//------------------------------// // 12 - Dinky Doo // Story: The Hollow Pony // by Type_Writer //------------------------------// The crowd hadn’t yet begun to assemble by the time Dinky and I got back. Snips and Snails had already returned at least, and everypony was standing outside the front door to Meadowbrook’s cottage. The door was open, and I could see Zecora moving around inside. Oddly, Snails was talking with Magnus and Meadowbrook, while Snips was standing off to the side by himself. He looked oddly agitated, and every few moments, he shot another nasty glare at Meadowbrook. We gave him a wide berth as we passed by, just to be safe, and listened to the end of Snails’ report. “...and then he just kinda seemed to forget why we’d gone back to his house? I don’t really know, he seemed really confused, and then we were confused, and he didn’t recognize us. So we had to explain who we were and what we were doing there again, and eventually he kinda shook his head and said he’d swing by, but then he went back inside. So I dunno if he’ll be here?” Meadowbrook sighed, and pressed her hoof against her forehead. “Alright. Thankya for talkin’ with ‘em, Snails, even if they don’t be all there anymore. You and your friend should get some sunlight.” Snails nodded, and went back to Snips. As he did, me and Dinky stepped forward, with Dinky doing the talking. “Magnus? We talked to everyone we could, but we got kinda mixed results. I don’t know how many will actually show up. And you didn’t give us any sort of signal that the meeting’s starting.” Magnus nodded. “Yeah, I realized that too, but apparently the central podium has a horn to call meetings. She’ll blow that, and they should remember to come, thanks to you four. You can come with, if you want; it’ll do the townsfolk good to see you standing next to us as a unified front.” Dinky nodded, but then looked back towards the town. “That’s…not all. A lot of the townsponies are pretty bad off, or already Hollowed. Maybe half the ponies we actually tried to talk to were completely Hollowed out, and the other half are all of a…questionable mental state.” “Half?!” Mage Meadowbrook made a strangled sort of noise as Dinky gave her report, and she sat down heavily in a stunned silence. Dinky cringed back, nut nodded. “I’m…I’m sorry, I know they were your fellow townsponies-” Meadowbrook shook her head, and stared down at the dead peat under her hooves. “They weren’t just townsponies, filly. They be my neighbors, my friends, my family. A thousand years of descendants spread across Equessria, and we called them back. I called them back. Jus’ to this?” She squeezed her eyes shut, but there were already tears escaping. “There…there would be many, I knew that. Was prepared for loss. But half the town…” And we had killed them, even temporarily. Dinky and I were the ones who disturbed the Hollows within their homes. We were the ones who brought down Meadowbrook’s descendants and friends by hoof and by blade. How many had we actually cut down, in our little door-to-door campaign? How many ponies was half of half of the town, even generously assuming the other half had been the duty of Snips and Snails in the bayou below? Even Magnus looked a little sick. We’d gone out there on his orders, after all. His eyes flicked towards the town, then he let out a deep breath. “Dinky, Holly, did you put them down for the moment?” I nodded, and Dinky added, “We didn’t leave any wanderers, so nopony else should get hurt. But they’re going to wake up, and some of them probably soon.” “Rutting Tartarus…” Magnus muttered to himself, as he shifted his shield into his off-hoof. “Alright. When you were out there, did you see any particularly strong buildings? Large, no windows, anything like a warehouse? We need something we can easily reinforce to contain them, at least until after we leave.” That got Meadowbrook’s attention. “You ain’t be stuffin’ my family into a warehouse to rot, Magnus! They be deservin’ more than that!” Her own shouting seemed to grab the attention of Snips and Snails, who were still sitting nearby. “Like what?!” Magnus barked, turning on his old friend. “Meadowbrook, I know you mean the best, but I’m really asking you, what can you do to help them? We’re not bringing them with us; the caravan’s already going to be bloated, assuming they stay here. We might as well walk them straight into the heart of the Everchaos, each with a dinner bell of their own to ring, singing ‘come drain us dry!’” Meadowbrook was shocked, and she stumbled backwards as Magnus shouted at her. Magnus froze as he watched her tumble onto her back, as if he’d suddenly realized he had shouted at her. But he was silent, as Meadowbrook mumbled quietly to herself, “They be deservin’ better...” With a long sigh, Magnus closed his eyes, and sat down heavily on the dead peat at her side. “Meadowbrook. I want to side with you, I really do. I’ve lost more soldiers and friends than I can count to this rutting Curse. But I have to draw the line somewhere. They’re Hollows, and once they get that bad, containment is the only thing we can do-” “Are you gonna contain us too?” The snarl came from behind us, and both Dinky and I turned to face Snips, who was shaking in rage behind us. Rage and something more; he was nearly foaming at the mouth, and the embers of his eyes darted wildly, all around us. Snails was by his side, and seemed to be trying to calm his friend down, but the taller of the two colts was clearly confused and terrified. Magnus’ eyes narrowed. “Snips, what do you mean by that?” “Don’t play ruttin’ coy! You were nearby earlier, when she was telling us how short our time was! When we go Hollow, are you gonna lock us up with them? Or back in Ponyville, are we going to get our own little cell to go insane in? How long are you gonna string us along in the name of this ‘cure,’ huh?!” Snips shook Snails off entirely, and the taller colt stumbled away in shock. “I…I didn't mean to string anypony along…” Meadowbrook was still laid out on the ground where she had fallen, and Magnus moved directly in between them. This turned out to be a good move. “Liar!” howled Snips, and he charged forward right between me and Dinky. He shoved us aside as he galloped straight towards Magnus and Meadowbrook, and the both of us ended up on our sides in shock. Snips kept charging forward, and Magnus held up his shield defensively, only for the wild colt to slam right into the bronze surface as if he hadn’t even seen it. A great clang rang through the clearing as Magnus forced Snips back. Dinky was on her hooves long before I was, and her horn ignited in golden sorcery. Sleeves of levitation wrapped around Snip’s legs, and she held him still as he writhed and frothed. Even now, he still tried to claw his way towards Meadowbrook, still tried to attack her, and he didn’t seem to care about the ichor spattered across Magnus’ shield or his own broken muzzle. “Snips! What in Tartarus is wrong with you? Stop this!” Dinky’s cry was tinged with tears as she held her old friend still, and Magnus advanced on his shaking form. Snails was behind me, mumbling something that sounded similar, but there was no way that Snips could hear him. Magnus stood above Snips, and shook his head. “He’s gone Hollow. And if he hasn’t, then he will soon. You got your wish, numbskull.” With shocking brutality, Magnus slammed the edge of his shield down on Snip’s neck, above the collar of the armor, and we all flinched as the colt went still with a wet crack. Dinky’s sorcery fizzled out as she gaped like a fish, but Snips’ legs simply flopped to the ground, lifeless. “Wha- you…you didn’t have to-” “I did have to, Archmagus.” Magnus snarled and slid his shield back over his wings, and his eyes snapped to me, then Snails behind me. “How about you two? Any urge to attack helpless old Pyromancers?” We were still in shock, but I shook my head, and shrunk back behind Dinky. I heard Snails whimper behind me, and Magnus seemed to take that as an answer. “Fine. This works out better anyways. Right, Meadowbrook?” The older mare trembled as she stood, but nodded. “I…I’ll get Zecora, and I be telling her. Have a barrel spare we can use to hold him.” “Good.” Magnus breathed out through his nose. “Watch over the colt until we get back. Snails!” The young colt shook as he approached, and seemed unable to take his eyes off his former friend. Magnus looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “You and me, we’re going to go check buildings for someplace secure to store Hollows. Then we’ll come back for your friend. Is that going to be an issue?” Snails hesitantly shook his head and whimpered, “N-no s-sir…” Magnus turned to face me and Dinky. “Holly. Dinky. Before you all started reporting in, Meadowbrook was telling me that she was running low on firewood. She has an axe you can use, go chop some of those trees we marked earlier. She’ll tell you when to stop.” We both nodded, and Meadowbrook’s hooves began to glow with light blue magic. A simple woodsmare’s axe floated out of her front door. It passed a curious Zecora on the way, who looked down at Snips and shook her head. “I was worried about that colt on the way here, and I’m sorry to say this was one fear…” Dinky took the axe in her own golden magic, and we left as Zecora began to help Meadowbrook pull Snip’s corpse into the cottage. We couldn’t shake the distinct feeling that we were being ordered to do this as punishment, and maybe we deserved it. * * * Neither of us said a word until Baton Verte was long lost in the fog of the bayou. Once more, we trotted from tree to tree, following the orange flags we had planted…days ago? It felt like days had passed, but without a sense of the passage of time, I had no idea how long it had been since then. I wasn’t even sure how long it had been since we had first left Ponyville. Dinky broke the silence first, and her voice was shaking. “I want to go home.” I turned to face her, and was struck by how different she was from the teenaged filly I had first met in Ponyville. While she was still the same height, her eyes were deeply sunken, and her fur was beginning to fade. When had this started? I had never really noticed until now, but how long had it been since Dinky had started to break down, out here? Had it been the run through the Firebreak? Apple Bloom’s attack? Or was it just a slow development from everything we’d seen and done here in the village? “I…I do t-too,” I said. My voice was nearly a whisper, but Dinky heard me, and shook her head. “No, not just- Not just in general. I’m not just homesick. This is…I hate it out here.” Dinky glared out into the swamp, as we sloshed through the wet muck. “It’s been…nothing but endless rutting fighting, and Hollows, and terrible things. Every moment since we left Ponyville has been a mistake. I thought…” Dinky screwed up her muzzle, and we both paused under the branches of a dead willow. “I’ve been sitting and training for so long in Ponyville. Talking to everypony I can about Sorcery, learning about everything I can, about the world outside. I thought…I thought…” She cut herself off. “It’s stupid. You’re gonna laugh.” I shook my head. “W-won’t laugh. I p...promise.” Dinky shook her head, then slowly collapsed onto her side under the willow tree. The axe fell to the ground beside her, and she huffed through her nose before she kicked it away. I sat beside her, and gave her time to collect her thoughts while I focused on my breathing. Dinky needed that comfort, right now. “I thought...” she began, hesitantly, “I thought I was gonna go out, into the world…and all that I learned, I was gonna use it. I was going to help ponies outside, I was gonna fight monsters. Find things long lost, solve ancient puzzles, maybe even cure the curse. I was gonna be a hero, but…I sure don’t feel like a hero. I feel like I’ve just made a mess of things with everything I do. Everything I learned turns to gum in my head when we get attacked; whether it’s spells or enchantments or melee combat. And then the fight is over, and maybe we shouldn’t have been fighting at all in the first place.” I placed a cold hoof on her shoulder, and she shivered through her cloak. “I…f-freeze up, t-too. It hap-happens to eve-everypony, n-not just y-you-” “We shouldn’t be freezing up at all!” Dinky said with a whine. “Magnus back there, he didn’t freeze up! Snips just shoved us aside like we weren’t even worth his time, and then Magnus hit him, and it was all over!” I tilted my head. “D-do you w-want to be m-more…like M-Magnus?” “Yes!” Dinky said with a cry, then caught herself. “But, no, but…maybe, I don’t know! He’s a trained killer, and I don’t want to be that, but…that’s how you survive out here now. I thought it was going to be nice and clean, we were going to fight monsters! But these ponies have names, all of them…or at least, they had names…” I rubbed her shoulder comfortingly, but Dinky brushed off my hoof with her own. “I…Holly, I…” She clenched her eyes shut. “Never tell anypony I told you about this, okay? Never. I don’t want to sound like some stupid whiny teenager. I’ve been training for so long, I thought I was better than that…” I nodded, and Dinky swallowed, as she ran her hoof through the dead grass in front of her. “I...” she started hesitantly. “I…I miss my mom.” I’d never seen Dinky like this. She always wore a mask, that of the professional Archmage of Ponyville, and ponies respected her because of that mask. She knew Zecora and Magnus professionally, and she acted like an adult three times her age. But all of that was gone now, and all that was left, under that mask, was a scared little filly. “My mom, she’d…she always knew what to do. She wasn’t the smartest, or the fastest, or the most clever, or anything special. She was a pegasus, not a unicorn, like me, and couldn’t teach me magic. But she always tried, and she always helped, no matter what. She loved me, and she- she was the best mother in Equestria, even by herself.” Dinky looked up, and stared off into the bayou as she spoke. “Her name was D-Ditzy Doo. There’s couriers now, there’s always been couriers, but she was a mailpony long before…all of this. She flew around, delivering messages across town, or to other nearby cities, but she always came back home.” “One day, she just…didn’t.” Dinky laid her head on the ground, and continued in a quiet whisper. “That was the same day Cloudsdale fell; she didn’t tell me where she was going that day, but I bet she was headed there, and got caught up in all of that. And then Princess Twilight left too, and Archmagus Starlight took over my lessons from her, but then she left too… “I miss all of them,” Dinky said, with a whimper. “Eventually, all of them stopped coming back. Starlight too, though she stuck around the longest. She was proud of me too, but she never came back, and some-” Dinky choked up as she let out a sob, and I laid my foreleg over her back supportively. “S-somehow I th-thought…I th-thought I’d g-go out and f-find them, and bring them b-back…Starlight, Twilight, my m-m-mom-” I leaned closer, and held Dinky tightly in a hug as she sobbed into the ground. I wished I could do more, but all I could do was hold her close, and breathe. And maybe that’s what Dinky Doo needed, right there, right at that moment. A friend, somepony she could trust. Somepony she could let herself cry next to. “D-don’t go,” whimpered Dinky, as she shook under me. “D-don’t want an-anypony to go and l-leave me, n-not anym-more…they-they’re going to b-but I d-don’t want them to g-go because they n-never come b-back…” “I’m n-not g-going anyw-where,” I promised her. Dinky needed that; deserved that. And it was the least I could do for my friend, besides to bring her back to Ponyville. And I promised myself, more than anything else, that I’d get the young mare back home safely. * * * Swinging an axe was hard, and weird, considering I’d had so little experience with using my hooves to hold weapons at all. Of the two I’d used before, it was actually much closer to Zecora’s machete, with all the weight focused at the end of the tool, but with much less reach. It was also significantly heavier; I felt like my own body served as a counterweight when I swung it properly, and I had to be careful not to lose my balance every time I slammed the axe blade into the dead bark of a tree. Dinky watched from nearby, where she sat in the sunlight between the branches of the trees above. “We probably should have been given two axes.” “Pr-probably,” I agreed. “This…is h-hard.” Dinky nodded. “We should talk, that’ll take our minds off it.” She looked around for a moment, before her eyes settled back on me. “You, um, you never told me where you came from. You must have seen lots of things before coming to Ponyville.” I swung the axe into the tree, then paused to shake my head. “W-woke up n-near P-Ponyv-ville. In a…b-building, that had f-fallen into a...r-river.” “Huh.” Dinky shook her head. “Wait, you woke up? As in, you don’t remember how you got there?” I started chopping again, and spoke between swings as I caught my breath. “Y-yeah. There’s j-just fl-flashes. I r-remember words, and their m-meanings. V-vague things ab-about towns, and...l-life before. B-but nothing ab-about myself. I had…had a s-sword through m-me, I ha-had to p-pull it out…it w-was st-stabbed through, int-into the w-wall.” “So…whoever you were, whatever you were doing, you were attacked. And really viciously too, if they didn’t retrieve their sword after. They wanted you…pretty dead, or at least immobilized,” Dinky mused, out loud. “Was there anypony else nearby? Or any corpses, even skeletons?” “T-two Hollows,” I grunted as I swung the axe again. “One…on the f-floor, injured, an-and I t-took her arm-armor. The oth-other was on the r-road, nearby…at-attacked me a b-bunch of times. Th-that’s how I l-learned I c-couldn’t die. B-both were…s-soldiers.” “Damn, that’s…that’s rough,” Dinky said, with a sigh. “So either you were a soldier and somepony took your armor…? Or you were being chased by the soldiers, though I don’t know why they would do that. Or what caused all of you to Hollow out, but you didn’t…or maybe you did, and somehow got your sanity back?” “C-can that hap-happen?” I paused mid-swing to look at her, but Dinky shook her head. “If it could, you’d be the first. As Zecora would say, ‘That which is lost can never truly be returned,’ or...something to that effect. But...you know, in rhyme.” Dinky laughed weakly before she bit her lip. “Maybe…it’s not a nice thought, but maybe something smashed your head when they killed you? And that screwed up your memory, because you had to regenerate your head?” I winced. I hoped that wasn’t it, but…at least if it was, I was glad I didn’t remember it. That sounded painful. Dinky sighed, then shrugged. “Remember anything else? I mean, we can probably go out when we get back to look for clues in person, but…if we can work it out before that, then that’s good too.” “W-was a c-cloud building…a b-bookstore. Wh-which makes s-sense…I’m a p-pegas-sus too, j-just…like-” “Don’t.” Dinky cut me off. “Don’t compare yourself to her.” I paused, and left the axe lodged in the tree as I looked back at Dinky. She saw my curious gaze, and lowered her head. “I’m sorry. She…” Dinky looked back in the direction of Baton Verte. “That…that old mare, back in town, she…that was bad enough. She’s not my mom, and neither are you, not even with wings.” Dinky closed her eyes. “I’ve seen…a lot of Hollowed pegasi mares. A lot of them could have been her, and neither I nor them could have ever known. I’m not going to see her again, not like she was…and I wouldn’t want to see her Hollowed out, anyway. I don’t…I don’t want…to be the one who has to…” Dinky choked up again, and I forced myself to start working at the tree once more while she composed herself. I could’ve hugged her, but…I got the distinct sense that, right now, that would have done more harm than good. After a few minutes, Dinky calmed down a little, and laid her head on the ground. Though she did give me one last glance, and shook her head. “You’re too…too short, anyways, and too young. You’re not Mom. Thank…thank Celestia.” A moment later, the tree trunk made a cracking noise as I swung the axe into it, and we both jumped. “Uhh…t-timber?” I grunted, in confusion. Dinky scrambled to her hooves, and moved around behind me as I yanked the axe free. The tree trunk cracked and groaned, as if in pain, and then the entire mass of the tree, branches and all, began to tip to the side. It collapsed towards the cut, away from us both, and then the branches splashed into the water of a nearby pond. “Huh,” Dinky said, as we both blinked at the felled tree, “that…didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Though I guess it’s not firewood yet? It’s still got branches and everything.” I nodded, working my shoulder as I stepped towards the tree. “I g-guess…I’ll n-need to st-strip those off…then ch-chop it down into sm-smaller logs?” “That makes sense,” Dinky agreed. “The branches probably work as kindling, and we can carry most of this in bundles back to town in a few trips. There’s some vines nearby that might still work as rope, to hold them together.” She paused, and then chuckled quietly. “Huh. Woodcutting is harder work than I thought.” I shrugged, and started to walk along the fallen trunk of the tree, while Dinky set off in search of vines still flexible enough for our needs. * * * “So…has anypony…actually told you about Cloudsdale? Or do you remember it, at all?” I had been working to chop the branches off of the main trunk for a little while now, and Dinky had long since returned with vines, like she said she would. As I stripped the branches off, she grabbed them in her magic and broke them into smaller and smaller segments, before tying them into tight bundles with the vines. Conversation had been light as we both worked out how best to do our end of the job, but we were nearly done by now. I swung the axe down into the wood, but didn’t pull it back out just yet. Instead, I leaned on the handle of the axe to rest, as I scraped my memory for any clues. Cloudsdale...I knew the name. I had vague flashes of a great city, made of clouds and fog and brick…an entire city, made of the same materials that the bookstore had been. It had been filled with ponies, so many that their faces, colors, and cutie marks all blurred. As I tried to look closer, the memories blurred and warped, as if I was peering through the clouds themselves, and then…eventually, I was left with only my memories of those faded memories, and I could barely see the originals at all, like blinking at an afterimage. I sighed, before I yanked the axe back out of the tree, and returned to my labor. This branch was nearly free. “I…r-remember C-Cloudsd-dale…s-sort of. Wha-what happened t-to it…?” Dinky paused, to bite her lip. “We’re pretty sure that the demons attacked it. Cloudsdale was basically right above the Everfree, and it would make sense if it was the first settlement to be attacked, but they did…something to the city, or damaged something important at the weather factory. But the first hint that anypony knew that anything was wrong was this awful shockwave.” Dinky stared into the distance, and her eyes clouded as they focused on the past. “Everypony felt it. The air itself seemed to shake, and every window in our house shattered at once. My ears popped as I ran out the door to look, and there was this huge rainbow shockwave over the Everfree. Like Rainbow Dash did a sonic rainboom, but a hundred times bigger, and it was fading. The shockwave blew away all of the loose clouds in the sky, and Cloudsdale…” She paused, and trembled as she spoke quietly. “It just…started to fall out of the sky.” After a moment, she swallowed, and continued. “All of it. Cloudsdale was pretty spread out, like a giant fluffy stormcloud, but the entire thing sunk, like a ship sinks into the sea. The edge just barely missed Canterlot, and landed upstream of Ponyville, near the dam. The ground shook again when it hit, and there was this awful earthquake, and then everypony was screaming that the dragons were attacking…” “It was all a blur after that, until Twilight, Starlight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie started to organize everypony. We fought off a bunch of demons in the first wave, and then the soldiers from Canterlot took over and helped us fight the fires. We had one fight that went really bad a couple days later, and I think…” Dinky swallowed. “I think…that’s when I died, for the first time? I don’t remember exactly what happened, but there was fighting…and then I remembered waking up in an alley, all by myself. I was covered in blood, but I thought I’d just passed out from exhaustion, because I hadn’t gotten a chance to sleep since Cloudsdale fell. I didn’t realize until later, when other ponies that had been killed started to get back up, too...” The head of my axe chopped through the branch, and between the way I stumbled and the sound, that seemed to knock her out of her memories. I continued with the next branch as she shook herself, and resumed with her own work as she talked. “Um, anyway...from what I hear, the main bulk of Cloudsdale all ended up in and around the reservoir, or the surrounding valleys, with the weather factory itself floating on the surface. And the weather factory’s still sort of active, which is a problem all on its own. That’s where all this fog comes from, you see.” Dinky tilted her head at the mist that hung over the bayou. “The machines kept running, but the magic still in them got twisted and corrupted, and this fog is still pouring out of the ruin. As far as we can tell, the fog is just enchanted fog, but we’re not sure what it’s enchanted with. The pegasi say it’s harder to move and manipulate, and it seems to be repelled by settlements, which is why Ponyville and Baton Verte both seem so much more clear. But it’s covering the entire continent, according to the couriers and travelers, and we have no idea how to even shut it off.” This branch broke much sooner, and as I moved on to the last one, I asked, “Are th-the machines d-damaged…somehow?” “That’s the thing, we can’t even get inside to check.” Dinky’s eyes narrowed in frustration. “Apparently there’s this stupid...cult or something, we’re not even sure. Whenever a pony disturbs the ruins, or even gets close, the skeletons of the dead come back to life and attack them. All the pegasi that died when Cloudsdale fell…they’re still defending it to this day, or the cult’s using them to defend it. Maud got close once, scouting for minerals up by the reservoir, and apparently she saw a bunch of ponies in cloaks hanging around. The skeletons completely ignored them, even seemed to protect them, so we’re pretty sure they’re connected.” Dinky shook her head in frustration. “Awful, disrespectful jerks. All the dead pegasi up there…and they’re animating them as cannon fodder. That’s one of the places I wanted to go most, when I started adventuring, to clear them out and put the dead to rest. But Ponyville’s so focused on the demons and Applejack’s fight against the Hollows inside the wall, that I never got the chance, plus they seem to be staying up by the ruins and not pestering anypony.” Dinky sniffed. “But they’re still jerks. Weird cult jerks.” I could hardly disagree; it sounded as though I'd narrowly avoided running afoul of them myself, during my journey to Ponyville. My axe chopped through the last branch of the log, and I set it aside to catch my breath. "Tha-that's the l-last one...n-now to st-start br-breaking up th-the trunk into seg-segments?" Dinky nodded, and her horn came alight as she helped reposition the trunk so it laid back across the stump. "I'll hold it in place, just make marks every leg-length or so first. We can chop them into pieces properly after we measure them. They should be short enough to tie together in bundles, and haul back." The axe worked well for this, even though my scores in the trunk were sloppy. I wasn't too worried; it all burned the same, in the end. I focused on that until the tree trunk was roughly sectioned off, and it was only before I began cutting the segments properly that I asked my next question. "S-so…the sk-skeletons aren't…Hollows?" “Not as near as we can tell?” Dinky shrugged, and her face was an expression of genuine confusion. “Ponies started getting cursed and coming back from the dead pretty soon after that, but there definitely seems to have been a cutoff point of sorts. Anypony that died on the same day that Cloudsdale fell stayed dead, but anypony that died that night or afterwards got cursed. Then…the sun stopped, and days didn’t really matter any more. “The skeletons are kind of in a weird half-state…” Dinky continued to mutter, mostly to herself. “They’re definitely not Hollows. Starlight captured a couple, early on, and before they just stopped animating entirely, she said that they seemed to be controlled by something else. I think she described them as puppets? There was a soul animating them, but it wasn’t their soul, and it was from somewhere else, somehow?” Dinky shook her head. “Starlight was always good with new or weird magic types, but she stayed away from necromancy, so she had basically no experience with it aside from being able to identify it.” Conversation faded once more, as Dinky started mostly speculating and theorizing to herself. It didn’t seem totally consistent any more, and she was making greater and greater leaps in logic. Eventually, I stopped being able to follow her thinking at all, and stayed quiet while I worked, and Dinky muttered to herself absent-mindedly. * * * "Y-you keep m-mentioning a St-Starlight…I r-recognize th-that name? B-but I d-don't rem-remember why…?" It took a lot of time, and a lot of work, to reduce the tree down to manageable logs. Dinky had tied them together into eight bundles of half a dozen logs each, and then strapped two bundles across both of our backs like saddlebags. Between that load and the bundles of branches, we were just on the cusp of being overloaded, but we managed to begin our slow slog back to Baton Verte. Conversation had naturally resumed as we walked. “Starlight?” Dinky asked, eyes raised in curiosity as she clambered over a fallen log. “I wouldn’t be surprised, she’s sorta famous. Sorta. She kept to herself, mostly, but…” Dinky shook her head. “Maybe I should start from the beginning…do you remember Princess Twilight Sparkle?” That was a name I remembered shockingly well. I paused on a stable bit of shoreline, closed my eyes, and clearly saw a purple alicorn. Much shorter than my memories of Princess Celestia, but about a hoof taller than myself, and smiling. I remembered she was important, and a hero, and one of the princesses…but mostly I just remembered her appearance. Clearly, I had seen her for myself at some point, long before I had reawoken. I nodded emphatically, and Dinky grinned as we resumed walking. “Okay, good! That’s something. So, okay, Princess Twilight lived in- you remember that big crystal tree on the edge of Ponyville? Or…actually, maybe you avoided it, Applejack’s headquarters are right at the base…” “I s-saw it…” In the distance, a cricket chirped. For just a moment, the swamp seemed alive again, before we both realized it would be best to avoid the source of the sound. We turned and crossed a shallow bit of bayou to skip some flags. Dinky nodded again, as soon as we were out of earshot. “Okay, good! So, that’s Princess Twilight’s castle, and she’s lived there since I was little, when she became a Princess. But she always let me use her library when I was growing up, so I got to spend a lot of time there with her and Spike-” “Sp-Spike?” I didn’t mean to keep interrupting, but nopony had been able to tell me this much new information since Rockhoof, and most of what he remembered was far too general to be useful. Or it was about weapons and armor, and that just wasn’t really something I needed to know much about. Dinky’s face fell. “Uh…yeah. Spike, he’s...another old friend, but he’s been missing for a really long time. I think he went with Ember…I think. He and Princess Twilight fought Celestia so hard on the whole Dragon War thing…” She shook her head. “Anyway, uh, getting ahead of myself. So, I was already hanging around the library a lot, and our teacher, Cheerilee, couldn't really teach us magic, so Princess Twilight offered tutoring lessons for unicorns, for free, at her castle. Eventually she took me on as her apprentice, after Sweetie Belle left to pursue her singing career, and I was still her apprentice when Cloudsdale fell.” I nodded, and we pushed through a patch of grass twice our height.. “And she always had this friend, Starlight Glimmer, who became Archmagus of Ponyville at some point…I think because legally Twilight couldn’t be both a Princess and an Archmagus within the same county? I forget the reason why, or who was the previous Archmage. But it was mostly in name, because everypony went to Twilight for all the reasons one would go to an Archmage, and Starlight ended up running a lot of the School of Friendship’s day-to-day stuff.” Dinky shook her head and furrowed her brow as new thoughts occurred to her. “Everything about that really confused me. Ponyville’s weird about stuff like that. You know, our mayor was basically the town’s mayor for life? She got a cutie mark in being mayor, and everypony loved how well she did her job that nopony wanted to run against her, even though legally she was supposed to quit at some point.” I coughed, and that seemed to put her back on track. “Uh, right, sorry. So...Cloudsdale fell, and there were soldiers everywhere, and everypony was always running around and it was basically…well...chaos. Twilight called me, Starlight, and the rest of the town together, and told us that she was going to Canterlot because Celestia needed her, and that they were going to try and fix everything. She asked Starlight to take over as my tutor, shut down the school because Ponyville was too dangerous for the students from other countries, and then left.” Dinky screwed up her muzzle. “She forgot to leave the castle unlocked though, which really sucked, because it was super safe in there. Demons couldn’t get in at all, but now we couldn’t either. Both Starlight and Trixie were really annoyed about that, and they basically had to live out of the School of Friendship, because they’d been living in the castle before. “Starlight was a really good teacher, even if the actual training times were kind of random. She had a really different style to Twilight, who taught me from books and scrolls and repetition. Starlight called herself a ‘Hedge Mage,’ and had learned magic by herself, so she was much more focused on feeling your way through magic and trying what felt like it would work, as opposed to framework and hypothesis. Twilight regularly told her what she did with magic was impossible, but Starlight would figure out ways to do it-” "There you are! Took long enough." The main ramp of Baton Verte emerged from the fog before us, and Commander Magnus with it. He seemed to have been waiting for us in the flat clearing just before Baton Verte proper, where the town connected with the road. Dozens of Hollows were milling around as well, and seemed to be busy hauling cargo from the town into wagons made of mouldering wood and threadbare cloth. Snails was present as well, at Magnus' side, but he seemed much more focused on the leather hoofball helmet cradled in his hooves. After a moment's thought, I realized why; Snails was wearing one himself. They must have been part of the colt’s personal militia armor. Applejack really had made the armor out of whatever was on hoof, it seemed. "Sorry we took so long, Magnus." Dinky looked around the clearing, then back at him. "Did we, ah, miss anything?" "Only the town meeting," Magnus said, with a hint of frustration in his voice. He moved closer, and Dinky pulled both of our loads from our backs. Magnus raised his eyebrow as his eyes skimmed the firewood, probably checking it over in case it had gotten too waterlogged on the way here. "Is this all? Not much of a tree." "It's only about half, we're doing two trips. How'd the meeting go? What's the verdict?" "Meadowbrook talked most of them into it…for better or worse. We've got a caravan of twenty-something wagons loading up, as you can see, and we're going to have to change our overland route to follow the highway to accommodate them. Up the side of the valley, so lots of switchbacks, and then a bit further south. We'll still link back up with the east end of the firebreak; I can show you on the maps…" I tuned them both out a bit as I slowly approached Snails. The colt barely noticed me until I was sitting right in front of him, and it was only then that he looked up. He blinked a bit, and I could see him mouthing something...trying to remember my name, maybe? I think I surprised him when I leaned forwards and embraced him in a gentle hug. He stiffened slightly, and nearly let the hoofball helmet slip from his hooves into the mud, but he fumbled and managed to hold on tight. Snail's fire wasn't terribly bright, but it was still burning persistently. I didn't have much practice doing this, but I slowly cradled my fire, and pushed its warmth out into him. Snails sighed contentedly, and seemed a bit more relaxed when I released my hug, though he was reluctant to let me go. When we did separate, he looked down at the helmet in his hooves, before he securely clipped it to his belt. "Th-thank ya, miss. I…you're really nice." I nodded, and we both got to our hooves and started listening to the conversation between Dinky and Magnus once again. Magnus, for his part, gave me a nod. "'Course, before all that was decided, we had to sort out the Hollows. Started with his friend there; Zecora and Meadowbrook put him into a barrel, and we rolled 'im down to that warehouse along the highway." "A…barrel?" Dinky said in confusion, and both Magnus and Snails nodded. Magnus pointed back the way we'd come, towards Ponyville. "Trick we developed pretty early on, for the sake of containment. Lots of empty barrels around, without any food to fill them, and most Hollows can't get up enough strength to smash their way out. Works for wounded undead soldiers too; we'll be carrying Autumn back to Ponyville the same way, as soon as I've finished supervising the wagons here." Dinky winced. "That's awful! What if he wakes up, stuck inside a dark, cramped barrel, like cargo?" "He won't." Magnus spoke with surety in his voice. "Zecora and Meadowbrook have made sure of that. We just have to get him to Ponyville, and then we can take care of him there." With a shiver, but a nod, Dinky turned back to me. "If something kills me on the way back, don't sign me up for the barrel. I think I'd prefer to be left behind…" She shook herself like she was shaking water off, then started trotting. "Come on Holly, let's get the rest of the logs. You coming with, Snails? We’ll bring them back faster with three sets of hooves." The colt nodded, perhaps just a little more lively than he had been moments before, and the three of us set off back into the swamp together.