At some point, we lost the road that we had been following thus far. Great cracked slabs of cloudstone had flattened the ground, serving as foundation for the buildings around us and the roads between, but they totally covered the valley’s floor. The edges had been eroded enough that we could climb atop them, and our hooves began to echo quietly through the fog as we walked down the fallen city streets.
Cloudsdale’s architecture, or what remained of it, was a disorganized mishmash of every different pony’s personal taste and aesthetics. Clouds were easy to shape, and it was a skill that many pegasi grew up practicing to build confidence for weatherwork. That meant that pegasus houses were always custom work, designed by the resident or residents, and temporary or experimental additions were the norm. Even gravity had no constraint on the style or structure of a cloudhouse built by and for pegasi, leading to tall towers, strangely-shaped construction, and houses that had been built downwards through the cloud layer. They generally tended towards a mix of the bland, cheap and industrial, mixed with beautiful and elegant columns, grand balconies, and intricate buttresses, all evoking imagery of ancient Pegasopolis.
When it had all turned to stone, few of the more fanciful structures had survived. Many houses had collapsed inwards on themselves, while others had been forced upwards out of the foundation by the impact. Most were little more than rubble, but the more grounded structures hadn’t been too badly damaged. Those intact buildings, we eyed warily as we passed by, for they could contain another guard tasked with watching the road. The rest were little more than shells of their former selves, or merely piles of rubble. We slowed our pace to muffle our hoofsteps as we passed by them, but there was only so much that could be done when walking across the bare stone of the road.
In the distance, a strange glow emerged from the fog. Trixie and I were instantly wary, and approached it slowly, as we expected to find more animated skeletons. Instead, they seemed to be words and a symbol, written on the door of a mostly-intact cloudhouse. Trixie stopped me for a moment before we could get close enough to read them, as her horn came aglow. A moment later she said that they weren’t explosive runes, or any other sort of trap, so we moved in closer.
“Some sort of enchanted chalk? It looks like two spells cast on the tool used to leave the marks. One makes it waterproof, so it can still be used to write and wiped away afterwards, and the other just makes it glow.”
I peered at the words, while Trixie glanced around us at the buildings once more. “It s-says, ‘wood, cloth, m-metal,’ but metal is sc-scratched out? And t-two tally marks?”
Trixie’s eyes turned to the writing as well. “I think that’s a musical symbol? I’ve seen a few ponies that had cutie marks that looked like that. It’s one of the timing ones.”
Inspecting the house didn’t turn up anything really unusual. We noticed there was a fair amount of mouldering wood furniture, padded with cloth, but that was all. Two more skeletons lay on the floor within, with their skulls intact but without lights in their eyes. We decided that whoever had written outside on the door must have been making notes of the houses’ contents, but for what purpose, we could only speculate.
Before we left, I noticed a broken table that lay askew. Damp had loosened the nails holding it together, and one of the legs lay on the floor. It made for a mediocre wooden club, but it would be more effective than my sword for smashing skulls. We shredded a bedsheet using my sword, and used that to craft a ragged, makeshift loop that held the club well enough. Afterwards, Trixie replaced her sword with my own, and hers went into my bottomless bag while I wielded the club. So equipped, we continued onwards, moving deeper into the ruins of Cloudsdale.
The further inwards we pushed, the more intact the buildings seemed to be. Rubble and skeletons still filled the narrow, winding streets, and the more intact buildings rose higher on either side of us like chalky teeth. We began to lose the sense of direction we had been afforded by seeing the light of the sunset through the fog above us, and the dark shape of the distant valley walls, and soon we were unsure of which direction was forward. Trixie took over, and we tried to head in a single direction as straight as we could. Either we would run into a hillside, the dam, or back out to the bottom end of the valley.
At one point, a massive pile of rubble dominated the ruined cityscape, and we had to spend a long while working around it. It looked as if it had once been a single massive building, and some part of me wondered if it was all that remained of Cloudsdale Stadium. The fallen structure was too tall to climb over, and too jagged and broken to even want to get close. Trixie fired an experimental bolt of magic into a loose section, and we had to gallop away as a large lump of cloudstone cracked off the side and fell free, where it crushed an entire house beside where we’d been standing. As we regrouped and listened to the sound of the collapse echo through the valley, we agreed not to try that again, then fled before somepony came to investigate the noise.
Other sections were perilous to traverse on the street, because the solid cloud banks that the city had been built on had cracked and shifted. Great crevasses had torn the streets asunder, and no matter how hard we peered between them, we couldn’t see the terrain below. Presumably the valley floor was somewhere below us, but we had no idea how thick the slabs of cloudstone were. The dim light of the sunset failed to penetrate those ravines, and the sound of rushing water from far below was little comfort. Were it not for that, the pits might as well have been as bottomless as my bag, for they seemed just as dark and endless.
The sound of rushing water between the cracks grew louder as we pressed on, and gradually, the mountainside loomed before us. We couldn’t cross over to it without crossing an incredibly hazardous trench filled with a rushing river of black water, but I pointed out that the water must be flowing downhill; ergo, we needed to follow the stream uphill once more. The dam had to be the source of the water, either from the crack in the concrete or from the spillways.
Another glow emerged in the fog, and soon, we started to find many more messages written on doorways. Most were almost identical to the first one we had found, with a musical symbol and a brief inventory of the building’s contents within, written in a dozen different hooves, but always in that glowing orange script. But there were outliers; sometimes we would find a more simple message, such as a warning that a wandering demon had made this house their lair, or that the alley was dangerous and a pony had been lost in the crack between buildings. A few were more detailed descriptions of supplies, which we took to be supply caches for the residents that wandered through Cloudsdale, but we often found those had long been retrieved.
Others were just graffiti. There was art, drawn onto the buildings in orange chalk, usually of skeletons, skulls, suns and swords. One pony had drawn a picture of our firmament, with a snake-like creature wrapped all around it. I tried to peer at the beast, but I couldn’t tell what it was meant to be; it seemed to have arms and legs, but every limb was drawn differently, which made defining it as any single creature extremely difficult. Another had drawn a huge tree, and had detailed how the branches held up the sky, and the roots explored downwards into a great cavern beneath the ground.
Sometimes ponies had written their names, or the names of others. We found a few names with hearts between them for new lovers, even now. More were eulogies for the Hollowed, or lists of the Cloudsdale dead. There were several poems, and iterations on those poems. A few had written with the intent of making a statement, such as, “the sun left us,” or “everypony here is a cloud.” One particularly puzzling note was above a skeleton, who had died while trying to climb through a window, which read simply: “Don’t give up , skeleton!”
We quickly became used to the sight of the orange glows, and began to ignore them. But this meant that when next we found a skull with glowing embers, it was only because I physically tripped over it, and was sent sprawling to the ground. “Aagh!”
Trixie’s eyes snapped to where I’d fallen, and as I struggled to my hooves, the skull I’d stumbled over rolled to a stop. Then it rose into the air, as dozens of bones from the piles of dead around us all began to skitter across the road towards it. I drew my new club as the skeleton assembled itself, and Trixie turned to face where we’d come, only to find two more had already assembled themselves behind her. “Augh, ambush! Keep that one busy, assistant!”
Trixie’s horn flashed, and she split into three, which charged as one towards the two skeletons. To our surprise, they didn’t seem fooled by the illusions; their eyes were locked to the center Trixie copy, and they both leapt onto her. The other two copies disappeared with a pop, while Trixie wrestled with the twin skeletons to force them off of her.
I gulped as I glanced around us. There had to be a necromancer around here somewhere, controlling them, but I couldn’t find them in time. My own opponent was standing and mobile, and I had to focus on them. I wanted to end the fight as quickly as I could so I could help Trixie, and so my first blow was a heavy downwards strike against the skeleton’s back.
The skeleton’s bones scattered as the blow slammed it downwards, and it would take time to piece itself back together. With that one taken care of for the moment, I ran to Trixie, and swung my club upwards into the jaw of one of her assailants. Bone cracked, but did not shatter—at the very least, it was enough to subdue the skeleton for a few moments, and Trixie was able to use her magic to force the other one away to get some breathing room.
A bright glow formed in her hoof as Trixie formed a fireball, and I had to shield my eyes as Trixie let it fly. There was a loud bang, and bone fragments showered the street like chalky shrapnel. “RIght in the breast!” She crowed triumphantly. Meanwhile, I noticed the first skeleton I’d smacked with my club had pieced itself back together, and I moved to swing at it again.
Suddenly, knives pierced my mind. It felt as though something had reached into my skull to grab my brain with the sharp talons of a gryphon, and I let out a strangled whimper as I lost control of my pyromancy. My wooden club fell to the ground with a clatter, and my hooves felt so heavy—like lead—that I couldn’t lift them. They fell to the road, and I stood there dumbly, unable to even turn my head. My eyes twitched wildly, and my embers jumped from side to side, looking, searching, for anything, but I couldn’t find it.
The talons twisted and lifted my brain out of my skull, and manipulated my gray matter like the strings of a puppet. I heard a voice, but I heard no sound; it seemed to come from within my own head. “Cease, Hollow. Sleep, and fade. Now, you serve a greater purpose.”
I tried to fight it. Every one of my muscles burned with exhaustion as I strained to move them, and my body twitched and jittered as my limbs were pulled in two directions at once. The skeleton I had been moving towards to defeat suddenly lost interest in me, and it picked up my club, then rattled past me. I had no doubt that it intended to use it against Trixie, and I couldn’t let it.
My legs shuddered as I turned to watch the skeleton pass by, and I think the only reason that I could do so was because my puppetmaster wished for me to turn as well. The skeletons all seemed slower now, less coordinated, and the voice in my head spoke once more. This time it seemed frustrated. “Another fighter. You are under my control now; surrender your own. You were an interloper before, but now, you will aid us.”
My teeth ground together in my mouth as they clenched harder, and I felt them shifting from the strain. My tail lashed erratically, and my wings fluttered like grasping claws. Trixie pushed her own skeletal opponent back a dozen steps, and turned to fight the one that held my club, but her eyes were immediately drawn to me. “Assistant! What are you doing?!”
“Kill,” the voice said, and I felt my muscles obey, despite how loudly my mind screamed out in rebellion.
Trixie’s eyes went wide as I staggered towards her, and she leveled her horn at my skeletal companion. Together, we would slay the interloper.
I felt a shudder run through my mind—pain shared through the communion—as Trixie launched a burning flare from her horn. A firework made of magic, and when it slammed into the skeleton beside me, she exploded in a shower of broken bones, dust, and sparkling sorcery. But Trixie hesitated as she turned to me.
I wasn’t allowed to hesitate. My Master forced my hooves forward, and I advanced without pause, to Trixie’s increasing nervousness. The skeleton behind her shuddered and froze, for my Master required near-total concentration to sunder my rebellious soul. I was so foolish for fighting against him; it would be so much easier for us both if I relented, and let him take full control.
There was sudden movement, and my attention focused on that. It mattered little if I was slain by Trixie; all I needed was to be aware of the third interloper. How many more were there? My Master would need to make his escape, and get the others. But I relaxed as they stepped out of the alleyway completely, and I saw the heavy brown robes, and their darkened hood. Though I could not see their face, they were of our covenant, and I could focus totally on Trixie.
Trixie had just finished charging a spell, and I stepped to the side, but my foolish mind fought me once more. It tried to delay me, force me to freeze, and that small bit of rebellion was enough to turn what should have been a near miss into a glancing blow. I sprawled as my shoulder exploded in pain, though my armor absorbed the worst of the magic blow. The blasted cloth smoldered and smoked as I staggered to my hooves, but I spasmed as a deep shudder of pain echoed through the communion.
The other skeleton, who had been moving to attack Trixie from behind, had been slain. They fell to pieces, and those fragments of bone sparkled with sunlight as cleansing magic tore my Master’s enchantment from them. In his wake stood a fellow member of our covenant, revealed to be a unicorn by the glowing light within her hood. In her levitation, she held a glowing mace, enchanted with some form of magic that had destroyed the undead rapport between my Master and my skeletal ally.
A traitor, then? Had the old mare finally turned against our covenant? Or perhaps they were another interloper, wearing one of our robes as a disguise? Insidious. My Master searched my most recent memories, but we were unaffiliated. An invasion, then? Still, I recalled what I had seen within Apple Bloom’s soul, and how Trixie had reacted to it, and my Master panicked. We could not be allowed to reach the Source, for we would destroy it with our greed.
I was yanked to my hooves, and I staggered frantically past Trixie in a wild panic. I would serve as a mere distraction while my Master made his escape, and the mare with the mace was too dangerous. She had to be stopped!
But she barely spared a glance at me, and leapt over us. I clawed at her hooves as she floated overhead, like a phantom, but nothing was accomplished. At the very least, I was too close for Trixie’s firework spell to strike me, and so the weakling sorceress was forced to tackle me instead. She slammed me to the ground, and I lost sight of the traitor. Without my eyes, my Master would not know where she was, how close she was to his hiding spot. I had to see, had to find her!
My Master’s voice receded, but did not fade entirely. He had surrendered some control, so that he could defend himself and flee, but it was too little too late. As Trixie pinned me to the ground, I felt my Master panic. Trixie blasted me with a burst of combustion from her hooves, but I barely felt the fire, compared to the burning shock that echoed through the communion. My Master had been struck with that enchanted mace, and the pain from his injury was the last thing we felt together before it was cut off by that accursed enchantment.
The claws that gripped my brain were sliced away in an instant. I was alone inside my own head, and in pain, but Trixie blasted me again before I could scream that I was myself once more.
* * *
Everything felt sticky. I shuddered awake, and tried to rub at my face, but my hooves defied me. I shot awake a moment later, and screamed inside my head, but my scream was vocal. “Get out of my head! G-get out of...out of…”
I was lying in the darkened corner of a cloudstone bar, lit only by the dim sunlight that could enter through the windows, and a fire in the middle of the room. The wooden floor was missing planks, especially around the fire, and it looked as though they had been ripped out specifically to make room. Those same planks now fed the fire, as did a few broken stools and table legs. Trixie lay next to the fire, and seemed to have been relaxed before I’d startled her with my cry. Beside her sat an ancient mare with a wizened face, who wore the dark brown robes of a Necromancer, with the hood pulled down.
She smiled at me, before she turned to Trixie. She spoke playfully, in a strangely musical accent, “Your friend is awake.”
“Assistant. At best.” Trixie grumbled. But she still stood, and made her way over, where she stood above me. “Hey, idiot! What was that, huh? Tell me what happened!”
I shuddered at the memories. I didn’t want to remember. Instead, I looked down at myself, and found that all four of my hooves had been tied flat against my belly, which effectively kept me immobile. They’d tied me up while I was dead? I also noticed that my flesh was scorched, and dark red burn marks scored my fores. They only got worse the closer they got to my head, and I suddenly remembered feeling sticky when I awoke. A creeping horror started to build, as I recalled how Trixie had killed me using her pyromancy.
“Assistant!” She barked, and I felt my composure shatter. I struggled against my bindings as I tried to escape her, but all I accomplished was a sort of sad wiggle against the floor and the wall behind me.
“In m-my head! Th-there was a v-voice inside m-my head, and I f-fought it, but it j-just kept c-commanding and I c-couldn’t m-move my hooves, and it m-made me c-call it m-master and it w-wanted me to k-kill you, b-but I k-kept fighting it and everyth-thing hurt-”
“Trixie.” The mare’s voice was quiet and polite, but firm. “Your voice calms like a swarming hornet’s nest. Her hooves are her own, and no longer controlled by one of the Necromancers. But those hooves may still strike you down, if you make yourself her foe.”
Trixie snorted in derision, but turned away, and walked back to the campfire. “Fine; Trixie supposes you look reasonably sane.”
The other mare took her place, and I felt the fire within calm as she sat beside me. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in raising every time we fall. Hello there, young one. My name is Mistmane; can you tell me your own?”
I shook my head, and she tilted her head in curiosity as I explained. “F-forgot my name...P-Pinkie Pie c-calls me Holly.”
“Holly,” she said, with a nod of acknowledgement. “It’s a beautiful name, though I know Pinkie Pie. I suspect she wasn’t thinking of the plant at the time?”
“N-no. For H-Hollow Pony.”
Mistmane bowed her head sadly. “Poor dear. Pinkie tries so hard, she really does, but sometimes she really doesn’t think things through.” Mistmane’s horn came alight, and my bindings began to untie themselves. “You’re safe now, Holly. I was the one to slay the Necromancer who reached into your head like that, and I turned him Hollow, much to my regret. But it had to be done, so that we could remain undetected when he awoke.”
“Th-thank you,” I mumbled. As soon as my hooves were free, I felt the burn scars across my flesh wrinkle and crack. They hadn’t healed properly while I was regenerating—would they ever? What of my face? I felt my muzzle with an aching hoof, and found my flesh was still raw and sore. I didn’t bleed, but I had no doubt that any remnants of my mane or fur had been burned to cinders.
More damage that would never heal, and another death. How many did I have left? How much sand remained in the hourglass?
Trixie didn’t care. She watched us from where she sat, beside the fire, and seemed impatient for answers to her own questions. “So, now that we’re both awake, will you finally explain more than your name? Why are you dressed like one of them, if you’re not a Necromancer yourself?”
Mistmane held out her hoof to help me stand, and I worried I’d just pull her down. She was the oldest non-Hollowed pony that I’d ever seen, and she looked terribly frail. But when I gently grasped her leg, she pulled me up with a surprising strength, and the only sign that she’d exerted herself in doing so was that she rolled her shoulder joint around a little afterwards. Arthritis, perhaps? I also noticed that I’d left a dark smear on her leg where my hoof had brushed her light purple fur, but she politely wiped it off on her stolen robes without mention. “I am Mistmane, in service of her royal highness, Princess Celestia. I’ve been studying the members of this covenant at her request, as one of her leading experts on unconventional magicks.”
Trixie looked skeptical. “Another bookworm, then? Out here by yourself? I’ve never seen an old bookworm that wielded a mace like you do.”
Mistmane led me to the fire, where she gave us both a respectful bow. “Scholar, adventurer, sorceress, and landscape artist—though considering the current state of the world, that last one was more of a hobby that I’ve been unable to pursue for a long time.” Instead of rising from her bow, she moved to sit at the fire beside us in an elegant motion, and I couldn’t help but stare at her mane. It flowed like the fog around us, and I wondered how she’d been hiding it under the hood of her cloak.
“An old adventurer, then.”
“Older than you might think, my little pony,” Mistmane said, with a playful giggle. “As for you two, where are you from? Not many ponies wish to explore these ruins; they fear the fog, and the skeletons.”
“P-Ponyville,” I croaked. “Applejack s-sent us out here to sc-scout out the area, b-but Trixie wants something d-deep inside the r-ruins.”
“Oh?” All of a sudden, Mistmane’s face turned neutral, and she turned to Trixie.
“My assistant makes things up sometimes,” Trixie said evasively. “But it is true; I am, in fact, the Great and Powerful Trixie!”
Mistmane smiled, but I could see she was hiding something. “I think I recognize that name. You’re one of Twilight Sparkle’s friends, aren’t you?”
“Ugh! Always Twilight Sparkle this, Twilight Sparkle that!” Trixie groaned. “Nopony knows me for being Trixie the magician! I am not her friend! I’m barely an acquaintance of hers!”
“Well, Trixie the Great and Powerful, what are you looking for within Cloudsdale? Because I might be able to help you, if you can tell me a little bit about it.”
Trixie suddenly looked incredibly uncomfortable. “We’re not- um. My assistant, she- Uh.”
Mistmane tilted her head in curiosity. “Did Magnus allow this? I know both him and Rockhoof were stationed at the front lines, so perhaps the information I’ve sent back to the princess hasn’t made its way to Ponyville quite yet?”
“Y-you know them?” I asked in surprise.
“I do,” Mistmane responded, and she closed her wrinkled eyes in a wistful expression. “Magnus, Meadowbrook, Starswirl, Rockhoof, Somnambula, and of course myself; we were once called the Pillars of Equestria, a very long time ago. It sounds as though you’ve already met a few of them, friend.”
I nodded, but Trixie scoffed incredulously from the other side of the fire. “Oh, you’re one of those charlatans!”
Mistmane raised an eyebrow, as her expression turned to amusement. “I’ve been called many things in my life, but ‘charlatan’ is a new one. You don’t believe that we exist?”
Trixie shook her head. “Naaah, you exist. But you definitely aren’t as old as you like to make ponies think you are. Her filly-friend was talking about how Some Ambulance was crowing about the ‘powers of the gods,’ and all that. The Great and Powerful Trixie knows a good scam when she hears it.”
“Interesting,” Mistmane still only seemed amused at Trixie’s disbelief, but we both leaned back when she drew her mace. Thankfully, instead of swinging it at Trixie, she only passed the grip to her, so that Trixie could inspect it. “My friend Somnambula enchanted this mace with that very same power, you know. If she is scamming us, then it is a very good scam; it seems to perform just as she promised it would.”
Trixie took the mace for herself and began to inspect it, which also allowed me to see it clearly. It was almost solid steel, save for a leather grip so it could be comfortably held in a claw or clenched between a pony’s teeth. Though the head and shaft were two separate pieces, they appeared to have been screwed together firmly, and it looked like a weapon that would hold up for a lifetime of smashing bones into dust. The glow that the steel emitted was most fascinating of all, however. It was like sunlight, like the liquid of my flask, but it exuded no warmth, and it could not be mistaken for life. It was light, and magic, but I didn’t know enough about the different types of magic to identify what it did.
Trixie turned it over in her levitation a few times, but she clearly wasn’t impressed. “More magic I’ve never seen. How much have I missed out on while stuck in a cell? Ugh, whatever this is, it doesn’t seem that impressive. There’s no offensive component to the enchantment; it’s more focused order and light. Whatever unicorn worked the spell into the steel definitely had a thing for the Princess, but I doubt it’s anything more.”
“Pegasus,” Mistmane corrected.
“Eh?”
“Somnambula is a pegasus, through and through. Not a unicorn.”
Trixie stared at the mace before her again, and shook her head in disbelief after a moment. “I know Pyromancy, and this isn’t that. It’s not weather magic, either. What’s a pegasus doing with enchantments beyond those two types?”
Mistmane smiled again, as she took the mace back. “That’s exactly what she’s seeking to discover. Like Pyromancy, this new magic can be used by anypony, and she’s pioneering these new advancements in the clerical arts through it. After all, you saw what it did to those skeletons, and the Necromancer that controlled them.”
“Sp-speaking of,” I mumbled quietly, but Mistmane turned to face me, with a smile. “Who are they? N-nopony knows anything ab-about them, ex-except that they l-live out here, and c-control the sk-skeletons.” We’d at least known a little bit about the Ashen Wallowers before we attacked them, but the Cloudsdale Necromancers were almost a complete unknown.
“The ponies that live out here?” She asked. I nodded, and she plucked a few discarded bones from the floor to use as visual aids while she explained. “They call themselves the Gravewardens, or the Cloudsdale Gravewardens, or the Covenant of Cloudsdale Gravewardens...it seems to depend on how formal they want to be to each other, and how busy they are when talking about it. As far as I can tell, the first large group was mostly post-graduate students from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, who wanted to study why Cloudsdale fell. At some point, they discovered something that they call ‘the Source,’ and started to study it. I’ve also heard it referred to as ‘her’ very rarely, but I have no idea if they’re merely personifying it, or referring to an actual entity.
“In any case, after they discovered that, they seemed to lose focus on ever returning. They’ve only been digging in deeper and studying the wild magic in this place, and they’ve raised a great deal of skeletons to use as labor and guards. Especially around the old weather factory; that’s where their ‘Source’ is, and they’re fiercely protective of it. It’s one of the few places I can’t go, even with guards.”
Trixie raised an eyebrow at that. “You’re working with them?”
Mistmane nodded slowly, and I could see Trixie’s fur stand on end. It made me a bit uncomfortable too; I didn’t know how deeply one of these ponies could get into another’s head. What if she had been controlled, or was under control now?
She could sense our nervousness. “In this era, my allegiances are to Equestria, and the four Princesses. Princess Celestia herself sent me out here as an envoy, and I spent a very long time gaining the trust of the Gravewardens to be allowed safe passage through Cloudsdale.” Her face fell. “Though with another one of them now Hollowed because of me, perhaps I don’t quite deserve that trust.”
“I’m not going to weep for them,” Trixie growled. “At best, they’re a nuisance. At worst, they’re just as bad as the demons.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Mistmane said with a sigh. “They’re very hostile to outsiders, yes. But just like Somnambula, they’re discovering and categorizing entirely new spells and avenues of magic. While I’m personally uncomfortable with the focus of their studies being…well, death—as is Celestia—we can hardly choose to ignore the field when we ourselves are now undead.”
“Ugh, don’t legitimize them,” moaned Trixie. “There’s a good reason necromancers have gotten a bad reputation. It always ends with skeleton armies, miasmas of death and disease, and so on.”
“If you were drowning,” countered Mistmane, “would you refuse a helping hoof from a pony you disagreed with?”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn’t go swimming, and so she would never have to consider such a preposterous scenario.”
Mistmane chuckled quietly. “Mmm. But ponykind does not have that luxury anymore, I think.”
I raised my head to speak again, and interrupt their argument. “W-what was that sp-spell he used? To control my m-mind?”
Mistmane shuddered, and shook her head in some mix of sadness and disgust. “I do wish that they’d stop using that spell—it’s awful to even consider such an invasion of a pony’s most private thoughts. But as I understand it, it forms the basis of how they control the skeletons, as well. Only undead—such as ourselves—can cast it, because it forms a rapport between that which makes us undead. It’s as if they’re tapping into the ground beneath our hooves, or the air we all breathe, but it’s a shared component of our souls now. Through that, they exert their will, and their control. The skeletons are in no small demand; they make decent proxies for them to practice on, and they have no will of their own to fight against it.”
“That’s disgusting,” Trixie stated bluntly, and I found myself nodding in agreement and discomfort. “And Celestia allows this? She reached out to negotiate with these ponies, as opposed to marching the army through here to clean them all out?”
“Only by the thinnest of margins,” Mistmane replied, nodding sadly. “But even what little they’ve shared with me has been invaluable to understanding the nature of the curse. They refuse to directly help us cure it, since it goes against the founding principles laid down by one of their former leaders. But any knowledge they can uncover about the nature of Undead is one more clue that helps us towards a cure.”
“F-former leaders?” How long ago had my memories—stolen from Apple Bloom—taken place? How out of date was the tiny amount of knowledge I had?
Mistmane tilted an eyebrow. “Yes, they seem to have gone through a few. There’s not much about the first two, aside from the writings and observations that I’m allowed access to. They seem to have left of their own accord a long time ago, and there’s been a line of successors since, though none seemed to have quite the ‘vision’ that the original two had. Such is the way of most fringe religious organizations.”
Mistmane continued to peer at me, and I gently laid my head down on my hoof. “I th-think we may have r-run into one of th-them.”
At this, her eyes lit up in surprise and excitement, and it hurt to quash any questions she might have had about Apple Bloom. “Sh-she was Hollowed, and c-crazy. K-kept attacking us, b-because she was h-hunting down anyp-pony working on a c-cure.”
Trixie let out an undignified snort at the memory, but Mistmane only nodded morosely. She pulled a rolled scroll from her robes to check her notes, then hid it back inside after a quick glance. “That does match up with what I’ve been able to uncover about...Apple Bloom, correct?”
“Y-yes, that was her n-name.” I looked back up at Mistmane hopefully. “W-what about the other one? Her n-name was Sweetie B-Belle.”
Mistmane checked her notes again, and this time it took a few moments. “She stayed for a while longer, but eventually she left too. Nopony knows where she went, or if they do, they won’t tell me. All they know is that she wanted to find somewhere that she could test out some very experimental magic."
"But she left this 'Source,' whatever it is, here for her cult to protect?"
Mistmane turned back to Trixie. "She did, yes. From how they've talked about it, I get the sense that whatever it is, it cannot be moved. I suspect it is too large or too heavy, or maybe it acts as a magic font for their enchantments."
Trixie blew a raspberry in annoyance. "If that's true, then it's not much use to me. What good is an immobile artifact?"
Mistmane smiled pleasantly, knowingly, at her. "So, you have come to try and take it for yourself, then?"
"Fine, fine!" Trixie said, with a whinny of annoyance. "Yes, that sounds like what I came here for. Is that going to be an issue, old mare?"
"Not for me—in fact, I'm just as curious as you are about what it might be." Mistmane tilted her curved horn towards the fog outside. "However, the Gravewardens will be an issue, since they'd likely throw every skeleton in the ruins of Cloudsdale in your way if you just tried to force your way through. So, I propose a deal?"
Trixie eyed her warily, but nodded. "I'm listening." Mistmane turned to me, and I nodded as well in agreement.
Mistmane pulled two more brown bundles from within her robes. "I've two more robes, and they shouldn't look too closely at a pony wearing these. We can skirt their settlement, and you two can go through the section of the weather factory that fell down here. The other end opens up near the entrance to the dam, and an elevator inside should carry you to the top, where the rest of the factory landed. I can also provide a distraction, which should ensure you get up there without incident. When you're done, there's a rather treacherous mountain pass accessible from somewhere up there into an adjacent valley, through which you can make a safe escape."
"That's a decent carrot," Trixie buffed her hoof on her breast, and looked at the smooth surface nonchalantly. "What's the stick?"
"There's still a lot of skeletons atop the dam. I don't think they're under the Gravewardens’ direct control—they seem autonomous, like they were left to guard it. Maybe by the founders themselves. On top of that, the part of the factory you'll be passing through seemed to deal with the more dangerous types of weather, and a lot of the machines are still on. They stay away because they consider it too dangerous to go in and try to shut it all down."
"That all?" Trixie snorted. "So it's still dangerous, but not as dangerous as you think fighting all of them would be. Fine. What's in it for you?"
Mistmane smiled wryly at us both. "This way, the Gravewardens remain unharmed and unaware of your presence. However, I'd like to meet you both afterwards—say, in the Ponyville town square? That way, you can tell me exactly what you found within the factory, or even show it to me yourself, if it can be removed from the building."
"Ugh…back to Ponyville. Fine, I can stop by the town square after I retrieve my wagon." Trixie sighed, then held her hoof out to shake on it. Mistmane eagerly did so, then held her hoof out to me as well.
I couldn't really trust Trixie, but I definitely felt as though I could trust Mistmane. She'd see us there safely, and we could handle the rest, I hoped. I eagerly shook her hoof, and she passed us the robes to wear.