After escaping the dreary woods, the two rested for the night in a nearby cave. Their journey continued the next morning.
"This terrain is beginning to look familiar. I'm sure these are the outskirts of the land of centaurs," Tirek proclaimed with confidence. He had often visited this territory to train his magic prowess when he was young, and apparently nothing had changed about it. The stormy skies had a permanent blue glow due to accumulated electrical charge, while dry grass painted the grasslands yellowish blond. The monotony was interrupted only by a few dead trees bearing red-hot scars, as if struck by lightning no more than an hour ago.
"Which means we will likely arrive at Midnight Castle today," he added, "though after all these years I cannot remember its precise location. Since we don't have a map, we will just have to rediscover it for ourselves."
An hour passed uneventfully. While walking Tirek inspected the horizon for the buildings of his former home as well as the nearby environment for pathways, milestones or any other artifact that would indicate that they were approaching civilization, but it was to no avail. Eventually a moderately tall hill arose on the horizon.
"That hill over there would be a good vantage point," Tirek said. "From there we can cover a lot of ground, especially if you fly up high and look around from above."
His words garnered no response. In fact, as he realized, the filly beside him hadn't said a thing all day. At first Tirek believed she was still fatigued from their escape the day before and therefore respectfully refrained from asking unnecessary questions; but now it had been hours without her uttering a single word and he was growing a little concerned. Indeed, upon closer inspection Cozy was far from her usual energetic self. She seemed lost in her thoughts, trotting forth with signs of some profound conflict etched into her rust-red eyes.
Thinking he had been patient long enough, Tirek tried to grab her attention by waving his hand before her face.
"Equestria to Cozy! Is everything alright in there? How about this: if it cheers you up, I promise we'll have ice cream later." He'd never had ice cream before, but one day during their shared time in Tartarus Cozy had mused at length about her love for various flavours of ice cream. He smirked, "Or perhaps we can search libraries of Midnight Castle for a book on ancient, powerful centaur magic. It's knowledge that not even Twilight Sparkle knows about."
"Thanks Tirek, but I think I'll pass."
Tirek winced in surprise. "Did I hear that right? After reaching me in Tartarus in search for great magical power, you're letting a free opportunity like this slip?"
"Even if I had all the power in the world, what does it matter if I'll just end up back in Tartarus? I'm better off doing nothing at all."
Tirek withdrew his elatedness and tried to sound more understanding. "You're still sad about yesterday."
Cozy thought for a second. "Not really sad, just… confused. I don't think my dream of becoming the Empress of Friendship is realistic anymore, because even if I’m in the middle of nowhere and I’m not really doing anything I still get brought down and my plans are foiled before I even begin. If I had to guess, it's probably that Tree of Harmony that the other students talked about. It knows where I am and is conspiring with Twilight to defeat me."
"Come now, that's a ridiculous theory. We wandered to a place where we shouldn't have been and through bad luck ended up in dire straits. But we managed to escape, we learned about some of the secrets of Tartarus, and now we are free to live another day and try again. That's something that you what you told me earlier, right?"
"Yes," she conceded, "but that was only because you helped me, and I didn't even coerce you to. A lot of things could have gone wrong and if they did, I don't know what I would have done." She let out an erratic sigh.
"But it isn't just you, Cozy Glow. We're a team. I bring the firepower, Chrysalis can shapeshift and hypnotize, and you are a strategic genius, especially for someone your age. How old are you again?"
This made Cozy giggle and her cheeks flushed red. "I'm only nine years old."
"And despite that you've devised plans to bring Equestria to your hooves. So what if you relied on somepony else for a moment?" Tirek shrugged.
"But that's something that Twilight would do."
"And?"
"And I've studied your battle with Twilight. If she hadn't traded off her useless friends for all alicorn magic, she wouldn't have been in needless risk and would have defeated you for sure—"
"Hold on a minute, that's debatable…"
"My point is that her friends are her biggest weakness. They used to be instrumental for wielding the Elements of Harmony, but ever since Sombra destroyed those they have been nothing but dead weight. What were they to you except worthless bargaining chips? Not only that, but they know her insecurities, her blind spots and all her secrets. She must live in constant fear that one of them flaps out some intimate fact about her and threatens her reputation! With the amount of time and effort she spends on those friends she has pretty much put herself in a position of subservience. If that is what it would take to become a more powerful pony like Twilight, what kind of empress would be left of me?"
"Well," Tirek responded pensively, "maybe they are less useless and fallible than you think they are. They have been successfully working together for many years now, so they must be doing something right. It seems that they trust each other enough that they will never let each other down; that's exactly why she demanded all of her friends—including Discord."
"I have considered that, but I don't see any evidence for that being the case. The only reason Twilight beat you was because the Tree of Harmony happened to intervene. Besides—" she looked Tirek in the eyes with coldblooded sincerity, "—I don't think you've forgotten the last time you put too much trust into somepony. Be careful not to repeat past mistakes."
"I—" His head sunk under his shoulders. He had balled his fists and was searching for words to explain himself. A softly grumbling thunder strike rolled over them, and it was followed by a moment of silence.
"What happened that day"—the words, weighed down by shame and self-reproach, barely broke from his lips—"happened because I never really trusted Scorpan in the first place. He was always following me around, listening to me, disturbing me with questions and opinions whenever I was working on something he found objectionable. But I never listened to him, and never asked him anything. I took his obedience for granted. When I first knew that he betrayed me, I don't think I was even enraged; I simply dismissed him, thinking that I was already invincible. Turns out I wasn't."
He suddenly stood still, raised his head and took several deep, meditative breaths, tasting the sharp smell of ozone that hung in the air. Cozy was staring at him all the while, showing neither empathy nor vanity.
"It is different," he continued, his voice now sounding considerably lighter and even slightly confident, as if some heavy weight had been lifted from his chest, "I think if I had cared about him more, he would not have turned his back on me. In a sense, he was never on my side to begin with."
"Or he would still have ditched you and ruled as king of the centaurs happily ever after," Cozy added with no trace of sarcasm.
"I will perish the idea for now," Tirek said, calmly but visibly dissatisfied with Cozy's snide remark, "it coming from our favourite warmongering filly."
"Warmongering? Me?" Cozy put her hoof by her cheek in amusement. "Maybe yesterday, but not anymore. What even is the point if we're all going to lose what we have gained anyway. If not sooner, then later. Not even the perfect plan can allow to you rule forever."
"Your sun princess is immortal, isn't she? Maybe you can find out a way to become an alicorn, too," Tirek proposed nonchalantly, yet at the same time eager to hear Cozy's opinion.
"Assuming I will never be defeated by a magical tree, that might work," she speculated, reciting thoughts she had worked out not much earlier, "but what point is there at staring at a finished chessboard for all eternity?"
Tirek shrugged. "Beats me. I only wanted to conquer Equestria for its delicious magic."
"I see." Cozy seemed content with the answer, but suddenly she followed up, "By the way, who was that King Vorak who Twilight mentioned on the checklist she gave me? Did you know him?"
Tirek's torso stifled with irritation. "Vorak?! Why in the name of Grogar are you bringing him up now?"
"No reason, it just came to mind," Cozy replied plainly, "Do you know him?"
"I most certainly do: he was my father. It is not something I wish to discuss."
Cozy leaned in a little and studied Tirek's face. Upon noticing the staring filly, he looked off the other away.
"If you don't want to tell me then I hope I can learn to know who he is at Midnight Castle. He sounds like a pretty important guy."
"Enough, Cozy Glow!" Tirek waved her off and increased his pace, forcing Cozy to speed up as well. With this she dropped the topic and returned to her own thoughts.
Sometime later they reached the foot of the hill. Despite the considerable distance covered today and the day before, Tirek was still energetic and quickly marched to the top. Cozy rested her hooves by flying the last stretch. Reaching the top, they found that the land before them had much of the same timeless impression: a climate frozen on the brink of its extinction. The only plain difference was that there were more hills and other rock structures.
"Tough luck. Are you sure we are going the right way?" Cozy said between puffs from her flying workout.
"No, we are almost there." Tirek pointed into the distance. A corner of the horizon appeared to offer an inconspicuous stony desert.
"What are you talking about? There's nothing there."
"That's where our destination is." Seeing Cozy looking at the centaur with a quizzical expression, he continued, "Midnight Castle used to be guarded by powerful spells. To outsiders it is invisible and impossible to find."
"If that is so then why did you ask me to keep a look out?" she protested.
"Since the Castle used to be my home, I was expecting it to readily reveal itself to us, but I surmise I have been outside of its walls for too long. We shall have to re-summon it. Though I have never witnessed it up close, somewhere not too far away from the Castle stood an ancient obelisk. If it still exists, we must find it. Its inscriptions can instruct us on how to gain entry to the Castle."
"I'm already on it." Cozy took off and flew straight up into the sky. She kept climbing until she was located about halfway between the earth's surface and the clouds. At this height her downiest hairs were standing on end due to the free electricity within the atmosphere. She carefully inspected the landscape with her sharp pegasus vision.
"Can you see anything yet?" Tirek shouted from down below.
"There's something over there! Follow me!" She went into a glide and Tirek hurried after her. As he was getting closer and closer to returning to his homeland, his heart was pounding harder in his chest. However, at the same he felt as if his emotions where being tightly restrained, for whatever it was that she was leading him to, it didn't resemble an intact monument.
Cozy had arrived a minute before Tirek and was waiting for him before the site, which now shown itself to be a pile of rubble. Broken pieces of granite were overgrown with moss and covered by a thin veil of sand, yet nearly untarnished by precipitation, temperature and other natural forces.
"I know it isn't exactly how you described it, but this was the only thing that stood out and it sure seems like it could have been part of a monument," Cozy remarked while studiously turning over a small fragment with her hoof. One the sides was perfectly polished and bore strange markings that she had never seen before.
Tirek picked up the piece, examined it and then dropped it. "It appears this is indeed the obelisk, or rather what is left of it."
"So how do we use it to find Midnight Castle?" she inquired.
"I've got no clue. In the condition that it's in, it's as good as useless." He sighed and started pacing in frustration.
"Don't give up so easily Tirek," Cozy said, though the centaur didn't appear to listen, "You would be surprised how much can be salvaged from something that is broken. I think we can fix it."
She began scouring through the rubble for small fragments, which she picked up and laid down in the grass beside the monument. Several fragments were already reallocated and she was on her way for another one when Tirek joined her.
"Do you really think this would work?" He asked, nervously rubbing his hands.
"Trying something out can't hurt. Think of it like a puzzle! First, we pick out all the pieces that have a smooth side and put them down over there: those are part of the outside, and the ones we need to summon the Castle. Then we put them together, using edge pieces and the inscriptions as our guide. If you do the big pieces, I will do the small ones."
Tirek nodded and the two got to work. About an hour later the fragments were all neatly spread out over an area the size of a living room. Cozy had already taken care to categorize her pieces according to their features—inscriptions and edges, as well as size; the ones that Tirek had moved were more randomly assorted. She spread her wings and took off to get an aerial view.
"Okay, let's see now. This pointy stone is probably the top of the obelisk. That's a good please to start. And that one over there seems as if it connects to it. Tirek, can you put them together?"
He did as instructed and Cozy continued, "That big one has a lot of text on it, so it probably belongs somewhere in the middle…" Piece by piece the monument was being put back together. Tirek was surprised at the speed with which Cozy managed to find fitting pieces: just as he laid down one fragment, Cozy had already selected the next one. All in all, he wasn't working any slower than when he was just sorting them earlier and even worked up some sweat. Through their combined effort time flew by.
"It's finished!" Tirek proclaimed finally, wiping his forehead with satisfaction.
"Oh golly, let me see!" Cozy buzzed over to Tirek, before whom the now-restored face of the obelisk lay stretched out. Its size was such that Tirek would barely have been able to reach the top if he stood on his hind-hooves and stretched his arms, and it had the shape of an elongated isosceles triangle with extra angles at the apex. From some of the bigger pieces that wrapped around the side it could be seen that it was in fact thinner at one side, like a tombstone. The text with which it was decorated appeared to be divided into two tall, vertical columns and took up the lower half of the surface. The glyphs were composed of shapes like circles, wedges and figure-eights, all connected by long strokes and here and there accentuated with dots. The upper half featured a coat of arms: it was the triangular sigil that Tirek once wore as a necklace but surrounded by a pair of horns. The whole was framed with a bordure and the surface was decorated with a subtle geometric relief that neither of them had noticed on the individual pieces.
It was the first time that Tirek had beheld anything from his own culture in a thousand years. It was clearly a sculptural masterpiece and for a full minute he stood there awed in silence and marveling at its beauty. Cozy was also admiring the work. It suddenly crossed Tirek's mind that while they were working, she had never even used the half-finished object as a reference, meaning that she was solving the puzzle just by looking at the pieces she still had.
"It looks really pretty," Cozy mused, interrupting his flow of thought. "Can you tell me what it says?"
Tirek blinked several times and mumbled, "Oh, right. It has been a while since I've read my native language, so give me a minute to comprehend it."
He first went through the text by himself, quietly reciting the words as he worked his way down. Cozy recognized the exotic yet graceful manner of speech from a few select expressions that slipped his tongue during their first days in Tartarus. He scraped his throat and read:
"The stronghold nearby
is beyond mortal powers
For shadows of night
are obscuring its towers
Centaurs and gargoyles
who laid down the bricks
Were masters of Nature
but knew not yet her tricks
The bat hunts by echo
and heat guides the snake
Without vivid daylight
they tell real from fake
Vain trust in illusions
foretells endless ordeal
But to the blind stranger
Midnight Castle shall reveal"
"Some of the stylistic devices have gone lost in translation," Tirek supplemented on a critical note.
Cozy Glow clopped her hooves in approval. "But you did give it a nifty rhyme scheme! Oh, I love solving a good riddle!"
Tirek stroked his beard. "What does it mean…"
"Well, isn't it obvious?" Cozy fluttered above the obelisk to capture Tirek's attention. "It says that we can only find the castle if look for it without using our eyes."
She dived into her companion's saddlebags and came back out with a piece of cloth, which she folded into a long strip. With one end in either hoof she darted around Tirek's head and drew it over his eyes.
"Night-night!"
"Hey! What in—get this off my face! I can't see a thing!"
"That's the point, dummy." She tied the ends into a sturdy knot and sat down on his back. "Try using your other senses. I'll hold on so we won't bump into each other." She too shut her eyes.
"Do you really think this works?" Tirek asked. He had regained his composure and was getting accustomed to the darkness.
"Maybe, maybe not. But it's worth a try! Now: shhh…"
Silence befell the duo. For a while they stood there, neither moving a muscle. Even their breathing was so slow and mild that it could not be heard.
Tirek listened closely to his surroundings. He picked up on a rustling: the wind was softly blowing through the grass. He felt it caress his arms, his legs, the hair on his face. He felt the dry, grassy soil that supported his hooves. Gravity pressed on his joints and he felt the weight of his own body, as well as that of the load on his back. The last picture of his surroundings faded from his mind; it was as if he could be at a completely different place when he would take the blindfold off. But still, no sign of a castle suddenly appearing.
"Have you noticed anything yet?" Tirek whispered in a deep voice.
"Not yet," he heard being whispered right next to his ear, "Try to think of what the place used to look like."
Tirek sat himself down on the ground, folded his hands, and took a deep breath. What could he think about? What could he even remember in the first place? He thought about the black, curving spires of the royal palace, as he last saw them when he set out for Equestria. He remembered the houses, the streets, the townsfolk going about their daily routine.
"Tirek, stop murmuring!" Cozy whispered from behind him.
"I'm not murmuring, you must be hearing things," Tirek rebutted, slightly annoyed at the accusation. "Wait, what did you hear?"
"I don't know, it was something in that centaur language again."
His heart skipped a beat. "Do you think it could be… Listen again, and listen closely where it comes from."
Again, Tirek pictured one of the main streets of the city, populated with centaurs and gargoyles. Some were hurrying to be somewhere; others were leisurely talking which one another. One centaur was shouting across the street at another.
"Golly, you're right! It's not you; it’s coming from behind us."
At once Tirek got up and turned around. He now too heard voices calling from far away. He could hear them, even though he wasn't even actively imagining them. Where was he? Was there actually somepony over there? Without thinking, he moved his arm to lift his blindfold.
"Don't look just yet! We have to do this right, or we may end wasting our chance." Cozy had gotten up and was pressing her hooves against Tirek's neck.
"But there is something over there, I'm sure of it!"
"Remember the text: it says that Midnight Castle shall reveal itself to us. Don't trust your eyes."
Tirek grunted, but he realized Cozy Glow made a very sensible point and reluctantly lowered his hand back to his waist.
For the third time he envisioned Midnight Castle. He tried to come up with as many memories as possible. The throne room of his father, the dinner hall, the armory, the training grounds, the marketplace… all these places that he hadn't visited for such a long time were now resurging from his mind, and with great detail. He pictured the whole place as if he were actually looking at it: the castle gate, the stone walls, and the menacing black spire in the middle, which was casting a huge shadow to the east. Its bells were chiming, like they did every evening. He also thought of the surrounding desert with its the sun-bleached rocks, the clear blue sky above it and storm clouds in the distance. When he looked down, he saw his torso and his arms. With a trembling hand he touched his forehead. His blindfold was still in place.
"Tirek," Cozy spoke aloud, "I can see it now."
He took off the blindfold and slowly opened his eyes. At a few miles distance, at a site that was as dull and barren as the vast stretches of the surrounding area, now stood Midnight Castle, exactly as he had remembered it—or rather, how it appeared to him. He did not think his own memory could create such a mental reconstruction. Even from so far away, what he saw looked more detailed than the most lifelike dream.
He got up. His knees were trembling too. For a while he stood there saying nothing. Cozy could hear him breathe heavily. She hopped off his back and joined him at his side.
"Congratulations, Tirek!" she chirped. "You've finally reached Midnight Castle and soon we will see what has become of it, just like Twilight asked."
Tirek took a deep breath and blew the air back out through his nostrils. "I have indeed. Actually, we have. I would not have gotten this far without you."
Cozy squeed. "All I did was keep up the morale a little, you don't have to thank me for that. Thanks to my bad luck we were almost trapped forever."
"No really, your company has made this journey considerably easier, despite the… uh, hiccups on the way." He produced a smile, to which Cozy blushed a little in response.
Tirek adjusted his cloak and stepped forward. "Come, let us see what I have missed."