to pluck it and call it a banjo. Artemis shared her dinner with Gale, but made no move to offer it to Bitterroot or Trace, so Trace (subtly, at least) offered Bitterroot some banana bread. Its deliciousness was slightly dimmed by the bad feelings stewing between Trace and Artemis.

When Bitterroot realized she had a relatively neutral topic of conversation, she jumped on it. “Artemis?” she asked.

Artemis didn’t even look up as she grunted.

“Do you know anything about Amanita that we don’t? Anything at all?” The last two days had left Bitterroot feeling there was something more to Amanita than the obvious. Whether or not Artemis knew that something was up in the air.

Artemis still didn’t look up. “If you’re sayin’,” she said darkly, “that I’m ’idin’ somethin’ from y-”

“Not. Intentionally,” said Bitterroot, suddenly fighting the urge to grab the rope and strangle Artemis with it. “You came to us with the bounty poster. You knew of Amanita before we did. Had you heard about Amanita before finding the poster? Do you know anything about her that just doesn’t seem important? Or did you just see the poster, get some information on her, and decide to chase her?”

Trace paused and slowly looked up at Artemis, her ears twitching. Bitterroot glared at Trace and mimed zipping her mouth shut. Trace responded with an eyeroll and a zip of her own.

It took several moments for Artemis to respond as she mulled over her memories. Finally, she flicked her tail and said, “Jus’ found ’er poster, asked around, ’vestigated Grayvale. Don’t really know anythin’ you two don’t.”

“Nothing at all?” asked Bitterroot. She suspected that was it, but sometimes drilling ponies helped their memory. “Ravens following her that could be thralls?” (Trace covered her head and looked up.) “Wards on herself? Lichdom?”

“Oh, Tartarus, she ain’t a lich!” said Artemis, laughing. “If she were, the Crown’d send a big ol’ anti-necromancer ’it squad after ’er, not some stupid boun’y ’unters! Liches’re big, mean, powerful, immortal-”

“And cowards,” interjected Trace, staring at the fire.

“Oh, boy, here we go,” whispered Bitterroot, hanging her head in her hooves.

“Liches? Cowards?” asked Artemis. She laughed again. “You’re outta your mind! Liches are some o’ the most dang’rous sorcerers in all Equestria!”

“I never said they weren’t,” said Trace. “But they are cowards, nonetheless.”

“If y’ain’t gonna-”

HOW ARE LICHES COWARDS, TRACE?” asked Bitterroot.

“Think about it,” Trace said with a shrug. “Truth be told, immortality through lichdom is essentially the only branch of magic motivated solely by fear. Fear of death, to be precise. If nopony feared death, nopony would become a lich.”

“What about alchemy?” asked Bitterroot. “They’re looking for the elixir of life. Isn’t that the same thing?”

Trace frowned and wiggled her hoof in a noncommittal sort of way. “Well… yes and no. The fundamental motive’s the same, but one can share the elixir and it has no need of the deaths of other ponies in the creation of a phylactery. I once heard of an alchemist who wanted to share it with her family. If you become a lich, you’re knowingly screwing over a bunch of other ponies in the process. You’re scared to die, so scared that you’ll do anything to stop it. You’d rather save your life and lose your soul than vice versa when any sane pony would stick with vice versa. Plus, the philosopher’s stone also gives you gold, which in turn gives you threesomes.”

Artemis snorted. “Lissen t’yourself,” she said. “You’re takin’ one o’ the most feared kinds o’ warlocks in all o’ Equestria an’ sayin’ they’re cowards? All of ’em?”

“Ah, yes, that was implied by the way I said, ‘liches are cowards’,” Trace enunciated.

Bitterroot moaned quietly. Was over a hundred thousand bits worth all this bickering?

But Artemis surprised her by going, “Huh. Never thought o’ it like that. Jus’, lissen t’all the stories, right? Liches’re learned, powerful, ’ard to kill-”

“Of course they are!” said Trace. “They need to be very, very skilled in the dark arts, particularly since they can’t study openly. But how do they use that skill, that knowledge? They don’t devote it to the betterment of Equestria, no. They simply cower before death and try to add more centuries to their life. Centuries they probably won’t enjoy anyway, since Celestia will have them hunted down and their soul jar destroyed.”

“ ’Less, o’ course,” said Artemis, “they managed to ’ide from the Court an’ nopony knows ’bout ’em.”

“Which would make them smarter than most ponies, I admit,” said Trace. “Nevertheless, it takes a special, greedy type of coward to be so smart and yet so idiotic simultaneously.”

Artemis shrugged and got to her hooves. “Feelin’ tired,” she said, yawning. “G’night.” She stalked over to her tent.

Trace rolled her eyes. “Argumentative, isn’t she?” she asked Bitterroot, rubbing her hooves together.

“Said the pot,” Bitterroot replied. She agreed mostly with Artemis, for once, but didn’t want to bring that up and re-open the can of worms.

Trace opened her mouth and lifted a hoof, paused in thought, then slowly lowered her hoof and wordlessly nodded. She glanced at Gale. “At least you won’t argue,” she said.

Gale grimaced in a way that looked like she wasn’t sure whether to agree or be offended.

“I don’t know,” said Bitterroot. “If you two were stuck in a room for a few hours, I bet you’d come up with a sign language to argue in.”

Trace and Gale looked at each other. Gale grinned as Trace admitted, “Yeah. Probably.”