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// 9 - The Fire Swamps 
// Story: The Hollow Pony 
// by Type_Writer 
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"Final checks!" Magnus barked, taking his position at the new front of the formation. Zecora and I were directly behind him now, with Dinky and one of the Golden Guard behind us. Another Golden Guard stood beside a hollowed militia pony, and the last pair behind them were Snips and Snails of the militia, sticking together as always. Everypony else had been for the wagons; this group was solely to escort Zecora.

"We're galloping for the treeline! That's about seventy body-lengths from the end of the trench, and it's not well-defined, so just keep galloping until the pony ahead of you stops! There's gonna be fire! There's gonna be mud! If you catch light, drop into the mud and roll until it's out, and try to catch up when you can!"

We all nodded, and there was a series of clanks behind us as the Golden Guard saluted. Magnus closed his eyes, turned forwards, and sighed.

"Three! Two! One! Go!"

We had a slow start, due to the damned mud. It was flowing downhill as we were scrambling uphill, and I heard one of the militia ponies swear as she slipped, slapping into the mud with a squelch. Then we were out in the open, and everypony's ears were flicking all around, listening between the reports of the cannons for any sort of animal noise.

Either we were lucky, or the diversion fire worked, because we entered the smouldering treeline only a few moments later, seemingly having avoided any attack. We all tensed up as we heard panting behind us, but it was just the militia mare who had fallen into the mud, after she'd recovered and caught up.

Magnus looked us all over, the fire gleaming off of his armor, and smiled, just a little. "Lucky break. It won't hold for long, though. Swords drawn, and watch the smoke. We're invaders in their territory now, and we won't start to be safe until we've left the fire long behind us."

We started moving slowly, cautiously, through the burning forest. Magnus took the lead, and carefully guided us around the actual burning patches, though sometimes we had to make a wide circle around them, or even double back, though it was clear he hated doing so.

Zecora, too, was clearly unsettled by being so close to the fires. “I urge all of you to be mindful of the Chaosfire that surrounds our hooves. It is not like normal fire, but more akin to a disease, twisting and warping whatever it may choose. The mere mud under our hooves may not be enough to extinguish one who is lit aflame, and I cannot promise that so doused may emerge with their form the same.”

That confused me, so when next we paused, I took the time to closely examine a smouldering sapling, and Dinky beside me had the same idea. As we watched together, we got our first up close look at the effects of Chaosfire.

The constant flickering was hypnotizing, and it made us nauseous to watch it. Dinky was the first to really understand what we were looking at. "It...it's not burning, it's growing! Over and over and over in the span of a second! The fire, that's the previous iteration burning off to make way for the next iteration!"

And every time the leaves regrew, it was as though they had been grown from a different tree. Pine, palm, birch, larch, oak, eucalyptus, and dozens more I couldn't identify. Maybe trees that had never been grown before, or never would again, all in the space of a second. Even the bark of the sapling was burning and shifting, changing texture and color and exploding out as new bark grew from underneath the old.

And yet, the tree never grew more than a hoof’s-width; it never had the chance, not with every piece of the tree growing and burning off all at the same time. It was locked in a bizarre, burning, chaotic stasis.

Zecora noticed us examining the burning sapling, and stepped away from Magnus to join us. “It is… beautiful, in its own uniquely dangerous way, and I have studied strange magic since long before the dawning of this final day. I know Discord has to be involved, but I do not think he is truly at fault. He prefers his Chaos to be entertaining, not merely the agents of an endless assault. Even this Chaosfire is different than his usual style, and the way it changes while remaining static? I knew enough about Discord to know that he would consider such a chaotic state to be not only boring, but tragic.”

“What do you think it’s doing? Magically speaking?” asked Dinky, barely taking her eyes away from the sapling.

Zecora sat down on a smouldering log next to us, and glanced back at Magnus, who seemed to be busying himself with another map. “It is difficult to explain, and so much of what I do know is guesswork and speculation. Perhaps it is better to ask what it represents, then to simply study it through endless observation. Pyromancy, for example, has always represented change, ever since the first equines brought light to dark. Chaosfire is change left unchecked, unstoppably changing the world around us and leaving its mark.

“Imagine a candle, burning bright. Imagine the heat, and imagine the light.” Zecora closed her eyes, and held up her hoof, her own Pyromancy flame springing to life to demonstrate. Out here, in the midst of the burning Everchaos, it seemed like little more than an ember. For the first time, I could not feel its heat. “The candle’s wick has either been lit, or has not. Those two states are all that a candle can exist in, or so we ponies thought.

“But a candle lit with the flames of Chaos burns differently, and everything about the candle is new and strange. The color of the wax and the flame emitted, the wick’s length and the thickness of the smoke, from one second to the next, are all being constantly changed. And if that candle should ever be snuffed, the Chaos magic will wither and die, unable to sustain itself.”

Zecora opened her eyes, and the flame in her hoof flickered out. “Long have I wondered what appearance Discord’s own Pyromancy flame would take, were I allowed to witness the sight. Perhaps this hazardous environment, and the demons it has spawned, are the results of that question coming to light.”

We would have spoken more, but Magnus finally smacked the map, and called Zecora back over. They argued quietly for a few minutes, but once they had agreed on a new route through the flames, we began moving once more. Zecora rejoined us, though she looked more and more nervous as we walked through the smoking underbrush.

“Zecora, what’s wrong?” Dinky asked. I was occupied as they spoke, and only half-listened. I was focused on the undergrowth for any of the herbs Zecora had shown me, just in case some had survived the burning Chaosfire.

“These patches of fire are obstructing us too regularly to be natural, and they are too thin to occur on their own. No matter the type, fire burns outwards in a radius around itself, but these patches almost appear to have been sown…I am sure we are being funneled into the forest’s confines, just as the soldiers funnel the demons into their firing lines.”

“Could it be the demons?” asked Magnus, slowing down to more closely guard Zecora. “That seems too coordinated for the beasts.”

“You are correct, this seems too intelligent for creatures used to rush tactics...” she murmured, watching the burning treetops. “In fact, this reminds remind me more of a Zebrican warfare practice-”

She was cut off by a shout from behind us as one of the Golden Guards yelped, “Movement!” A moment later, whatever she’d seen whipped past my own vision, as I had still been peeking through the underbrush for herbs. For once it was a good thing that I had reacted so slowly, because as I saw the flash, a blur whipped just over my head. Glass shattered behind me, and a stallion screamed; the guard who had been beside Dinky.

We all jumped, readying our swords, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the Guard. Whatever had been contained within the glass bottle had splashed across him, and was hissing and sizzling like boiling oil as he desperately tried to shake it off. His features were starting to melt as the acid burned through his flesh, and tarnished the gold of his armor, and we couldn’t help him, because we had to watch for the next attack.

It came from above, another bottle. This time, it glowed a bright blue, and would’ve smashed across Zecora if Dinky hadn’t caught it with her magic, tossing it away with a flick of her horn. “Potions! We’re being attacked with potions! Dodge them, catch them, just don’t let them shatter on you!” Dinky shouted over the screams of the Guard beside her.

Under her striped fur and her traveling cloak, Zecora went pale.

Snips and Snails were watching the back of the formation, but at the sound of screams, Snips galloped forward to assist. He lit his horn, and a glowing shield manifested above him, but Snails was left by himself. Our assailant seemed to notice this, and the next potion sailed high above the formation, to shatter at the hooves of Snails.

To everyone’s momentary relief, the contents weren’t immediately deadly; instead, they expanded out in a roiling purple cloud of noxious gas. Snails’ eyes bulged as he clutched at his throat, and his sword fell into the mud. Snips doubled back just in time to watch his friend and fellow militia member drop to his knees, gagging on the poison, and everypony else was forgotten as he ran to help. He leapt into the toxic quagmire with his horn lit, and he grabbed Snails with his magic to begin hauling him back out.

Magnus spread his wings and leapt atop a splintered tree trunk, trying to spot our assailant from above. “Form up around Zecora and the wounded, a loose circle! Call out if you see them!”

If Snips heard him, he was too busy to acknowledge the orders. The poison seemed to take a toll on them both; Snails had already lost consciousness, and was foaming purple at the mouth as Snips pulled him to the edge of the cloud. Finally, they both burst free, parting the fog that separated them from the rest of the group, but that was as far as Snips could go. He collapsed just past the threshold of safety, and face-planted into the mud, as both he and Snails convulsed and wheezed raggedly.

They had at least escaped the toxic fumes, but the cloud had thoroughly cut us off from any hope of escape or rescue. Snips had been holding his breath when he galloped in, and he spent seconds at most in that miasma; clearly whatever had been contained within the potion bottle was toxic to the flesh, not just when inhaled. There was no way we could try and gallop back through that the way we came.

As Dinky, the remaining guards, and I all herded Zecora into a defensive formation, she was preoccupied with a search through her bags. Maybe she thought something she had brought would help us fight, or she had something to help the melting Guard beside her, maybe even an antidote for Snips and Snails. I only watched her for a moment before turning my attention back to the undergrowth around us. We waited with bated breath as the Chaosfire crackled nearby, but everypony else was watching the breaks in the fire. I was the only one facing a wall of Chaosfire, out of our defensive herd, and that was why I saw her emerge.

She was young, maybe the same age as Dinky, or a little older, and she leapt out of the Chaosfire like the Frog Demon from before had leapt over the wall. The fire parted around her, and in the smoke-tinged firelight, it seemed almost like she was wreathed in red light as she struck. What was worse, it obscured her features beyond her size and silhouette.

There was no warning or fanfare; she simply leapt directly at me. I only barely raised my cavalry sword in time to parry the blade of her weapon, which was a strange sort of halberd, with a hook and blade all on a long pole maybe twice my height. It deflected her killing blow, but she’d anticipated that, and the pole was twisted to hook my blade. My grip, trained for strength with which to hold my sword, was turned against me as she yanked my sword to the side, and I followed it to the ground.

Behind me, I heard the war-whinny of the other Golden Guard, and there was a loud clack of steel on steel, then a clang. When I stumbled to my hooves and turned around, the other Golden Guard was lying in the mud, ichor leaking down from inside her helmet as she clutched it tight to her head. Our assailant was finally out in the open, and, of all ponies, Zecora was the first to recognize her.

“Apple Bloom?” My mentor’s voice was trembling. She had only gotten angry at me once, but I had never heard simple disbelief in her voice before. Our ambusher was deeply hollowed, with almost no fur left, and only the ragged scraps of a red mane around her head. Multiple bandoleers of misshapen potion flasks were wrapped around her barrel. 

She didn’t respond to Zecora. She never said a word, she only spun, whipping her weight around with the halberd following. As she did, I could see her eyes, and they burned bright, like tiny infernos in the smoke around us.

Zecora wasn’t too stunned to dodge, and she only barely caught the edge of the blade, drawing a dark smear across her own traveling cloak. It fell to shreds, and Zecora shrugged the rest of it off as she danced backwards. Dinky and one of the militia ponies stepped in between them, but that didn’t slow down Apple Bloom.

Instead, she flicked her halberd down, stabbing it into the mud, and using the momentum to flick her own body upwards by the strength of her forelegs. She leapt into the air, and as she was flipping, a bright yellow potion appeared on the end of her halberd, hooked on the blade. She landed a moment later, swinging the halberd around, and throwing the potion like it had been fired out of a cannon.

Only Dinky’s quick thinking saved the three of them. A shield flickered into existence in front of the potion, and it shattered into glass and glowing yellow fluid. Wherever the potion landed, the mud and ash of the ground turned metallic, like sickened gold. I had no desire to find out what would have happened if it hit a pony.

I charged her, unarmed, anything to throw her off balance so one of the others could attack her. I didn’t care if I fell to keep Zecora alive, I would have gladly given my life. But Apple Bloom barely glanced at me before she grabbed the pole of her halberd with both hooves, and slammed the length of pole between her hooves into my throat. I toppled to the ground, splashing into the mud, and she managed to dodge even that, ducking back into the treeline.

“Junebug! In front of you!” barked Magnus from his perch atop the tree stump, and one of the militia ponies—a mare—dropped her sword to spin her fores, bucking into the bush next to her. Her legs never impacted; the halberd emerged like it had for me, horizontal, and Apple Bloom swung upwards from below. Junebug barely had time to let out a yelp as she was toppled, hinds over head, onto her back. Apple Bloom emerged for only a moment to stab downwards at the helpless Junebug’s exposed throat, finishing her off, before she ducked back into the bushes.

“Dammit!” swore Magnus. “Grapeshot! Pull her into the center, and close the gap!”

I was staggering as I joined back up, but our herd was looking poor overall. Only Dinky, Zecora, and Grapeshot, the other militia mare, were still unharmed, as well as myself. I grabbed my fallen cavalry sword as we huddled around the wounded, but Apple Bloom’s next attack wasn’t for us.

Instead, she struck at Magnus, hooking her halberd onto a branch of the broken tree he was perched in and flicking herself up. Both her hinds slammed into his chest, and we all heard the clang as his chest plate dented inwards. He toppled out of the tree, wings and hooves flailing as Apple Bloom followed him down, and they both fell out of sight into the underbrush.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit…” Dinky muttered, horn glowing brightly with a spell yet uncast, watching for a target. Zecora’s own hooves were glowing as she called upon her Pyromancy flame. I felt inadequate as I clutched onto my muddy sword.

“Down!” Zecora barked, and we all hit the mud as Zecora reared up on her hinds. A great conflagration leapt from her fores, like a dragon had sneezed, and we saw a shape within the flames leap back, scorched but unharmed.

Another potion was whipped at us, and Dinky had to release her held spell to deflect it away with another shield. The uncast spell was released as a golden corona upwards into the sky, sparkling as it dissipated, and the potion exploded away from us, electricity crackling across the shield and the surface of the puddle below.

“If we drag out this fight, then she will not even need to use her own hooves to slay us,” Zecora snarled, standing protectively over the wounded Guards. “The demons will be attracted, as the sound of battle will betray us!”

“W-why is s-she at-attacking us?” I rasped out, eyes flicking wildly across the underbrush.

Zecora shook her head. “I know not why she has chosen this path, or why we have so earned her wrath. I only hope she does not seek our souls-”

Dinky’s eyes widened. “Magnus! She could be draining him right now!”

Zecora swore in a foreign language, and added, “Dinky! Holly! Go to where he fell, and pull him back! Grapeshot and I will defend here, and we will see which group she attacks.” Zecora was already casting some form of Pyromancy on herself, her flesh under her ragged fur stiffening and darkening. Beside her, Grapeshot was fumbling with her weapon, a cut-down double-barreled shotgun.

I could see Dinky’s trepidation at leaving them, but we both nodded, and leapt into the bushes towards Magnus’ former perch. As we galloped, a certain terror crept through me. This was just like the Mimic, and Diamond Tiara. I had to move faster this time. Thankfully, it didn’t take us more than a few seconds to find Magnus, and when we did, he was staggering and blinded. A slash across his face had filled his eyes with ichor, and he was swinging wildly.

“Magnus!” Dinky shouted, and he took a swipe at her out of panic before he regained his senses.

“Tell that fool zebra I’m fine, when you go back and help her! I’ll follow your voices!” We nodded, spinning around and galloping back the way we came.

We arrived just as Apple Bloom attacked. She slid up from under a bush, striking like a snake with a halberd, but Zecora saw her coming and simply didn’t dodge. The blade of the halberd slammed into Zecora’s chest with a scraping sound, like steel against stone, and it glanced off to the side. Zecora used the opening to raise her hoof, and a thin spray of flame engulfed Apple Bloom, causing her to leap back once more.

This time, the fires didn’t go out so easily, and Apple Bloom had to cast a Pyromancy of her own. A heat shimmer, like a mirage, surrounded her, and water seemed to coalesce across her fur, dousing the flames and diluting the mud under her hooves. Grapeshot took the opportunity to fire her shotgun wildly, and a cloud of gunsmoke enveloped Apple Bloom. By the time she had extinguished herself, and the cloud had begun to clear, I was upon her, and Dinky was casting behind me.

I had neither the time nor the armored saddle required to screw my cavalry sword into for a proper charge, so I had to settle for rearing up as I reached Apple Bloom. As I did, I reached across my barrel to grab my sword out of its sheath, and used the momentum from drawing it to whip the blade horizontally at Apple Bloom’s neck. She dodged it almost casually, but a fireball exploded behind her and made her jerk to my left. That put her off balance and into Dinky’s firing line, and a golden spear of magic thudded into Apple Bloom’s chest a half-second later, sending our assailant sprawling.

As my hooves came down, I dropped my sword into the mud, ducking my head down and retching as I grabbed it with my mouth out of the puddle. Once I had it in my teeth again, I was able to step closer, and stab at her with the sword. My aim was terrible when I held the sword like this, though, and she dodged it easily, flicking ichor across me as she bled from the magic strike. Behind me, Grapeshot cursed, trying to line up a shot, but I was in the way.

Apple Bloom caught me off guard by rolling fully onto her back and bucking upwards with her hinds, which threw me up and into the air. The world spun as I flailed wildly, flying in the least controlled way that a pony could, and my sword flew away as I reached the apex of my flight. I landed with a “splat” a second later, and another golden spear of magic flashed over my head. It didn’t land, because a moment later the hook of her halberd hooked into my armor—she was trying to use me as a grapple point to strike again!

I grabbed onto the pole of her halberd as she vaulted over me, and the inertia yanked me out of the mud a few leg-lengths before our opposing forces reconciled. When I came back down, I came down hard on the blade, and pain lanced up my side as I felt the hook pierce my leather armor, then snap off inside. It threw her off balance, however, and she snarled at me in anger before another golden spear lanced into her back.

She toppled over me, and apparently decided she’d had enough. Leaving her broken halberd buried in the muck and my side, she bounded off into the underbrush for the final time. As she galloped off, she tossed one final potion, covering her escape with another noxious cloud of purple. That, I realized with a curse, blocked us from chasing after her or seeing where she was going. Clever.

Dinky looked almost ready to chase her through the poison cloud, but a shout from Zecora stayed her hoof, and she galloped to my side instead. As Zecora tended to the wounded where she stood, Dinky instead busied herself by pulling out the broken halberd and examining it. “Clever...“ she muttered, swinging it around to test the weight. “It’s some sort of billhook, maybe for cutting trees, and sharpened. I bet if Applejack cared, she’d probably find this missing from one of her tool sheds.”

I groaned, trying to stand, but I only succeeded in rolling onto my back and releasing a fresh wave of ichor across Dinky’s hooves. That got her attention, and when I explained that something had broken off in my gut, she used her magic to feel around at the edges of my wound until she felt the hard edge. She pulled out a broken rib first, but the second try saw the tip of the hook removed, and Zecora passed her a cold-burning poultice to apply.

As we were patching each other up, Magnus finally staggered out of the brush, and blindly demanded that a nearby tree stump give him a report. We quickly determined that Junebug was regenerating, but Apple Bloom stabbing her through the throat had truly put her out of commission for a while. We’d have to carry her for the rest of the way, and maybe all the way back, too. Magnus would likely recover on the way to our destination; Apple Bloom hadn’t actually damaged his eyes, just flooded them with ichor that he had to keep washing out of his sockets.

Dinky and I checked on Snips and Snails together, and Dinky managed to shake Snips awake. His eyes were wild, and he couldn’t stop coughing up gobbets of foaming purple bile, but he assured us that he could walk. In fact, he surprised us; with his squat, bulky build, which was unusual for a unicorn, he actually managed to haul Snails onto his own back. He stumbled and staggered the entire way, but his concern was just for his friend, as Snails was still unconscious.

Out of everypony, the Golden Guard that had gotten hit with the corrosive potion was the worst off by far. Magnus informed us as we drew close that his name was Autumn Leaf, and while the damage was almost all external, he had actually partially melted into the mud under him. The potion had smashed on his head, and while he had managed to rip off his helmet with dissolving hooves, his face had gotten almost all of the flesh stripped off down to the bone. He could still see, as like Magnus, the embers that made up his eyes hadn’t been damaged, or maybe couldn’t be damaged. But he couldn’t speak, could hardly move, and we couldn’t separate his flesh from the muck around him as his ruined body tried to pull itself back together.

He seemed to be in a lot of pain from the damage that the acid had done, and Zecora eventually sighed and used her machete to finish him off. With a few grisly chops, she removed his head from his body, and the lights in his eyes went out. She continued to disassemble him, removing his ruined forelegs from his torso and his hindlegs for good measure. Eventually, we were left with a bag of limbs and body parts, which Zecora assured me, would regenerate and reconnect through the power of the curse as we continued onwards. Autumn Leaf would, eventually, be whole again, but he would be spending quite a lot of time regenerating in order to get there.

Magnus chose to carry the bag on his back and bear the weight himself, while Zecora again assured us that, eventually, Autumn would regenerate fully. But the thought of it still made me shudder, and it reminded me of my initial fall into Ponyville. How broken had my body truly been, inside that rusted and ruined armor? If Applejack had kicked my body into nothing but an ichorous splatter, would I have eventually pulled myself back into the shape of a pony from the gutter?

As my mind wandered, the swamp changed around us. There were no more steadily burning fires, but the occasional drifting piece of burning firewood sometimes connected with a pocket of bubbling natural gas. The resulting loud gouts of flame in the otherwise-silent swamp never ceased to startle us, and we were jumpy the entire time we were sloshing through the knee-deep muck and water.

As the Chaosfire that kept the forest alive and yet burning became less and less frequent, I noticed just how quiet the swamps were. Instinctively, I knew swamps should never be quiet; there should always be the croaking of frogs, the buzzing of insects. But all I could hear was our own sloshing hoofsteps as we waded through the shallows. The trees here had all died long ago, just like those I had seen on my first journey to Ponyville, and the only change they’d suffered since their death was the warping that came with water damage.

How, of all places in Equestria, was an entire swamp simply dead? Was there anywhere in the world that still had living plants? Was there anywhere else in the world where things truly lived at all, besides the Everchaos? How far had the Hollow Curse truly spread? Were us ponies all that were left, because we were stubbornly unable to die?

As if to mock me, we passed by the skeleton of a hydra, half-sunken in the swamp. Magnus started telling a story about how they’d had to hunt it down after a while to keep Froggy Bottom safe, but all I could focus on was the rotten black algae that sat atop the swamp water. Even the algae was dead. Even the rot that had overtaken it was dead. Decay itself had ceased to be, simply because Equines and Demons were the last things alive, all the way down to insects, mold, and rot.

The only parts of the plants and scum that were still alive were tainted and sustained by Chaosfire. At least that was interesting to look at: The algae burned on the surface of the water like oil, as the destructive magic was washed downstream by the firestopper shells that flooded the Everchaos. Idly, I wondered how far downstream the magic was being washed. It had to stop eventually, or did it just get diluted to nothing? Or was all of this magic leaking out into the ocean, tainting the life below the waves as well?

I got introspective when I was wounded, I noticed. Maybe it was because I couldn’t move around as much when I was hurt, so my body couldn’t do the walking and fighting for me. Or maybe the pain made me more centered, and I just didn’t focus as well now that the general aches and itches and soreness of living had begun to fade into white noise. If this kept up, I was going to be introspective very, very often.

After a long period of silence, Dinky sped up to trot alongside us, her attention on Zecora. "So…who was she?"

Zecora was normally at least a little cryptic, due to her unusual syntax. But in this matter, she was as direct as she could be through rhyme. "A former apprentice of mine, though her family was already familiar with Pyromancy. Instead, she sought me out to learn my personal skill, the practice of potion-making and alchemy.

“With a keen eye for herbs, and a deft hoof for the pestle and mortar, she took to my teaching not unlike a fish takes to water. I thought for sure she’d find her talent through my lessons, but… she drifted away to focus on ‘crusading,’ and that was the last of our sessions. I rarely saw her afterwards, but I was always proud of dear Apple Bloom; I never could have guessed that eventually she would seek our doom.”

"I heard the Crusaders left Ponyville a while back, after Cloudsdale fell," interjected Dinky. "Went looking for Rarity, I think. And I had heard about the rumors of a rogue alchemist attacking travelers in the outskirts of the Everchaos, avoiding the firebreaks, but I never thought…"

Dinky trailed off as Zecora hung her head. The hollowed Zebra sighed, looking back towards the way we came. "As much as I am sorry to see she has become such a fright…I am at least relieved the other two are not by her side.”

"Yeah," Dinky agreed, "I thought those three would stick together through thick and thin. I wouldn't have been surprised to find that had happened literally, out here, with all the wild magic saturating everything."

"I can only hope they are well, for I wish none of them ill will." Zecora sighed again. "And…I can only hope Apple Bloom has good reason for wanting to kill."

"She seemed cognizant…" muttered Dinky. "Restricting our movements, ambush tactics, and she fought like a mare possessed. The glass of her vials looked a little sloppily-blown, but that could be for a number of reasons…I wonder why she didn't speak?"

From ahead, Magnus cut into the conversation. "More importantly, did anypony notice any weaknesses in her tactics, or errors in her attacks? We're going to need to pass through that section of the woods again on the way back, and it's almost guaranteed that we're going to encounter her a second time."

We were all silent for some time, thinking back to the fight. Eventually, I ventured a basic observation. "Sh-she might not be able to th-throw p-potions any m-more. We br-broke her halberd…thingy."

"Billhook," Dinky corrected quietly. "Maybe. We didn't break it into pieces too small to repair, but we definitely damaged the metal head. Good work on that, Holly."

A small mote of pride welled up from within, and I found myself smiling, even with all that had happened.

"She could steal another from Fort Apple." There was a snort of laughter from behind us as the remaining Golden Guard apparently heard the name for the first time. Magnus threw a glance back, but shrugged, and continued. "But doing so would take time, and be dangerous. It depends on how much she's still considering risk vs. reward."

“Her armory of potions, of course, must be restocked. That will delay her somewhat, as the whole reason we are out here now is that many ingredients have been lost,” added Zecora. “She still seems to be as creative as ever, as I did not recognize several effects. I only wish that she was not trying to use them in service to our deaths.”

"Do you know why she targeted you, specifically? When we went to save Magnus, she went straight for you instead." Dinky chewed her lip as she pondered.

"And the troops she did attack directly, it was mostly to whittle us down, or incite panic," mused Magnus. "Make no mistake; she wanted a chance to strike you directly, Zecora."

We sloshed through the swamp in silence, as Zecora pondered. I noted it had been a while since we had passed any burning fires, though I could still see the oily magic polluting the water around us.

Eventually, she shook her head. “We parted last on good terms, as teacher and student. The Apple family was always friendly, and often gifts were sent. Though my interactions with Applejack are now strained...nothing about this was mentioned, perhaps because the thought caused too much pain.”

Magnus nodded. "Alright, so we know she's going to use potions again at the very least. We'll just all have to run some combat evasion drills once we reach Meadowbrook's home."

“Why not take a different route back to Ponyville?” asked Dinky.

Magnus shook his head. “It’s a good idea on paper, but all of Equestria is much more dangerous than it used to be. Some paths are still patrolled by the army, but there’s nothing out here. I’m seriously considering ordering Meadowbrook to close shop and return with us, because if a wandering demon wiped her little settlement off the map, we wouldn’t find out about it until we came to check in on her.”

“Like...we are now?” the remaining Golden Guard asked, from behind us in the formation.

Magnus winced, but nodded. “Exactly. Let’s hope she’s still alright, or else this whole excursion... “ He trailed off, before looking back at Dinky. “As for traveling through the trenches…it’s dangerous, but it’s a known danger, and if anything does go wrong, we have everypony stationed there for backup. Better the demons you know, after all.”

After that, conversation more or less petered out. I did note that, between the willow trees and the haze of the swamp, the sunlight did seem to be getting brighter. We had moved far enough to the east that the sun must have been just a little bit higher in the sky here. For some reason, the thought made me happy.

The sunlight seemed to be good for our health, too. I felt less sore the further we walked, and Snails startled us all when he jerked awake on Snips’ back. His eyes were clouded and his mind confused, but we got him caught up on the situation as we walked, and he managed to walk on his own after a little while. Like Snips, he spent a lot of the walk coughing and wheezing as he tried to clear his lungs. I hoped I never encountered whatever that poison was for myself—with how much trouble I had with regular breathing, something that did active damage to my insides might cripple me permanently.

Around us, the land flattened out, and the trees began to spread further and further apart. We had been moving downhill on the slightest incline, as the river flowed from the midlands of Equestria out to the ocean. When the water started to be more common than land, and the water around us began to clear, we guessed we had reached sea level. 

The Hayseed Swamps were surprisingly humid, with the air becoming warmer the further east we traveled. While Equestria seemed wreathed in fog and smoke for the most part, these days, this humid mist seemed more natural. If it weren't for all of the flora having long ago died and partially rotted, and the fact that the land was frozen in late afternoon, I could almost convince myself that the curse had not yet spread here.

Snails, for his part, seemed saddened by the sight of the swamps. When he hung his head, Dinky noticed, and the both of us broke formation to walk alongside him and Snips for a while. Dinky bumped his knee with her shoulder to get his attention. “Hey, what’s up? How do you feel?”

Snails blinked at her, but after a moment, realized he’d been asked a question. “Oh, uh…I’m okay, I guess. I still don’t feel very good, and breathing’s kinda hard.”

Dinky and I looked at each other, and Snips bumped Snail’s other shoulder with his own. “They wanna know why you look so sad, dummy. They’re not used to seeing you mope about this, like I am. Talk to ‘em.”

Snails looked reluctant, but between Dinky’s concern and Snip’s gentle shoves back towards us, he opened up a little. “It’s the… I was gonna be a zoologist. They’re ponies that study animals, and bugs, and…anyway…” Snips shoved him again, to keep him talking. “Ow, hey...um. Anyways. I guess I had to kinda give that up a long while back, ‘cuz the demons, they either were the animals, which made ‘em too dangerous to study, or they were huntin’ down whatever was left. So there’s...no more need for zoologists, I guess…”

Snips looked like he was gonna shove him again, so Snails stepped away and waved a hoof lazily at the dead swamp around us. “But I knew that for a while, it’s just... you know, seeing all of it... like this. I’d never seen it up close, for myself, before now. Was always helping miss Applejack protect Ponyville.” He lowered his head again. “I was...I was really proud of how good I could catch things without hurting them. Always gentle, no matter how fast they moved, because you can’t study a squashed bug. And now…I can’t study them at all. An’ that sucks.”

Dinky was silent as she looked around us. Had she ever actually realized that, I wondered? I woke up and everything seemed wrong as soon as I looked at the world around me, but if she’d been around and aware the entire time as the world went to pot… Had it been just too slow for her to really see the change? Was she only just now then seeing how dead the world around us was?

Eventually, I had to respond for both of us. “Y-yeah… Th-this all s-sucks. I h-hope Zecora and M-Meadowbrook can h-help fix th-things.”

There wasn’t much else any of us could say, after that. Any platitudes would ring hollow, and we were all already hoping for the best. But what would the best even look like, at this point?

Eventually, our path crossed a poorly-maintained hoof path, which we followed until it merged with a larger highway. Our path was only blocked by the odd abandoned cart or wagon, which we usually stopped to investigate for supplies, or to see if they would still roll. The ability to pull our wounded behind us on a cart would have been a boon, but it was not one granted to us; the carts were all in various states of disrepair. Perhaps if we broke apart every one we found, we could have constructed a single working cart, but we decided it wouldn't be worth the effort.

We slowed down as we came near to our destination, with old road signs on the sides of the highway pointing the way and telling us how much further we had to trot. Mage Meadowbrook's home had actually been a bit of a tourist destination after her return, back when tourism was still an existing industry. Her presence brought historians, herbalists, alchemists and pyromancers alike to the small town of Baton Verte, breathing new life into what had been an abandoned ghost town. Even now, the rusted signs advertising it hung limply from their posts.

As we approached, Magnus smiled just a little bit. He told a few stories of their struggle to reclaim the land here, and make it livable once more. All of the Pillars and a few of the Elements had helped, and he mentioned a name I hadn’t heard before: Fluttershy; whoever she was, apparently she and Meadowbrook had been close. His voice trembled when he spoke of Applejack’s contributions, though, and he trailed off not long after.

The town of Baton Verte wasn't quite abandoned now, but it was hardly thriving. While we were still several miles from the coast proper, the terrain the town was built upon was more water than land, and the buildings themselves had been built on great stilts in between the trees and hills, with rickety hoof-bridges crossing from building to building. The stilts, Zecora explained, were so that when the swamps flooded, the buildings would not be washed away.

There were still villagers around. Living ponies, though all had deeply hollowed. They paused as they walked between buildings to stare at us, or scampered out of our way. They clearly feared our uniforms and armor. A few mindlessly stood on the banks below the bridges, or sat on bobbing rafts. They were equipped with fishing spears, or rods, but the entire time we took walking up the ramp and through the town, I never saw a single one of them actually catch anything. Were the fish all dead, as well? Even those twisted by Chaos magic?

Our destination was built on slightly higher ground, towards the edge of town, so we mostly avoided talking to the locals as we passed. I wondered what they did out here, at least those who weren’t already fishing. Perhaps they were scavengers, or hunters? I hoped they didn't just wander the bridges and swamps until they went hollow, but then, we didn't exactly have much to do within the walls of Fort Ponyville, either.

Mage Meadowbrook's home was more tree than building, and it was a tree that had been in the process of outgrowing the furnishings woven through its trunk when the curse killed it. A thin trail of smoke curled out of a stovepipe chimney, and there was a faint glow shining through the windows, so we felt confident that Meadowbrook was here. She had a large circular clearing just before her front door, which I suspected was used for unloading cargo and experiments too large for the inside of the building, and most of us stopped there to catch our breath.

Zecora and Magnus were in no mood to rest, however, and they walked up to the door while Dinky and I waited, seated on the ground a few steps behind them. Magnus knocked with his hoof, and there were a few rattles and thumps from inside as the occupant moved something away from the door.

When the door opened a moment later, a hollowing earth pony mare opened the door. She had a lovingly-decorated bird mask pulled up onto her forehead, and a cloth rag held her mane in place in the form of a messy sort of beehive shape. Even from here, I could smell the bouquet of oils and powders that stained her fur from an eternity of alchemy. What was more, the sheer heat of her fire washed over me from even where I was sitting, and if I hadn't known already that she was one of the greatest Pyromancers to have ever lived, then I would have guessed as such from her flame’s radiance alone.

Yet…her fire still seemed smaller than Pinkie Pie's had been. Though Meadowbrook's fire was hot, burning like a compressed inferno, Pinkie Pie's had been like I had been given a hug by the sun itself. Had there been something the unhollowed mare hadn't told me? Was there a power greater than pyromancy that could be contained within a pony? Or was Pinkie Pie simply the most powerful Pyromancer I had ever met, and yet, I was somehow the only pony to have noticed?

I was yanked back to the here and now as Meadowbrook's eyes widened, and she chirped in a sweet, friendly accent, "Zecora! Magnus! Celessia's sake, haven't seen either of ya for…shoot, can't even recall how long! How you been, what brings ya here? Good news, I hope!"

Magnus rubbed the back of his head. "Some good progress, since last we spoke. The firebreaks were moved inward another mile, but we're pretty much stuck at a stalemate there. Still, better than having demons running wild."

Meadowbrook nodded, and turned to Zecora. "And my star pupil! Très wonderful t’ see ya here, you're one of the few ponies I know who can really appreciate some of my most recent work. What's new with you?"

"I…have taken on a new apprentice of my own, with great potential. Though she is perhaps a slow learner, she has nonetheless proven herself to be a great help." She turned and gave me a smile as she said it, and I jokingly stuck my darkened tongue out at her, before following it with a smile of my own.

"Awwww, I like ‘er already! You know, it is funny you actually came by, I was jus’ considerin’ the logistics of goin’ out to Ponyville to visit you myself!"

Magnus chuckled. "Damn. Wish the telegraph wires were still up, so you could have saved us the trip. You missed us?"

"I did! Although, I have to admit, it be a bit of a business call, too." She turned back to look inside her house, but kept talking as she watched something out of my own sight.

"Oh?" Zecora asked, raising an eyebrow. "Some sort of breakthrough in our shared goal? Perhaps some way to again help Ponykind as a whole?"

Meadowbrook tittered, then looked a little embarrassed. "Not quite, though I have learned a lot, and I do think I am on the right trail. Actually...it would be more of a supply run; I, eh, heh…might've been a little overzealous in some of my research, and my stocks of even the most basic herbs and reagents are gone..."

All murmurs of conversation died in an instant. Before, the wind had been rustling the dead grass, and something had been bubbling inside the building. But now, it was as if an incredible silence had fallen over the clearing.

I swore I could see Zecora hollowing right before my eyes, as the embers of her eyes had shrunk to pinpricks. This entire journey had been for naught.