In some ways, all dreams were the same.
It was a true statement and like so many truths, there were exceptions continually lurking in hopes of gaining a chance to test the rule. The most frequent protective qualifier was to say that the statement applied to the dreams of sapient beings. The first moons of finding herself with what had originally been an extremely unwelcome ability had required the dark mare to test herself over and over again, largely as a means of finding some degree of control -- including that which she'd wished for more than anything. The capacity to stop.
It had allowed her to learn what the rules were, along with locating the limits. The dreams of sapient beings matched in many ways and for the dark mare, the most crucial was that those were the nightscapes she could most easily enter. They were also the dreams which were simplest to leave. She could visit the inner sleeping world of those animals whose minds had advanced far enough for dreams to occur, but the raw force of emotions which had yet to learn the lies of greater complexity... that was a tidal wave, and she had found herself tossed about as pounding waters wore away the thin coat of civilization. The others had done everything they could to retrieve her when the unnatural movements began, and she'd found herself whinnying for hours until language finally returned.
Animals had become easier: she knew the risks now, was better at shielding her identity. There were times in the modern nights when she chanced visiting the dreams of an animal, although only when the need was great.
Monsters...
The girl dreamed, spent much more time in the nightscape than the average pony. And there were ways in which the existence of those dreams proved a simple fact, something the dark mare would never be able to explain for those who had a vested interest in not believing it. They proved that the girl wasn't a monster.
Even when that was so much of what she believed about herself.
The previous night, after the time in the smithy... that had been especially bad. The observer had needed some time to figure out where that nightmare was going, and part of that was because she hadn't initially been able to identify a location. The girl had been trotting through...
...at first, all the dark mare had been able to think was Some kind of city, and that left out too many of the distortions. There was no reason for buildings to be that tall, she didn't understand the focus on glass and metal, and too many things moved. Some ponies had been known to pay for the placement of repeating illusions upon small portions of walls, mostly in the theater district: it could be an effective form of advertisement, allowing a few seconds of a play or cinema to show themselves over and over. But in the empty city, where the girl had initially been trotting alone down the center of a black street which seemed to both absorb and radiate heat... it was as if entire structures had been created to serve as nothing more than the screens for outdoor cinema. It was too bright, too frequent, created too much to look at, and generally served as the visual equivalent of having a thousand ponies simultaneously screaming for attention into a single ear.
But then the dark mare had spotted a familiar clock face, followed by a portion of a Palimyno street. It had let her realize that the girl was trying to visualize Canterlot, and had been doing so by mixing what was familiar to her with scant portions of pony architecture. She didn't have enough experience to truly picture a pony city: most of what she'd seen of Palimyno had been witnessed from ground level as she'd been dragged along, and the observer had added map and tourist guide to the things they needed to bring her --
-- and the city was empty.
The lights were too bright, the wind howled down canyons created by buildings which seemed to be stabbing at the sky, the air reeked and there were times when the girl desperately brought a sleeve in front of that minimal nose and tried to breathe through the fabric, for all the lack of good it did her. But she was the only living thing moving down the center of that dark road, with no one on the sidewalks, nopony using the air paths because the girl didn't know how to picture an air path. No one and nopony and nothing. Just a centaur, whose form showed a useless right arm with one step, hooves fracturing with the next, ears twisting towards sounds they could no longer hear. Always and forever something wrong, for the only inhabitant of a conjunctive city which had never existed.
And then a window had opened.
Girl and hidden mare had looked towards it. A pony head had fearfully poked out, frantically looking around as nostrils flared, looked down...
The pony saw the girl.
The window opened a little more.
The body hit the street.
More windows opened. Unicorns and earth ponies jumped to their deaths, because doing so was so much easier than having to exist anywhere near the girl. Pegasi locked their wings against their sides and made sure the impact would be headfirst. For something over a half a minute, the world rained corpses, and bodies rolled up to the girl's hooves so dead eyes could stare at the one who had forced them into a final decision.
It rained corpses.
Then it rained acid.
Flesh melted from pony forms. Fur simply evaporated: liquid muscle ran in red rivers into sewer gratings. Offal was left behind on the street. And the girl, her eyes streaming with endless tears, silently gathered the bones and put them in the saddlebag which rested against her right flank. The left bulged with ingots, the heat radiating from the dark surface was matched by a surge from the air as the city turned into nothing more than the supply house for a giant forge.
The palace smith told the girl that she was creating a graveyard which could be worn, that is what she took into the nightscape, and by the time the dark mare realized where it was all going...
There are dreams which evaporate upon contact with daylight. The visitor knows that wasn't one of them. The girl carried it with her to the training grounds. She may carry it for the rest of her life.
But she isn't having that dream again, not tonight. This is the time for a more subtle horror.
The girl's true body is resting on a single thin blanket, which was placed on the floor in an isolated corner of the barracks. It has become twisted under her barrel as the upper torso twitches and all four legs jerk. But in the nightscape... in dream, there are no buildings, no forest, no home in that hidden valley (and the dark mare is becoming roughly familiar with those streets). There are no roads or paths. There is nothing. The girl trots along vacuum so complete as to pass for the between itself. A place where no living thing should ever exist for long, but she runs across nothing with her sickly arms stretching forward, her drooping ears straining for any bit of sound, and there is something to listen for. When the dark mare follows, making an extra effort to stay hidden in an environment which offers no concealment, she starts to hear it. Wingbeats. Somewhere up ahead, out of sight, and moving with what could be described as deliberate intent.
Sometimes the girl gets close enough to catch the briefest glimpse of a black tail, just long enough to see it lash with rage before vanishing again. But when she gives silent, pleading chase, the wings flap all the faster. Always moving, and always moving away.
There is nothing.
No one.
Nopony.
And the endless weight of loneliness begins to press in, the girl's knees buckle, her lower back caves inward as her neck --
-- the dark mare twists.
(She's twisted more with the girl's dreams than she did in the last decade before her abeyance began. It isn't getting any easier with frequent practice.)
The twist is performed with only the most basic intent at the core: that the girl needs somewhere to be and because the dark mare is still learning about that strange life, she makes a mistake. She sends the girl to be with her own people, and so that body shrinks and stabilizes, but --
-- she's looking around, there is a moment when the dreamer knows something happened, she's trying to find --
-- but that moment ends.
And then there is a filly climbing out of a pool.
The dark mare had given very little direction to the twist, and so the girl had made her own association. In waking, she had been in water, and it had led to pain. And now she leaves the water, towel already wrapped around an upper torso which doesn't bulge anywhere near as much at the front: puberty has begun, and earlier than for a few of her age -- but not all. At best, she was second.
The girl glances back at the pool, and sees fillies at play. They splash each other, kick and flick tails at the eyes of friends because that can whip moisture as well as a sluicing arm, and with more of a choice for direction. They laugh and giggle and play-attack in pairs, because that's what's fun. And as the filly watches, two of them manage a simultaneous temporary blinding, mutually stumble forward while groping for support, and so trot into a wet hug. One where the embrace is welcoming, tender, caring...
But this is a filly who's just left the pool. Perhaps fifteen others are behind her. Seven pairs. She left alone. She entered alone. She stood near a partially-underwater wall because she's tried to play before this, and the others move away from her. The filly wants to be part of the game and the others know that at any given moment, her mother may appear and turn splashing into something closer to a live combat exercise. The filly is being pushed too hard and a body forced to move at all times is usually directed to move into something. They used to shift away from her because they didn't want to get involved, and now they move away because that reaction has reached the level of instinct.
Fifteen fillies still in the huge pool. Seven pairs. But there's one...
She's taller than the girl. Perhaps a year or two older, or just early to the vertical growth spurt. Visibly more powerful, and muscles ripple along her flanks as the black coat pushes through the water, with long dark hair plastered against the fur. But she has another distinction beyond her size. She's alone.
The filly glances back at her. Looks at girls who laugh and play and care about each other, because this is the start of the time for love: something which will be over all too soon. She looks at embraces and awkward rearrangements of hair and -- hands. Two couples simply stand next to each other in the water, holding hands. They're mostly quiet. Their eyes occasionally dart towards each other, they let the water lap at their flanks and they try to make the moment last because the time for love is a brief one and when breeding begins, the memories are the only thing they'll be able to keep.
Seven pairs. One alone. And the filly who looks at that solitary figure for just a little too long before turning away. Silently trotting with her head down towards a fast-approaching maternal shadow, as the nightscape begins to quake.
When the girl comes to memory in dream... it was the same as it is for every other sapient, because there are ways in which all dreams are the same. She replays that which was taken in through her senses and so for whatever she directly experienced, the display is a true one. But that reproduction is limited to what she saw, heard, scented and touched. And so at the instant she turns away from the pool, that part of the fast-ending dream turns into what she believes to have happened. What her deepest self felt had to happen, especially given what would take place in the days to come.
The others stop playing, stop holding hands. Palms cover their mouths. And as the girl is led away by the grip of perpetual disapproval, every shoulder shakes with the force of muffled laughter.
Given neutral conditions, flame would initially propagate up. Smoke, however... most of that spread depended on the air currents and when air began to gain heat in a confined space, those currents could twist. There was also ventilation to consider, because smoke in an area of high heat could move faster than anypony expected. Ponies generally thought of smoke as something which drifted, and that common definition was something which a narrow ventilation shaft and the pushing energy of heat loved to violate first. The second thing violated was usually somepony's lungs.
Fire wanted to go up. Smoke went everywhere. But the true structural damage would be limited to where the heat had been, and so the white mare didn't worry about the impact of her weight on the ramps as she steadily climbed towards the burn. If she reached a point where the floors seemed unstable -- well, she would know about that when the Guards who preceded her started to make the usual assortment of noises about her safety: those behind would then turn it into a chorus.
They cared about her. They were willing to die for her. They were also seldom willing to take 'I'll self-levitate' for an answer, especially when dealing with a hallway which would be too narrow for her full wingspan. Her Guards usually wanted her to have at least six ways out of any given situation, and always had the first entry on the list as Don't Get Into It. On a very real, just about surface level, they didn't want her to be here. And somewhere within the deeper ones, they didn't want her to be anywhere else.
She was alive because of the Guard. The world went on due to the actions of Guards. Every honor statue in the gardens was a life lost, and those lives had been voluntarily given to purchase decades.
The white mare seldom had a chance to return any degree of favor. But when it came to the current situation... in truth, she'd never really cared about the distinction of Solar and Lunar shifts, especially after the vast majority of her life had been spent in charge of both. (It was one of her weaker defenses when accused of cross-staff filching: she still saw all of them as working for her.) So it didn't matter that this was about a Lunar Guard. One of her own had been attacked. And Luna had every intention of acting -- but this was a case where the younger was willing to hold her temper until the proper target presented itself. They had discussed the matter, and it had taken almost no time before they'd agreed to let the elder take the initial lead.
There was a very good reason for that.
A rather irritated "Look," came from up ahead, just past the last bend of the ramp, and it reached her immediately after the lead Guards would have come into sight. "I know this is about your own and if it was one of ours who had something happen in the palace, you'd be shooing me out. But we're still working on this stage of the investigation, and it's crowded up here. We need some time to -- Princess!" A foreleg of flicker-yellow and orange slipped as it slid down the wall, turning the hoof-mounted tool's scrape sample into a freeform piece of art. "Nopony told us you were --"
"-- step away from the wall, please," she calmly said. "And the door." What was left of it. "As you've already noted, there isn't much space to work with, and I'm afraid I take up something more than your share. Who's the lead investigator?" A unicorn shakily ignited her corona. "Good. Would you --"
"We've already cast the primary spell," the mare forced out. "The one which detects the emotional resonance. Verifying intent. Er. I don't know if you're familiar --"
"-- and it came up as deliberate?"
(She knew it had been deliberate. She was also very aware that there were ponies who would take her saying 'I knew' as evidence, and so also remained aware of the need to actually back it up.)
"Yes," the mare verified.
"Thank you." Gently, "But I'm afraid that wasn't the question. I see five of you standing here, plus some equipment, two of my Guards, and there are two more behind me. Would you please tell me how you feel about the structural integrity of the floor? In your professional opinion, will it be able to take my weight?"
You usually had to watch closely to know when a pony had just broken into a sweat, because the first portions of liquid didn't reach the surface. If you weren't close enough to scent it, a slight darkening of the fur would be the first clue, and the portable floodlights set up in the hallway made that easy to spot.
"Er..." the very helpless mare said.
Politely, adding a reassuring tilt of her head as the pastel mane steadily flowed, "I'm about to address you by name." The oldest mare in the world smiled. "Which means I'd like to know what it is."
"...Backfire."
"Thank you. And I'm sorry. I know you're new on the job, and that you transferred in from San Dineighgo -- oh: please give my regards to Furnace if you see him again. But I didn't have time to learn much more." The tilt angle subtly increased. "Backfire, I know ponies are generally reluctant to discuss my size unless they can find a way to make it overwhelmingly complimentary. But I'm aware of how large I am, along with the fact that said size comes with an appropriate amount of mass. The fact that the floor is safe for you doesn't mean the same for me, and my Guards will probably form a living barricade unless you give the word. Can I trot here, would you advise me to take some of the weight off the surface through self-levitation, or should I come back later so my signature won't interfere with your readings?"
"...you can do --" Backfire stopped. "-- of course you can, you're the Princess..."
She waited.
"I... think for safety's sake, you should levitate," the unicorn told her. "We already checked for signatures, so you don't have to worry about us having to factor out yours."
"Thank you." Her horn ignited, and soft yellow surrounded her body: just enough to take some of her weight off the floor while keeping her hooves on it. "I'm going up to the door. Give me some space, please."
The investigators and Guards shifted, with nearly everypony winding up on the ramp. She stepped aside to let them pass, then approached the ignition point.
"A unicorn did this," the old mare softly stated as she looked at the hollow of crumbling char.
"Yes," Backfire called out. "The signature --"
"-- you don't need the signature to see that," the calm voice politely broke in. "An earth pony can't reach that high, even braced on their hind legs. It would have been a jump, and that means the liquid splashes. With a pegasus, no hover is ever completely level: you would see some vertical spread from the bobbing. Careful placement, almost no drip at the point of impact because they were trying to keep the brushtip exposed through the corona and most of the liquid which fell would have become tangled up in the field. But that means..." She stepped back a little, looked down at the irregularly-shaped splash of black. "Yes, here it is. The field winked out here. Fear, I'd imagine. And that meant everything caught up in it dropped. They recovered the brush so as not to leave more evidence, and took the ignition fluid canister for the same reason. But they couldn't exactly gather up the fallen drops. So there was a little more fuel available in this spot..."
It was possible to hear the blinks, especially when they took place as another kind of chorus.
"I -- I would have needed another hour to work that out," the lead investigator half-whispered. "How did you know --"
"I understand fire," Celestia replied: words which were perfectly soft, and so they were also words which had just enough carefully-placed insulation to contain the inner heat.
She looked closer.
"There's a pattern here," the alicorn said. "On the door. It looks like they were trying to use the ignition fluid to draw something. Part of that burned in. But some of it was ruined, because a portion of the illness potion used on the last notice soaked into the wood. That's the reason it caught so quickly, and went out of control. Following that trail. It's going to make it that much harder to make out what's supposed to be in the center. Fortunately for us, the ignition was somewhat below this, so it's not impossible. Glimmerglow?" Her pegasus Guard looked up. "Please come over and hover next to me. I could use an extra set of eyes. I know what the border is, but I think the interior is --" she squinted "-- overlapped."
"Overlapped?" the attractive mare inquired as she began to fly towards her Princess.
"One thing drawn on top of another. 'Superimposed' would have been a better word. My apologies."
"So what's the border symbol?" her Guard asked. "I can't quite spot it."
"Because of the burn," Celestia quietly offered. "Backfire, take a picture of it when we're done, please. Use conventional film, then examine the negative. I think it'll be easier to see that way. But the border is our own primary warning symbol for No. Being used as a circle."
She took a breath. The lingering stink of smoke was drawn down into her lungs, which processed it with something just short of draconic efficiency.
"So let's see what they were saying no to," the Solar Princess decided. "Multiple branching lines coming off the top: four of them. One shorter line off to the side, at an angle. Rather more circular in the center, with something of an implied depression." She slowly shook her head, silently forcing her mane's flow to remain at the same falsely steady rate. "Not much of an artist. But it had to be something which could be drawn in a hurry. Five total lines --"
"-- not lines," Glimmerglow breathed -- which was followed by a cough.
Celestia glanced left.
"Fingers," the Guard declared. "Thumb off to the side, more or less. That's a hand..."
Which suddenly made the poorly-rendered doubled shape of the center resolve itself. Not a distorted palm, but --
"A hand," Celestia said, "superimposed over a hoof. Somepony's idea of a useful visual shorthoof for centaur. Backfire, have you heard any updates from the hospital?"
She could also hear the unicorn swallow. "I thought..." Closer to a whisper, "Don't you know?"
The alicorn had sent for an update. But she would have needed to wait at the palace for it to arrive, and when it came to picking it up in person...
"We asked them for a report," the old mare softly told the unicorn. "We had to leave before it arrived. So I would appreciate anything you can tell me."
"Well..." Another gulp. "The occupant of the apartment was released already. She was in her bathroom, getting ready for a night out: she didn't hear anything over the water. But once she smelled the smoke, she cleared out through a window, tried to get back in from another angle -- oh, you know that, she's a Guard..."
"Nightwatch is fine," Celestia calmly said. In spite of her best efforts. A pegasus who was preternaturally good with wind didn't quite have the same degree of skill for heat-shifting. "Tell me about the rest."
"Well... she managed to wake up the others on this level, Princess. Got them out: the other pegasi helped her carry the earth pony family down. But while she was doing that, the smoke..." The shudder of anger went into the words, made the nearby scorch flake off all the faster. "We're told the children on the level below this should recover: they didn't get that much of it. It's the foal everypony's worried about. He was just born a few days ago, and..."
The lead investigator was young. She hadn't seen enough yet, she'd already seen too much, and that was why she didn't quite choke back the sob.
"...he might be in the ward for a moon. I... took the wrong ramp up. I saw the birth buntings on the door. I..."
Everypony went quiet: Guards, the other investigators, and a very old mare. Giving her time.
One last sniffle, plus thirty more seconds, and then Celestia asked.
"I'm assuming that you can show me severed copper," the alicorn deduced. "Whoever did this would know the building has a fire suppression system. So they found the channeling wire, and cut it. Meaning the wonder couldn't send moisture to the hallway, and their warning would burn long enough to leave an impression. Accurate?"
"They cut it in multiple places," Backfire half-spat. "Including a few on the way up. I don't think they understood how much they had to do there. Or how wonders work at all. It's part of why we evacuated the rest of the building: somepony has to restore that before it'll be truly safe to move anypony back in. But aside from some smoke damage, the other apartments are all right."
"And this one isn't," Celestia stated. "The door is burned -- but it's still mostly intact. Because Nightwatch didn't know the fire suppression was gone. This is an old building and the entire floor is on the same wiring. So she went out the window. And when she opened it, trusting that the wonder would activate -- she created a pressure differential. The underside of the door doesn't form an airtight seal. The fire was pulled. She looked back just in time to see the flames come in, and by then..."
She lost everything in the apartment. She keeps her most valuable possessions in a safe deposit box, but... she won't sell them. Because I gave them to her.
She could have tried to take some things out. But she prioritized for everypony else even after the top floors were evacuated, because she's a Guard and there are times when Guards think of themselves last.
"You recorded the signature?" the old mare asked.
"Yes."
Someone made a symbol.
"Princess..." The unicorn's voice was hesitant. "I... I don't read it, but I saw the afternoon edition of the Tattler. The front page column. It was hard to miss in the newsstall. I don't believe it. I know -- the palace -- the Diarchy would never -- just to raise sympathy, you wouldn't have faked..."
A foal.
In a ward.
The tiny bed. The monitoring spells. Sparks drifting from the surrounding field loops to alert the casters of any changes.
For a moon.
Celestia hated hospitals. Loathed the helplessness which came when ponies recognized she was in the area, friends and family of the ill flooding towards her because there was a Princess in a hospital and wherever Celestia went, miracles had to follow.
She hated hospitals because the wards were the first, best homes of prayer. And all too often, when she forever found herself unable to answer them, the last.
"Thank you, Backfire," the elder gently offered. "Let's see what we can work out about possible height before we go to the various hotels and start asking the residents if they saw anypony unusual on the ramps. There's only so much neck craning most ponies care to do. And after that..."
I hate it.
I owe it to them.
To be there for their pain.
"...I'll go to the pediatrics ward."
To give them somepony they can kick.
The Sergeant was watching the path which led in from the training barracks. It was the only thing he'd been doing for what felt like the last twenty minutes. He hadn't ordered Cerea to do anything except wait: she was doing so on his left. And with motion stilled, with exercises ended until whatever they were waiting for happened, something he wouldn't tell her about beyond a sharp bark of "YOU'LL FIND OUT WHEN IT HAPPENS!" -- when the body had been stopped, the mind was free to start working again.
All she could do while they waited was think, and being run around the track until her hooves were ground to dust was better than living with what was racing through her head. Around and around, over and over, until she wished to drop.
She hid her scent.
Cerea had moved her last blanket to a corner of the barracks. Nightwatch, who'd left the bathroom ahead of her, had already chosen a cleared bed by the time a dressed centaur emerged: one which seemed to be about as far away from Cerea's previous sleeping post as the room would allow. But then the Guard had needed to start her shift, Cerea had eventually fallen asleep (and the dreams had been horrible), she'd woken up for the fourth time to find the clock telling her to get breakfast, that meant heading for a kitchen --
-- and by the time she got back, the pegasus was asleep. Most of the mare's body had been visible: she seemed to have kicked the majority of her blankets off. It let Cerea see the way her legs kept shifting, the rustle of feathers...
...the ripples moving through the fur. Moving up.
There was a wind wall surrounding the bed, channeling all scent through a little ventilation grate. The mare knew something of what Cerea could do, and had arranged a degree of privacy accordingly.
It hadn't prevented the centaur from seeing. The sleeping kicks. The twitches.
She's... the only one who kept coming to see me --
-- it's her job, she's supposed to stay near me because it's her --
-- she was the only one.
The little knight no longer had a home, and Cerea knew it had something to do with her. It had to be something Cerea had caused, because the kitchen staff had reacted to her entry with a rather abrupt cleaning of the dining area. Something which disposed of every newspaper in the room.
It's me.
It's always me --
-- and the first musical note touched low-dipped ears.
It was a rather low C, quavering somewhat around the edges. It dipped a bit, rose too much, and possessed all the control of a greased slide whistle.
The Sergeant nodded. "That's him," the old stallion stated. "Little late. But he would have needed to find somepony who could let him in through the shield, and he probably took the walk before that. Can't fault him too much."
Him? She'd known her instructor had been planning to bring people in as part of the training, and so this was the first of them. But as for who it was, all she could do was watch the path, the little ridge which led to the dip towards the main building --
-- and the monster casually hiked into sight.
She almost reared back. Instead, her forehooves scrabbled against the soil, her right arm automatically reached for a weapon as she automatically shifted closer to the Sergeant, getting ready to protect --
-- the monster was whistling.
It was also wearing a tie.
She hadn't seen that at first: her attention had been focused on the horns. They were on the sides of his head (because she was starting to realize it was a male), jutted out over part of the broad shoulders before the silvery-grey sharply curved up. They were long enough to scoop, spear, gore, and possibly all three in that very short order. They also had little blue spheres of fabric impaled onto their points, and it gave him the look of someone who'd tried to put on a portion of clown makeup and stopped immediately after Step One.
He was thickly muscled, but the vast majority of that was in his upper body. He seemed to be about forty percent pectorals and thirty percent biceps, with the legs --
-- he's a biped --
-- not so much afterthought as having been installed on general principle without a followup government safety inspection. The fur... it took her a moment to pin down the color, and then it took a few more before she managed to put the Russian Blue's associated purr away. But it wasn't a completely even hue: there was some greying here and there, most prominent around the eyes. The mane (and it could just barely be called that: short and exceptionally narrow) had gone to salt-and-pepper above the flattop skull, while the bovine snout had no fur at all. Just a large gold ring pierced through the nostrils, which swung slightly as he casually walked along with his hands stuck in his pockets --
-- he has hands --
-- while trying to whistle.
The yellow shirt was relatively light for the weather, but there was fur underneath it. The narrow-legged pants were khakis. He hadn't bothered with shoes because they just didn't work with hooves, the striped tie was far too small against his broad torso and so mostly looked like he'd put a tie on because he'd shown up at a club without one, someone had told him they were mandatory, and this barberpole embarrassment had been the only thing in the emergency stock.
His eyes were a somewhat darker yellow than the shirt, forward-set and surprisingly round. And he couldn't whistle very well. He saw her, the note fell off a cliff and then rebounded into the kind of warble which made ducks give up on life. But he continued to advance, she caught his scent for the first time and realized it meant nothing because he was the first. She'd been able to work out ponies so quickly because some of their scents were close to those which she had known, and with him...
She had known something like him (and a toxic mix of inferiority blended with jealousy began to stir, with none of it directed towards the visitor). But as with the local gryphons, he existed as something which had seen every human aspect removed. Physically, it made him into a monster out of myth. Human myths: the creature they had told themselves was at the heart of the legend before the overbearing, unjustifiably-smug truth had stepped forward.
He walked right up to them. To her, stopping about a meter and a half away: enough to let her finish gauging his height: his forehead was about thirty-nine centimeters above hers, and it left her looking up into intelligent eyes. For his part, he looked at her for a second, paused briefly in one area and in doing so, became the first male to take what she quickly realized was a strictly casual interest in her breasts: he'd seen something like that before, was just verifying that she had them, but she wasn't his species and so that was where the curiosity stopped. And then the huge right arm came up, he casually stuck his fist out with the knuckles curled towards her --
-- stopped. Blinked once, and the big hand opened as it rotated. Fingers forward, prospective grip loose.
"Heya," the minotaur said, and offered a handshake.
Her well-trained reaction was automatic: reach out, grip --
I'm touching him.
He's touching me.
There had been a thousand thoughts trying to reach the starting gate. She wanted to know his name. There was a desire to learn about his nation. The toxicity, which was rather angry about having gotten it wrong during the press conference, really wanted to know about the average bra size of a female minotaur, and most of that was still completely misplaced. But she lost all of it in the feel of fingers gripping her hand (without squeezing), the sensation of someone touching her when no one had voluntarily touched her in --
-- strictly speaking, that wasn't true. The dark Princess had touched her, along with permitting contact before the teleports. But the alicorn had been the only one. And in a world of hooves and glowing horns, this was a handshake.
Someone was holding her hand, if only for a few seconds, and so it took a deliberate effort not to cry.
"Recruit," the Sergeant gruffly said, "meet Force/Twist/Torque Power. Mazein's current ambassador to Equestria. Want to guess what he's here for?"
The bull grinned. (It was possible to identify as a grin on first go.) Carefully released the handshake, then stuck his right hand back in the appropriate pocket and shrugged.
"Emery Board here --" a quick glance down "-- and don't tell me to call you Sergeant unless you're signing back up with us --"
"-- not happening," the earth pony stated. "Reactivated. Staying home."
The minotaur nodded. "-- anyway, he did some training for us. Worked out pretty well. And he dropped by the embassy, asked if we could send someone out to give you the basics. Me..." Another shrug. "...Sunbutt and I owe each other so many bucking favors --"
The Sergeant's spine locked. Cerea's ears went straight out, then back, and followed that up by having every inner strand of fur trying to retreat inside each other.
SUNBUTT?
She pictured it. She couldn't not picture it. And then she realized that there was only one pony in the world who knew what centaur laughter sounded like, which meant there was probably a chance to pass off what was about to happen as a coughing fit because I can't stop it I can't stop it I can't and her hands were in front of her mouth, her upper back curved and her chest heaved a few times and she wondered if there was any way to kick a few fake sneezes in for the full performance --
-- the old stallion was staring at her, and the solidity of his pupils told Cerea there were going to be laps around the track. Also that there were going to be a lot of them.
The mintotaur, however, very lightly and with utter casualness, slapped her on the upper back.
"Better?"
She faked one last small cough, just for the sake of appearances. "...y...yes. Thank you."
He nodded. "Anyway," he added with an equally-even regard, "I figure this balances a number in some book or another. He wants you up against a minotaur. Best way to keep it from being a diplomatic incident is to do it with a diplomat."
The Sergeant nodded. "Save you some trouble here," he told Cerea. "He's from the last country we'll ever go to war with. Because we've never had one. Equestria's oldest ally. Ponies and minotaurs got their nations at just about the same time, and they've been standing together ever since. They just do it on two legs. There's been a few combined units on the battlefield over the centuries. We guard their backs on magic, they watch us for everything else." Almost reverently, "Makes for great stories. I haven't seen it in my lifetime, and I don't want the war which puts us together again. But in the Hall Of Legends... that charge never ends."
"But Guards," the ambassador continued (and there was a new tone in the genial voice, something darker), "still get training in fighting minotaurs. Same as our military gets it for going up against ponies." Another shrug. "'course, some of our military is ponies. Makes it easier. But you need to know how to fight us."
And before she could stop it, "...why?" They both looked at her, and that was how she knew she'd screwed up -- but if she didn't voice the rest, the Sergeant would shout it out of her. "If you're the oldest ally... if there's never been a war..."
"The nations have never been at war," Torque told her, voice calm and laden with weight. "Bulls and ageládas go bad. We get our criminals. Our lunatics. Most of the second category gets uncovered during the voting exams, one way or another: if someone doesn't want to take the test so they can vote, it's usually a bad sign. Mazein isn't gonna attack Equestria, and the same goes the other way. Even when we have our bits of weirdness now and again, we've always kept talking. But there's minotaurs who act on their own, who've decided they're the only ones who are real. And when you've decided you're the only person -- the rest of the world becomes something to break."
She just barely managed to nod.
"This is a live practice round," Emery Board stated. "The Ambassador blunted his horns, and he'll be careful on his charges. Bashing only."
Charge. The snort was purely internal. He visibly had upper-body strength to spare, but with those short, thin legs...
"For your part," the Sergeant told Cerea, "you don't kill him. Common courtesy."
"And Moonsault would be annoyed about having to moderate a national referendum to vote someone else into the post," the ambassador added, grinning again.
"But he can take a hit," the old stallion added. "So you do fight him. Go to the training barracks. Fourth locker. Nudge the dials to 9-3-6-2. Got a surprise waiting for you."
Her sword was in its scabbard. Her real sword.
It couldn't be moved magically. Nightwatch had told her that, when she'd still talked to Cerea as she would to a person. It stayed where it was during teleports, and a pegasus who was directly touching it couldn't fly. It usually wound up being dragged in a net, and it had to be shifted in secret: the actual transfer had probably taken place during the night. There had also been a selection of other weapons available: she'd abandoned the sling because she didn't have enough control yet to be assured of not cracking someone's skull with a stone, and took the new set of bolas as a just-in-case, clipping them to the top edge of her skirt.
They were standing in the center of the oval track, with the ambassador about fifteen meters away. The Sergeant was standing on the left side of the track itself, watching.
"You go until I say stop, or until one of you surrenders," the old stallion ordered. "Understood?"
"Yes," Cerea said.
"Got it," the ambassador declared. Fingers flexed, and did so in a way which suggested a last-second counting of resources.
The dual assent won them a single harsh nod. "On four. One, two, three --"
Which was when Cerea recognized the presence of a vacuum in the field of information.
"-- Sergeant?"
"What do you want, recruit?"
"How do minotaurs fight?"
He didn't grin. He never smiled. But this time, she could see where the smile wasn't.
"WANT TO FIND OUT? FOUR!"
Cerea started to reach for her sword. She had all the time in the world to figure out her first approach --
-- which, in practical terms, worked out to less than three seconds.
The bull snorted. Then he charged.
He was fifteen meters away. Ten, and she was just barely touching the pommel. Five, she didn't have it clear of the scabbard yet and he was --
-- big hands went into her shoulders, gripped, tightened, began tilting her upper body to the left as the power of the squeeze increased, her right shoulder was being held too tightly and she couldn't move her arm --
"FASTEST THINGS ON THE PLANET OVER A SHORT DISTANCE!" the Sergeant bellowed. "CAN'T DO MUCH OVER MORE THAN SIXTY BODY LENGTHS! BUT TWENTY OR LESS? THEY CAN CHARGE!"
The yellow eyes were strangely calm. But they were also utterly focused, he was still pushing her left, four legs gave her more stability and she had the mass advantage, but he had height and leverage and one of the issues with the centaur body was that if the upper torso went too far in certain directions, the lower would eventually have to come with it. He just kept pushing, and his grip had the ease which came from a lifetime of practice --
"AND THEY LIKE TO WRESTLE!"
Of course they do, briefly flashed across Cerea's wildly-sparking mind. They're Greek.
Too much strength in his upper body. Too much --
-- too much in the upper body --
She kicked him.
The Sergeant had seen it during the testing: there was an imbalance in her strength. The majority of her mass was in her lower body, and so that was where she had more power. Force which could strike out with less fear of damaging the impacting point, because hands needed gauntlets and with hooves, the shoes were more or less optional.
She had more strength in her lower body. The minotaur was the reverse, supporting that broad torso and its thick arms on thin substandard-issue legs, and so she kicked the left one out from under him.
He grunted, slipped backwards as his grip released, an aching shoulder cooperated long enough for the blade to come free and she swung the flat of it towards the side of his ribs, his arm came up to block --
-- which still meant she made contact.
He staggered. The huge arms dropped as if sagging under their own weight, both knees bent --
"WONDERING WHAT THEIR MAGIC IS? IT'S STRENGTH! COMES IN A FEW DIFFERENT FORMS FOR THE OUTLIERS, BUT THAT MOSTLY MEANS MUSCLE POWER! AND WHEN THEY KNOW HOW TO USE IT --"
-- he couldn't seem to keep his own mass upright, he was going down --
-- he was a wrestler.
And a wrestler knew how to fall.
She was swinging again, trying to take him down, and he beat her to it. He fell backwards, started to roll before his upper torso impacted so the horns wouldn't interfere, used the momentum to get out of her range --
-- he's too low, I can swing that low but it's hard to aim, I can't reach --
-- got his wind back, dove forward and went for her forelegs, but that was the predictable move and so she cantered backwards, tried to put the flat of the blade into his neck, but he was already shifting to the side, getting up again --
-- he grinned at her.
It had been easy to initially identify what a minotaur grin was like. She would spend much of the next four minutes getting the chance to memorize it.
"Oh, Ancestors," the bull chuckled. "You are gonna be fun!"
And then he charged.
There are rules for fighting. All of the best books say that: a knight has a code, and that creates order within the chaos of combat. You offer mercy to those who deserve it. You do your best to avoid striking against a turned back. You act with dignity, and victory brings you honor.
In the waking world, the girl has been fighting. The dark mare gently nudged, and so the filly is entering combat.
It's a slightly unusual sort of arena. The spectator area (which has but three mares in it) is at ground level: the combat pit is about five meters below. The intent is to keep the fillies from jumping out. There are obstacles: things you have to vault, walls which can be used for cover. And today, there's a black-haired, black-furred centaur who's a year or two older than the girl, who just had the gate close behind her as she exited the ramp into the pit.
The filly is looking at someone who's stronger than she is. Who has more training, experience, and is going to win because that's what just about always happens. The filly feels as if she's never been put into a fair fight because her mother
(her mother is watching from above)
always pushes, pushes too hard and she feels as if the entire length of her back will break. She's going to lose again as her mother watches and this time, that's not even the worst of it. This is the one who was alone. Alone in the way the filly always is: she saw that at the pool only a few days ago. And when two are alone... if there was any chance to talk about it, to explore the only true cure which exists for loneliness: the opportunity to spend time with another. To have a --
-- an adult mare jams a dagger hilt into a curved metal plate. The sound echoes and before the note fades, the black-haired girl is charging. And the filly tries to get out of the way, buy time in which to think, but the other girl is bigger and faster and pushes her back, they go behind one of the cover walls and there's a second where the filly can't see her mother or any other adult, they're both completely hidden and that's when the filly learns why the other girl is alone.
The black-haired girl grins. Hands drop from the filly's shoulders. Go to her still-small breasts.
SQUEEZE.
She doesn't scream. (She should have screamed.) It isn't the worst pain of her life because she's crashed into obstacles which had been raised too high for her to jump, been put into matches against those larger and stronger, and there was a day when she cried herself out under the same tree where generations of centaurs had felt that final misery before her. There is nothing which will ever be worse than that.
She's hurt her ribs and legs and just about everything else, knows something about fighting through familiar agonies. This is pain in a place which has only existed for a few months, she has no experience in dealing with it, the fire burns through her and by the time it reaches her brain, the alchemy of humiliation has transmuted it into rage.
Her arms come up, get between them and push the black-haired girl back. And before she even can be surprised at the smaller girl having dislodged that horrible grip, the filly charges, gets her shoulders low and the impact disorients her opponent, the filly rears back and both forelegs lash on, the black-haired girl is driven back into visibility and the filly is right behind her, right on top of her as she rears up again, which puts the filly's own arms all the higher and...
It could be said that the opportunity for revenge presented itself, and so when it came to the combat, the filly ultimately wins.
The presentation, however, was fully public.
And so the filly loses again.
Her mother is still lecturing her. Most of the females in the herd seem to have been assembled to hear the verbal whipping, although it's possible that some of them just showed up to see what all the noise was about. Mares and fillies surround them, listen to every blistering syllable as the filly is told about things the honorable would never do in combat and she tries to protest, she knows she must have bruises rising and all she wants to do is get home so her parent can see that she was hurt first.
But the revenge was public, while the pain was private. She did not scream, and all her mother seems to hear now is the wailing of someone who could only win by cheating. Who, in a two-filly match, has once again come in second.
Everyone watches. Everyone listens. The filly can't look at them all because her eyes are on the ground most of the time, and so the population which exists in the portion of the tableau created by imagination has to hide their laughter.
She's dragged home, by tail and ear: sometimes in turn, sometimes together. Her mother still won't listen to her and because the filly keeps protesting, keeps begging for one chance at proof, she doesn't get it. Begging is seen as undignified.
Three days in her bedroom, while her mother refuses to look at her. And by the time she's released, centaur resilience means the bruises have faded to the point where they could have been caused by anything.
So the filly goes back on patrol. Beating the borders, or at least as much as she's allowed to do while trailing adults who won't look at her.
It means they don't see her eyes as she memorizes their routes.
No one truly looks at her for days, and it creates another kind of opportunity. Her spare canteen comes out of the storage closet, never to return. Fabric is commandeered, clumsily stitched together. The schedule is learned by heart, down to the last hoofstep.
There's nothing for the filly in the gap. There never will be. Dozens of generations have died upon this soil and no other, and she knows in the deepest part of her heart that in the end, she will suffer the same fate. There is no true escape from the prison which the liminal species have created for themselves, not with what waits on the other side.
She will die in the gap. Die as a failure. The black-haired girl was the final proof.
So she's committed her plans to a single day.
One day to go out and live.