//------------------------------// // Bats In A Belfry // Story: The Princess's Bit // by Mitch H //------------------------------// The auntie was standing there, just behind where the baku had been before Ping had split the dream-eating monster into two messy, gory halves. Gore which had splattered the auntie in the face. And the mane. And the tail, and pretty much everything else in between. The auntie's shadow-wings furled and unfurled, and the phantasmic gore disappeared into the dream-stuff it had once been. Good thing it had been phantasmic, the auntie didn't look best pleased. "Nephew! You are alone in the Walking. Where are your spear-carriers? Your shield-maiden?" Ping felt like the scolded foal he evidently was. "I do not need to interrupt the rest of new recruits. I can and have been handling minor haunts like this for the better part of two years. By myself. Without an entourage, or a following, or overtrained, underpowered wet-wings who will never be able to do much more than hold up a baku-sticker and hope to not be possessed." "Arrogance is not a good look on a youngling, even one as talented and full of potential as you." The auntie smiled, dangerously, and Ping almost cringed in the dreamscape in expectation of the inevitable- "COLT! FOAL! USE YOUR FOLLOWERS, OR-" "You'll call me home? I'm sworn to service, auntie. Same as you all. And more substantially than the rest of you, sitting retired in those back caverns. I-" "No lip, Two Pings! We need you to fold two of the younger matrons into your newfangled guards regiment! And I am far too busy to bandy words with a barely-whelped child! You are to meet them in the usual place in Trottingham, Picket Fire will secure the meeting, at noon, your time!" "But it's a-" and she was gone, with a thought.  Ping looked around the gloaming that loosely represented the dreaming minds of Garrison #5. The new artillerymare Lieutenant Lulamoon attracted more than her share of psychic remoras and worse, but Ping's nightly job was complete. If only he hadn't had to do it in so very few hours of sleep. More forged paperwork! And matrons, that was impossible. Ping awoke with a start, and looked over at the mechanical clock on the wall. He had very little time to deal with his morning necessities and slip out before something came up to keep him busy over the noon hour. "Ping! Hey, Ping, get out here, I need you to check on- what the buck?" "Oh, hey there, Sergeant Gilda, I wanna go out into the city today, check out the Cathedral of Labour, do you mind?" "I don't care if you drown yourself in the harbor, Magus Heartstrings, have you seen Ping?" "Who?" "Little batpony. Our company clerk - well, squadron clerk now. Efficient little bugger. But I can't find him today!" "Nah, never seen him. I think? This place is crawling with batponies. What's up with that, anyways? I've never seen so many batponies all together like they are here." "You figure it out, Magus, you let me or Major Shield know. I tell you what, go ask Sergeant Gustav for a full file for escorts, and I don't care if you go bar-crawling down through the heart of the Pennies." "Awesome! Do you know where the good bars are?" "No, I do not. Good day, Magus Heartstrings. Ping! PING! Where the buck are you?" The two matrons were barely that, in Ping's opinion. Picket Fire had let him into the catacombs from a townhouse a block and a half away, and they'd followed serpentine ways through the underground, avoiding the Rangers' old listening posts with care and stealth. The two matrons had been secreted in one of the rebuilt bell towers far above the ground floor of the great Cathedral of Labour. Ping looked around at the empty cradles, the missing bells having not been part of the reconstruction, to all appearances. There was nopony to overhear or interrupt the meeting. Picket Fire knew his business, and he knew his temple. Whatever the griffons wanted to call it, it was the batponies' temple. The monsters that it attracted made certain of that, for sure. And without Picket Fire's powerhouse of a wife to keep the dream-fires burning, it would be Trottingham that burned. Moreso than that tormented city had up to that point, anyways. The two matrons - or possibly aunties playing at being matrons - wore pegasus feathers, and innocent semblances, looking for all the dream-world as if they were fat day-loving tourists. Grossly out of place in this dark, gothic pile, even more grossly out of place in the heart of the griffish slums. You never even found Trottish earth ponies in the heart of the Pennies, let alone clueless Cloudsdale twitterers like the matrons were pretending to be. There was a slight distant muttering from somewhere below. Ping blinked, surprised, and shuffled a few feet beyond the doorway, listening until he could hear two disembodied janitors gossiping. Ping turned to his guide, and looked askance. "Don't mind that, sar." Picket Fire and his shy wife had lived in Trottingham so long, they'd taken to speaking in the local manner. "That's the whisperin' gallery reborn, it is. The mad ponies, they managed to resurrect it from th' dead when they rebuilt this 'ere tower. I asked around, I did. Used to be famous, or maybe infamous. You could 'ear th' whole congregation whisperin' from one point or t' other up 'ere. They say the priests would place their spies in th' belfries, an' if they stood in exactly the right spot, they could 'ear this 'un or that 'un conspirin' in the pews. "I 'ad it checked out wif the missus, 'ad her up 'ere flittin' about and kreein' up a storm, an' me down there in the nave, tryin' to 'ear a note of it, trottin' 'ere, trottin' there, movin' around, and never once 'earin' a squeak. Those earth ponies, they knows their rebuildin' techniques, they do. It's a marvel, it is. We're safe as 'ouses up 'ere, we is." "If you two are quite finished, the End of Days isn't about to wait on your witterings!" shrilled one of the badly disguised matrons. "How in the Mother's deepest shadows did the two of you get this far without being caught and burned as cultists? You couldn't stick out worse if you wore a set of dragon wings and lit the scenery on fire with your breath!" Ping demanded, provoked out of his usual equanimity. "Show some respect, colt! We are the experts the Council has sent to deal with this situation." Ping had to play along, lest the aunties sent worse. He swallowed his fear and outrage. "What situation is that, ma'am? I'm handling matters. The recruits are being integrated seamlessly, we're not threatening anyone. But I need all the help I can get not alarming ponies. We need to limit new transfers, we're already at a troop and a half - we haven't had a concentration of armed batponies this dense in a hundred and fifty years!" "And it would have been worth it if we'd been able to reconstitute the Lunar Guard, now, here! So close to the return!" said the more fanatical-eyed of the two disguised batpony matrons. "Yeah, well, that isn't happening, is it? I reported to the aunties. I told them, the Sixth isn't the Lunar Guard. It isn't the fabled Soldiers of the Night returned. It's barely anything at all at the moment, but what little of it there is, is a historical relic and a half-crazed adventurers' company being put together by a pair of overgrown teenagers. We were fooled. The Princess-" The two disguised mares hissed, enraged at Ping's use of the title. "Fine, the White Witch outmaneuvered us. It was a trick. A scam. We got lured off the mark, and put nearly six score of our best trained night-fighters into the mad start of an overprivileged, overpowered unicorn brat." It was almost too easy to slip back into this persona. To be the hard-eyed, bitter colt they all expected. "No, young Two Pings, it is the White Witch who has outsmarted herself this time. The auspices are changing, the stars are shifting. The breach won't come in the Everfree on the witch's holiday like everypony thought." The disguised mare cackled, the sound emerging strangely from under illusion of the harmless-looking mare she wore as a disguise. Oh thank the moon and stars, thought Ping. Sleep another hundred years, Mother of Dreams, and spare us from thy wrath. "No, it is drifting, eastwards, faster every night. We currently estimate our Queen of the Night will emerge somewhere southeast of Griffonstone, right on schedule. With the White Witch and her preparations half a world out of position!" "Until The End of Days!" the two mares caroled, looking transported. "Until The Last Night," replied Ping miserably, along with a somewhat alarmed-looking Picket Fire. Night, did he hate this part of his life. And they weren't shutting up… The muttering from below started up again, distracting Ping from the disguised matrons' blustering bigotries. That sounded like, it couldn't be- "BE SILENT, YOU OLD HAGS!" Ping's brief screech achieved ear-bleeding decibels, simultaneously he reached out with a desperate, narrow blast of his shadow, slashing through their loud, flashy semblances. Semblances that stood out like flares in the night to anypony at all mana-sensitive. The two matrons' disguises split like four halves of two rotten oranges, revealing the dark-furred, black-winged bitches hiding under the cheery pegasus semblances. Their sharp draconic eyes blinked in astonishment at his burst of power. Ping got himself back under control, looking down between his hooves, listening, desperately, carefully. He walked a half-pace, two paces back to the right. There. "What in the darkness-" began one of the old harpies. "Shut your fool mouth, mare. That voice - I'm pretty sure it's-" and it was, Ping was sure now. "We can't make another spark up here," he whispered urgently. "We have to be very, very quiet in the dreamscape. There's a magus under our hooves. I don't know where she came from, but I know Magus Heartstring's annoying voice when I hear it, even a hundred and fifty yards away through a whispering gallery made by oblivious earth ponies." "A magus! We're discovered! We must kill her and her followers before all is revealed!" The harridan wanted to kill a magus. In the cathedral. Under Ping's implicit protection, at that. He couldn't do anything with these lunatics. They were a threat to the entire squadron, batpony and daywalkers alike. If only the magus walked away without finding them in their hiding place. Lyra looked up at the vault, wondering what she'd just felt. Ghosts? She shook her head, dismissing the thought. It was the middle of the day, nearly noon! Lyra looked around at the magnificence of it all. "Mare, I knew this place would be worth the trip. Look at these vaults! Pristine!" "That'd be onna account of the ponies rebuilding it not three months ago, marm," said the blueshell griffish tom. "Well, the ponies and billies like Billy-Bob," he corrected himself. "Yeah? Wait, what?" Lyra said, turning her head back down to her escort. "You had somepony worked on this place, and they didn't send him with us? That's criminal!" "Sergeants 'ave better things t'do with their toms than send 'em off t' play tourist," said the earthpony beside her griffish escort. A matched Trottish set! Public Choice would have been so jealous of Lyra's good luck.  Served that stallion right for being such a stay-at-home coward. This was where the true academic belonged! Out on the cutting edge of social science, always one step away from slitting your throat on that edge. And if a social alchemist like Choice refused to get out on the picket lines and the skirmish lines to do a proper bit of exploring, then he wasn't any sort of magus! Speaking of which… "Shame I couldn't hit some of the other tourist options in the Isles. This was easy - the famed Cathedral of Labour! Half-shelled to oblivion! Haunted! Dark, mysterious catacombs. Speaking of which, how about we start making our way over that way, I think the caretaker said the stairs downstairs are over that way somewheres." Maybe she could get the locals to start talking about spooky places. Best way to winkle out interesting problems. The two Trottish guards looked to the other two members of Lyra's truly excessive entourage. That nervous nelly Sergeant Gilda had insisted that Lyra take an entire file of Crystal Guards with her as a bodyguard! In a pacified city! Nonsense and stuff. And damn stuffy. Lyra'd have to see if she could knock any of the stuffing out of that bird, she was too young to be so old! Where was Lyra? Oh, right, batponies. Batponies all over the place! Well, not here, the only batponies in sight were the two that Gilda's fellow Sergeant Gustav had given Lyra. But from all accounts the underground catacombs were dark, and labyrinthine, and were exactly the sort of place you brought a corporal's guard of batponies plus friends for backup and to help navigate through the shadows and spiderwebs.  "I mean, I'd have gone out to Flint Island to check out the Cave of the Gorgons, if I could have talked Major Shield out of the price of a ship out to the outer Isles," Lyra said a little brightly, projecting, trying to fill up the vast gloomy spaces under the underlit vaults of the central mass of the Cathedral.  "Naw," said the Trottish griffon. "Th' Cave is a damn cheat. Everygriff knows it's a pony tourist trap." "Says you," poked back the pony guard. "I 'ear it's a 'oot. All mummery and faffin' about. And there's dancin' durin' the festivals." "Yeah, but it's a pony thing, and a bleedin' farce. Mares wit' seaweed iner manes all painted up like watery tarts, that ain't no sort of serious spookery naw, izzit?" "I 'ear they's dead sexy when they's a-dancing, the mummers. And they get the cavern mouth all lit up, with shadows projectin' and dumb-shows and the whole nine yards." "All I know is that me uncle Giminy went out to see the Cave, back when they'd let griffons on the pony islands, and the barstards beat 'is 'ead in and took 'is bits, and left 'im on the docks fer the ferrymare to scrape off th' pier and ship home. 'E always squawked ten bits for one, all about 'ow it were a cheat and a lark and nawt but bumf and suchlike." "Yeah, but 'e drank out on it th' rest of 'is life, didn't 'e? Come on, Gillie, our families' as close as any pony 'n griffon's get can be got. Your ol Gim turned a stubbed claw an' a disappointed drinkin' session in the bars o' Port Flint inta the Tragedy of Old Maid Gharne! I oughta know, my uncle Strike Shaft was right next to 'em, drinkin' him pint for pint. As the both of 'em were most nights back on Halfpenny and Fuller."  The two Trottish guards' sniping back and forth filled up the darkness to Lyra's satisfaction, and she sighed in contentment as the silent, judgmental-looking batponies found the downward spiral stairs into the lower depths. It was nice to not have to be the clown all the time. The upper Cathedral hadn't had any of the markers its reputation reputed it - no heavenly iconography, no suspicious scrapings or dark hangings or tapestries. Boring, really, if you didn't care for politics or the sordid history of labor unrest. This was more like it. Carvings had been scraped off every second turning of the stairwell, and clumsily at that. They had to bring their own light down with them, because the sconces had been smashed up, too, which meant that Lyra had to fire up the ol' horn-glow, strong enough to light up the hoofing for her and the daylight guards. The two silent batponies moved a bit further ahead and down, where Lyra's green glare wouldn't ruin their nightsight. "Night, that's distorted," Ping muttered to himself. The sound of the guards and the magus had disappeared out of hearing around about where he and Picket Fire thought the whispering galley corresponded to the stairs down into the catacombs. Ping's hearing was, of course, supernaturally impeccable, but Picket Fire knew the Cathedral like the back of his wing. Ping looked up at the two barely-cowed 'matrons'. They were idiots, and they were opinionated. They might have knowledge and wisdom hoofed down from the ancients, but they were hopeless bigots, and there was no way that Ping could hide them in the squadron, let alone in the narrow confines of a crowded light carrier for what would probably be a weeks-long cruise. At least. "No, we're not doing this," he decided. "I don't care what the Elders of the Sacred Night want. Not on this." The aunties could scream at him in the sanctity of the Dream. They were half a continent away. Ping was here. He was the pony on site. They had no idea what they were asking. "You two disappear," Ping continued, staring down the two eldritch horrors. "If you insist on making yourself heard, then write your proposals up, give them to Picket Fire or Hearth Fire, and Picket will make sure it gets to me and the veterans. This is a delicate business, and I can't have you two dancing sharp-hooved all over our covers. You stick out like clowns painted up like demons in a pantomime without the disguises, and we have not just one, but two powerful unicorns who will spot you at a hundred yards in the disguises. Maybe further. The light carrier’s gondola length isn't longer than two hundred and fifty yards!" "But-" "No buts! Go away, and then when you're done with your proposals, go home! I need to make sure you and Magus Heartstrings don't cross paths. Picket Fire, sit up here with these two shrieking night nags and listen for us coming back up, I'll figure out a way to get her out of the Cathedral without twigging to these two. Somehow. "Make these two disappear after we're gone." Lyra was having the time of her life. She was also a little lost. Luckily, she had a light that would never go out, but she could hear the griffon sobbing in the darkness somewhere off to the left, and back a bit. She'd lost both the earth pony and the two batponies a couple turnings back, and now that wimp of a tom was crying like a kitling. Lyra would find him in a minute, but there was a damn fitted-stone wall between her and the sobbing. How in the name of harmonic convergence had he managed to get that far away from his only light? Lyra doubled back, and cast around for the corridor that had to be off in that direction. Oh, there he was, curled up with his wings over his head. "Well, bugger me in Boreas's frozen bunghole, aren't you a sore sight, 'Gillie'. Don't get lost like that. Have you seen your friend the idiot earth pony?" "'Aven't- haven't seen him in fifteen minutes, marm. Maybe go back the way we came?" "And why didn't you do that yourself?" "Thought I saw yer light through th' cracks in the wall. An' then you just… disappeared like." "Come on then, you big strong tom you. Find your friend for me, and we'll find those blasted batponies who've let us to wander. You can't tell me that ponies with sonar and night vision can get lost even in this stygian ever-night." They walked back the way Lyra had come. She was never quite sure why other ponies found it so hard to keep their bearings in the dark. It was elemental! They found the other idiot up another corridor, sitting quietly on his haunches in the middle of the corridor. He wasn't making an ass of himself like his blue friend, but Lyra wasn't fooled. He was one more spooking short of wetting his fatigues with a yellow stain. She was disappointed that she hadn't found anything interesting, though. No dark tombs, no broken idols or blasphemous chambers of fell, ancient rites. Although there was something glinting off down that side corridor over there… "Magus Heartstrings, there you are!" squeaked an unfamiliar batty voice. Lyra looked over to the corridor leading, eventually, to the stairs going up into the Cathedral. A little batpony stood there in the darkness, his slit-eyes enormous and glinting like dragon-gems in contrast between the darkness and Lyra's hornglow. "Yes, I suppose I am," Lyra conceded. "Do I know you? You glitter like a Crystal Guard. But you aren't my missing batponies." "Are you missing some batponies, Magus?" he asked. Celestia, he was kind of cute, wasn't he? In a mildly terrifying, diminutive sort of way. Like a tiny imp, or a small timberwolf. "I came down here with two bat-guards, who immediately decided to fuck off somewhere, leaving the other two guards here dependent on my aimless irresponsibility. I'm fine, but I'm afraid that Trooper Gillie here -" "Gilead, marm." "Really? I never pegged you for a Gilead. What's your quivering friend's full name? It can't be just 'Joe'." "Joe's dam named 'im Piccadilly Joe, marm, but most folk just call 'im Mickle Joe on account of 'e's so short." "OK then! Troopers Gilead and Piccadilly Joe may never get over their trauma." "We never, marm!" "I know, dears, you're very fierce. But you see my dilemma- um, who exactly are you, again?" "That's Corporal Ping, marm," offered the griffon, getting over his trauma a great deal faster than Lyra had expected. "'E’s the company clerk." "Squadron clerk, trooper," the little batpony said, nettled. He frowned, looking around.  Then he let out an almighty horrible shriek, as if he was an entire troop of batponies screaming.  Lyra grabbed her ears with her hooves and cringed, fearing for a repeat. Her hornglow flickered a bit from the unexpected shock. Then there was a fluttering of bats' wings, and her missing guards came bursting into view. "There we go!" said the littlest batpony. "I think you all have had quite enough exercise for the day, haven't you, Magus Heartstrings? I'm sure the Major and the Sergeant would like to know where you've been." "From what I heard the last time I laid eyes on Sergeant Gilda, I think it's you she wants to know where you got to, if you're the same Ping," Lyra laughed at the little bat-winged puzzle. "Oh, crap," the batpony said, looking like a foal who thought he'd get away with filching a cookie from the jar on top of the fridge. Do batponies eat cookies? wondered Lyra Heartstrings, as they all trooped up the steep stairs back into the living light of the world.