We caught up with the others before we left Baltimare, but we didn’t stop running. The more distance between us and the changelings that would inevitably emerge from their hive, the better. Raindrops had hauled Trixie onto her back after I’d dropped her, and she was getting smeared in that same sweetly poisonous goop with every step. Gilda took wing after hauling me to my hooves, and she swooped back and forth above us to keep watch for pursuers, and direct us out of town by the fastest route. Ocellus took the lead, following Gilda’s directions, and while she could move the fastest out of all of us, she had to slow down so we could keep up, because Maud set the pace for the group. She could move decently fast in her armor—the fact that she could move at all in armor hewn from stone was a show of strength and power in itself—but her fastest speed was a stomping gallop that knocked chips of concrete from the sidewalks and dug furrows in the gravel roads.
Soon we approached the city limits, and reached a familiar strip of stores along the highway. This was where we’d rested before splitting our group, before we’d ever entered Baltimare to begin with. It felt like an appropriate place to stop, just before we left that cursed city for good. Even here, we were wary. A pony could call us paranoid, and they wouldn't be wrong; we kept waiting for a final ethereal straggler, or a changeling lying in wait, to suddenly spring out and ambush us. But it never came, and so eventually, we began to calm down.
Maud turned and stood guard on the highway without even removing her helmet, and kept watch for any changelings that might have given chase. We collapsed onto the road behind her, exhausted from our panicked gallop, and spent a long while just catching our breath. Trixie found herself dumped unceremoniously onto the road as Raindrops fell, with her legs still shaking. Ocellus was making pained wheezing noises through her spiracles, and her legs curled up against her belly as she slumped over. I collapsed onto my side next to them, while Gilda circled above us lazily, like a vulture, before she landed atop a copper awning. She remained perched up there, watching the road, the city...and us.
Everything burned. We’d done so much running, and I never wanted to move faster by hoof than a determined limp ever again. I had no idea how Maud was still standing—maybe she wasn’t, she just had some way to lock her stone armor in place so it appeared as though she was.
So it wasn’t really a surprise when Trixie, still groggy from her changeling-induced coma and having been hauled on ponies’ backs for multiple miles, was the first of us to try and stand. She wasn’t exhausted, like we were, but she clearly had yet to shake off the effects or physically wipe off the changeling amniotic fluid. She slipped and fell back onto the road a few times, growing increasingly exasperated that nopony was helping her, but she managed to find her hooves after that. Then the gunk soaked through her fur seemed to be her first priority; she stumbled off in the direction of one of the buildings, presumably to see if she could still find a working washbasin inside.
A blink of the eye later, and a somewhat-cleaner and more-awake Trixie trotted back to us, though it surely must have taken more time than it seemed. Not long enough for her hat to dry; though it was still sopping wet, this time it seemed to be merely waterlogged, and she held it beside her in her magic to air-dry instead of wearing it. She hesitated for only a moment before she moved to me, and I didn’t have the energy to protest as she rolled me onto my back and started to rifle through my bottomless bag.
Gilda did have the energy for it, however. “Hey! Get your hooves out of there!” She leapt off the awning, caught the wind under her wings, and swooped lo skid to a stop atop my prone body. I still couldn’t move my aching body, but I thanked her with my eyes.
Trixie had backed off at the shout, and she definitely took a step back now that Gilda was standing over me. “What? What’s your deal? Trixie was only taking inventory, while we had a moment!”
“Yeah, I bet you were ‘taking inventory.’ Keep your hooves out of other people’s bags, that stuff doesn’t belong to you.”
Trixie narrowed her eyes. “What kind of rescue operation is this? Trixie can fight and defend herself, but she requires equipment of her own! The Great and Powerful Trixie hardly expects to be hauled around like a sack of potatoes all the way to...wherever we’re going!”
“Canterlot. By way of Ponyville.” Maud was indeed awake, then. Though, she spoke without her helmet moving in the slightest.
“Ugh, Ponyville, back to that hick village—” The illusionist did a double-take. “Wha—Maud?”
The stone helmet barely moved. “Hello.”
Trixie unsteadily moved around to Maud’s front, and hesitantly peered through the slits of her faceplate, while her horn provided light. “It is you! How...what are you wearing?”
“My armor. I made it myself. I’m very proud of it, though it needs to be cleaned now.”
“No, don’t, the bug blood suits you.” Trixie snarked, as she rolled her eyes. They landed on Ocellus, instead. “Oh! And I’m still waiting for an explanation as to why I shouldn’t blast this bug, considering apparently they’re all dark and evil and hiding in tunnels underground again now!”
Ocellus coughed, and started to pull herself to her hooves, as she shook her head. “Not evil. Never evil. Always just...surviving. Do what needed, to survive.”
“Yeah, that’s not convincing me. And why is your voice so familiar?” Trixie asked pointedly, turning her head to peer at Ocellus.
“Trixie.” Maud spoke quietly, and slowly, so she could be clearly understood. “She used to be one of our students at the School of Friendship. Her name is Ocellus. She graduated with honors. I’m very proud of her, too.”
“Ocellus!” Trixie repeated, stamping her hoof. “That’s it! That’s the name you were trying to tell me before! I think my ears were full of glowy gunk though. Also, no, that’s not Ocellus, she had blue chitin. Very similar to Trixie’s own periwinkle fur, but inferior, obviously.”
“Not b-blue any m-more.” Ocellus whimpered, sadly, as she sat down on the road.
“Okay, so let’s assume that is Ocellus. Why isn’t she blue? She’s a shapeshifter, why doesn’t she just become blue again?” Trixie looked around at all of us. “Trixie feels as though she missed out on a lot while she was with Starlight, and she is owed an explanation!”
Enough of this. I let out a whinnying snarl as I struggled to my hooves, and the burning embers of my eyes locked with Trixie’s eyes. “You f-first.”
“What?” Trixie blinked at me, before recognition leapt across her face. “—ah! Trixie’s apprentice, yes! That flashy show of Pyromancy you did back in the tunnels, that was very impressive, even if Trixie is not entirely sure exactly what you did—”
“Trixie.” I snarled, as I staggered closer. My hooves were still burning with pain, and I felt the fire burning in my soul again. “You k-killed me. You r-ran away. Why? W-what did you see in R-Rarity’s necklace?”
“Ahhh, is it really that important? I mean, you’re clearly fine now, and I’m not sure where the necklace went, and really, this is all water under the bridge and Trixie should maybe be going now—” She turned and tried to leave, but Maud turned around to face her, and Avalanche was pointedly slammed into the road to block her way. Trixie spun around again, looking to run past me, but Gilda hopped into the air to hover in place above me, her bow drawn.
The message was clear. Trixie wasn’t going anywhere without answering some questions.
She let out a long, annoyed sigh, and sat back down on the road. “Fine. Trixie will explain things...at least, as best she can.”
* * *
The first bit of Trixie’s explanation I knew; she’d seen the same vision I had, of being Rarity, just before she threw herself into Cloudsdale’s cloud mixer. But I let her tell the story regardless, so I wouldn’t need to tell it to the others myself. As she spoke, I used the time to ponder about that memory, and how it fit with everything else I knew.
Rarity had been an alicorn too. On par with Princess Celestia, or Pinkie Pie. Feeling that much power, filling every fiber of my being, that had been intoxicating. Humming with fire, humming with pure goddess-like potential...I was baffled at how she’d even managed to contain it within herself, like she had. I think I would have burned away to cinders if I ever held that much fire within my soul. But nopony had ever mentioned as such; I’d thought her to be a unicorn, and she even thought about how she was still getting used to the wings, within the memory. So Rarity had not always been an alicorn.
Was she a Princess too? Was Pinkie? It didn’t really matter any more, but I was wondering, now. Princess Celestia hadn’t treated Pinkie as a Princess; just as an old friend. She’d treated Applejack the same way, up until the Commander had turned on her; even after that, she’d been incredibly reluctant to treat Applejack as anything less than her equal.
Questions. I had so many questions. Had Rarity—or what Rarity had done, what had become of her—been responsible for Cloudsdale’s destruction? Something about that fire in her soul being released like it had, all at once, or perhaps something about the weather factory itself...was that the reason Cloudsdale had turned to stone, and fell out of the sky?
In an odd way, it made sense that nopony seemed to know where she’d gone—the only ponies who’d witnessed her suicide had been caught in the blast. Only Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and now myself and Trixie, had ever known the true identity of the Gravelord in Cloudsdale’s ruins. Not even the Gravewardens themselves had known that.
That was sadly ironic—Rarity had been trying to spread her gift. She’d been trying to give everypony a fragment of her immortality, but in doing so, she’d accidentally wiped out a city full of ponies. But it had worked, to some degree; we were functionally immortal, even if that fragment of immortality acted more like a curse than a blessing.
We couldn’t die—Rarity had succeeded. But we could die—over and over and over again. All that fragment did was ensure that we recovered eventually from our wounds, no matter how grievous. That was one half of the puzzle of our eternal life solved; the other half was Hollowing. I had to understand why it destroyed ponies’ minds over time, as though it was feeding off of their spirit. Without that, ponies became little more than wandering, immortal husks of their former selves, hungering for more fragments, so Rarity—or the fire that had been contained within Rarity—could put herself back together.
Maybe that was all we were, in the end. Embers of a dead goddess, trying to pull ourselves back together, and make ourselves whole once more.
* * *
Trixie’s story diverged after Sweetie Belle had taken Rarity’s flame from the Element of Generosity, because it seemed as though she hadn’t. Part of Rarity had lingered within the gem, locked in place and unwilling, or unable, to leave. Whatever that was couldn’t be taken, couldn’t be removed, and had lain dormant within the gem as more power returned to her, charging the gem once more.
That was why Rarity had begun rebuilding herself, even after Sweetie Belle had lulled her to sleep. And she might have done so again, if I had left the Element there, in that pile of bone dust.
Trixie described a few interactions with Sweetie Belle, including their last meeting, but from the opposite perspective. I had to remember the story was being filtered through Trixie, because after having experienced it through Sweetie Belle’s eyes, I dearly hoped that Rarity had been much more emotional than Trixie described. According to her, Rarity mostly seemed hungry, but couldn’t stop the incredibly powerful filly from slipping through her hungering grasp. The thought that Rarity might have seen her sister as little more than a warm meal of her own fragments was incredibly depressing.
That perception seemed to have stuck with Trixie, however; she skimmed through a few more small fights, where the Gravelord took scraps from the occasional curious traveler, before ending the memory after our own fight with her. It must have been odd to have lived through that battle twice, seeing it from the eyes of our foe at the time. Once she finished recalling the memory, she talked about how hungry she was, and how she knew where Sweetie Belle had gone, because she’d seen it in their final communion. Trixie knew that she had to chase her down, and take that power, before something or somepony else did—such as Twilight Sparkle. She’d heard rumors before that the errant Princess had been seen in Baltimare, and Trixie had no intention of letting her steal the power that she felt rightfully belonged to her.
Maybe it was a good thing she only kicked me into an abyssal lake, instead of trying to drain me first. Either way, she skipped over that too, and I decided not to remind her.
When she reached Baltimare, she had gone straight for the library, without giving much thought as to the empty streets. She’d completely missed the ghosts; when we described them to her, she thought we’d all hallucinated them, because she hadn’t seen anything like that. Instead, she went inside, spotted Twilight Sparkle, and then...her memory got fuzzy.
She only got a few sentences into describing her “reunion with Starlight in her wagon” before we cut her off—though she didn’t believe us, that seemed to be the point at which she’d been captured.
* * *
“So...changelings.” Trixie summed up, after we finished explaining the actual situation in Baltimare, between the two major factions inhabiting the city. We’d avoided mentioning that Ocellus had been the one directly responsible for capturing Trixie, for which Ocellus seemed thankful.
“A whole hive of them, yeah. Real nasty infestation.” Gilda said, as she crossed her forelegs. Raindrops coughed pointedly, and flicked her head at Ocellus, but Gilda just shrugged instead of offering any sort of apology.
“And you all just decided to come and rescue the Great and Powerful Trixie?” She asked pointedly.
Raindrops sighed, and shook her head. “Not on our own; mostly, we were following the orders of—”
“A-ha! Trixie knew that country hick would want revenge!”
Raindrops blinked. “What? No. What? Princess Celestia asked for volunteers to rescue you, and to retrieve the Element of Generosity.”
That made Trixie pause, her eyes wide. “Wha—Celestia?” After a moment, her eyes narrowed again. “Maud, you said we were headed to Canterlot by way of Ponyville. Celestia wants to see me herself, doesn’t she?”
“She’s requested your presence,” Raindrops confirmed. “But she was genuinely concerned for your wellbeing. I think it’s a little misplaced, myself...”
“Yeah, yeah, screw you too,” Trixie said with a wave. “And the Element of Generosity; she was referring to that necklace, wasn’t she?”
“Yeees…?” Raindrops seemed wary, since she didn’t know where this question was going.
“So that means you retrieved it, right? We’re not going back into Baltimare again?”
Raindrops glanced at me, and I nodded. It was safely in my bottomless bag again, and I was the only pony that could remove it from within that bag. At least, as far as I was aware. She turned back to Trixie, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we got it. Are you suggesting we should give it to you? For...what, safekeeping?”
“Pffft, no.” Trixie rolled her yes. “You can keep your cursed necklaces; Trixie already got what she needed from it. She just has no inclination to return to that city. If Twilight Sparkle is still hiding there, then she can have the entire city, for all Trixie cares.”
“Uh...huh.” Raindrops said, glancing now at Gilda, who had kept Trixie’s hooves out of my bag. “Right. Well, unless there’s anything else, we should start moving. The sooner we get back to Ponyville and begin moving towards Canterlot, the better.”
“W-wait. Is...is something.”
We all turned to look at Ocellus, who was huddling her forehooves to herself nervously. She looked at all of us, and then glanced back down the road, back towards Baltimare. “I...stay here. Have to...stay here.”
“What? Stay here in Baltimare? Are you crazy?” Raindrops asked.
“Not crazy,” Ocellus shook her head. “Hive needs me...can’t abandon hive.”
“Ocellus.” Raindrops walked over to the changeling, and gently put a hoof on her chitinous shoulder. “You should come with us, to Canterlot. Princess Twilight made peace with the changelings, and Princess Celestia will understand what happened out here. She’ll forgive you. And she’ll do everything she can to help you and the ponies still in the hive, especially if you come with us, to ask in person.”
Ocellus looked down, but didn’t say anything.
After a moment, Raindrops continued, “Besides, you’re not safe there by yourself. You helped us rescue a pony. They’ll know it was you; you might be walking back to your death, if you do go. I remember Chrysalis, and I remember hearing the stories about how she punished traitors.”
It was so strange, being able to look at an undisguised changeling. Ocellus’ spiracles flexed like tiny gills, in a line down the chitin of her neck, as she let out a long sigh. “Don’t think...don’t think they w-will. Others...not like me. Forgetful. F-Feral. Very f-few remember names...or ponies b-before.”
“So you think they’ll just let you back in? Like nothing ever happened?” Raindrops shook her head. “That’s an incredible risk to take. And for what? You can help us, and we can get help for your hive, like I said.”
“Can help hive here, too...need help directly. Sisters need knowledge...b-books. Can’t read, not any more...but I can. Can’t steal knowledge from hive, like how I stole f-food.”
Raindrops looked utterly despondent at the idea of letting Ocellus go back to Baltimare. “But what about Chrysalis?”
“Ken...will know,” whispered Ocellus. “Cannot hide from Ken. M-Must see her myself. Must ask her mercy. She w-will decide.”
But...wasn’t…? I stepped forward, and Ocellus looked up at me as I spoke. “B-but...I saw your q-queen, when I was in the hive.” I lowered my voice to nearly a whisper, out of respect. “Ocellus...she w-was dead. Your q-queen.”
Everypony’s eyes widened, but Ocellus was the first to recover, and she shook her head. “No. Ken appears dead—one face of many she wears. Tricks to fool invaders. Ken slumbers, safe within the hive. Waits for right time to awaken, yes? And lead us once more.”
Raindrops looked between us both. “The queen bitch is dead?”
Ocellus made a face, but didn’t say anything. I answered instead; “Y-yes. Trixie was b-being kept in a p-pile of cocoons, in the s-same room as her throne. She w-was still sitting on it, there were c-changelings all around her th-throne, but...they were empty sh-shells. Dead husks. N-not alive, not Hollow. Except f-for one, still stuck t-to the throne.”
“Tor’aks,” Ocellus provided.
Hearing the name made Raindrops blanch under her fur. “Wha—Thorax is down there? Thorax, the big glitterbug with the deer horns?”
Ocellus nodded. “He serves Ken a’ Kens once more, as I, as does Tor’inx. Or…” She paused, to swallow quietly. “As did Tor’inx.”
Raindrops shook her head in disbelief. “Pharynx too—what happened down there? You two need to tell me, it sounds like it was really important!”
I couldn’t look at her, or Ocellus. I didn’t want to think about it. I could smell Tor’inx’s blood again, and the burnt rubber scent of melted resin. I could feel the fire in me, biting, snapping, hungry for more. I clenched my eyes shut, and tried to shut it all out.
Raindrops relented after a moment, but repeated the question, in a mix of sadness and fear. “What happened down there?” I don’t think she expected an answer; her imagination must have been running wild, with what could have happened to cause us both to freeze up like this.
“Trixie remembers Starlight, then darkness and disgusting, warm stickiness, then flashes of changelings. Whatever these two did, it was before I came around.” Trixie explained from behind us.
“Thanks, Trixie,” Raindrops said quietly. “Look, I can’t...ugh. I can’t force you two to tell me, I guess. But if you’re so dead set on going back anyways...Ocellus, can I ask you one question, at least?”
“Depends on question…” the changeling murmured.
“Why come back here at all? To Baltimare? To serve Chrysalis again? Maud was telling me about you, Ocellus, and I can see she’s right about you, how smart you are. You’re a good person. And so are—or were—Thorax and Pharynx. Why come back to Chrysalis?”
Ocellus was silent for a while—long enough that I opened my eyes, to make sure she hadn’t crept away when I wasn’t looking. But Ocellus was still here, still thinking. I got the sense that she hadn’t thought about those questions in a long time, and she had to dredge the answers up from the back of her mind.
When she spoke, it was quiet, and thoughtful, but clear. She needed to be coherent, to remember the reasons. “Came here...to Baltimare, by request. Tor’aks sent letter—was already here, with brother Tor’inx. Ken a Kens had built new hive, new sisters here.”
Her chitinous brow wrinkled, as though she was confused. “Old sisters, me, brothers Tor...all changed. Something new—not changeling, not like Ken a Kens, or Kens beyond. Something wrong, unnatural. She showed us that. Cured us. Needed to cure other sisters...every one we could find. Bring them here, to Baltimare. So Ken a’ Kens could cure them.”
Ocellus looked out, past the mountains of the coast, at Equestria. “Still need cure sisters, out there. Bring them to Ken. But Banshee stopped us, trapped us, starved us. Ponies disappeared. Heart-soul ran low. So Ken slept—trusted us to keep fighting. Maintain hive. She wouldn’t need heart-soul while she slept. Promised us, would awake when needed. But said...said her children needed to feed more than she.”
And now Chrysalis was dead. Or at least, she appeared to be dead. Had she starved herself on purpose, so her children could live? Had she ever truly intended to awaken?
And considering the state of the world now...I couldn’t decide whether sacrificing herself to keep them alive was even a noble goal any more. Maybe all she did was end her own suffering early, when she saw the deadlock in which she and the Banshee were trapped.
Raindrops caught my eye, and I could see it in her face—she’d come to the same conclusions, and was wondering the same questions. But it meant that if Ocellus was right about her sisters, and wrong about the queen, then she would be safe. But if that wasn’t the situation...Ocellus would be walking back to her death.
Raindrops shuddered, and looked down at the ground. “Okay. I think...I think I understand now. Thank you, Ocellus. But you’re sure, you can’t come with us? Just in case? At least to Ponyville?”
Ocellus shook her head again “Need to apologize to Ken a’ Kens. Betrayed her...betrayed hive. She decides fate. You, go on. Take Harmonic Element—fix world. If Ken a Kens is merciful...will keep Hive alive until world is fixed. Or try my best.”
Raindrops nodded, but she didn’t look up from the gravel of the highway under her hooves. “Okay. Thank you for helping us, Ocellus. We...we lost a lot here. But we would’ve been wiped out if you hadn’t helped us. You kept us alive as best you could, and we have the Element, thanks to you. If…” Raindrops swallowed. “If Chrysalis is, ah...not merciful. Or your sisters remember...remember that. You helped us fix all this. And we’ll always be thankful for that.”
For the first time in a while, Ocellus smiled, though it looked a little strange with her flexible fangs. That was fixed a moment later, when her horn lit, and green fire washed across her form, as she took the disguise of Twilight Sparkle once more. In her voice, but still in the broken changeling accent, she said, “Fix world; best thanks you can give. But appreciate it, all same.”
She started limping back towards Baltimare, and nopony stopped her. After a few steps, she opened her now-feathered wings, and took shaky flight—I don’t think she was used to having feathers instead of her odd insectoid wings, once again—and began a long flight back to Baltimare, and whatever fate awaited her.
Trixie had an odd expression on her face, as she watched her go. After a moment, she mused to herself, “I remember...Twilight Sparkle, right before everything gets fuzzy in my memories, right before Starlight showed up…”
“Trixie. Come on, we’re leaving. No point in dwelling on it.”
She grumbled in annoyance, but aside from that, we began moving again in silence. Away from Baltimare, and back towards Ponyville. I was all too glad to be done with this damned and accursed city.
* * *
We hadn’t been walking along the old highway for long, before we spotted a little clearing, off to the side of the road. It wasn’t more than a stretch of gravel, dumped here by the side of the road to make a very basic stopping point for carts and wagons before approaching Baltimare, and a couple of those carts remained, long abandoned. But what caught our eye was the campfire.
Raindrops didn’t say anything; she just started moving towards it, and we followed. She didn’t have to; we all knew that if someone was heading towards Baltimare, we had to warn them away, so they weren’t taken by the changelings.
She paused at the edge of the clearing, and I was right behind her, so I paused as well. Quietly, she pointed with her hoof, and murmured, “Looks like a Hollow…”
I heard the quiet rattle of arrows in Gilda’s quiver as she drew her bow, and Trixie joined me and Raindrops as we slowly moved closer. Maud, presumably, was watching the road. I glanced around to make sure they were alone, but there weren’t many places to hide; there was only the small fire pit, the old abandoned carts, and a brown, furry form laying next to the fire.
I got a better look as I drew close, bracing myself just in case they lunged at me like the other feral Hollows. But little moved, besides their brown feathers and fur fluttering in the wind. A pegasus stallion, with fur that might have been golden-brown, long ago. “H-hello?”
A dim ember in one of his empty sockets flickered to life, and turned to look at us, through the shattered remains of a pair of wide eyeglasses. After a moment, he looked away, at the fire. He made a quiet noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a sigh, and seemed to be something approaching a “hello” in return.
“N-not Hollow,” I said quietly, to the others. Raindrops relaxed, and the spell that Trixie had been preparing fizzled into sparks of magic.
The stallion made another whining grunt, and maybe it was originally intended to be a laugh. “Not Hollow,” he repeated, his voice aching and croaking as he lay on his side in the gravel. “Not yet. But not long for it.”
Raindrops looked away, and Trixie shrugged, before she started examining the carts. I heard Gilda take wing, as she had apparently decided to watch the road from higher up. I slowly stepped closer, until I was sitting next to the fire, across from him.
Now that I was this close, I could see the sorry state that the stallion was in. He was a mess, with his fur worn and stained with old ichorous blood, and his mane wild and limp in the gravel around his head. One of his wings was just gone, and there remained a ragged stump where it should have been, while the other lay, extended but limp, and pointed towards the fire. The rusted remains of a wingblade was clasped along the length, and presumably he had worn a matching set, before something took his wing. His hooves were swollen and his legs laid at odd angles; he must have broken his legs or torn his tendons at some point, and they’d healed poorly. His hooves were particularly distressing; the walls were worn down near to the fetlock, and he must have walked over a broken bottle, because small shards of glass stuck out of his frogs like crystalline leeches.
“Are y-you okay?” I murmured, but the question seemed stupid even as I asked. It was all I could think to say; the shock of seeing the extent of his injuries stole any other questions from my lips.
Slowly, that single ember looked back at me. “Been better in the past...not sure I’ve ever been worse.”
“W-what happened to you?” The smears underneath his body—I thought they’d been mud before, but it was more ichorous blood, dark like my own long before. It looked as though it had been soaking into the gravel under his body for a while—not that he was in any condition to really care.
“Traveling,” he groaned. “Surviving.”
Me and Raindrops glanced at each other, before I looked back down at him. “W-where are you from? Where were you tr-traveling to?”
The broken stallion let out a sad, quiet chuckle. “From...from Las Pegasus. Long time ago. Was trapped in that town, or...f-felt like I was. Had to leave. Had to go somewhere. Anywhere else.”
He tried to push one of his hooves under himself to stand, but his hoof collapsed under him, and wet ichor oozed out around the shards of glass. Raindrops winced, and turned back to Trixie. “Hey! Can you pull those out with your horn? He’s still sane enough to be helped.”
Trixie sighed and rolled her eyes, but she did move closer as her horn lit. She roughly rolled the stallion onto his side, and held up his hoof to inspect the glass jammed into the soft flesh, before she began to grip them and tug with her magic.
As Trixie did that, the stallion continued to speak. “Thought a lot about the world...where to go, where to run. But these pr-problems, I don’t think I can outrun them. They’re crushing. They keep me from running, ruin my body, they w-weigh me down, keep from leaving, and now...now there’s nowhere I can settle that they won’t catch up anyways.”
His single wing limply lifted a hoof-length, then fell back flat onto the gravel. “I k-keep moving in little bursts. All I can do. Keeps me distracted, as long as I think ab-about the next place I’m going...next place I can rest. Was Baltimare b-before...now it’s Canterlot. Just gotta get to Canterlot, then...then I can r-rest, for a little bit.”
Gently, I sat down next to him, and he lifted his head to lay it against my flank. “W-we’re heading to C-Canterlot next. We can t-take you with us.”
“We can?” Trixie asked, though I ignored her.
The stallion shook his head slightly in response, however. “Would s-slow you down. Be a b-burden. Can’t. G-gotta stay here for now...get my strength b-back. Might t-take a while, but...I’ll g-get to Canterlot eventually. Ev-eventually. Promise.”
We’d left enough ponies behind. My stomach roiled at leaving another, even one who wanted to be left here. “P-Please. Come w-with us.”
The stallion shook his head again, a little more vigorously this time, and huddled closer to my side. “C-can’t. Thank you, but...can’t.” He closed his eye, and let out a long, tired sigh. “But...stay here? Just...just for a little bit. Missed ponies. Missed contact. I talk so much, but never to others...never face to face. Often...just to myself. Miss the warmth...of others, of friendship. Always so alone.”
I laid my own hoof on his, and gently patted his head, while his eye turned back to the smouldering fire. Trixie finished pulling glass out of one hoof, and let it drop into the gravel as she moved to the other, while Raindrops looked on sympathetically.
After a few long moments, the stallion mumbled, “So warm...bright, and hot, like the mare in the fire…”
I blinked slowly. “Huh?”
His wing twitched again, as he tried to extend it towards the embers in front of us. “F-Feed the fire...just to keep it burning. So you can see…”
Raindrops spotted a couple of planks of scrap wood, but the stallion chuckled as she pulled them into the smouldering pit. “Not quite...mundane, too m-mundane. You…” He looked up at me, with that one eye. “The fire inside you...use that. You know what I m-mean.”
I did; he meant my pyromancy flame. It suddenly occurred to me that I couldn’t feel his, or rather, it wasn’t where it should have been. Instead of being part of him, he’d moved it outside himself, into the fire pit. As if he’d used his own soul, to keep his little campfire burning for warmth. And it was weak. I gathered up some scraps of my own soul, and kindled his fire with mine in a dull flash of combustion, just to keep it from getting snuffed by the wind.
He let out a relieved sigh as his eye closed, and he relaxed slightly against my flank. “Thank you...the mare in the fire, she’d...she’d thank you too.”
“What mare?” Trixie growled in frustration.
His wing shuddered again. “Look...look at the flames. Stare at them long enough...you’ll see a mare. She’s weak now...and so tired. She’s been burning...for a long, long time...longer than any of us. All she wants is rest...but she can’t rest, or else the fire goes out. Just like us.”
I tried, I really did. I looked at the fire, and stared into where it burned hottest. Past the trails of fire that wicked away into smoke, where the wood crackled and dissolved into ash. But I couldn’t see the mare he described within the flames.
Not this time, at least.
I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to crush his hopes, or reveal that he might be mad. I just patted his head as we stared into the fire together, resting as a group before we had to get moving again. We couldn’t give the poor stallion much comfort, but we could stay long enough to help him regain his strength. He’d need all the help he could get, to reach Canterlot and the places beyond—just as we would, after the ordeal that had been Baltimare.