Expedition to the Cloudbreak Islands

by Starglider

Shadow

With the dragons gone and the senior engineers with them, the ponies settled back into their routine; cooking, cleaning, gathering supplies from the island, repairing the ship and tending to those who still lay injured. By late afternoon the excited chatter had died down and relative calm descended on the Harmony.

Now that she had a moment’s peace, Set Sail spread her brown feathered wings and took off, cruising around the ship and surroundings, looking for a particular blue and white unicorn. Asking the crew for directions led the pegasus down into the ship, where part of the tween deck had been set up with a table, measuring instruments and some boxes. Blue Type was there, poring over the documents recovered from the soda factory. The lavender earth mare was trying to piece together the fragmented, faded texts to try and understand the quite frankly bizarre ingredients used in the factory's formulas.

At the other end of the table, Summer Scribe wore a magnifying monocle and was fiddling with some sort of a figurine: a stylised bubbling bottle, which seemed to be the company’s insignia. The green-kerchiefed pegasus trotted up to the two of them, her hoofsteps sharp on the sturdy flooring, giving a wary look to Blue Type before announcing, “Summer... we need to talk.”

"Huh?" Summer Scribe looked up. That wasn't a comforting tone of voice to hear from a superior; she'd learned that from a succession of senior researchers who hadn't approved of her solo field trips! Summer set her monocle down and trotted over, trying to exude confidence, even if it was the false kind. "Sure, what's up, Set Sail?"

“In private,” Set Sail specified curtly, “I know there’s not much privacy around here, but... the captain’s cabin is private, so can you meet me there?”

Summer's ears flattened. Okay, so this was really serious. She certainly didn't look pleased, but deferred to the captain's authority. "Alright, let's go."

If Set Sail noticed Summer’s reaction, she didn’t say anything, turning and walking off without another word. Summer shared an anxious look with Blue Type, before hurrying after the pegasus mare, up to the main deck where the captain’s cabin lay. Of course, the unicorn immediately started fretting about what this could be about, which continued the entire way to the cabin. Perhaps she was overthinking things, overlooking the obvious?

The cabin was one of the larger ones, compared to what the bulk of the crew called home. There was a painting of a parrot on the wall, next to a photo of the captain and his first mate posing together for the camera. A thin layer of dust had accumulated over everything: it was pretty obvious to an even moderately observant pony that nopony had been in this room in weeks. Set Sail just stood there as Summer walked in, looking off into space as if thinking about something. Then she turned to Summer, saying, “...close the door. You aren’t going to want the others to hear this.”

Summer Scribe had been looking around the disused quarters curiously. At the captain's remark she wiped her brow nervously, focusing her attention on the other mare. "Oh. I see." She shuffled the door shut behind her with a quick glow from her horn, settling into a corner. Already feeling the anxious heat of a terrible conversation about to happen, she asked innocently, "So... what are we talking about today?"

Sighing, Set Sail said, “Summer, you’re a really smart mare. Smarter than me. And you think this is about anything but the soda factory? Just what do you think happened back there?”

'Of course it is', Summer thought. "Mmmm... well, we have to explore and learn everything that we can about our surroundings, if we're to survive here. If we do nothing, we definitely won't: the drow on their own have handily proven that," she rationalised. "To Reef Skimmer and Gearshift, I extend my deepest regrets and apologise for their respective conditions."

“Do you really?” Set Sail asked, giving Summer a hurt look, “You think they can hear you from here? I'm not even looking for an apology. Why would turning on a factory that warned you out loud that it’s broken, how could that possibly help defend us from the drow? You were just playing around, weren't you?”

Summer Scribe stood her ground: "We have to try everything available to us! We know basically nothing about this place even though we've been working flat out, and we don't have forever!" Her voice rose until it was almost a shout.

"Look! Accidents happen, it's true. But we had to learn what the factory did sooner or later... if we didn't, we'd just ask ourselves why we overlooked it anyway! And no one could have known it would turn out this bad: that's the nature of tasking risks! Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don't: if you never take a risk, that leaves you sitting at home twiddling your hooves. Then what would we do?"

“We wouldn’t turn the most wonderful evening into a nightmare!” Set Sail protested, wings unconsciously half-spreading. “We wouldn’t turn our friends into horrible monsters! You ruined his life, forever!”

Summer Scribe huffed! "I didn't do that! The magical slime monstrosities did that!" She put a hoof down. "You accept a certain level of risk doing field work: that's just the way it is! I don't like what happened to Reef any more than anyone else did, but we can't give up and huddle in our airship until the world swallows us whole!"

Glowering, Set Sail stepped forward, and Summer couldn’t back up far enough until the mare had grabbed the slim unicorn and slammed her up against the door, pinning her there and growling right in her face, “You are a monster.”

Summer's heart was racing. She didn't want to use her telekinesis to defend herself... that could turn out ugly for either or both of them... but she was feeling distinctly endangered, crushed against the door by the larger mare. Instead she just gritted her teeth and averted her gaze, saying plaintively, "I am not a monster! D-don't make me a scapegoat for this!"

“The slime monstrosities were just acting on their nature. Reef saved our lives! He isn’t the monster, you are!” Set Sail insisted, pulling back from Summer Scribe and leaving the unicorn to collapse to her hindquarters there against the door, “I don’t care about if we can’t beat the drow,” Set Sail huffed, pacing through this cabin that she should never have entered.

“And I don’t care about what happened to Reef. He’s at least trying to be a decent pony. He’s trying to get better, but you? No you’ll keep doing the same thing again and again, because you’re not sorry! You’re not sorry at all! You won’t even admit that you did anything wrong! Why shouldn’t we lock you up with those drow we captured, before you do something else without thinking about it, and then prance around declaring that your friends are acceptable casualties?!”

Summer Scribe took a much-needed breath as she slid down against the door, trying to make her thoughts coalesce into a coherent response. "Look. It should have been me, alright?" She tapped a hoof on the floor for emphasis. "I should be the slime monstrosity right now, not Reef, and I fully accept that. I'm the one who turned the valve, and I should be the one who bears the brunt of the consequences, and it's nothing short of unfair that Reef has to suffer in my place."

She picked herself up, trembling with the stress as she managed to look the captain in the eye. "But now what? What do you want from me? It already happened and it can't be undone. I've apologised. We're all going to make the most of our circumstances, whatever they are: why won't you let me do that too?"

“What I want!?” Set Sail’s voice caught just short of a shriek before she said a little less furiously “What I want is for you to ask for help! You think you’re so smart but you’re still a pony, and you still make mistakes. You don’t always know better, so stop acting like it! A little bit of caution and-and relying on your friends would have d-defended us from the drow way more than you did!”

Shivering, she added bitterly, “So you made a mistake, fine. We’ll deal with it! What we won’t deal with is if you try to act like you did nothing wrong. When you apologise for something, that means you won’t do it again! If you try to say it’s actually a good thing you did, then you’re not apologising. You’re just lying!”

Summer Scribe began to calm down, letting her breath even out as she lowers her gaze to the floor and sighed. Ok, maybe Set Sail did have a point there. The thing was, in practice, they did work together and try their best collectively to solve the problem - after she'd given the order to turn the factory on - and she couldn't have shut it down alone. But that's not what Set Sail wanted: Summer just wasn't finding the right words. What the other mare really wanted was some kind of assurance and plan for why something that tragic won't happen again. And that she could do.

"OK, I understand. I'm not doing solo work anymore." Summer admitted, her tail still between her legs. "I'm a part of a team, and it's the whole team's business, not just me making decisions and doing things on other people's behalf." She nodded her head. "If I'm doing something on my own; I choose what I do and I suffer the consequences for it. But if I'm taking a team into some place dangerous and unknown - not just an archaeological jig or pleasant chat with locals - then everyone deserves to be an equal peer with me, rather than having their outcomes dictated by me."

“I don’t know what I want anymore,” Set Sail said in frustration, sniffing and wiping at her eyes with a foreleg, casting her gaze down, “I just want everything to be better again. I just want to go... go home. But we can’t, so we just keep living. I can’t blame you if you just made a mistake. Just please don’t tell me about... how it’s a good thing. It doesn’t have to be a good thing. It’s okay to make mistakes! You don’t have to...” Set Sail paused, and lifted her eyes to give Summer a thoughtful once over, “...pretend that you didn’t.”

Summer Scribe nodded again. "Yeah; this isn't what I asked for, either. Things have gone wrong since day one, and we're all lost and confused and fending for ourselves." She'd thought that at most she'd be helping dust off alien artifacts; instead she'd been burdened with much of the responsibility of keeping the expedition together! But nopony could, or should, do that alone.

"So yeah, it's true. I made a mistake. I didn't mean to. Maybe I could've known, maybe I couldn't have. But it's unambiguous: I ordered the factory turned on, and ponies... people suffered for it." The unicorn lowered her head. "I think I had the idea that you wanted me to hyper-focus on how I could have prevented that; I apologise for that too. You really just want me to be mindful in the future. And every situation will be unique, so I need to be thinking of my friends and not just myself."

“Yeah, I suppose,” the mare said in a more subdued tone, glancing aside with ears only slightly back. “I’m not angry at you,” Set Sail said, blushing and adding, “I mean I was, but it’s nobody’s fault here. If you watch out for it in the future, and just... use your smarts, then... it’ll be okay. I dunno. I just wish I could do something for Reef. I don’t mind his uh, tentacle things, but when I was a seapony for a while, when he had to sacrifice himself to save me, those things they were... eating me alive. I’m kind of afraid to touch them again.”

Summer Scribe nodded at that too. "Mmm, me too... I hope we can cool down and figure this out." She thought out loud. "Hmmm, so like, he's not dead. He's not even paralysed, exactly. His body changed, and the downsides are obvious... but maybe he can learn to control it and live with it."

She fumbled for an analogy, "Like how when a pony becomes blind, they learn to navigate with echolocation and they see the world in a different way? Like that kind of thing." She shrugged, "Or maybe it's outright fixable. We still have plenty of avenues of research to investigate: places to explore, people to ask. I don't want to give up hope, and I don't want you to give up hope in me either."

Giving Summer a sad look, Set Sail said in a lost voice, "If you say so. Sometimes I wonder if I even know what hope is. I'll try but just... please..." her pleading look turned to uncertainty, and then embarrassment, blushing and looking away saying, "W-well you know what I want."

Summer Scribe's nod was almost a bow. "Of course: you're the captain, and you make the rules." Then she stood up straight, tilting her head as Set Sail averted her gaze. "Yes, you've made your wishes clear. But please, promise me you won't despair. We're strong together. We've solved worse problems before, and we'll do it again."

“I’ll... I’ll try,” Set Sail said, sagging tiredly. But looking up at Summer with a wan smile, she added, “We are strong together, and I do think we can learn to live in this world, if we get half a chance.”

Summer finally managed a smile. "Yeah, me too. But we'll have to work our hardest: together." A decisive nod. "Is that all?"

Nodding, Set Sail said, "Yeah, that's it. Sorry I... I didn't mean to go all schoolyard bully on you. Are we good for now?" She held out a foreleg.

"Not the first time I've gotten yelled at." She let her tail straighten out before tapping hooves to Set Sail. "All good!"

Smiling genuinely, Set Sail said "Okay then, back to uh, whatever you were doing with the artifacts. And have fun!"

Summer Scribe did indeed plan to get back to 'whatever she was doing'. Gotta come up with a breakthrough somehow! "Thanks! Have a good day yourself!" With that she bowed and trotted out, leaving the pegasus alone in the captain's cabin.

"Do you feel any pain now?"

"No."

"None at all?"

"Well... a little. But not enough."

The unicorn faced off against the strangest of the strange ponies that had been changed by the magic they ran into on their trip through the storm wall. Except for her empty eyes glowing white, and cutie mark of a trisected cloud, Cloud Cutter was purple all over. Reef Skimmer had informed the pegasus very clinically that she still had eyes, they just could not be seen. Right then their unblinking stare was making the white stallion known as Winter Hope feel quite uncomfortable.

The quartermaster drafted as a medic sighed, saying, "Alright, just go easy on it for a while. Besides that, and a nasty rash where the burns were, you seem to be pretty, um... healthy."

"And a broken rib," the pegasus added under her breath.

"What?" Winter asked, flicking his ear.

"Nothing, never mind," Cloud Cutter replied. "I'm fine."

Clashing Gale watched the exchange from his cot, smirking but holding his tongue. The newly turned vampony hadn't yet escaped from Winter's nervous observation.

As for Cloud Cutter, she wasn't doing so well, but still much better than the night before. Bluebell had pushed her dislocated shoulder cleanly pushed back into its socket. The wounds from the goo worms, which had burned like acid even if it was technically some kind of magic, had nearly healed. Her strikingly pale flesh was still exposed in patches, where her purple fur coat had yet to grow back.

The purple pegasus walked away from the medical office with a noticeable limp, trying to stay off her weak leg. She was observed by a certain blue-coated, plum-maned unicorn. Azure Feather had slipped into the sickbay a few minutes earlier, listening to the conversation and watching Cloud Cutter with a pensive stare. Though clearly still injured, her friend was in remarkably good shape considering her condition last night.

"Okay Azure, what can I help you with?" the part-time nurse asked the newcomer.

"Apologies, Winter Hope, but I'm fine... I came to check on how your newly-recovered patient was doing." Azure smiled. "Seems she's quite alright, mostly. So thank you for that, really appreciating you backing us up..." She looked at the door. "...But I really should check on her. Sorry I can't stay." And with that, she was trotting off to catch up with her ally...

Cloud Cutter didn't go far. Her destination was up on the top deck, where she approached the gleaming metallic cage that housed the control assembly for the Storm Piercer Device. She'd gone into this thing with a soft white coat of fur, a striped blue mane, and a lot more excitement than she came out: purple, effectively dead, but somehow not getting the memo that she wasn't supposed to get up and move around.

She caught sight of a flock of small birds from the nearby jungle, perched on the struts: as she neared the cage they all flew away in a sudden squawking fluster. Cloud Cutter watched them flap off towards the treeline, then looked down into the cage itself. Damn... empty. She didn't know where the other purpled ones were; maybe in the equipment bay below? She really needed somepony to talk to right now.

Thankfully, the pegasus didn't have to wait long. "Hey, Cloud Cutter... great to see you back on your hooves again." Azure Feather began. The smile on her muzzle and warm tone of her voice made it clear that she wasn't kidding, but concern leaked into her next words. "You feeling alright? It's been a little while and..." Trailing off, she couldn't help but sigh. "Lots has changed... and most of it not for the better. At least not as far as the Harmony's crew is concerned."

"I'm fine," Cloud Cutter said noncommittally, not looking away from where she lay a hoof on the control cage's gleaming silver filagree, "Reef Skimmer has been acting... strange since the magical catastrophe. Not like himself anymore."

"Not that I can blame him. You take away a hippogriff's ability to transform, remove their ability to fly, then you change them into... some strange tentacled creature... I can't blame him one bit." She sighed again, shaking her head. "I'm just a stupid guard, my relation with medics is usually 'Get me on the field, I'll protect you', not 'I'll help you get over having your hooves become worms'..." She grimaced. "Damn it. Saved all our hides, but..."

Cloud Cutter looked at Azure with something that might have been worry, though her empty eyes were unreadable. "I wasn't there when it all went down," she said, "Ponies have been talking, but I don't really know what happened back there. He was just cut into... three pieces by those things and... still alive somehow. That's all I know, really. What happened to his... What happened back there?"

Azure was quick to reply, though it was not a happy report. "What happened, as I saw it, was a bright flash, and Reef Skimmer took all of the worms, all of that... tangled magical waste product and just fused with it? And the next thing we knew, he became as you see him now. No flight, no transformation... it's as if his life was taken away. I think he became interested in the Water element of this place... or he caught it's interest maybe, and... well, the rest is history, I guess." Going over it again wasn't doing much good for her mental state.

"Nothing happened like that to you, did it?" Cloud Cutter asked Azure almost hopefully, "You've been using a lot of wind related magic lately. But nothing like what happened to him, and..." she looked away, "...us."

"Not... not yet at least." Azure confirmed, a hint of fear creeping into her voice. She was still far more full of worry and uncertainty than any trained guard should be, she thought. "But... it isn't all that bad for you, right? I mean... you've become quite the fighter; just what we need in this place." The unicorn smiled a bit at that... but she knew there were a lot of downsides as well... and that just got her to think. What if she was affected? What would she sacrifice for the sake of her 'Air' abilities?

"I'm not a fighter," Cloud Cutter said unhappily, unconsciously shrinking away from contact with Azure. "I'm just a weather pony. A really good weather pony, who can't even make a spring breeze anymore. The only thing I've become is... deadly to the touch." Closing her eyes, she said, "I'm sorry. Don't mean to burden you with my problems or anything." Then she opened her eyes and glared toward the cargo hold, "Unlike some creatures."

Azure just shook her head again. She was trying to focus on what she saw as the upside... unfortunately, it seemed it was far from positive to Cloud Cutter. Maybe, just maybe, she needed to stop considering things from only her own point of view. "Have you tried to understand what you can do with that magic?"

"How?" Cloud Cutter asked kicking the cage lightly behind her in frustration, "I don't know anything about using magic. The only thing I do is... pull it into me, and then release it. And that kills everything around me. That's why creatures and... ponies don't want to be around me. Even you feel it, I know you do? I... do want to experiment with it, but I can't just go killing innocent little animals to satisfy some morbid curiosity."

Azure gave a little chuckle at that, remembering a recent encounter. "Then it's a good thing this island has its own pests, isn't it? I know you weren't there on that first mission, but... you were certainly there when we exterminated that pit. The one thing this island's never short on: chompies. Plant things every creature hates and no one's going to shed a tear if we whack one or fifty. Come on, let's give you your crash course on your magic."

"Chompies." Cloud Cutter said blankly. "I–I never thought of using chompies. There's so many of them here!"

"C'mon!" Azure repeated, lifting up into the air on her magical butterfly wings. Cloud Cutter spread her own wings, and ascended after the unicorn, feeling sheepish that she hadn't thought of it first, but hopeful. Together, the two glided on over the river and through the woods, coming to a stop on the crossroads between the quarry and the abandoned village.

Searching from there was as simple as clearing away the underbrush, and seeing if anything within it tries to bite your ankles off. Somewhere north of the trail they found it. A bulbous pod attempting to hide there in the greenery, spitting Chompies out at anything that drew near.

"There it is," Cloud Cutter whispered, staring at the thing, "How should I do this? What should I try?"

Finally; back to simple targets one could dispatch with no issues. Azure stared at the pod, before looking to Cloud Cutter. "Well, for one, we know you can assault an area and just... destroy anything in it, but how about something smaller... a blade? Perhaps just focusing the magic into bullets you can fire at an enemy? Maybe you could also just focus on a single enemy and... assault it directly, instead of centring the effect on yourself..." She didn't have much experience with this Cloudbreak magic; perhaps Sunburn could have helped?

"Focus... on the... I can try, I suppose." Cloud Cutter looked at the pod, spreading her wings subconsciously as she concentrated. Her fur began to take on an unreal looking eerie glow of its own, like a badly exposed photograph, the air disturbed like a heat distortion except from that direction, Azure was feeling very cold. "S-stand back, just in case," Cloud Cutter said, squinting and holding out a hoof in that direction.

The strange effect seemed to flow away from her hoof as much as concentrate in it though, like the ancient depths of the sea left dim and unseen for eons. "Okay... bullet!" Cloud Cutter called out, and then with a purple flash, all the greenery around her and the vines overhead withered. "No wait, that didn't work," Cloud Cutter muttered, letting her hoof drop. "I think I felt... something about it going that way though? One more tr—" she seemed to notice she was standing in a small circle of withered, dead grass then, her ears going low.

"Trust me, magic won't work on the first try unless you're an absolute prodigy." Azure Feather said encouragingly. "Or Princess Twilight. Either way, keep at it! You've definitely got the basics, all you need is the right channelling method and you've got this!" Goodness, this almost sounded like her years back in Manehattan, her actual hometown. Already there was a spark of excitement: it felt like Cloud Cutter was almost there!

"Alright, if that's how it's supposed to work," Cloud Cutter said with confidence more characteristic of a young filly than a grown mare; understandable given the circumstances. "Okay I'm going to try it again." Her power once again grew, as she said excitemedly, "C'mon, bullet over there. Bullet over..." That was when Azure noticed Cloud Cutter's shadow... separating from her body, sliding across the surface of the ground as if with a will of its own, heading over to where her foreleg was pointing.

The unicorn couldn't help but stare silently at the display of magic. By Celestia... was she making her shadow into a weapon? She'd once heard a Night Guard or two say that the most damaging strikes were those one didn't see coming, but this... this was something completely different, something she'd not seen in person... yet she would only watch. Even guards could learn new tricks, after all, right?

Uninterrupted, Cloud Cutter focused on her target and... a purple flash burst from her as usual. Azure was about to relax and reassure the other mare that third time would be the charm, when she realised that there was no sign of the other mare, just some sort of purple smoke dissipating from the centre of where the flash had been.

What the— what happened?!" Cloud Cutter's voice called out; the purple pegasus found herself standing directly in front of the chompy pod. A chompy popped out of it, and immediately latched onto her face.

Azure Feather and seen a lot of magic through the years. Beams of energy, balls of flame, lightning bolts, ice storms, she'd seen it all... but nothing like this. The mage of the group just stood there, trying to piece this entire situation together. Her shadow was moving, and then the flash... some kind of teleport; wait a minute, was that smoke...?! "You were literally controlling your shadow, but then..." She tried to cast a quick wind blade to knock the Chompy off her ally, but Cloud Cutter had spread her wings in shock and was blocking the shot.

Well, if the surgical approach wouldn't work, perhaps Azure would have to take a few hits herself. Thankfully, Chompies were still the mindless glass cannons she remembered; a quick hoof strike sent it tumbling to the ground where a wind blade popped it into green goo. More chompies popped out, but they fell easily in turn to Azure's well-placed kicks and wind blades. Her greatest worry was simply not hurting Cloud Cutter by accident. Soon they were all destroyed, except for one lucky nuisance which had been shot further than the rest and managed to latch onto her side.

It seemed Cloud Cutter's greatest concern was friendly fire as well. She managed to zap the thing off her ally with a little purple flash, but the chill leeched into Azure too, leaving the butterfly-winded mare with a slight disorientation as though someone had struck her on the head.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Cloud Cutter declared, racing away from the chompy pod, shortly followed by the blue unicorn, until the two were at a safe distance. A couple of chompies managed to followed but they were easily squashed.

Azure looked rather surprised after the retreat, giving Cloud Cutter a long look. "The best Night Guards can usually strike without being seen, but... literally being able to control your shadow to strike... or teleport with perfect accuracy. Goodness, just when I thought I'd seen it all...!" She chuckled softly... "You faring okay?"

A laugh burst out of Cloud Cutter herself, as she said, "I walked right into my own demise, at the teeth of a chompy. My face hurts," Noticeably less worried than before, she looked at Azure and said, "I really do think I am faring okay. What was that about my shadow, though?"

"Your body's shadow was detached from your body. You were literally controlling it. Strike while in that state and your enemy will never see it coming. Goodness... I think only Princess Luna herself could pull that trick... if even she can." Azure looked genuinely impressed by the display.

Cloud Cutter actually blinked at that. "I was?" she asked in disbelief, "I was just trying to shoot the chompy pod, over there. So I uh, shot over there." Her ears did not rise at Azure's praise though, and instead the pegasus looked off grumbling, "Great. Another way to kill ponies faster. At least it's not killing everything around me." With a fixed smile Azure's way, Cloud Cutter said, "I think you're right. My abilities might be more than I imagined, even if they're all just... death."

Azure sighed and shook her head. There was a more positive way of seeing it, but again... Cloud Cutter wasn't a fighter. She didn't want to be. And as such, she remained silent at that, realizing that while some creatures have advantages in battle... not all are keen on using them.

"Well, I suppose death is something to be expected, with a pony like myself," Cloud Cutter said grimly, "I wonder if I can do it without trying to kill something though."

The pair retreated to the quarry for further experimentation, where the exposed rock pit made things much easier to see. Cloud Cutter concentrated on a distant spot, this time glancing downward to see her shadow rushing away from her, obvious in the sharp contrast cast by the unfiltered sunlight. "You're right! It—" she said before abruptly skipping about two metres in front of herself in a double poof of spooky purple smoke (maybe not quite as spooky out in the afternoon sun). "Woah," she said, disoriented.

Azure nodded as her initial hypothesis was proven correct. "Teleportation. Similar to that purple dragon, except... I didn't see her shadow move. If you can control your shadow enough to strike with it directly... very useful. Worth practicing." She stated, while keeping in mind the notion of her ally not wanting to fight. There was no sense in pushing too hard. "I'm not sure even the princess of the night could do that."

"Shadow Strike sounds better than my idea," Cloud Cutter remarked, looking herself over and finding herself in less than ideal, but not adversely affected form, "Spectral teleportation. Come on let's see how far away I can do it!"

The two danced around the quarry for some time, with Cloud Cutter grudgingly agreeing to follow up her teleport move with a simple wing blade attack, for 'self-defence' of course. No other strange new abilities manifested during that time but it was a lot of fun. Finally Cloud Cutter said laughingly, "Okay okay, I don't have to do this all day. So strange how natural it feels. I never dreamed I'd be casting real magic one day. It must be silly to see me excited about such a thing for you. I bet you cast magic like this all the time."

Azure Feather chuckled weakly... but soon shook her head. "Nothing so impressive, at least until I got here. Definitely not teleportation. There's a reason I'm so low-ranking in the Lavender Blades - they're a new division of the guard, they'll take anypony who's willing to fight to protect the Princess." She paused, shaking her head.

"Too much time buried in books; that's how I learned all I know about magic. That and sticking to my dream. Lot of good that did me, look at me now, foreign land, can't understand the slightest bit about the magic they have here, and... I'm just the stupid guard anyway. Only here because I'm basically cannon fodder to the Blades." Azure practically spat out the last part in frustration.

"Why would being good at magic make you high-ranking in the guard?" Cloud Cutter asked cluelessly. Perhaps not so cluelessly when she added, "Oh, I suppose it could be an advantage in combat. But I thought unicorns learned magic for other reasons. Did the guard require you to read those books or something?"

"I read them because I wanted to learn. Back when I was young and stupid. Back when I thought all you needed was books and a few good friends. The truth is, unless you're Princess Twilight? No, friendship isn't all that it's cracked up to be."

Cloud Cutter toed the rocky ground demurely, saying cautiously, "Sounds like you went through a lot. Nothing bad ever happened to me while I was young. Top of my class in weather management. That's why I was picked to operate the Storm Piercer. It's sad that we can't all be so lucky."

Azure seemed about to reply, but instead bit her lip and shook her head. Finally she smiled weakly and said "Yeah. Didn't have half that amount of luck. Congrats, though. Takes a lot of talent to be top of the class."

"Not much use now," Cloud Cutter shrugged, "My luck ran out a little later in life, I guess. As in a couple of weeks back. I'm just mourning that you didn't get a chance to learn more before things went bottom up. You helped me so much, I thought you might've learned a few things, before the guard you know... helped you become the pony you are today."

"Oh, I learned quite a few things, not just basic combat magic, weapons, tactics..." Azure started. "Mainly what I said earlier about friendship." Another long pause, before she looked back to Cloud Cutter. "I had a whole group of friends, you know. Good ones, or so I thought. Tried helping them as much as I could, but it didn't help. Lost 'em all... then joined the guard. At least there's some pride in saying that your job is to defend the Princess of Friendship, you know?"

"It is something to be proud of, that's for sure," Cloud Cutter said with a sad smile, "I can sort of relate though. Clouds are what I'm good with, and they don't make the best of friends. I suppose your friends just... didn't like you enough? Like they moved on to go do other things, and be friends with other ponies?"

"...I don't know. I really couldn't tell you. I suppose it's entirely possible, you know? Who wants to be friends with a bookworm that wants to fly, but can only manage... this?" Her conjured wings spread slightly as if to emphasize, as she seemed rather low on morale. "That's... just what's happened."

"Well... I wouldn't mind being friends with a pony like that," Cloud Cutter said, looking shyly the other way. A far cry from the avatar of death she was at her most deadly, "It's a little late, I know."

"I... do apologise, though." Azure admitted, turning a bit to the side. "I got a bit too... excited, when it came to your abilities... didn't really think of how the pony wielded them felt about the matter." She tapping the ground with a front hoof. "No... it's not too late." she concluded, allowing a tiny bit of warmth back into her voice.

Holding out a forehoof before the other pony, Cloud Cutter said hopefully, "May as well do one more test, to see if I'm safe to touch without doing the thing."

"Sounds like a darn plan if ever there was one." Azure nodded, stepping forward to shake hooves with the Undead-elemental-pony without hesitation. Surely she'd learned how to control the energy drain, even if it she was still working on the shadow strike. Surely her ally would be safe now, right?

The other mare's arm felt neither cool nor warm to Azure, but what was warm was how Cloud Cutter's smile grew as she realised that this final test worked after all. Perhaps things might turn out okay somehow, when somepony like this was ready to stand with her. Whether chasing death, or chasing life.

MAGIBUBBLE (r) MANA-ENRICHED LIFESTYLE BEVERAGE RANGE

Note: effects sometimes stack when multiple bottles are drunk in quick succession but this is not reliable.

MAGIBUBBLE (r) EXTREME MANA INFUSION (tm) BEVERAGE RANGE

for release this summer, sampling now!

WARNING WARNING CROSS-CONTAMINATION HAS RESULTED IN DANGEROUS ANIMATE MAGICAL WASTE - R&D are working on the problem, in the mean time follow approved containment procedures as necessary.