Brightly Lit 2: Pharos

by Penalt

Chapter 8: Prismatic

    The flames burned with ferocious intensity.  Air roared as it was forced to drive the contained conflagration even hotter, and through it all there could be heard a regular rhythm of sound.  Like a heartbeat, a ring of metal on metal beat time as it had for thousands of years, for in truth it was the pulse of humanity’s advancements.

    From the Bronze Age, to the Iron Age the sound had rung out.  From the legions of Imperial Rome to the Industrial Revolution the rate of man’s rise to power over his world could be measured in that steady beat of hammer on metal.  For whether that hammer was driven by iron thews, or the churn of a water wheel, or the power of industry, that sound still meant that the very bones of the earth were being reshaped into what a man desired.

    Riding alongside that steady drumbeat of purpose, another sound had crossed untold ages as well.  It stood in silent partnership to the ring of metal on metal, and waited patiently for the least misstep, for the moment it would once again be allowed to slip free in its ancient cry:

“DAMMIT!” 

    Unaware of the ancient drama unfolding in the town a few miles behind them, the group of five friends cantered happily up an old logging road.  During the heyday of pacific coast logging the Great Bear Rainforest had been a prized location for timber harvesters, where titanic firs and spruces had been felled to feed the growing hunger of a young province and nation.

    These days, the former pathways of logging trucks were now the domain of sportsmen, hikers, and eco-tourists come to explore the wild land that humanity had barely made a dent in.  Among their goals were fishing of the lakes and streams, hunting of deer and elk, and watching for that rarest of ursine delights, the Kermode aka “Spirit” Bear, with its unique white pelt.

    “Wait,” Seeker suddenly ordered, bringing her friends to a halt on the gravelled road.  The other four looked back in puzzlement, until they saw and recognized the change in their fellow Power Pony’s eyes.  Their red bodied companion had taken to shifting her vision at random intervals into spectrums undreamed of in the animal kingdom.  

    It was trust in this “sight beyond sight” as Seeker’s mother called it, that commanded her friends’ instant obedience to her call to halt.

    “What is it?” Seeker’s sister, Shield Maiden, asked.  

    “About thirty meters up ahead,” Seeker said, her voice low and quiet.  “There are ten people hiding in the bushes.  Five on either side of the road.”

    “Have they seen us yet?” Darter, the swift and bold pegasus, asked.  His eyes were sparkling at the chance to test his skills yet again.

    “Maybe,” Seeker equivocated, her split irises of blue and green whirling.  “It’s kinda hard to tell.  They’re just kinda glowy blobs in the bushes.”

    “Are they carrying any guns?” Iron Hoof queried, with a touch of worry.  “They might be soldiers like last week.  You know, the ones that were coming after Foxfire and Luna?”

    “I… think tho,” Seeker replied slowly, drawing out her usual lisp of the “so” sound.  “Like I said, it’s hard to tell.  And they’re really good at hiding.”

    “Ambush?” asked Skylark, Darter’s sister and fellow pegasus. A pony of few words.  “We should run.”

    “We should attack,” Darter argued back.  “They don’t know we know they are there.  We can take ‘em easy.”

    “We don’t know if they are bad people or not yet,” Shield Maiden responded, unsure.  “Seeker, can you see anything else?”

    “NO,” Seeker almost growled back, and every pony’s ears went flat against the sides of their heads as they witnessed the furious concentration on the earth pony’s face as she tried to resolve more details.  

    “We should back—” Shield Maiden began, before one of the strangers hiding up the road took matters into their own hands.

    “Hey, it’s okay,” called out one of the hiding men, and as he stood up the ponies could see he was wearing a mottled green uniform, and carrying a military rifle.  “We’re friendlies.”

    “What kinda friendly sneaks up on people?” demanded Darter, who despite his brashness was wisely hiding behind the orange barrier of Shield Maiden’s power that she had flashed into existence.

    “The kind of friendly that was getting in some practice and learning the area,” the soldier replied.  “Everybody stand up, we’re making the civilians nervous.”

    “We’re not civilians, we’re the Power Ponies,” Iron Hoof declared proudly, standing alongside Darter with a puffed out chest.  He didn’t understand why some of the soldiers were holding a hand over their mouths as they got up out of their insufficient hidey holes.

    “Corporal Justin Barlow,” the man in the lead said, slinging his rifle and putting out his hand.  “Princess Patricia Light Infantry.”

    “The who?” Shield Maiden asked, curiously.  Until she saw the flag patch on the man’s shoulder.  “Oh!  You’re Canadian.”

    “Yes Ma’am,” the corporal responded, smiling.  “We’ve been asked to hang around and keep things safe. Not that you ponies aren’t doing a good job.”

    “Um, hi there,” Skylark said, stepping past Shield Maiden’s dissipating barrier and extending one of her silver tipped wings to one of the soldiers, a woman with a close cropped blond mane.  

    “Hey,” the woman replied in response, getting down to one knee so that she could look the young pony in the eye.  “Sorry if we scared you.  We were just out learning the area.  Corporal saw you coming and we decided to see if we could hide from you while you went by.  Guess not.”

    “Thorry,” Seeker chimed in, coming up beside her fellow pony and extending a hoof.  “I kinda cheated.  My eyes let me see things.”

    “Don’t be sorry, kid,” Barlow replied, over his shoulder.  “What you did wasn’t cheating, it was using what you had.  There’s no such thing as cheating for us, only training and learning. What you did was a lesson for us on what to do when an ambush gets busted.”

    “Oh!” Seeker answered, brightening.  “Thanks!”

    “No worries,” the corporal added, “And a word of advice.  If you catch on to something like this again, keep acting normal while you work out what to do.  When you all stopped and started talking to each other it told us that you had twigged to what we were doing.”

    “Oh,” Shield Maiden said, her cheeks colouring.   “I… um…  I guess we still have a lot of things to learn.”

    “Saying that makes you a good leader,” Barlow stated, before turning to his group.  “You kids should think about joining the Cadets.”

    “Polaris wants us to start a Junior Canadian Ranger troop,” Shield Maiden replied, Barlow’s praise heartening her.  “Mom doesn’t think much of it though.”

    “Well, I’m sure I could convince your mother,” Barlow replied confidently, until the other soldier piped up.

    “Um, sir, aren’t you forgetting our briefing?” the blond soldier asked, her name tag reading “Williams,” and her fingers stroking one of Skylark’s extended feathers in absent wonder.  “Shield Maiden’s mother is Foxfire.”

    “Oh,” Barlow said, his face paling slightly.  “The Angry’corn.”

    “Huh?” all five ponies said at once, curious.

    “Talk around our camp is that this town has unicorns, alicorns, annnnnd,” Barlow paused for effect.  “One angry’corn.  Foxfire.”

    “I don’t know if I like that,” Iron Hoof replied, with a scowl, one of his forehooves scraping a track in the gravel and dirt beneath him.

    “Whoa kid, sorry,” Barlow swiftly backpedaled, realizing his error.  “It’s meant as a term of respect.  That nobody, but nobody messes with Foxfire and gets away with it.”

    “Oh, I guess that’s okay then,” was Iron Hoof’s response.  “Sorry.”

    “Not a problem,” answered the corporal, glad to have diffused things.  “We were going to be heading back to camp.  Did you kids want to come with us?”

    “Where you camping?” Darter asked, pushing off the ground into a low hover.  “Bet I can get there before you.”

    “Bet you can,” Barlow agreed.  “Your Mayor Montcalm is letting us stay in the bunkhouses for the summer firefighting crews.  At least until they’re needed that is.”

    “We need to get going,” Seeker stated, and getting odd looks from her fellow Power Ponies as she did so.  

    “Um, yah,” Shield Maiden added, more to back up her sister than anything else.  “Thanks for the advice.”

    “Okay, take care,” Barlow replied, and gathering his troops, set off with them singing, “The Princess Pat, lived in a tree.  She sailed across the seven seas…”   

    The smith was undeterred by his previous failure.  Gathering up the twisted remains of his previous attempt, he once again brought forth air and fire to reduce solid metal to liquid flame.  Again, came the careful mixing of metals in proportions just so.  Again, the addition of flux, and once more the ever-so-delicate pour into the mold of special sand.

    Once more the smith waiting patiently for the blazing mix to cool, and when the solidified contents of the alloy were revealed in their golden form there was once more the appreciation of the beauty of golden metals.  Even if it was somewhat diminished from the first time by new familiarity.  

    With the newly formed blade gleaming, the smith again fired up his forge to attempt to overcome the shortcoming from his first attempt.  Balefully, a gimlet eye watched the temperature gauge climb until it reached a preset mark.  The smith tuned the ferocious flame with all the skill at his command to hold the burning warmth of the metal at the precise measure he had set.

    As time passed, the smith judged the moment to be right, and he drew the smoldering length from the fiery blaze that was meant to harden the formed alloy into something worthy of the one for whom it was intended.  Swiftly, he plunged the blade into a waiting bath where it was quenched with a sibilant hiss.  Dripping and steaming, the metal was then lifted up and carried to an iron anvil for the final shaping and proofing.  

One final thing remained before he could begin however.  A simple test to see if the mix of metals had been hardened by their second passage through the forge.  Gingerly, the smith leaned the bladed shape against the anvil and slowly added weight and pressure.  Once more, the classic golden alloy bent into a graceful curve.

“DAMMIT!”

    Unknowing and unheeding of the Curse of Murphy that was being carried out back home, the Furred Five continued their journey along the old logging road as it wound its path along the shore of Carmanah Lake.  The day had been fairly long for the ponies and even with their stamina some of them were beginning to feel they had gone far enough.

    “Guys, c’mon,” Darter whined.  “How far are we goin’?  I’m getting hungry.”

    “Just a bit more,” Seeker replied, as she trotted along, her sister at her side.  

    “I’m actually kinda with Darter on this,” Shield Maiden protested.  “Why are we heading out this far from town?”

    “I wanna see the border,” Seeker succinctly explained.  “We’re almost there.”

    “The border?” Iron Hoof asked, confused.  “What border?”

    “The magic border,” added Seeker, rolling her eyes at the, to her, obvious question.

    “Oh, I get it,” Skylark filled in, nodding as she got what her friend meant.  “She means the edge of the magic from town.  That border.”

    Nodding in understanding, the rest of the ponies pressed further up the road, until around a hundred meters further along the road a small stream passed under a slightly less small bridge of earth and wood.  Just past the bridge, was a small cairn of rocks that had been gathered from stream and lakeshore, and spray painted a metallic gold.

    “Well, there it is,” Darter proclaimed.  “Can we go home now?”

    “‘Sec,” Seeker responded, her eyes a whirl of blue and green as she shifted her range of vision.  Long moments went by as the small red pony looked left and right, frowning in concentration as she did.  Finally, she spoke. “It’s bigger.”

    “What’s bigger?  The magic border?” asked Shield Maiden, pulling magic to her horn just to see if she could.  An obliging orange glow sprang to life.  

    “Right side,” Seeker murmured, and each of her family and friends obligingly pivoted to look upstream just in time to see a group of four dirty and wet individuals come into view as they made their way down the watercourse.

    “There’s the lake!” the man in the lead called out to his companions, two men and a woman.  All carried what had been clearly heavily laden backpacks, but now rode lightly on their backs.  The only thing of any significance that any of them carried, were some musical instruments. 

    “Are you sure that’s Carmanah Lake?” asked the single woman, a dirty redhead.  “Damn GPS hasn’t been worth a damn all day.”

    “Gotta be it, they could mess with the GPS but not—,” replied one of the other men, before the quartet suddenly saw the five ponies on the road in front of them, “Oh.”

    “Who the heck are you guys?” Darter asked, lifting off to a hover high and to the right, his sister mirroring his move, only to the left.  

    “I’m Jim,” said the lean man in the lead of the group, before gesturing to the others.  “This is Rob, Barb, and Hannah.  You’re Brightly Ponies, right?  This is Brightly?”

    “This is Carmanah Lake,” Shield Maiden corrected, recalling her magic back to her.  “Brightly is a few kilometers down the road.”

    “Wait,” the woman said, staggering and splashing forward, her voice taking on a note of awe.  “You.  You’re the Maiden.  That means the rest of you are the Power Ponies.”

    “My God,” added the man in the rear, moving forward as well.  “We didn’t just find Brightly.  We found her.  Guys, this has gotta be magic making this happen.”

    “Stop right there,” Shield Maiden commanded, flashing an orange barrier into existence while her pegasus friends drifted back in close.  “My name is ‘Shield Maiden’, and what the heck are you talking about?”

    “Sorry, sorry,” Jim responded, spreading his hands.  “Look, can we get out of the water?”

    “Okay,” Shield Maiden answered, and at a look her friends pulled back a bit.  The unicorn withdrew her barricade so that the four adults in the stream could clamber out of it, but not so far back as to allow the adults onto the road.  “Darter, I think you should head down the road and get those soldiers we saw earlier.”

    “No, wait!” the red-headed woman cried, the desperation in her voice stopping Darter more than anything else.  “Please, you’re our only hope.”

    “Huh, what?” Darter asked, stopping so fast he almost left skid marks in the air itself, before dropping the few feet to the ground.

    “What do you mean, we’re your only hope?” Iron Hoof questioned, puzzled.

    “Let them explain,” Seeker ordered in a calm voice, and the other ponies saw that the eyes of their visionary hadn’t stopped in the whirling.

    “I’m transgender, like Medevac,” said the rear most of the group, a thin man with green hair.  “I was nearly killed by a gang in North Dakota a month ago, and it was the third attack the cops ignored in three months.  I’d appreciate it if you called me, ‘Hannah’.”

    “I’m Barb, and I’ve got terminal cancer,” the red-haired woman stated.  “I have two to three years to live.”

    “I’m Rob, and I’ve got Lou Gherig’s disease,” added the one man who hadn’t spoken as of yet, before nudging the slim man who was the group’s leader.

    “I’m Jim, and we’ve all been friends online since we were kids,” explained the man.  “We had no hope, until we heard about Brightly, and about you.  The Shield Maiden.  Who has the power to change people into ponies, and change lives for the better.”

“The magic doesn’t work that way,” Shield Maiden protested.  “And I don’t know if I can help with any of that.”

“We know it’s not much of a chance,” Jim replied, his voice pleading.  “But it’s my friends’ only hope of survival.  Please, change us into ponies, and then you can call the cops, or the army or whatever, and we’ll go quietly.  We promise.”

“I can’t,” Shield Maiden replied, bowing her head sadly.  “I made a promise not to.  Not without permission.  I’m sorry.  I’m really sorry, but I can’t.”

“It’s okay,” Barb soothed.  “We know we shouldn’t put this kind of pressure on you, but we’re desperate.”

“How did you get here?” was Skylark’s soft question.  “There’s nothing but forest the way you came from.”

“Not until you get to the coast,” Jim answered, with a small laugh.  “If you follow our trail back, the boat we bought in Bella Bella is probably still tied up to the shore.”

“But that’s gotta be twenty kilometers of solid bush,” Darter marvelled.  “With bears and wolves and stuff.”

“Felt like fifty,” quipped Hannah.  “We lost the last of our food two days ago to a bear.  We’ve been living off of berries and creek water ever since.”

“All we’ve got left are our instruments,” Barb added, pulling a banjo out of a soft case.  

“We’re a band,” further explained Jim.  “It’s why we kept in touch as we got older and why we are all together now.”

“How are you guys a band if all of you are way apart?,” Darter asked, some dirt smudging his coat. 

“The internet let us stay connected,” Jim answered.  “When my friends all started having all their problems, I started looking for some way, any way that I could help them.  When I read about Medevac and how magic was real I figured that being turned into ponies might not help, but it couldn’t make things worse.  So, we pooled our money together, flew to Vancouver and then to Bella Bella, where we straight up bought a boat.  We knew that if we just landed where everyone else does we’d get arrested as soon as we touched.  So we went around to the east side of the peninsula we were on, landed there, and hiked overland.”

“Wow,” Skylark breathed.  “You did all that for your friends.”

“My best friends in the world,” Jim corrected, pausing as his three companions touched their friend, and each of the ponies could tell from the human’s expressions that no matter how things turned out for the musicians, they considered the trip worth the effort it had taken.

“I promised not to cast the spell anymore,” Shield Maiden reminded everyone.  “I made a promise to the princesses and to my Mom that I wouldn’t.  I’m sorry.  I can’t.”

“Tell you what,” Jim said, looking up at the faces of his friends.  “Give us one chance to convince you.  Let us do just one thing to convince you to change us into ponies.”

“I guess you can try,” Shield Maiden replied.  “But it’s not gonna change anything.”

“Yeah guys, Shield Maiden’s mom is like super strict about rules and stuff,” Darter added on.  “You guys aren’t gonna try anything dumb like pulling out a gun are you?”

“We’re musicians,” Barb answered, adjusting the strings on her banjo.  “We thought we would play you a song.”

“Well, I guess that would be okay,” Shield Maiden cautiously allowed, letting her barricade dissipate.  

“Thank you,” Jim said, pulling out a guitar.  Hannah followed suit by pulling out a strange thing that looked like a cross between an organ and an accordion.  

“What do you play?” Skylark asked Rob.

“I can’t play an instrument,” replied the man, quirking his mouth as he picked up a heavy, fallen branch and thumped it rhythmically a few times against the ground.  “So, I’m the bass line.”

“Everybody ready?,” Jim asked his group, sitting or standing on one side of the road, the attentive Power Ponies on the other.  “Right then, ‘Stormriders’.  Tune of ‘Oak and Ash and Thorn’.  Three, two, one…”

    “Look,” whispered Seeker, and the ponies’ eyes grew wide as all five of them began to see flickers of rainbow power start to curl around the limbs and bodies of the musicians. 

    “Should we stop ‘em?” Darter asked in a hushed voice.  All four players were now fully enveloped in the power of transplanted Equestrian magic.

    “No,” commanded Seeker, her eyes as bright as the flaring amethyst at her throat.  “If they can do this, then let it be done.” 

   
    On the third repetition of the chorus, everything everywhere seemed to pause as a bell-like tone sounded, and with a flare of rainbow light four human beings disappeared, replaced by the collapsing bodies of four ponies who didn’t know how to control their bodies just yet.

    Silence fell except for a single complaint of, “This is why we tell you not to whine about being bored.”