The next day Daring reluctantly settled down on the chair between Somnambula and Welkin, breathing tensely. Somnambula made some motions with her hooves and the mirror began wavering, but nothing happened.
“Wherever he is has scry shielding.” Muttered Welkin, “we can bypass it so long as the place has a mirror.” She added a spell into Somnambula’s mix and the image solidified into a small library Daring had visited in Sanfransiscolt. It was off the beaten track and never advertised but always had a steady stream of wealthy customers looking for old rare books. If Terra was here tracking her… he was about eight months behind.
Daring spent nearly a minute scanning the private lounge for the pimply young teenager she hadn’t seen in a decade then coughed when she finally recognized the golden magical aura surrounding the unmistakable gnarled horn of a half-kirin stuck to the head of a massive yellow stallion lounging in the corner. He’d grown up. Thick curls of black and brown hair tumbled down muscular shoulders and onto a set of carefully made and extremely compartmentalized saddlebags. Somnambula followed her gaze and pointed a question to which Daring nodded.
“Yum!” cheered Welkin, licking her lips, “When you said you’d ran I thought he’d be hideous. How could you not want a piece of that?”
“Does he always carry that much stuff with him?” asked Somnambula.
Daring hoped so. She couldn’t see him being less paranoid about thieves and keeping his stuff with him was a massive improvement to booby trapping hotel rooms like the one that cost a cleaning maid an arm when they stayed at Los Pegasus. “I don’t kn-” Daring froze as Terra’s image stiffened, looked at the far wall, then turned directly towards them. “Oh crap he’s seen us!” She tried to bolt out of the room but Starkin caught her in telekinesis and pulled her back and held her still for Somnambula to tightly drape a wing around her; “I thought scrying only worked one way!”
“It does.” squeaked Somnambula, fear quivering her voice.
“Reverse scrying.” laughed Welkin, almost sounding confident, “I could do that.”
Terra… smiled. He put his book down picked up his thick shake and unrolled his parchment as he approached. “Hello Daring… happy birthday 3 days late.”
Birthday? She was born in winter, no that was Jeopardy, she had missed her birthday, “Ummm… thanks… can you hear me?”
The words on his parchment changed, “No, but I can lip read.”
“Scrying doesn’t transfer sound,” assured Somnambula. Daring knocked a jar over that Terra couldn’t have seen and he didn’t flinch when it shattered loudly. She didn’t trust either of them but if he was acting he’d gotten a lot better.
“Who are your friends?”
“They’re from my support group.”
“Two teenagers?”
“Yup.”
He paused, “I’ve missed you.”
“Ask him to meet,” whispered Somnambula, dipping her head.
“I… need help. I’ve been getting threatening messages from Caballeron lately and he-”
“Dr. Caballeron has been dead for six months.”
“...What?”
“After he was disbarred when you proved he’d plagiarized his work he and his cartel associates came to me. For some reason, they thought I hated you but didn’t have the ability to ability to corner and kill you by myself and offered to kill you for me if I helped track you. I protected you.”
Terra Clave was always making comments like that: ‘this is your friendly reminder I wouldn’t need help to kill you all by myself’. She never knew if he realized how intimidating he sounded, or if it was just another way for him to boast about his abilities to try and impress her.
Dr. Caballeron… dead. That… didn’t bother her too much but she wondered how many of his ‘associates’ had been with him at the time. Some of his bigger expeditions had included dozens of creatures of various races, not all of them were evil. Some of them included young couples who Caballeron encouraged to bring their young children on digs so his daughter would have other kids to play with. Daring wanted to ask exactly how many he had killed but knew not to; the last thing Terra needed right now was to think that there was anyone he had ‘missed’ and needed to finish. “...Oh.” was all Daring could manage.
“How many people did you kill?” Welkin asked gleefully.
“Thirty-seven.”
Welkin grinned and even Somnambula gave an approving smile. The red unicorn mare who had been sitting behind Terra, pretending not to notice, dropped her jaw. Terra followed Daring’s gaze with a slight turn of his head and the idiot mare gave an incredibly obvious cringe and buried her face in her book. Terra didn’t even turn around to send a bolt hurdling into her chest with a silent crack. Two other unicorns jump to their hooves and one of them almost cast a spell before they were also hit and collapsed. Someone else bolted and almost made it to the door before they collapsed and two more bolts flew beyond Daring’s field of vision. Terra put everyone back into their seats and arranged them like they’d simply fallen asleep while reading, the scorch marks on their coats fading under subtle illusion spells as Welkin laughed hysterically.
“Now we have a private conversation. What is this really about.”
“I feel bad about that hot young mare you just stunned.” giggled Welkin, “Maybe you should plow her fields for her when she’s awake.”
“She’s not a farmer.”
“Oh well, maybe you should just give her a nice drink of thick shake from your straw.”
Terra held his drink closer to his chest as Daring groaned, “You could keep talking like that forever, he’s never going to get it unless you’re literal.”
“Oh.” muttered Starkin disappointingly, “… Show us your cock!”
Terra always had trouble navigating social interactions and looked to Daring for guidance when he didn’t know what to do. When she didn’t do anything, Somnambula stepped in, “The three of us were playing a game of questions where the goal is to exaggerate as much as possible without being caught and Starkin here asked Daring the best-endowed stallion she knew. If her description is accurate she wins and if she was lying...” she withdrew a knife which she slid playfully down Daring’s face, “she loses.”
Terra had been staring at Daring since the scry started and she knew what that meant. She pulled her helmet over her face as he reared, drawing an excited ‘whoop’ from Starkin as she scribbled out a scorecard and held it over her head.
“Congratulations Daring.” said Somnambula coyly, “you win five thousand bits.”
“What, really?”
“Of course. That’s enough to cover this week’s interest payment and have enough left to take us out for a nice dinner. Keep winning like this and maybe we won’t have to sell you to The Nimbus Den to cover your debt.”
The mirror cracked in two and both images of Terra glared at Somnambula with a look she’d only seen him give to the trio of colts that used to bully him. One had fallen down a staircase and shattered his arms, one accidentally drank mentholated spirits and went permanently blind and the third developed an aggressive form of leukemia and died. “What debt?!?!?”
“Oh your little friend is quite the high-stakes gambler,” smiled Somnambula, “Sometimes doesn’t know when to quit?”
“How much?”
Starkin shuffled some random papers that were in a drawer, and then shouted, “837,827 bits and a tuna fish sandwich!”
“Daring?”
Daring had never heard of The Nimbus Den, but the look on Terra’s face told her he did and Somnambula was probably accessing at least some of Pearl’s memories. “I-I’ve made mistakes?”
“I’ll pay it.
“Splendid!” laughed Somnambula, “Starkin, give him our coordinates.”
“He already has them,” Starkin whispered.
“I’ll be there in three days. No more gambling until I get there!”