Twilight took John's arm as he helped her rise back up from her illustration of the resonance pattern. The implication of it chilled her enough that she paid little attention to Luna's words to Chief Manco and Rarity's dramatic outburst. If the Nightmare learned how to restore the dead Nightmares of the Shonokin to life and returned to Equestria with that knowledge, what else could she bring back? Sombra? Tirek? Grogar of Tambelon? Catrina the Abyssinian Witch? All the horrid monsters and tyrants from the old stories of Dream Valley? Those alien Nightmares and Windigos whose names Thorn called upon to empower his spellcasting?
IF the Shonokin don’t just expend her along with Luna and feed a full Alicorn Major’s power to Those Nightmares They Serve…
Nearby she noticed Pinkie Pie. The party pony stood still, staring intently at the darkening woods across the road. She twitched like Fly-ders bit her, and her mane looked like it was deflating.
Meanwhile Mister Manco spoke to John and Luna.
“John, that's the only real option we have. Get these ponies in close to Chorazin and let them use their Elements on the Tantabus. And soon,” he looked at the horizon. Twilight glanced to see the sun down behind a forested ridge, painting the dusk a fading salmon pink and crimson. Above the first stars appeared, in constellations so unlike those of Equestria. And the moon too, with that terribly familiar image on it that drew a shudder from her.
And Pinkie Pie twitching and staring. Wait, Pinkie staring? Tail twitching, mane deflating?
“Everyone look out!” Twilight yelled even as Mister Manco spoke.
“Before the Shonokin and their new ally decide to come at us again.”
Before anyone else said anything, a familiar voice spoke, full of hunger and greed.
“Luna.”
Twilight and the others spun. The Nightmare, the Tantabus, stood thirty lengths away amid the trees, a silhouette blacker than black with eyes of turquoise foxfire. Not as majestic as all those years ago, more like Thorn's conjured form, a walking sickness, but still as cold and terrible as the death of all light.
Luna fell back, ears pinned. She glanced at Twilight in desperate fear as the Nightmare trotted closer. She looked less solid than Twilight remembered, not just her mane and tail but her entire form swirling like sparkling black mist. The Shonokin came behind her, with pale faces and pale hands that gripped dull-shining rifles.
“Twilight,” Luna begged, her voice a low whicker of Equestrian. “We are as sisters. Aid me now, I beg you!”
Before Twilight could answer the Nightmare spoke again, licking her lips in hunger.
“Luna, come to me. I am the greater part of you. You know this. Come and become whole again. Come and become Me again.”
Twilight tried to think of a spell she could call on with the limited power here, but the formulae jumbled in her mind. No background magic to tap, no horn to focus…
“NO!” Luna whinnied in terror mixed with fury, and then everything happened at once. Pinkie wheeled and shot for the cabin, somehow snatching up Rarity and Evadare and Fluttershy as she went. Angry snorts sounded in Twilight's ears as Rainbow Dash and Applejack charged by, Dash low in the air and AJ on the ground, right at the Nightmare and her Shonokin allies. Twilight tried to cry warning after them. Had they already forgotten what happened in Chorazin?
But even as she did she felt John seize firm hold of her shoulder and pull her back. He began to speak one of those warding spells of his that she'd tried so hard to study: “The peace of Our Lord Christ be with us, that the blade may not cut, that the dog may not bite, that the gun may not fire –!”
Then loud piercing cracks one after the other, like a string of big firecrackers with one BOOM amid the bangs. A sudden gasp came from close behind.
John!
She looked and saw Mister Manco double up and crumple to the ground to lay still, oh so still. Like the dream-figures in John’s dream of frozen Tartarus.
Beyond him, Dash whinnied in sudden sharp pain and crashed into to the ground with a half-roll, sending a shock of terror through her. She relaxed only a little when the blue pegasus bounced back up, her left wing hanging loose at the wing-joint, blood so startling red staining blue feathers.
But worst of all was Luna's cry. No longer a whinny, but a scream.
John ran to her. Twilight raced behind, wishing for her pony form's superior speed. Hooves pounded close by as Applejack charged with Dash close behind, dragging her wing and limping. Her teeth visibly ground against the pain she must be feeling.
The Nightmare whinnied laughter as a nebula filled with tiny cold spots of light swept past Twilight to envelop the Alicorn of Night. Luna gave Twilight one last desperate look, eyes wide enough to show the whites all around her blue pupils. She reached for her.
“Twilight!”
Twilight made one last surge. One more step and she'd have Luna's hoof.
“Princess Luna, I've got you!”
Something cold went slithering between her hand and Luna's hoof. Twilight cried out her disgust but held on. With a whip-crack it tossed her back to slam into John. They both rolled to the ground.
Twilight rose up on her knees just in time to see that sparkling cloud of cold darkness swallow Luna up. There came a last burst of chill mocking laughter, full of savage pride, and the Nightmare swept Luna and the Shonokin up and took them away.
We failed, Twilight thought hopelessly. The Nightmare and Shonokin have Luna, and they'll drain her to nothing, and then they'll let a whole army of nightmares and windigos and monsters loose on everypony. Both here and in Equestria.
“Twi!” Applejack reared up before her, dropping her fetlocks over Twilight’s shoulders and gave her a shake. She pointed at Mister Manco and Dash. “Snap out o' it! We need ta take care o' some ponies here!”
Twilight looked at them and gasped. Mister Manco was on his knees. His face was turning sickly green and pale as he clutched both his arms to his abdomen from where a steady stream of blood flowed. Dash looked better, but only in comparison. She limped and cursed, the words hissed through clenched teeth as her maimed wing dangled beside her leaving a blood trail in the dirt.
“Oh my gosh, Fluttershy!” Twilight looked up at the cabin and gasped to see how pockmarked its front wall was. What if one of those bullets had found its mark by mere chance? She heard no sounds from inside. She yelled, “Pinkie Pie! Rarity! If Miss Evadare is okay we need help here!”
“I'm fine, Miss Twilight,” Evadare said as she hurried out the door. In her hands she held what looked like a small white box marked with a red cross. In the midst of her panic Twilight found the calmness to wonder that ponies and humans both used the same symbol for medical care. She froze a heartbeat long when she saw what had happened. “John, my God, tell me you're not hurt!”
“Nary more than you,” John sounded relieved to say it. He turned to Mister Manco. “But Reuben and Dash are hurt plenty bad here.”
Dash looked up and shook her head, teeth bared in a ghastly grin. Muscles bunched and twitched under her coat, but she stood on her own.
“I'm fine,” she rasped, pain making her voice rougher than usual. “I got hurt worse than this training with the Wonderbolts.” Pinkie and Rarity and Fluttershy all appeared at the door. The butter-yellow pegasus had her medical saddlebag on. Their eyes rolled and ears pinned back at the sight and smell of violence. Dash just waved her unhurt wing at Manco. “He needs the help!”
“Oh, Dashie!” Pinkie was at her side in a moment. She seemed to nuzzle at the pegasus’ bleeding wing root. Dash yelped; Pinkie turned her head and spat small metal balls onto the ground. “In stories like this, you’re supposed to dodge when somepony shoots at you!”
Then Rarity and Evadare were with the wounded pegasus, Evadare wiping Dash’s wing with something from a glass bottle; Twilight took it for some disinfectant.
“Aw, stop fussing over me, I’ll be fine – OW! What’s in that bottle? Dragon fire?”
Rarity held a stack of bandages in her horn’s aura, calling to Fluttershy as she flew over: “Fluttershy, help Mister John and Twilight. Mister Manco may be dying!”
“I may be, but I'm not dead yet,” Manco seemed to gasp the words out. Pain thickened his words but his voice stayed calm. Blood still flowed from his injury, staining and matting his shirt and old pants. Twilight could smell the coppery scent of it. He was putting pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding. “John, young ladies, if you have anything that can help it would be useful right now.”
John stooped over him, pulling a cloth from his pocket as Fluttershy dropped beside him. With her wing she began pulling bandages and bottles and thick pads from her saddlebag. As she did John reassured Mister Manco.
“We'll be helping you right now, Chief,” he gently pushed Manco's hands back and away from the wound, cutting the wounded man’s shirt to look at it. It was a bloody rent in his flesh, a tunnel deep into his body. John took one of the bandages from Fluttershy, pressed it onto the wound and put his weight onto it. “Miss Twilight here knows some tricks the nair of us do, and – what are you a-doing there?”
“Getting ready to help,” Twilight said as she stripped off her clothes, all three humans staring in confusion. She slowed when she reached the underclothes. They were attached in some odd-feeling ways behind her back with hooks and eyelets. “I know how to heal it, but I can't cast the spell in this form. I'll have to assume my normal one – Blast it!” Twilight dropped to all fours and called up the dispel for her polymorph. “I don't have the time to fool around!” Purple light exploded around her, her remaining clothes flew from her in shreds, and she gasped at a swift sudden burst of pain as flesh and bone returned to her normal form – hooves, horn, tail, wings. Twilight stumbled for a moment caught between the pain and restoration to her normal quadrupedal stance. And more, to the smells that assailed her with renewed intensity.
Blood. Pain. Death. RUN!
“Twilight! Whatever you mean to be a-doing, better do it quick!” John Mister Manco lay flat on the ground; his face looked even paler now, slack hands were dropping away from his injury. A pained grunt came from him as John put more pressure on the wound. The bandage was soaked crimson, overflowing onto his hands, and he kept repeating something over and over.
“This is the day on which the injury happened; Blood, thou must stop, until the Virgin Mary brings forth another son…”
Twilight remembered her discipline and forced her equine hindbrain to sit down and be still s she moved to John and Fluttershy's side. The metallic blood reek was even stronger. She ignored it to call light from her horn and look into the wound magically.
“Blood, thou must stop, until the Virgin Mary brings forth another son…”
She was the Element of Magic. One of its manifestations was to instinctively analyze and know the basics of any spell cast on her. Over two years ago Celestia had cast a Princess-strength Heal Major on her and the others, as they waited wounded and drained for the Sunny Towners’ final assault after Thorn’s defeat. She'd heard stories from her brother of injuries in the field, and seen some herself after several years worth of striving against some of Equestria's worst foes, but the sight of a bloody gaping hole in somepony still sickened her. First step, stop the blood loss.
“Blood, thou must stop…”
John’s hands were as stained as the crimson bandage as her spell probed inside. The wound itself was a jagged tearing hole through Mister Manco's abdomen. Like a crossbow wound, but messier, like the tiny metal bolt had spun or even tumbled as it tore through him. She checked for it and found nothing foreign inside his body. No bolt, she thought, it went completely through, no need to remove it. Missed the abdominal cavity… A bloodshot cylinder of a bruise surrounded the wound channel. No major organ damage… Just major bleeding… Though her horn she could see and feel the torn blood vessels leaking vital essence into the open air. She killed the diagnosis spell. Twilight saw what needed doing.
“Young lady,” Mister Manco gasped, his voice sounding thready and weaker with every word. “Whatever is to be done, please hurry.”
“I will,” Twilight promised him. She focused her concentration, ignoring that a good stallion who she liked and who trusted here was depending on her to save his life right now to remember what Celestia and her own research had told her about that Princess-strength magical healing. Healing magic does not create something from nothing. It stimulates regrowth and natural healing to a rate hundreds to thousands of times faster than normal, using the unicorn's own magical energy for power. Pony magic aligns with Life, and draws upon the life of the healing-caster. Which was why most unicorn healers, all save the strongest and most skilled, might at best have been able to stop Manco from losing any more blood if they could only use their own magical energy resources. But Twilight was an Alicorn Minor and the Element of Magic. And even here, in this near magic-less world, she had more than enough power to do this. The Princess healed us all that time; I have only one to concentrate on.
So she told herself as with infinite care she let the magic extend from her horn into that rent in his flesh. First she forced the tissues to regrow, her magic providing the power that would normally be provided by the body in weeks and months of recovery. She tracked down and reconnected every leaking blood vessel, feeling them reach out to rejoin themselves. Only then did she start re-closing the wound channel from the inside out. Manco's grunt of pain showed it wasn't pleasant. Twilight strongly suspected it to be preferable to dying.
“Chief, are you a-feeling any better?”
“Some, Brother John,” Mister Manco said. Twilight barely noticed him raise one hand – barely – to forestall further questions. “Let this young lady do her spellworking in peace.” Then with some of his old curiosity, “It is a thing to see, though I could have stood seeing it happen under better conditions than this.”
“Twilight,” Fluttershy’s voice sounded soft in her ear. The pegasus didn't have unicorn magic but she had experience with her animal friends; she knew something of the sort of concentration needed under these circumstances. “I know you know what you're doing, but just in case, don’t close him up completely. You need to leave an open channel for the wound to drain fluid or it'll form an abscess.” That said she trotted over to Dash. Twilight heard Dash complaining as Evadare and Pinkie Pie helped her, aided by Fluttershy.
“No,” Twilight muttered as she felt the spell begin to weaken. She pulled at her Element and herself as heavily as she could, but both were at their limits. The bleeding had slowed but not stopped, and she was almost too drained to finish.
“Twilight, darling,” Rarity stepped up beside her and put her horn against hers, moving slowly and gently not to disturb the spell. Her smell worked through the blood scent, lilies and lavender and the normal sweet pony scent, but even stronger from Rarity. “I strongly suspect you need some extra strength for this, dear, so take what you need.”
The Element of Generosity joined with the Element of Magic; Twilight felt power flow from Rarity’s horn into hers, through her spell and into the wound. The last blood vessels grew and fused leaving sutureless scar tissue; Mister Manco sighed in relief as the pain lessened.
“Um, not to be giving getting bossy, or anything,” Fluttershy's hooves sounded softly against the earth underfoot, clicking against a stone, “but does your world have anything that can aid against infection? I only have the one vial of sulfanilamide powder.” Twilight caught sight of the pegasus pulling the bottle out of her saddlebag.
“Sulfa?” John turned to Fluttershy, took the bottle from her mouth. “We have that, too.”
“And other antibiotics even better, but not here and not now”, Mister Manco near-whispered.
John uncorked the vial and began sprinkling the contents into the wound as Twilight started to close up, debriding anything that didn’t feel like living healing flesh. “Pardon for the rush, Chief, and I hope you have nary a problem with this, but this here wound needs it.”
“Thankfully, no,” Mister Manco said, with one or two winces. “Though the last time I needed it used was many years ago, when I was much younger and more foolish.” He watched while Twilight kept busy on the wound, finishing her magic on it. When she stepped back he carefully pressed on the injury. When it didn't bleed he nodded approval. “It is good. I suspect I will live. Thank you, young woman,” he bowed his head to Twilight. “I was glad before for your presence and I am even happier now.” He began to sit up. With a groan he sank backwards against the earth.
“Chief!” John hurried to catch him.
“Just felt dizzy there,” Mister Manco said, setting his hand to his face and slowly shaking his head. He folded his legs close, raising his knees slowly and carefully. “Weak as water. It seems even magic from other worlds has its limits.”
“It does,” Twilight sank down on her belly, sweating and panting. She couldn't remember the last time spellcasting left her feeling this drained. The fight with Tirek, maybe. “You lost a lot of blood volume. I can't replace it magically; it'll have to replenish naturally.” She bowed her head in apology. “I'm sorry.”
“Miss Twilight,” Manco smiled, a little tightly, but he smiled and reached out a shaking hand to touch her forelock. “Under the circumstances, believe me, I have no trouble forgiving you. You're not the one who did this.” John moved to his side and began helping him to sit up, then got his head and shoulders under the Cherokee’s arm and raised him to his feet as a hatless Applejack steadied him, rearing up on her hind legs to assist.
His eyes widened slightly at that but he only said, “If Miss Dash is well, we'd better move inside your cabin, brother John. It seems certain the Shonokin and the Nightmare are gone, but if they left someone behind I'd rather we had a strong wall of logs between us and them.”
“I'm great,” Dash grunted the words where she lay a couple lengths away where Pinkie and Evadare worked on her. Her wing was bound up like something from a Daring Do novel and looked to have stopped bleeding, though a large stain colored the dirt beneath her. Both earth pony and human helped her to her hooves.
“I just want to get Luna back and teach Nightmare Moon and those Show-nothing guys a lesson.” She stretched a little and winced. “Ugh! My wing feels like it got bitten by a whole swarm of bees or fly-ders.”
“I thought one of those Shonokin had a shotgun,” Mister Manco said, and scowled to say it. “We were just lucky they didn't have more, or came closer before shooting, or more of us would have been wounded.” Dash snorted in contempt; Applejack joined her.
Chief Manco managed to chuckle, sounding more like his old self. “Some wise old Indians I knew as a boy would say that Miss Dash has a warrior's heart. I wish we had some of them here now, as they were. They would have been happy to help stop the Shonokin and their new ally from whatever wickedness they're about.”
Fluttershy relieved Evadare with Dash, and Evadare relieved AJ in helping John get the Cherokee to the cabin. The ponies followed, Rarity looking as drained as Twilight felt.
By the time they reached the porch, she felt steady on her hooves; maybe her Element, or Rarity’s, or both helped recovery. Stopping on the porch, she scanned the darkening woods with a wary eye before stepping inside. Twilight felt sure the Shonokin and Nightmare Moon were gone. There wasn't that ugly sort of an itch in her horn she’d felt in their presence.
“I think those lowflung Shonokin are gone, Chief,” John said as he and Evadare maneuvered Manco to the rocking chair. “Else with all that moonlight a-shining on us, they'd have shot us all certain sure before we air reached the cabin.”
“There’s a downright happy thought,” Applejack muttered, closing the door with a rap from a hindhoof. “If’n they did, Ah’d be charging them right now, whatever Twi told me to do.”
John and Evadare settled Mister Manco into the rocking chair, moving carefully. Evadare lit a distilled-oil lamp while John cut off the remainder of Manco’s bloody shirt.
Twilight dropped back, her ears pinned as the metallic reek filled the cabin like an alarm to the ponies. Twilight took an unwilling step back and noticed the others doing it as well. All save Fluttershy. Twilight remembered her saying that being around and treating her animal friends left her pretty immune to usual pony panic reactions to bloodscent. Evadare fetched some water from a pot boiling over the iron woodstove, took a towel, and began lightly sponging the Cherokee's wound, front and back. His skin looked like old and well-aged leather, wrinkled but not weak, covering a body that reminded Twilight of a scarred old tomcat with its lean rangy muscles. Other, older scars showed here and there. None looked as impressive as his latest injury.
Mister Manco noticed her attention. “Yes, young lady. I have been injured before, though each time I hoped it to be the last. I do take some pride to say that, barring one or two, I regret none of them. I got them all helping others. I remember an old line from your ancestors, John, about how wounds taken in honorable service should be borne with pride.”
Twilight nodded. “My brother served in the Royal Unicorn Spellguard. He said once that his instructor said much the same thing.” She looked at the now clean and bandaged wound and couldn't help wincing. “Not that it makes it any less painful when you get them.”
At that Manco laughed, not as deeply as before, but loud enough. John looked to be smiling at it himself. He walked back over from the kitchen with a pitcher of water and what looked like a tin cup. “Here, Chief. You'll be wanting some of this.”
“Brother John,” Manco turned to him, accepting the glass of water, “if all these ponies you met in you other world are as wise and decent as this young lady and her friends, those people are doing very well by themselves. But now, however,” and his face turned grim again, “we have our own problems.”
“Yeah,” Dash interrupted, drawing a scowl from Manco, “like my wing.” She raised her splinted and bandaged wing, winced and lowered it. “Ya helped the Chief here, Twilight, can ya help with this?”
She looked hopeful as Twilight mentally checked on her reserves of energy. Her horn sparked slightly, but only a little.
“Sorry, Dash,” Twilight shook her head. “But after helping Mister Manco I'm going to be tapped out for a few hours. No major spellworkings. And we need to be saving Luna first; we’ll need as much power as we can.”
“Rats!” Dash snorted in disgust and stomped one hoof. Evadare set a small bowl of water within her reach. Dash walked to it and lapped the water down. She looked up, her muzzle dripping, and seemed a little calmer. “Guess it can't ever be easy, huh?”
“Those we face will make nothing easy for us, young lady,” Manco said, his voice regaining some of its usual deepness. “Not even dying, if they have their way. Their hate for us and for our defying them won't let them show mercy, even if they ever felt it.” He frowned and looked thoughtful. Light from the fireplace deepened the shadows in his wise old face. “Hate, yes. It's an active principle with the Shonokin and it seems with the Nightmare as well. They hate us, they hate and want to enslave or destroy everything that isn't themselves. Sometimes I wonder if they even hate each other, the way the Shonokin abandon their own dead to animals and the elements like they were nothing. You people are so gentle,” he nodded at Twilight and her friends, “I wonder if you can understand that. I hope not.”
“Not all ponies 'r all that gentle, Mister Manco,” Applejack answered from where she stood watch at the cabin’s small front window. “We've had trouble with some nasty ones, once-twice our own selves, an' with other critters.”
“Oh dear, yes,” Rarity nodded, closed one eye as she thought. “Chrysalis and the Changelings, Garble and his beastly associates, King Sombra, Discord...”
“And Thorn. And Tirek.” Twilight shivered at the memories before walking across to the window, bracing her forehooves on the sill beside Applejack’s. Outside, a waxing moon sat low behind the trees, its light filtering through the foliage.
“If they plan to do something to Luna…” Twilight started, “they’ll probably do it when your moon is at the zenith. When it’s highest in your sky.” A little over four hours, if the days here are like Equestria’s.
“Yuh,” Mister Manco’s voice came from behind her. “That seems the likeliest. The Shonokin love the darkness and hate the light, like your Nightmare. How did one black magician explain it? ‘Half the night to gather your strength, the other half to use the Power you’ve gained’?”
“They’ll not be getting any power,” John said. His voice reminded Twilight of when they were preparing to go to Sunny Town and Thorn. “Not tonight. Nor airy other night.”
She craned her head around to see John placing the map from before on the plank table next to the lamp, then his guitar, then a walking stick that looked dark with age and as strong as iron.
“Ash,” he said at her look; the top was carved into something like a pony’s head; the other end was sheathed in metal. “Chief Manco got this for me, and I relish having it some times these past few years. Ash is lucky against bad magic like we’ll be facing. Chief?”
“Yuh?”
“We need to go to Chorazin. Can you drive in your condition? I hate to be asking,” he looked out the window at the rising moon, “but if we walked we'd be lucky to get there afore midnight latest, and the less time we waste now, the better. And you're the ony one here knows how to drive.”
Manco nodded. “I can, but I won’t be good for anything else. Normally it would take about forty minutes, but the way I am now I would allow two hours.”
John nodded back. “And we have about four.” He went over to a shelf, brought out the bottle of disinfectant Evadare had used; it smelled of alcohol and not much else. “Chief? Evadare? Ladies? There’s rightly only one thing we can be doing.” He set the bottle beside the lamp, next to three tin cups. “Air one gather round. This is a Council of War.”
# # #
Neither Chief Manco nor Evadare said much of anything while he drove up along those back roads to where we’d head off to Chorazin. He looked like it took all he had with that hole in his side to focus on the road. Me, I wondered myself other things.
Was it true what I’d thought, that my bringing Twilight into my dreams, even if I nair knew I was doing it, was what brought all these troubles among her and her friends? I minded me how they felt and spoke when they’d called me up to face Thorne a few years afore. They’d been right sorry down to their bones, even if they had no way of knowing what sort of help they’d get or what would be a-happening to them. I didn’t know if I felt as sorry as they did then, but I don’t think I could have felt the least bit sorrier.
I put my arm around Evadare as she sat beside me. She pressed back but didn’t say a thing.
To try and keep my mind off things, I looked out the side window of the Chief’s old pickup. It was dark out past the little light from the headlights, but I’d always been able to see pretty well in the dark. I was born right around midnight or nearabouts, and old folks say a child born then can see in the dark. Mostly what I saw were big old trees either side of us where they’d cut down to put the road in. I felt sad to see that, a little; I’ve always been right fond of trees. I saw a few other things, too, like brush around them and when I looked up, a few thin high clouds passing between us and the stars and moon. Seeing that made me wonder how long we had until the Shonokin and the Nightmare did whatever they wanted to do with poor Luna. If Twilight was right that they’d wait ‘til the moon was at its highest, we had two-three hours. We had a plan, but it sounded too much like Twilight’s when we entered the Everfree against Thorne two-three years gone.
“When we buried Thorne’s grimoire, we disabled it. If we… If we were to unearth it, it would still be disabled, right?”
“I don’t rightly know. I nair heard of airy one digging one of those books back up after burying it proper-like. Why? What are you thinking on doing?”
“Thorne wants his grimoire back… If it’s disabled, we might be able to use it as bait to draw him out into the open. I…I know it’s risky – I told everypony we should never let Thorne have any chance to get that book back, no matter what, but we don’t have time and this is the only thing I could think of.”
“It’s a kindly big chance. For your own self and air pony else.”
“I know… but he’ll be expecting us at the Castle of the Sisters in two days. We might not have two days. If we come in for him before then he’ll have to react to us, and it won’t be us reacting to him.”
I looked back through the rear window at the ponies in the truck bed. Twilight was standing in the center, looking like she mostly worried herself over Luna. The other five were right curious, hanging their heads over the sides and looking at air thing we passed. Once a little fancy car came hurrying by with its lights shining bright, to make sure you saw it. He must have seen something he nair expected to see, because after his lights went over the back and Pinkie reared up and waved he raced past us down the road like a little boy who saw a ghost flapping through a graveyard.
“I reckon he got a surprise,” I said, a-hoping to make a joke. Chief Manco just nodded the once, and Evadare nair showed if she even heard.
The Chief went up one road and down another and each one was rougher than the last. I kept harking back to what he and Twilight spoke about what they’d seen at Chorazin, those strange plants and strange houses that might have been the man-eaters folks call gardinels. I’d seen such things afore, that one time with Brooke Altic when he took me to the Shonokin town called Immer to try and make me join up with him. I’d told him no, and when he tried to kill me for it I helped make an end of him to save my life and others aside. I minded me of an old saying how air time you stood up to bad magic and defeated it, made its owner run, it made you the stronger against it.
That was something I’d done many a time in my years. Brooke Altic, Mister Lowden, Tiphaine and her whole coven in their abandoned town, Ruel Harpe who might have been the strongest of them all including Rowley Thorne and maybe even the Nightmare, all of them mighty evil and evilly mighty and gone where such folk ought to go in the end. They’d all tried to either master me or kill me, but in the end I’d put an end to their evildoing. Twi and her friends had been a-doing that very thing back in Equestria too. I just hoped we owned enough strength between us to beat it once more, here.
The truck rocked as the Chief went up the roughest and narrowest road of all, rolling over dirt and stones and maybe even fallen logs. Then he finally stopped it and said, “Well, John, this is it.”
# # #
The sky was black and the Mare-marked Moon high through the thick trees as Reuben Manco braked the powered wagon in the midst of the pine tree woods Twilight remembered from their morning trip to Chorazin. The trees looked no friendlier now than then, tall and dark like some forbidding fortress.
“I don’t like these trees,” Fluttershy quavered. “They’re too much like the ones we saw the first time together, when we went to face Nightmare Moon. They’re – not friendly, if that makes sense.”
Like the Everfree at its worst…
Twilight felt the cold of the metal wagon’s bed even through one of Evadare’s quilts covering that bed. It felt less chilly than the air around them. The moon hung full and ominous overhead with the Nightmare's shadow on it, gazing down on them. Like she spied on them and knew they were coming against her. Twilight's coat twitched at the thought as she jumped down to the dirt and rocks and wheel ruts, followed by the other five Element Bearers. Rarity lashed her tail in dismay at the dirt and pine needles. Dashie got down with a little help from Pinkie and Applejack, making a soft hiss of pain.
The right-hand door of the powered wagon’s cab groaned open and John got out, slinging his guitar over his back. He wore a beat-up old leather jacket and hat. Nothing bright or reflective anywhere about him that might shine in the moonlight and reveal where he stood. Other than his silver guitar strings.
“John,” Manco looked at him, “I can't begin to tell you how much I wish I could be going along. I think you may be needing my help before this is all over, even with your own knowledge and these brave young women. Maybe if I didn't hurry too much –” The other door’s latch clacked and it began to open.
John opened his mouth and raised one hand to warn against it, but it was Fluttershy who reared up to set herself against the door.
“I'm sorry, Mister Manco,” the pegasus said in that oddly strong soft voice she could use. She stood on her hind legs, wings half-opened for balance, and leaned against the door with her forehooves, her weight holding it shut. Manco scowled at her. She flicked her ears back nervously. But she still said, “I know enough medicine to tell you no. You were shot, you've lost a lot of blood. You would reopen your wound, and it would take even more energy from Twilight and Rarity to seal it again. And what if those terrible Shonokin caught you when you couldn't defend yourself?” She shook her head, her long mane tossing softly. “You're staying here with Miss Evadare.”
“Fluttershy has the right of it, Chief,” John cut in as Evadare slid out of the other door. “Right now you're too bad hurt to be a-helping us. I wish you could be coming too. You're a wise man and I know how strong your knowledge is from that time with the Voths. But this time, you're going to be sitting it out.”
“Maybe,” Chief Manco frowned. His grip on the steering wheel tightened, the knuckles standing out on his strong and leathery hands. “I won't pretend to be liking it, Brother John. But I'm afraid you're right about this.”
That said, John moved to the other door where Evadare waited. Twilight watched and smiled gently as he and Evadare embraced and kissed like they might never see each other again. The smile slipped from her face as she realized that was what might happen.