Chapter Eleven
Malediction
To the south, the sea of white stretched, uninterrupted unto the horizon. Snowbanks, waves frozen over ground, marked out fences and ditches, roads and signposts, homes and carriages. Field after field after field, the cold blanket covered it all. Many hundreds of meters away, thin lines traced through the white, where ponies trod or had trod the day before to begin the arduous work of plowing clear the roads and precious fields of grain and plots of vegetables.
The sun had risen amid cloudless blue for the first time in what seemed an eternity, but it would not shine on green grass for days.
To the north, beyond the open slat of the starboard cupola and the aft gun turrets, Maximillian’s trail led up into the foothills and the tree line, a pair of wide, deep tracks of compacted ice defined by the unique tread of gargantuan wheels of rubber and steel mesh. The carriage I had flown from Cloud Loft Peak could have landed in one of those tracks and had room to spare on either side.
To the east, about half a kilometer distant, a pale red pony in a field looked up at our passing. I leaned back from the compact telescope attached to the broken-out window and glanced around the many cannon barrels that dotted Maximillian’s colossal frame and, indeed, the mangled, inoperable machine gun that leaned against the inside wall of the cupola on a rusted swivel.
I shifted inside the bulky, and much too large, but well-padded environmental suit I had found in one of the vehicle bay’s storage lockers and telekinetically toggled the radio’s channel via a key on my greave. “Max, can you point all your guns away from the fields? Just so they’re not aiming at anypony out there, please?”
Before I had finished speaking, the hum and whir of motors accompanied the motions of machine guns and cannon turrets, some out of sight, swiveling toward the forest to the west.
“Thanks, Max.” I switched channels again and muttered, “Won’t stop everypony from being afraid, though…”
“I see a lot of guns moving, kiddo; you know something I don’t?”
My ears twitched inside the spacious, rigid-frame helmet as the radio crackled. “No problems here, Eagle. Max has to be pretty scary for everypony out there. I asked him to point everything… you know, not out there.”
“Good thinking. May as well make him look a little friendly. How’s the suit?”
“Warm and comfy. And roomy.” I stretched one foreleg out and leaned closer to the slat window, listening to the rumble and low, constant roar of Maximillian’s passage. “Kind of funny how the state-of-the-art, prototype power suit with fancy noctium claws and miniature computers couldn’t seal itself up without Carbide’s help, and yet the, um…”
I snorted softly as I eyed the heavily tarnished alloy that formed the greaves and boots on my forelegs. A row of thinner, segmented plates along my back and a high collar, itself not far removed in design from that of the power armor Carbide had built, completed the protective ensemble. “… extremely vintage hazard suit still holds air in and rads out—well, also in, I guess, since that’s the problem. Gotta give credit to Carbide; everything he and his buddies made two hundred years ago works pretty well.”
“Hey, my suit’s vintage. What are you trying to say?”
“Not this vintage. Not a single spell matrix in this thing. All old-school enchanting and custom talismans. Like Night Cloud’s armor, except… not as nice. Dig the horn guard; doesn’t scrape at all. And it’s a bit heavy, but that might just be the bad fit… or me being tiny.”
I tugged on the sleeves and readjusted the jury-rigged straps I’d added to keep them from sagging. “Kinda growing on me, though.” As I brought my helmet’s scratched, though polished, faceplate up to the telescope’s eyepiece again, I gave a soft laugh and muttered, “Or, you know, maybe I’ll grow into it, if I’m lucky. Any word from Orchid Wisp?”
“Still nothing. Must be taking longer than she thought to make that talisman.”
A faint and indistinct shadow passed over the field of snow and Maximillian, darkening the cupola briefly, and I leaned aside from the telescope to peer out the window and at the sky. “Eagle, did you just fly in front of Max? Um—east side?”
“No. What did you see?”
“A shadow. Something just passed near us.” I poked my helmet out through the window and looked up. The sun was above the Troll’s Teeth peaks beyond Bellenast and roughly even with the white, flower-like top of the Single Pegasus Project tower there, more than a thousand meters above the range. The skies above Maximillian were clear. “Okay… I can’t see anything now, but it was fast and low. Had to have come from the city.”
“Descending now. Go back inside. Might—” With a pop, the transmission cut out.
Static filled my ears, then lightning flashed. I jumped as the double peal of thunder followed milliseconds after.
My heart began to race. “Eagle?” What—” Maximillian shuddered and skidded to a sudden halt, throwing me forward. My helmet struck the cupola’s lone, intact window, which promptly fell open on squealing hinges as I fell backward and tried to clutch my smarting muzzle through a polycarbonate visor. “Aaagh! Max, what the fuck?!”
A wavering field of magic lit up across Maximillian’s hull, and one of his clawed arms spun suddenly overhead. The frost-coated speaker grill on the inside wall crackled. “Crystal Dew, retreat inside the vehicle bay immediately. An elemental animus is approa—it is inside my shield perimeter. Telekinetic deterrents ineffective. Hurry.”
“Just say ‘golem,’ Max! It’s faster!” I snorted, causing a spray of blood from my throbbing snout to spatter the inside of my helmet’s faceplate. I pushed open the door to the cupola and clambered along the narrow catwalk that led across Maximillian’s hull to the exterior hatch of the vehicle bay. A rushing noise came from all around, and the sunlight vanished as a torrent of golden sand enveloped me.
-Crystal! Teleport! Use your talisman, quickly!-
I stumbled and toppled over as the sand pushed me along the catwalk as if a gifted pegasus had summoned a howling gale. I slapped my forehoof on the talisman hanging over my chest. The sand grew denser, blotting out the sun and pummeling my faceplate. Blinded and battered into the grating, I hit the talisman again. -Night, magic necklace isn’t working!-
-Hang on! I’m coming!-
I pushed a wave of telekinesis outward and sent the sand back, briefly allowing the sun to shine on my hazard suit again. I then formed a small, flickering bubble of magic around myself, a sphere of emerald green, which pushed me up by my hooves as its solid surface buzzed with feedback against my own mass. The sand, distorted by my magic, surged inward from all sides and slammed against the barrier. I grunted as the impact sent a rush of feedback through my head, and cracks spread across the surface of my shield. The darkening ball of sand expanded briefly, then slammed inward in an instant and shattered my feeble attempt at protection, but instead of crushing me, the golden sand swirled closely around me and covered me completely.
A heavy door was wrenched open with a howl of tearing steel. Hard, cerulean light shone through the golden curtain, and with it came the roar of an angry goddess.
“DON’T TOUCH HER!”
A harsher, brighter light surrounded me within the glittering storm, I made a final, titanic effort to push against the encroaching magic, my stomach lurched, and the sand burst away from me, as insects scattering before a flame. My insides flipped again. A canopy of snow-dusted evergreens opened above me, air rushed past me, and I tried to spread my wings.
My hazard suit didn’t cooperate.
Before I could scream, I plunged into a deep mound of snow with a jarring whump and a sharp pain at the tip of my tongue. I slid and rolled down the icy slope of the hill, trying to catch anything with my hooves. Instead of a root or rock, I found only a thin layer of powder snow over wild, frozen grass, and tumbled down and down amidst the blinding spray of dusty white, every leg wrenched and rib battered, until a tree caught my barrel and crushed the air out of my lungs. I wheezed and grabbed onto the trunk reflexively, even as every muscle throbbed and seared in complaint.
I coughed, allowing more blood to stain my helmet faceplate, and groaned. Where my transformation had left behind a deep ache, the tumble had beaten me with hammers. The hot tang of copper flooded my mouth and nostrils. Myriad bruises throbbed freshly across my legs and back. Knives sank into my chest as I breathed. A few meters beyond the tree to which I gingerly clung, the snow ended, and a ravine took its place. Water gurgled below, but how far away, I couldn’t tell.
And, then, as a pilot light sets a furnace ablaze, a burning, but relieving, warmth spread through my chest and rapidly through my legs, and from my snout to my tail. A grinding sensation came from my chest, but soon faded. I worked my jaw and frowned as the tip of my tongue ceased to sting. The jabbing pain in my chest, similarly, began to dissipate quickly, and I gave a deep sigh as my muscles relaxed and legs ceased to twinge.
“That was fast,” I mumbled, and propped myself up against the trunk of the tree.
The silent forest greeted me. I looked uphill; nearly thirty meters of gouges and ploughed-aside snowbanks marked my descent between the unevenly spaced trees.
-Night? I teleported, and I’m not at the friggin’ palace.-
The water gurgled. A gentle wind whistled across the pine needles all around. My breaths slowed, but my heart continued to pound. The air was somewhat thinner, though after two weeks spent flying and walking toward Bellenast, the mountain atmosphere brought me a measure of calm.
-Night Cloud?-
I swallowed.
-Blitz? Ivy?-
I looked back over my shoulder, taking in the steep slope of a cold, shadowed valley. “Eagle?” I shifted my weight against the tree, climbed onto my haunches, and sat with my back to the trunk, looking all around.
The valley was very deep.
“Eagle?” I switched channels. “Max? Maximillian!” Quiet static hissed in reply. I switched back to Eagle’s channel and telekinetically activated an emergency beacon. “Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap—okay, high ground. Have to go higher.”
“Save your breath, betaya. They won’t hear you.”
I jerked my head around toward the calm, smooth voice, or where I thought it had originated, but saw only snow and tree trunks. “Yeah,” I squeaked, swallowing. “Kinda figured that one out.” I swept magic across the inside of my faceplate in an attempt to clear the large splash of blood, but only smeared it further. Growling, I unsealed the helmet and pulled it off the hazard suit’s collar.
“I would prefer not to harm you.”
“Really? ‘Cause that sounds like there’s an ‘if’ coming.” Glancing left and right at the looming trees, I swept my magic over my torso and whimpered when I found no coach gun or aetheric carbine. “If I cooperate, right?”
“You’re a sharp one.” The stallion’s voice seemed to come from everywhere at once; he took on a chiding tone. “Oh; pardon me, betaya. I neglected to bring your weapons along.”
I levitated the talisman up from my chest and started prodding the iron button in the middle of the brass disc with my hoof. It didn’t budge.
“Allow me to guess: A teleportation spell?”
“Yeah,” I squeaked. Biting my lip, I pushed telekinetically on the button and looked around again.
“I wonder why it isn’t working, then? Perhaps I damaged it during our little jaunt.”
“Because it friggin’ iced over, dickwad!” My horn flared, and the button jammed inward. The black, cast iron disc cracked in half under the force of my panicked efforts. A wisp of smoke and slight crackling came from the talisman. I snarled, stomped the snow, and telekinetically launched the brass disc at a nearby tree. The air cracked, splinters exploded from the trunk, and a warbling hiss and distant ringing sounded across the valley as the disc ricocheted and sailed far away. The tree shook, and an instant later, a fountain of snow fell from its branches. I growled and shouted, “It wasn’t anything you did, you friggin’ arrogant moron! Teleporting doesn’t break talismans!”
Something whistled softly, somewhere to my left, like wind in tree branches. The trees were still.
“If you cooperate, I shall not be required to harm you.”
“Oh what a friggin’ joke!” I spun in place and blasted a jet of emerald fire from my horn, once to the left of the nearest tree and again to the right, and the roaring echoed across the valley. Snow flash boiled into water vapor and rose on columns of hot air, only to freeze instants later in the mountain atmosphere and settle as a fine, dry mist that blew gently away. The trunk of the tree had caught alight instantly and begun to smoke, and the bark had blackened.
“Be required?” I shouted. “Be required?” I scrambled uphill and looked frantically at the burning tree as I moved away from the ravine and gurgling stream. “Okay,” I mumbled, “Bad idea.” I scooped a pile of snow into the air and plastered it onto the burning tree trunk, and the flames were smothered with a dull hiss. “Who’s requiring you? Who’s commanding you? Nopony! You’re a friggin’ prince, aren’t you? Prince… Nádarin, isn’t it? Valley River? Right? Don’t act as if it isn’t your own friggin’ choice! You kidnapped me! What’s next? You hold me hostage?”
“It was not my plan, truth be told, betaya. Not originally.” His voice floated around on the air, seeming to jump rapidly from place to place and grow closer with each shift in position. “Opportunity knocked, as it is said in Celestian. I saw you in Her Highness’s company, on multiple occasions, as you traveled to Bellenast; compared to her own daughter, you struck me as the easier to subdue, and the value she appears to place on you is comparable. Thus, yes, you ought to make an excellent hostage.”
The Prince paused, and chuckled. “Although, I admit, betaya, I may have made an error in judging you as the easier pony to capture. Your strength is formidable, for one so young; even for a mage with decades more practice. Who taught you to set a such a blaze?”
“I did!” I shouted, clambering up the slope to the next tree. It was broad, and tall, and its branches heavy with piles of snow. With a crunching and crackling of sundering wood, I wrenched a thick, lower limb off the trunk and stripped the smaller branches off, forming a hefty, two and a half meter club. I swung and slammed it through several nearby snowdrifts in short succession, pulverizing the gentle mounds into clouds of white, then sent the club whistling through the icy mist to spread it around in a vortex.
My horn flared with glaring emerald as I converted power to acceleration. The whup-whup-whup of the club circling me became a low, droning hum, and I stirred a whirlwind of snow into the air. I brought the club to a gradual stop, the rushing wind died down, and left in its place was a pale, chaotic cloud. I slashed the club twice through the air, watching it leave a turbulent wake. I turned all around, looking up and down the hillside and between the nearby trees for any empty spots in the drifting flurries.
“Why don’t you show your face, so I can burn it off your friggin’ skull?”
A rustling of cloth came from behind me. I reared up to spin and sent the improvised club shrieking over my head and toward a vague shape in the air that disturbed the powdery eddies. The impact shook the ground and sent a spray of snow and dark soil into the air, and as I planted my hooves and lifted the club again, a metal ring slipped onto my horn.
The thick branch sailed high into the air as my telekinesis failed on the upswing, spinning as it went. I shrieked and bucked backward as my horn sparked, and a strong hoof pressed down on my back, between my wings, and shoved me face first into the snow at the base of the tree. My eyes and nostrils stung as I snorted a panicked breath of powdered ice.
“Perhaps, betaya,” said the stallion, setting his muzzle near my ear, “Because I believe you could do exactly as you say? I know dragons that would balk before you.” I gave a muffled scream into the stinging snow and struggled to escape his hold. The branch slammed to the ground a few meters away, throwing a plume of snow and dirt across us, and the stallion seemed to flinch, shifting in place with his hoof on my back. Telekinesis pressed my legs into the snow and held me perfectly still. I tried to force a burst of my own telekinesis through my horn, but the energy only built and built, never releasing.
“Let me go-aagh!” He pulled a length of cloth across my mouth as I shouted and swiftly tied the gag around my head several times.
“You can learn much about a pony by fighting him. Or her. Pardon me.” I snarled and snorted as he rolled me onto my side and bound my forelegs together with a rope, allowing me to see him plainly. He wore a padded, tan garment that might have concealed armor, his coat was yellowish orange, and his coffee colored mane was cut short and streaked with grey. His eyes were a dark, brownish green, and the hue of his telekinesis was a pale blue nearing white.
“For example,” said the unicorn, tying my hind legs together and ignoring my snarls, “You are clever and powerful, but woefully inexperienced. If given a few years of proper training, you would be terrifying.”
I scowled and thrashed again. “Aiight eee!”
Prince Nádarin pushed me onto my side, pinning my right wing painfully against the ground, and pulled my forelegs and hind legs together, then began to tie all four hooves. “What am I, a vampire?”
I glared, breathing in angry snorts, and forced another wave of magic into my horn, only for it to build into a crackling, buzzing sensation and recede as my heart raced and a pounding ache built in my forehead. The ring vibrated against my horn for a fraction of a second as my magic continued to fade.
In the quiet that followed, between panting breaths, I heard a brief, high tone, as if a small bell had been struck. I pushed again, building a tremendous telekinetic potential, only for the effort to amount to naught, and heard the shrill tone again, an irritating resonation in my horn. Arcs of uncontrolled magic leapt between the end of my muzzle and a few magenta strands of my mane that had fallen across my eyes.
Nádarin gazed down at me, a curious tilt at the corner of his mouth. “If you try too hard to wield your magic against that bond, it could be quite painful.”
I snorted, and the cloud of steam rose quickly past my snout. I pushed again, and shuddered.
He was right about the pain.
My mane burst into a roiling wash of emerald and yellow fire, and Nádarin stumbled back from me in surprise, in turn causing me to fall sideways. I screamed into the gag and struggled against the ropes, but the intertwined loops were far stronger than I could hope to break with my meagre strength. As the stallion approached me again and the flames roared with sudden fierceness, I kicked against the ground and rolled over to face him more directly.
A light steam rose from around my head; I couldn’t tell whether it was from my feverish temperature and the cold air, or errant magic looking for a way out.
“An interesting trick,” said Nádarin as he stood over me and passed one hoof through the emerald blaze. “But if you don’t stop, I will have to sedate you.” He levitated a cloth and a small, dark bottle from a pocket on his chest and removed the stopper. “Your choice.”
I gritted my teeth and forced a torrent of magic up from the well at my heart, growling as the flames of my mane built higher and higher, and the air around me wavered. A harsh vibration resonated through my horn and skull, and the ring on my horn produced a sharp tone that grew loud and painful. Nádarin looked at my horn and took a halting step back.
I screamed past my gag and gave a final push as magic sought the only path it could: Out.
With a deafening bang, the ring exploded. Iron splinters peppered Nádarin’s chest and shot off as white-hot streaks that trailed smoke and sparks. I collapsed in the snow and worked my jaw, ears ringing. I panted and tore the ropes and gag off in a flare of hard green light.
A suffocating grip pressed on me from all sides, driving me back to the ground, and I struggled to lift my head as Nádarin fought my magic directly and tried to close his blue-white field around my horn in a dense miasma. Giving an incoherent cry of rage, I repelled his grip with a surge of force and seized his head and horn, instead.
Our contest was short. Prince Nádarin staggered and grunted as his magic sputtered and died as swiftly as the errant sparks from his horn flickered into nothingness.
He stared at me, eyes wide and jaw clenched. He struggled, planting his hooves unsteadily as I stood up again and tightened my hold on the base of his horn. He tried to force a spell through, but I smothered it as easily as I would douse a candle. I took a step through the snow and slipped, stumbling briefly, but stood in front of him and glared. The flames roaring above me shrank and grew quiet, and my mane fell, magenta once again.
My breaths were deep and ragged. Prince Nádarin’s were short and panicked. The valley was otherwise silent, save the gentle, swirling snow, gurgling stream, and murmuring trees.
Nádarin closed his eyes a moment and gave a short, defeated growl. “I suppose,” he said through tightly held jaws, “I under—”
“Shut. Up.” I forced him onto his haunches, tightened my grip, and wrenched.
The snap was almost metallic, almost crystalline, and startlingly loud.
Prince Nádarin flinched and stiffened in shock. His breath left him in a weak grunt, as if he’d been kicked, and his eyes seemed to lose focus, if only briefly, and I released my hold on his head. He blinked blearily and stared at what I held in the air, dumbstruck, and panted. A wisp of pale smoke and a few arcs of flowing magic rose from the jagged stub on his forehead, and he closed his eyes and shuddered.
I dropped his severed horn in the snow and spat a glob of blood to the side. I wiped my snout with the cold sleeve of my hazard suit and blinked away tears; my legs trembled, my head pounded, and thin wisps of steam trailed upward from my horn as falling snowflakes struck it.
I glanced back to a tree farther down the slope, and levitated my discarded helmet over to put it on once more. I activated the tinny external speaker and glared at the stallion past the frozen blood stains inside my faceplate.
“Ivy doesn’t want to kill you, because she’s so friggin’ nice, and forgiving and all that. I’m not sure about Blitz—Princess Blizziera. She might just kill you when she finds us. I don’t know. Maybe she’ll let you live, just because I’m fine.”
He coughed, took a breath, and gave a short nod. “Is that so?”
“Why else would I say it?” I turned around, levitated the Prince ahead of me, and began to trudge uphill; as an afterthought, I lifted the severed horn from the snow and tucked it into one of my hazard suit’s front pockets. I looked directly back at him. “I could be sitting in front of a fireplace right now. With my marefriend.”
I levitated the ungainly club I’d fashioned and carried it at my side while I climbed. “I would really like to be sitting by a fireplace right now, with my marefriend. And just so you know, I’m radioactive. As in, being near me for, oh, say fifteen or twenty minutes, probably, would kill you. So, I’m going to be nice and keep this helmet on, so you don’t turn into a puddle of goo. That way, when Blitz and Ivy find us, they can decide what happens to you.”
Prince Nádarin was quiet for the grueling minutes it took me to reach the top of the slope. Several times, I slipped and slid backwards, but I didn’t fall. My heart raced, my legs burned from exertion, and steam continued to pour off me as snow fell on my hazard suit. I stopped to breathe at the crest of the hill, and silently wondered how long the effects of radiation would keep me warm.
I turned my head left and right in the midmorning sun. An ocean of dark green spears capped with fluffy white went on and on in every direction. Foreboding clouds of deep grey, towering up and up, formed a wall that loomed uncomfortably close on the eastern horizon.
I set Nádarin down by a tree and walked closer to him.
“I’ll say it again, Mister Prince. If it weren’t for you and your friggin’ nutjob henchponies, I could be sitting by the fireplace with my marefriend right now. Instead, I’m stuck out here with you.” The coffee-maned stallion furrowed his brow, but maintained an otherwise neutral expression. I leaned forward until his breath fogged my faceplate. “Fireplace. With my marefriend.”
I prodded his chest. “Try to attack me, and I’ll throw you down this friggin’ hill and see how many times you bounce. You want to live longer than the next thirty minutes? You just sit there and be broody, ‘cause I’m fucking done with today.”
“Truly, you are a paragon of restraint.”
I stopped grinding my teeth and shoved him again. “Yeah? You think so? Let me make something really, really, abundantly clear, Prince. The last time a stallion put a ring like that on my horn? I stabbed him. With my horn. And then?” I turned and walked a few meters away, steadied myself, and poured a healthy surge of magic into clear bubble that I manifested at the end of my horn. A secondary layer of bright green overglow formed around my horn as the flow of specific gases from the surrounding air into the bubble accelerated, the internal pressure increased a hundredfold, and I lit a spark.
I opened a hole at the top of the bubble and snarled as a third, dazzling layer of overglow erupted around my horn and nearly ten tons of force screamed to the heavens.
The valley was lit by an emerald sun, and the roar of hypersonic plasma thundered across the earth and shook me down to my bones. Snow and dirt sprayed away from me in a circle, my mane was blasted back, and the trees swayed and lost their snowy trappings. The pillar of harsh green rose ever higher in a stream of bright, diamond patterns until distance and turbulence in the air created swirling vortices of errant plasma that arced with wild bursts of contaminant magic.
I sustained the spell for about fifteen seconds, then, gasping for breath, let it sputter out in a rising cloud of short-lived plasma. My legs trembled, my ears rang, and steam rose from my hazard suit and the patch of snow at my hooves. My forehead and horn were distinctly, uncomfortably warm, and wisps of light smoke rose from the fluted guard on my helmet.
I bit back a sob as white-hot needles stabbed behind my eyes in time with my rapid pulse.
I turned back to Prince Nádarin. A flock of birds farther along the valley and barely visible through the trees had taken flight, and the rumble of my spell continued to propagate across the forest. “And then I put him in front of that. That, for your information, will have been visible for at least fifty kilometers in every direction to anypony in the air. There are probably five ponies in the air right about now, all of whom will be looking for me. One of them can lift a twenty ton gun like it’s a tea set, one of them has a suit of power armor and is extremely protective of me, one of them has an aetheric anti-everything rifle and is extremely protective of me, one of them is my marefriend, who is friggin’ angry, friggin’ strong, and, guess what, is extremely friggin’ protective of me.”
I stomped over to Nádarin once more, telekinetically forced him to the ground, and met his brownish green eyes. “And one of them is the daughter of the stallion your big brother murdered right in front of her thirty years ago. Oh, and she’s extremely protective of me, too. By the way, the only one of those five ponies who might still want to see you alive instead of incinerated?” I prodded his chest again. “That’s Ivaline. She said, and I quote, ‘He has done nothing I cannot forgive.’ But that was before today. I want you to think about that for a moment, Prince.”
He worked his jaw and blinked several times to dislodge a bit of snow from his eyelashes. “And what of you? What judgement would you pass on me?”
I ripped several small branches off one of the nearby trees, broke them up, cleared some snow from the earth, laid them in a pile in the dirt, and sprayed a liberal blast of emerald fire at them until the frost sublimated away and the branches caught alight. I sat down in front of the small fire and cleared away the snow in a larger area, leaving a circle of hard, cold ground at the top of the hill.
I then began to scoop the snow around us, one pile of roughly a cubic meter at a time, into a low wall to better block the wind. The effort of levitating even that volume of snow put more strain on my concentration than all the combined elements of my combustion jet put together, and after having made that exertion, made my head throb and the fringes of my field waver and spike.
Nevertheless, I built up a wall around us, adding another heap of compacted snow every second. “Your problem is with Ivy. You can talk it out with her. She doesn’t want to kill you… but as far as I’m concerned, you can freeze to death out here.” I levitated the stallion to the other side of the campfire, not exactly opposite me, and set him down. “Or, alternatively, and just a suggestion, you can sit there, nice and quiet, and leave me alone while we wait for them to find us.”
I released my telekinetic hold on the stallion and put some finishing touches on the snow wall behind him and to the side; we sat in a bowl made of snow, about four meters across, with walls a meter high. I lifted my branch club and scribed a line with it in the cold, packed dirt, bisecting the shelter either side of the fire.
“Don’t step over that—” I shook my club lightly in the air, then set it on the ground in front of me. “—and we won’t have problems. Any questions?”
Prince Nádarin gave a slight tilt of his head, worked his jaw, and lightly touched the side of his hoof to the jagged stub of his horn. “You are radioactive?” I nodded. “And this does not harm you… so you wear that suit so as not to contaminate the air.”
“Pretty much.”
He lowered his hoof and lay down near the fire. “And though you have gifts of great power, you would not strike me down without great reason…”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t tempt me.”
He gave a tired, wry smile. “You will make a great leader, one day… but be cautious, when you offer mercy to your adversaries, young mare. Some will accept it and be grateful… some will repay your kindness with deceit.”
I only stared for a moment. “Are you the same pony who led an army of Kekalo ponies to Bellenast and pillaged and terrorized the countryside on the way there, or what?”
“Ha! Oh, betaya… yes, I am the very same. Except for the pillaging bit.” Prince Nádarin looked at the fire and said, “Some among the ponies who have followed me on my journey… misunderstand my goals, and are perhaps overzealous.”
“Yeah, I can tell. One of them impaled me. It was pretty zealous, and it friggin’ hurt.”
“For that, I apologize.” To my surprise, the stallion looked contrite. “But in their defense, you did attack first.”
A spark leapt along the fluted cover over my horn. “Your invisible goons were about to jump us! Don’t try to play innocent.”
“I hold no delusion of innocence, child.” He shrugged. “I have not had the chance to hear all the details of your encounter. I am curious: How did you see them?”
“Your cloaking spells don’t hide body heat.” He gave a puzzled frown. “Thermal cameras in my power armor. They detect infrared radiation, from body heat. Invisibility spells don’t hide that.”
“Power armor?” His brow creased. “Ah. So it was you that Blizziera was carrying, that day…” Prince Nádarin shook his head slowly. “No matter… if nothing else, I would ask that you understand this much: I came to Bellenast to have Ivaline answer for her cruelty… not to kill her. I wanted to kill her, for many years.”
He sighed and looked me in the eye again. “But I cannot judge Ivaline for avenging her fallen king. I would have done the same, if fate had seen to our… juxtaposition.” The stallion’s entire muzzle contorted into a grimace, and in that moment, I saw every line that age had left on his face. “I can respect a desire to give due justice… I have lived with it for much of my life. But the end she inflicted upon my brother… goes beyond any semblance of it… beyond mere vengeance.”
“She cursed him. Right?”
Prince Nádarin nodded. “Did Argent Nimbus speak of it to you?”
“Yeah.” I scowled and shrugged. “Didn’t give a lot of details.”
“He wouldn’t speak of such fell matters with a child. Argent is often circumspect about topics he ought speak of plainly… and he is among those who misunderstand my goals. That is my own fault… I didn’t confide in him, when perhaps I should have.”
Prince Nádarin sighed and brought a hoof up to his broken horn again, and I shifted uncomfortably. “My brother… Nádar Uéke, or ‘Valley Oak,’ in your tongue… killed Bellenast’s king, Arcottio Firenza. I do not know why; I was too young at the time, for him to confide in me the nature of his grievance with Bellenast, and he kept no journal or other record of his motives. I had theories… most of which I believe were wrong.”
“But, by the time he returned from his journey to this kingdom, after he had committed the act… his mind was halfway gone already. My brother no longer recognized me, and at first, all he could speak of was a ‘great demon’ that came out of the night and struck down his compatriots.”
Nádarin shrugged and said, “Not the most complementary of epithets to bestow a mare, but then, Ivaline the Wrathful is… well, the name says it all, doesn’t it?” The prince let out a short, mirthless chuckle. “During the last days of his life… Nádar Uéke said one thing, over and over. Would you like to know what that was?”
I rolled my eyes. “Why do I get the feeling saying no won’t make a difference?”
He fixed me with a calm, if unnerving smile, and pointed his hoof to his forehead, to the jagged remnant of his horn. “Words are what I have. Words I shall give.”
My ears drooped. I shuddered and brought my forehooves closer together in front of my chest. “What did he say?”
“My eldest brother, on his deathbed, said to our father, ‘Papa’s gone.’ Quite the odd thing, to say to one’s father, clearly alive and well in front of him. ‘Papa’s gone, Papa’s gone, Papa’s gone,’ again and again and again until he breathed his last.”
Prince Nádarin rubbed his jaw and murmured, “And yet, it is, possibly, exactly what Her Highness might have said, on that day, don’t you think?” He glanced at me, then reached a hoof into the folds of his barding, fumbling slightly, and tugged out a small, bronze box, tarnished with age. He set it on the ground and pushed it to the line I had drawn in the dirt. “Have you ever seen a memory orb, young mare?”
“No.” Grinding my teeth briefly, I said, “My name is Crystal.”
He nodded. “Crystal. I would say well met…”
I nickered, glaring, and levitated the tiny box over to set it in front of myself. “Let me guess: It’s an orb that has memories in it.”
Nádarin’s lip twitched into a slight smirk. “A memory orb stores memories, much as film stores a photograph. Don’t grasp the orb inside that box, only the box itself. If you focus your magic on the orb, you will be drawn in, to experience the memory it contains. Once you begin to view a memory orb’s contents, you are rendered helpless, immobile and completely unaware of your surroundings, for as long as the memory lasts.”
I dropped the bronze box immediately and glanced warily at the dark, translucent ball of glass inside its faded, purple padding. It looked like nothing so much as a foal’s toy marble, if somewhat larger than one; yet, deep within it, a pale light flickered. I closed the box with my forehoof and looked at the prince again. “That last bit. Why would you tell me that?”
“Because that memory is not meant for you… and you were able to shatter a ring of binding, a feat I’ve not seen in all my many years. Who is to say you could not escape the memory and immediately burn me to cinders for my deception?”
Prince Nádarin crossed his forehooves. “True, I would have used you as a hostage to approach Ivaline herself, and coerced her to view that memory, had my plan worked… but it did not, and here we are. In either case, I never intended to harm you, if I could avoid it. So, I give the orb to you. I plead that you give it to her in turn.”
“What—” I grimaced and shook my head. “Why the—just—what’s so important about it? Why do you want her to see it?”
“That memory, at its core, belongs to a child—a young filly. A filly I had never met, until recently… and yet, I have held that orb in my possession, kept it safe, safer than any trinket I hold dear, for thirty years of my life.” Prince Nádarin stared at me from where he lay, patient and calm and collected, and said softly, “How do you suppose I came by that memory, Crystal?”
The old stallion tapped his hoof on the cold earth and murmured, “I extracted it from my brother before he passed, of course, because, of course, I had never met Blizziera. How could I have? I didn’t know she existed until some… fickle jest of fate willed it.” He looked at the fire, rubbed his hoof along his jaw, and said at a normal volume again, “One of the talents of the agents of Unity, the alicorns, is the ability to see into the depths of one’s mind, as one might peruse a book and find its secrets laid bare.”
“Their telepathy doesn’t work that way,” I said. “It lets them talk to each other, but they can’t read minds…” I paused for a moment, thinking of Blitz and her rosy pink eyes. “I have that on good authority. The green ones are telepathic relays for the rest. They wouldn’t be able to keep a connection over long distances without them holding all the others together. Ivy was one of them.”
“So they have told you something of Unity’s workings, have they?” The stallion shook his head in reply. “I doubt she would reveal her more poisonous abilities in polite conversation. She did leave Unity behind, more recently, after all…” He began to draw his hoof across the ground, scratching idle lines into the snow and dirt.
“While it is true,” said the prince, taking care to enunciate clearly, “That they cannot scry one’s innermost thoughts and deliberations, those of lesser will are susceptible to… invasion, glances of those thoughts closest to the surface. Emotions, impulses, primarily… but that is not the working of which I speak. Ivaline is among the eldest of all alicorns of Unity; not in time spent in their ranks, but among the eldest, nonetheless. She has had an extraordinarily long time to hone her skill. The manipulation of memory, extraction and implantation thereof in particular, is, most certainly, one small piece of her formidable repertoire.”
“Sooo… taking a memory out.” I craned my neck to peer past the fire at the drawing that had taken form beneath his hoof; it appeared to be nothing more than random swoops and swirls. “And putting it in somepony else.”
“Yes. She plucked that memory out of Her Highness, little Princess Blizziera, and put it in my brother’s head, and forced him to live a waking nightmare, over and over, until it drove him to madness… and death.”
Nádarin turned away from the fire and said, “At least, that is my theory, based on what I observed, those decades ago. The memory in that orb is flawed, limited by design and the ingenuity of whatever magus of the old world created the spellwork. The memory orb itself shows only what is seen, heard, touched, even smelled… but it shows only these physical perceptions, not what is thought.”
“And, it is a memory of a memory: What my brother was forcibly shown of Blizziera’s recollection, as he experienced it himself through the lens of a sharing spell. It has become… twisted, muted. Incomplete. Jarring and harmful merely to see, oneself. Perhaps it always was, even before I asked for it to be extracted. In any case, by watching the memory, I can’t experience exactly what my brother did, what he thought in the depths of his madness.”
Prince Nádarin gave a heavy sigh and gestured toward the tarnished, bronze box. “I can see it through a looking glass, one warped, cracked, dusty… and ponder. Only Ivaline knows the truth. Instead of simply killing my brother outright, she let him live but a little longer. She planted the memory in his head, to poison him… perhaps she saw something, an iota of reason, behind my brother’s own malice and foolishness. Something that would drive her to do what she did, in turn.”
I shivered again. “So… you want to ask her questions, not, um… not kill her. Necessarily…”
He lightly kicked at the misshapen drawing on the ground, scattering the snow and cold earth. “To say that I do not desire her death would be a lie… but I would rather see her answer for her actions, herself, and shed light on my brother’s own motive, if she is so inclined.”
“Well… um… hate to break it to you, but she doesn’t know why he did it. Or at least… she told me she didn’t fully understand the reasons, so…” I shrugged. “Maybe she knows something. I dunno.”
“That is… disheartening to hear.” He looked up and gazed at me, silent at first, his eyes narrowed and lips pursed. “I have studied all I can, of the records about Ivaline’s life, and her business, in her time before leaving Bellenast to join Unity’s ranks.”
At my questioning tilt of the head, he said, “I came to Bellenast on my own, not long after my brother’s death, to search for information, from all across the kingdom… several times, over the decades, I journeyed here again. To summarize, Crystal… Ivaline, as her long and storied biography would tell, is, indeed, the Wrathful. She earned that name, and all her others, more than a century ago… long before she gained her immortality. But…”
He raised his forehoof and shook it slowly from side to side before me. “She was ever and always described as a righteous mare. A mare fair and wise, but also swift to punish those that wronged Bellenast and her kin, when such action was appropriate. When retaliation was required, she would retaliate. When negotiation was the better answer, she would negotiate. When vengeance was called for, she would deliver it.”
He laid his hoof down again. “I don’t condone what my brother did, whatever his motive… but if Ivaline, today, is the same just and noble mare that her legacy so stridently proclaims, she at least would have executed my brother, at gunpoint or at the gallows or with whatever spell of death she might choose.” Nádarin inclined his head toward the small box before me. “I would have respected her decision, if his death had been swift. What she did, instead, was vile, dishonorable… and nothing short of rapacious.”
My wings twitched. “Like you know the meaning of the word,” I muttered.
Nádarin turned his head to one side and frowned ever so slightly. “My ears have a few more decades behind them than yours, Crystal. Care to speak up?”
I scowled, tucked my forehooves closely together and said, “Maybe you should have just walked in the front door and asked Ivy, yourself. I think she would have respected that.”
Prince Nádarin laughed. “Could you? Could you approach the Witch of the Amber Palace herself and ask her why she murdered your brother? I assure you, it is not as easy as that.”
“At least you had a brother. Parents. Mine ditched me for foster care. Now, when I finally have a family I love, you show up and friggin’ take me away from them.” I snorted and shrugged. “So… no, I guess I don’t know if I would waltz up and ask her, but I’d at least try it first, instead of what you’ve been doing for the last thirty years. What you’ve done in the last week. Forgive me if I’m less sympathetic than you expected.”
“Oh, I expect no sympathy.” He looked to the sky and sighed. “Dear child,” he said, giving a gentle laugh, “For all my life, I have been surrounded by those who follow me for all the wrong reasons… or who would put a dagger in my back in shadow, should I oppose their wishes in the light. Even now, the veritable army that has come with me, to Bellenast, may not heed my words any longer, now that I have an opportunity to meet the one pony I have sought to meet, to understand for so long. So clouded with fire and zealous hatred is their vision of justice that they have forgotten my vision. They have forgotten my mistakes… and so they have not learned from them as I have.”
He let out a long breath, and once again the fatigue in his eyes betrayed his age. “Would that I had your spirit, that I had the naivety of youth again. Perhaps I might have erred more on the side of courage and…” He looked past me, and his face became a fine example of perplexion. “… less on the side of caution.”
My ears swiveled backward as clumps of snow tumbled softly to the bare earth.
I leapt to my hooves readied an emerald bubble shield around myself even as I lifted my club, scrambled backward past the campfire, and blasted a short-lived gout of emerald flame at the figure peeking through the snow wall.
The brief roar of flame accompanied a louder hiss of sublimated vapor that quickly blew away on the wind, and the vanishing cloud of steam revealed a pair of cloven hooves the burnished green of tourmaline, an ashen grey coat, and a voluminous, exceptionally full, and distinctly leonine mane the same white as the blanketing snow around us, which framed her head all around and covered her neck and the upper part of her chest. In the chaos of a snowstorm, the pony would have been nearly invisible.
The front portion of her snowy mane glowed an incandescent yellow and flickered with a thousand tiny embers, but no smoke rose from it.
Inquisitive, turquoise eyes blinked at me, then darted up to the flaming length of horn that curved sharply back from her brow, then up again nearer its asymmetrically forked tip. The mare shook her head, a lighter, irregular segment near the base of her horn glowed pink, and a wave of pink light swept upward through her mane, extinguishing the many spots of flame.
Then, face otherwise wooden, she lifted a cloven hoof to wave at me. “Sooooooo, I’m Pinwheel. Pinwheel Malaise.”
“Valley River,” said the prince, from where he stood against the opposite wall of our bowl shelter. “A pleasure.”
I swallowed. “Um… Crystal. Hi.” Pinwheel scooted forward, falling down through the collapsing wall of snow, until she more or less stood halfway through it. The strange mare was stockily built and rather short, compared to Eagle or Zephyr, though still taller and much larger than I was, and her pale coat was thick and bushy.
With her closer to my eye level, I was able to see the ridged crest that lined the top of her snout and her brow, and the coat of scales that covered her back in place of fur. Both the scales on her back and the crest of her snout were the same burnished green, and slightly iridescent, tourmaline color as her cloven hooves, and her horn was the dull red of pure iron oxide.
“Peachy, lass!” She grinned. Her accent was bizarre, but not so much that I had difficulty understanding her. “Thanks for starting with fire, instead of the stick. Very considerate of you. Well, for me, specifically, anyway. Don’t think that applies to everyone else. Anywho, that fire was green; you know, the fire you shot at my face.”
I winced.
“Oh, nononono, girlie, s’all right. I’m fine, completely fireproof! No worries ‘bout that; perfectly reasonable reaction. I should have hollered before I poked my head in. Anyway, green—that fire was green. So was that big fire that shot into the sky. The really bonkers loud fire; sounded a lot like a bottle rocket, now that I think of it, except huge. You know, the one that made all the snow fall off the trees? Scared off the birds?” She jerked her forehoof back over her head. “Caused a small avalanche, next valley over? Was that you?”
I took another step back until my rump hit the wall. “Um…”
Pinwheel Malaise sighed and set her hoof down, and her head slumped. “Yeah, that? That buried my house. As in, halfway up the chimney buried.”
My ears drooped. I swallowed again, opened my mouth, and found my throat to be dry.
Pinwheel grinned. “Okay, no, it didn’t actually bury my house; that’s a few miles off. It was a wee little avalanche. You would’ve heard a big one. Sorry. That was mean.” Unkind words stuck in my throat. My shield collapsed. “Really, it’s okay. I’m perfect as peaches.” I growled and grinded my teeth. “But seriously, though, you could have set off a big avalanche, and that could have buried my house. Or anyone else’s house around here. You need to be more careful. There’s only one of me around here, and I’m reasonably certain nobody else can melt their way out of being buried in the snow.”
She glanced at Nádarin, then back at me, then quickly back at Nádarin. Her entire demeanor changed. Softly, and slowly, she said, “What exactly’s going on, here?” Turquoise eyes darted down to the pocket on my breast, where the jagged base of a spiraling horn poked out for all to see. I pushed the horn farther down and buttoned the pocket, but Pinwheel Malaise looked at me with a new wariness. She took a slow step back from me. “Okay, would one of you say something?”
Prince Nádarin raised his hoof cautiously and said, “Pinwheel… suffice to say that Crystal has good reason to be on her guard, and it would be for the best if you left us, until the… authorities arrive. Our business does not—”
I shoveled a chunk of the snow wall in his direction and bowled him over with a powdery thwump. “You don’t decide what concerns anypony right now, Prince.”
“Damn. That’s cold, lass.” I stared at Pinwheel Malaise. She smirked, shifted to an awkward smile, and shuffled her hooves. “Sooooooo, Prince, eh? Friend seems a bit suspect, yeah? I mean, you seem a bit suspect, too, to be honest.” She chuckled, and her genial smile shifted more toward nervousness. “Snapped off his horn, did you? Wee bit harsh, yeah? D’you unicorns grow those back?”
“I don’t really care. He kidnapped me.”
“Ooooooh. That so?” She shot a discomfited glance at the buried prince, who gave a muffled yell from under the mound of snow and began to dig his way free. “Did you have to clobber ‘im like that?”
“Let me think. Yes.” I nickered and stomped, then stuck my club ten centimeters into the ground. “He kidnapped me, teleported us here, and was going to hold me hostage. I kicked his flank. Snapped off his horn because I don’t really want to kill him, but I don’t trust him to sit still and not attack me for a few hours while my friends look for me, and I’m really friggin’ pissed off right now.”
“Aye, I can see that, lass.” Pinwheel reached up to rub the back of her neck and said, “What I mean t’say is, eh… he seems—well, civil-like, and you have him handled, so is kickin’ ‘im while he’s down really necessary?”
My lip twitched, and when I spoke, my teeth showed and my voice rose. “He kidnapped me and he wants to kill one of my friends, or at least extort information from her, and then maybe kill her. His cronies have tried to kill my friends—and have nearly killed me—friggin’ twice now, and if he’s telling the truth, he might not even be controlling them, and they’re just running rampant around the countryside, scaring ponies for kicks, because he can’t be bothered to keep them in line. If he is actually in charge, then he’s had his ponies attacking towns and ambushing caravans and hurting innocent ponies for the last week, me included, just to draw out the ponies he really wants to hurt. One of those ponies is my marefriend’s mom, and he kidnapped me because of that! Just to hold me hostage and try to lure them out again, because every other time his goons tried to attack us, they fucked it up and didn’t manage to kill us—and I don’t even know if they attacked us because that was their plan, or because we were just in the friggin’ way!”
I took a heaving breath and stomped the snow, and all but shouted at the odd mare. The ancient speaker wired to the outside of my helmet strained and distorted my shouting. “And the first friggin’ thing he said to you was to try to convince you to go away! To friggin’ leave me alone with him! He’s a manipulative snake. He put an inhibitor ring on me and tied me up five friggin’ minutes ago! I barely managed to break it and fight him! And I’m radioactive right now, so I kept my suit on just so he wouldn’t die by the time my friends find me, and still he tries to pull something like that. I’m trying to do the right friggin’ thing and not just friggin’ club his brains out or burn him to death, but he’s making it really friggin’ hard! So, yeah! Does it sound like he doesn’t deserve a few kicks to his everything?”
At the conclusion of my tirade, Pinwheel Malaise gave a slow, emphatic nod and quirked her ears as the echoes of my yelling carried across the hills. Turquoise eyes had narrowed, and focused intently on me once again. “O-kaaaaaaaay. Yeah. Gotta admit, now he sounds like a right scoundrel. Assuming you’re telling the truth.”
My hind legs gave out. I sat where I fell, shaking and breathing hard. “Look—which way is Bellenast from here? And how far is it?”
“Bellenast, eh? That where you popped from?” Pinwheel turned to her left and pointed past me. Beyond the trees and deep valleys were mountains, high and jagged. “Southwest by west, Crystal, about fifteen leagues as the bloatsprite flies. Those are kinda scatterbrained, though, and they can’t fly very far at all. Don’t know where that phrase came from, but it never made much sense to me. Always heard my granpappy say it.”
I gaped for a moment, then shook my head. “It’s ‘as the crow flies.’ As in, a straight line, over anything in the way.”
Pinwheel’s turquoise eyes widened. “Ooooooh, is that what it’s supposed to be, crows? They do seem a bit smarter than a bloatsprite.” She gave a goofy smile and tapped the side of her head. “Poor, screwy little fuzzballs. All the radiation must go to their wee brains.”
I shook my head again. “So, fifteen leagues?”
“Aye, maybe a touch closer to sixteen.”
“How far is a league?”
“Mmmmmmm—three miles or thereabouts.”
I groaned inside my helmet and stomped the cold, packed ground, to little effect. “What the fuck is a mile?”
“One hundred and eight kilometers,” said Prince Nádarin, as he escaped from the pile of snow, shivering and breathing heavily. He shook his entire body to rid himself of clinging snow and sat on his haunches close to the fire. “One league is six-point-seven-five kilometers; sixteen leagues is one hundred and eight. Not a quick jaunt by any means.”
I took deep breaths.
Pinwheel Malaise nodded, glancing uneasily between us. “Aye, it’s a bit of a walk. Although, fair disclosure, you have to go south a ways, through Gelgrin Pass, to the lowlands, then take the old road west through the Corsair Hills to get anywhere close to Bellenast. That’s the easiest route, and that’s about double the distance. The mountains west of here are impassible this time of year.” Her horn glowed, and a smattering of branches floated from the ground somewhere behind her in a haze of pink and added themselves to the small fire. “Unless you have wings, but even if you did, I’d stay away from there—that’s naga territory.”
“Indeed,” said Nádarin, shivering violently, and smiled at me as I shifted my featherless wings inside my suit. “Thank you for the directions, Pinwheel. That would make... quite the journey.”
I reared, stomped, and screamed at the sky. “FUCK!”
After a brief pause and the ensuing silence in the snow-blanketed valley, Pinwheel whispered, “She’s got a temper, hasn’t she?”
“Her bite is worse.”
“Aye, I can tell. You look rough. No offense.”
“None taken. It’s largely my own fault.”
“Sounds like it, grandpa.”
I stalked over to Nádarin and levitated him. “Was that part of your plan?!” I shouted. The speaker on my hazard suit screeched and crackled, distorting my voice. “Blitz can’t teleport half that far! How the fuck can you manage it?”
“I didn’t teleport us,” said the prince, raising one hoof to wipe snow from his snout. “I formed a spatial tunnel. Then, you tried to disrupt the opening, and because your effort was unfocused, you shunted excess magic into the spell… at least, that is my hypothesis. A sudden addition of power would cause the terminus to translate farther than intended, but along the same vector. It’s fortunate that we arrived at a higher elevation.”
“How is that even possible?” I dropped him again and snarled, then took a deep breath and once again tried to scrub the splash of blood off the inside of my faceplate; it had congealed and frozen on the cold, inner layer of polycarbonate, so it came off more cleanly than when I had tried before.
Biting my lip, I unfastened the helmet for a fraction of a second to toss the frozen mess out, then resealed it. I growled again and went back to the edge of the shelter, and sat where I could see both Nádarin and Pinwheel. “I’ve used a shared input spell. It doesn’t just work that way. You have to let a second pony take over the spell. It’s a joint effort.”
The prince lifted an eyebrow. “I have never heard of a ‘shared input’ spell… a spatial tunnel achieves the same end result as teleportation, true, but the method is susceptible to outside… interference, is the best word, I think. Under certain conditions, that interference can be… convenient, or not. Constructive, or destructive.”
“Constru—” I snarled and shouted, “You mean I friggin’ amplified your spell?”
He nodded, smiling. “Yes, exactly that. In this case, we traveled farther than I could have sent us under my own power. Normally, traversing such a distance would require four or five unicorns bolstering the tunnel in concert for as long as you need to traverse it, but doing so is simple in execution, if they are sufficiently strong… or, it seems, if one extra unicorn is sufficiently strong over a very short period of time. It readily draws in additional energy so long as it is diffuse, unfocused, which, as you saw, allows you to travel a longer distance.”
“Huh.” Pinwheel chewed her lip in thought. “That’s pretty clever. Sounds like a great way to move a lot of folks around quickly… if you can figure out the kinks, that is.”
I glared at the prince. “Yeah. Sounds like.”
He gave a slow nod. “Indeed. It’s a remarkable means of travel. I admit, I’m not as skilled in its use as Argent Nimbus; he devised the spell, and implemented safeguards in the working, which would prevent this sort of accident…” Prince Nádarin shrugged. “As I said, I’m not as skilled. As annoying as the stallion can be, he is a magus without peer.”
I snorted. “Yeah. Argent Nimbus is annoying.”
Prince Nádarin laughed. “One can find common ground with anyone, even if it is only in those ponies that irritate you.”
Pinwheel hissed sharply through her teeth and said, “Aye, grandpa, but I don’t think she capitulates that much.”
“No,” said Nádarin, “Far from it. I’ve found her to be rather ferocious and… unyielding.”
“Oh, aye, I can see she’s a regular firecracker.” Pinwheel Malaise grinned a carefree grin and chuckled, saying in a low voice, “Those I can understand.” The strange mare pointed through the gap in the snow wall from which she’d entered. “So, d’you two want to come somewhere a little toastier? I realize that you’re, eh… at odds, yes? And one or both of you might or might not be slightly murderous.” She raised a foreleg and clicked her cloven hooves together. “But! You haven’t killed each other yet, so… you know, if you intend to sit and stew, may as well sit and stew somewhere more pleasant, right? I don’t mind company—love it, in fact!”
She frowned for a moment. “Don’t get much of it, these days, on account of the signs.” Her smile came back immediately. “Never mind that! You can just ignore those. They don’t mean much, and they’re quite mean, besides. Besides which, blizzard’s about to be beside itself. We’ve got four, maybe five hours ‘till that big swirly doo hits us, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d much prefer to have company inside with a cup of tea than have company outside with a pair of popsicles.”
I sighed. “Do you have a fireplace?”
Pinwheel Malaise looked around at the snow and mountainous expanse, then shuffled backward through the snow wall and sidestepped to reveal cargo harness on the ground, which she had to have been wearing before she made her sudden introduction. One side of the harness held a thoroughly stuffed canvas bag, and the other was laden with a tight bundle of branches. “Er. Yes? Big fireplace. Very fiery, and placey. Y’know. Considering. Was actually on my way back with some mushrooms and kindling.”
“Right. Dumb question.” I pointed at Prince Nádarin. “How about some rope?”
“Rope? Course I have rope. I’m an honorary hermit!” After grinning, she gave me an odd look. “Are you a from one of those Stables, lass?”
“No.” I frowned back. “Why would you think I’m from a Stable?”
“Well, I mean, you think I wouldn’t have rope? Who doesn't have some rope lying around somewhere? And the bubble head suit—actually, I guess you’re wearing that for the opposite reason most folks usually do.” She lifted and clicked her cloven hoof again; I couldn’t help but stare at the gesture. “Eh. Never mind. Just flapping my gums faster than my noggin can keep up, I suppose.” She pointed over her shoulder. “Come on; it’s a five mile hike back home. We’d best hurry.”
The ash- and tourmaline-colored mare led the way through the mountainous forest and guided us across the field of snow at the very bottom of the valley, about eight kilometers from the ravine and stream where I had subdued Prince Nádarin. The stallion trotted parallel to me, separated by several paces. The wind had begun to pick up as we’d traversed the forest.
While Pinwheel Malaise’s pale coat and mane all but disappeared in the blowing flurry, she kept her horn alight with a pink glow as the looming blizzard darkened the sky, and the emerald glow of my own magic around my club coupled with the iridescent scales along her back made her an easy mare to spot from behind.
Under any other circumstances, I would have enjoyed the view. Her swishing, tufted tail was like a metronome.
As the present circumstances allowed, I instead found myself impressed every time she leapt casually over fallen trees, rocks, and dips in the path, any one of which I would have expected to give trouble to a pony without Night Cloud’s height and agility.
The stocky pony forged a path easily on her own, though I widened it by holding a field of telekinesis in the shape of a plow, much as I had seen Blitz do, to follow her, else I would be chest-deep in freezing powder. She set a pace that I was able to match—barely—and I struggled to keep up with her on the uphill parts of the march. The mare would stop to look back every few minutes, and wait for me if I lagged behind more than about ten meters.
Prince Nádarin, to my simultaneous annoyance and respect, kept pace without complaint, though he did begin to shiver, and his breaths grew labored. As small and weak as I was compared to him, life above the clouds had prepared me for thin air; his struggle was one of scarcer oxygen, while mine was having to shovel cumulative tons of snow out of my path.
My own breathing was loud and close inside my hazard suit, and the boundless, inner warmth of radiation, after nearly four hours of the hike into and out of neighboring valleys, began to fade gradually, and my body began to fight the laws of thermodynamics on more even terms.
For the first time since fighting the prince, and after the immense amount of energy expended on my plasma-spewing distress signal, the club I held in my magic grasp seemed ever-so-slightly burdensome, and the chill began to find its way through my suit.
Then, the forest opened upon a river, and with its rumble came the gentle tinkling of bells.
Pinwheel Malaise’s home stood on a level berm of packed earth, an old log cabin surrounded by a sturdy deck and the scattered stumps of the trees long ago felled to make it. The cabin was a short trot away from the placid river, which, this late in winter, had begun to lose its covering of ice.
Across a shallow, narrow portion of the river perhaps fifty meters away from us was a bridge of evenly spaced stepping stones, though their frosted surfaces spoke more of treachery than utility. The river wound in a gentle bend in either direction, and the forest swallowed it on both sides.
Less than twenty meters from the cabin and its smoking chimney was a barn that might well have borne witness to the end of the old world. The ancient walls creaked in the wind, and atop the a-frame roof was a familiar profile cut from polished sheet metal.
“A storm naga?” I gave a weak laugh. “You have a storm naga wind vane.”
“What?” Pinwheel paused to look back at me, then up at the steeply angled rooftop. “Oh yeah!” she exclaimed, showing plenty of bright teeth in a cheery smile, then bounded forward again, sending sprays of snow behind her cloven hooves. “Storm nagas follow a lightning storm; helps them build up enough charge to sufficiently zap their next meal. Well, I thought, ‘That’s not very helpful, is it? Coming after the storm, instead of before it?’ Bunch of freeloaders, mooching off the hard work of Mother Nature. So I made that a few years ago. This way, my storm naga tells which way a storm’s coming from.”
“Yeah, I get that. I know what a weather vane does.” I shook my head. “Just… I hate those things.”
“Nagas? Why? They never bother anyone. Well, they never bother me. Guess they might bother a pegasus if one flew into their territory. They usually stick to one place, but they go out to hunt during lightning storms. Don’t get too many of those here in the winter. Air’s too dry.”
“A big one attacked my sky carriage about two weeks ago. Tore a hole clean through the hull and let its… a bunch of the little ones, its babies, I guess, inside. Then, one of them spit magic death ice in my face, almost suffocated me. Then, just a few days ago, when I was on a carriage to Bellenast, another big one attacked us. My friends scared that one off. So… yeah. Hate them. With a burning passion.”
“They’re just animals, girlie.” Pinwheel held her hoof up and clicked again. “They’re territorial, but not too bright. You nose around their territory, they try to run you off. Just the way they work. No point hating them.”
“Still hate them.” I shook myself free of the snow gathered on my back and helmet, shot a brief glance at Prince Nádarin, and quickened my pace after Pinwheel as the odd mare bounded up the steps onto the deck of her house and lightly tapped a faded, yellow panel bolted to the floor, which caused the front door to swing smoothly inward on silent hinges.
The entrance to the cabin projected out from the center of the outer wall, and there appeared to be a second door deeper inside, flush with the wall itself. A worn and flaky rubber hose, insulated with decayed strips of foam, lined the entire edge of the doorframe, serving as a gasket of dubious effectiveness.
Pinwheel Malaise trotted inside. I stopped at the entryway and stepped aside, turning to face Prince Nádarin as he caught up with us. The lightly-garbed stallion winced as he climbed the few steps onto the expansive porch. I met his brown-green eyes and stomped my hind hoof once. “Are you going to behave?”
He was silent for a few breaths, then gave a small smile. “Consider me defanged.” I raised an eyebrow. “You did call me a snake.”
I scowled. With a flare of emerald green, I unfastened the tunic of his barding and lifted it away, revealing the plain, steel cuirass beneath, scratched from years of wear and deflected blades, and unbuckled it, as well, depriving the stallion of his armor and the hidden knife, small gun, and belt of phials slung under his barrel.
Accompanying the belt was a small telescope, capped with a compass, and a canteen. I bundled the barding and belt together and put the gun, which had no mouth grip at all, in my front pocket, next to the stallion’s horn. Nádarin stood before me, lean and wiry, and completely bare in his yellow-orange coat and coffee-brown mane. He had a smattering of scars, patches of coat that had thinned and faded over old wounds.
His cutie mark, of all things, was the grey square of a holotape cassette, its casing opened and the black, shiny tape inside spilled out in a tangled mess. I couldn’t help but stare for a moment.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Did you expect a poisoned dagger, or perhaps a flying standard, red as blood?”
I snorted. “Answer the question: Yes or no?”
His halfhearted smile faded. “If you can’t trust my word, then trust my desire for truth. I can’t get my answers if I leave your good graces, can I? I’ll settle for the possibility of speaking to Ivaline from a cell, if the alternative is being left to freeze to death in the mountains by a frightened young filly who has ample reason to despise me.”
Pinwheel gave a small cough. “Eh… lady, gent?”
I glanced at her briefly; she grinned. “One moment.” I telekinetically pulled Prince Nádarin down to my eye level and held him still. I prodded his chest and said, “You know what they say about first impressions? That they last a long time? Well, my first impression of you was that you kidnapped me. I will never trust anything about you, snake.” I released him, and he staggered backward. “And you want to know something about snakes?”
“That their heads can bite even after being severed? A latent reflex, nothing more.” After staring with my mouth frozen open for half a second, I snorted. “Crystal, I am a prince of the Kekalo Empire. Much as you liken me to a snake, I am far more familiar with them, cold-blooded and otherwise, than you ever could be. Yes, I’ll behave. I would not take advantage of your mercy… or of Pinwheel’s hospitality.”
I scowled and pointed inside. “Thanks for making my point for me. You first.”
“Oi! Both of you.” We looked in unison at Pinwheel Malaise. She pointed to each of us in turn, affixing me in particular with a stern gaze. “Just so we’re on the same page, here, this is my home, understand? My rules. And my rules are no fighting. Understand? I don’t care who kidnapped who, who started what—I’ll finish it.”
Her turquoise eyes flicked between us again, she blinked a couple times, and she said, “By which I mean I’ll knock you both flat on your bickering behinds if you bicker behind my back—and if you think I can’t get the drop on you just because I’m a bit chunky, let me remind you who trots through the mountains every day. I’m inviting you into my home, where it’s warm, and there’s food, when there’s a blizzard knocking, because I don’t want to see you frozen solid on the side of a hill.”
She wiggled her cloven hoof and pointed back toward the forest. “You want to have a slobber knocker, Little Miss Firecracker, you can do it out there, when the windchill hits twenty below.” She smiled and lit her horn with pink, and the outer door shut behind us. The building wind grew marginally quieter. “So, keep it civil. No throwing of ponies or throwing of heavy things at ponies. We peachy?”
I glanced aside at Prince Nádarin; he gave a slow nod and an irritatingly patient smile. “Yeah… nice airlock, by the way.”
She beamed. “Aye, thanks! Don’t get to show it off much. Helps keep warm air inside. Or most of it, anyway; not really airtight, but I ran out of rubber hose.” She lifted her pack of supplies off her back and opened the inner door, then paused. “Oh, and please don’t shoot or zap my piggy. He’s not used to strangers, and he can be a bit nosy. Literally. He might try to sniff you.”
“Piggy?”
The crackle of a fire and smell of food came from inside, and Pinwheel trotted forward on the smooth, timber floor and hollered.
“Rotunduuuuus! Mum’s home!”
There was a loud squeal, a series of thumping, scuffing beats that sent vibrations through the floor, and then a black boar the size of a bathtub charged across the heavy timbers straight at us.
“Tundy, no!”
