//------------------------------// // III. // Story: Vale // by AShadowOfCygnus //------------------------------// Are we more than the sum of our parts?   Kind of a dumb question, on the face of it: unsubtle, vaguely sophomoric, obviously slanted towards the kind of pedantic positivity we used to pride ourselves on. It’s a hallmark of all the wrong kinds of collegiate Canterlot-corner coffeehouse company, smugly stirring a few lumps of moral superiority into their free-trade tea—the kinds of folk you used to accuse me of running with before we sat down and had that shouting match after class.   It has its beauty, though: the more you read into it, the more complex a question it becomes. Define we; define parts. What are we so desperate to be ‘more than’? Get yourself a sparring partner for an afternoon—an evening, as it later became—and it becomes one of the best intellectual chew toys around. Get around the knee-jerk, really sink your teeth into it, and you have a recipe for all kinds of comfortable self-discovery.   Which of course means that somepony had to come along and ruin it by bringing it into the public consciousness.   Few decades back, FlimCorp finally managed to get somepony around the cordon Dusk and Dark had conspired to set in one particular, forgotten corner of the untrammelled Everfree. It wasn’t a particularly nice cave; dank and dark as most are, and lacking in abundance the graven, verdant splendour of the World Tree, or the Long Spire’s dulcet crystal veins. But it was a place of power, and by that late stage, the more conniving entrepreneurial types had learned well the value and profit in such things. Still more so in bottling them up for the public consumption. The whole flimflammery family of them were big on that: framing themselves as the heroic, down-home sorts standing up to the ‘provincial intellectualism’ of traditional Unicorndom and the ‘stifling bureaucracy’ of the Tetrad to bring “needed innovation” to folk who coveted it most. It was the usual marketable anti-Alicorn poppycock, barely bothering to distinguish itself from flat-out Tribalism, and most knowledgeable folk treated it accordingly. There were suits and punitive court orders galore, and for awhile it was even a popular game to see how much you could win betting against anything the family had a hoof in on the Manehatten Stock Roulette. But, somehow, they always managed to scrape together enough money and popular support in the rural prefectures to keep themselves afloat.   They were never a profitable enterprise—just a stably failing one.   And then they found the Mirror Pool.   Their agent—whoever he was—was tremendously underpaid for the sheer competence he displayed in the field. Dodging multiple cordons, pirouetting past trip-wires and bear-traps and root-snares like they weren’t even there, grinning all the while? The Serpent Himself couldn’t have done it better.   By the time the alarm-wards triggered and the guards went rushing in, he’d already dipped himself enough to hit platoon strength, and he kept right at it as the guard fought unsuccessfully to push the clone-horde back. One stallion—one, albeit many of him—managed to overwhelm an entire regiment of trained Guardsmares and make good his escape. By the time Dusk arrived on the scene, nearly two-hundred black-clad bruisers had boiled out of the cave and into the surrounding forest, crisp leaflets in their pockets and a slick pitch on every tongue.   It took only a few weeks for the clones to be rounded up and dumped back in the pool, but by then the cat was well out of the bag, and the merits of magical cloning were on every tongue. Pub-crawlers and dainty tea-sippers whispered into their steins and saucers, and the corporate rags oozed their characteristic malcontent. Some questioned the morality of destroying these thinking, feeling creatures; others questioned whether they had a financial, or a scholarly, or a reproductive right to the power of the pool. Summons were sent, suits were filed, and FlimCorp rode the wave back into the black—for a time.   I don’t think it’s possible to describe in words the anguished litany of curses that must’ve fallen from Dusk’s lips as she rived that ancient body of unearthly wonder to its constituent enchantments, but a copy of the FlimCorp Certificate of Legal Dissolution hung in pride of place in her archive until the last.   But that wasn’t the end of it. The questions had been asked, the synaptic threshold reached; if the magic—however complex, however unachievable—existed, it could be sought, and could be used again. And for years we argued precedents, argued limitations and reasonableness and authority. Barren mares and wizardlings, sexpots and entrepreneurs: everypony had their day in court, and everypony had their say, and after ten long years of off-and-on deliberation, the Tetrad went ahead and banned it anyway. Too dangerous, and too open to the kinds of abuses we had the least trouble imagining.   Though I suppose, as there always is, there was that niggling little asterisk left somewhere in there, the ‘see me after class’: make a convincing enough case, work in a lab with the appropriate oversight and ethical constraints, and we’ll hoof you the resources ourselves.   I remember you and I talked about it the night the verdict finally came down; the papers had been on pins and needles for days, and the address itself was blaring from every front window open to the piny summer breeze. I was nursing Marigold, and you kept pacing on and off your soapbox.   Surely they’ll see the merits, you said. They have the experience to know better, I said.   We don’t know how lucky we have it, you said.   I’m grateful for it every day of my life, I said.   You don’t think of anyone but yourself, do you? you said. You’ll wake the baby, I said.   And then you had nothing to say.   And maybe that’s why I couldn’t help but laugh when she locked gazes with me through the roaring Pyre, when they strapped the ash-blasted bassinet oh-so-gently across my back, and the roiling alloyed Egg beside it.   Did it have a soul? The Tetrad said it did.   Would it grow to be more than a hollow shell? She certainly thought it would. How did it come to be? Ethical constraints and oversight.   I’d never understood why She, of all of them, never bore any children of her own. She always insisted in the interviews that we—the ponies, the populace—were all She could want in that regard, but of course us dinner-table gynaeco-psycho-sociologists always had theories of our own. Maybe She’d poured all that magic into making the last two; maybe the Dusk and the Dawn were the limits of Her imagination. She always did seem to look at things like that in artistic terms: the philosophic Right; two out, two in; a balance.   Maybe it would’ve left too much left to chance. Mid-life apotheoses you can guide, and choose, and control; the right job to the right pony, another perfectly-tended branch blossoming along the singing, silver-sharp arc of the World Tree. Biology, though? Biology has this nasty habit of turning around and spitting in your face just when you think you’ve got it right. Even with all the care and pre-term fiddling She’d be sure to do, the good stock She’d be sure to slurry in, there was never any guarantee She’d end up with anything but another golden Apostate: another dangerous princeling, another disappointment.   And maybe that’s all it was, in the end. She looked at all her options, all the things that could go wrong, and She decided she didn’t want to. I could respect that. Even when things were at their best, when it was down to a few crazies ranting on the fringes and the worst we had to worry about was arguing politics at the dinner-table, you and I talked about the kind of world we’d be bringing our daughter into—had brought her into. Would she have all the opportunities she deserved? Could we guarantee her health, her safety, her happiness? Even with the school expansion, and the cockle-warm promise of a fresh-off-the-press Princess just across town, two centuries of perfect peace—was it fair?    And in the end, the question we always settled on—the question that always settled us, chuckling into our wine glasses: do we inflict the world on our child, or our child on the world?  As I held her for the first time, tracing the tiny exhalations beneath the swaddling-blankets, feeling the Sun pouring out of the sigil-spires and into my horn—and as I watch her now, bounding in and out of the murky fog-bank ahead of me—I know we always had our answer.   It’s a grey morning; the rain held off overnight, but the haze I’d noted yesterday has grown and thickened into a truly egregious pea-soup. I almost vetoed our trip down the cliffside on that basis alone, but the little expectant eyes I awoke to find peering eagerly over the foot of the bed killed that thought in its cradle.   ‘Hey,’ I say, raising my voice to be heard over the thundering falls a quarter-mile ahead of us. ‘I know you’re having fun, but you need to stay close to me from here on, okay? It gets steep around the falls, and I still don’t trust your wings yet.’   She reappears beside me like a little ghost, swathed in mist and morning-dew. ‘Nyeh!’ A little puff of the stuff shoots off her nose to land daintily on her stuck-out tongue.   ‘Yes, boo, you got me. Do you understand or not?’   ‘Yes. Now can we hurry up?!’ She grins at me again, executing a perfect cartwheel over my head.   ‘No, I’m serious. I haven’t been back there since my tour ended. I don’t know what state the place is even in. If you can’t commit, I’ll turn us both around and we’ll spend the entire day in the garden.’   ‘But—’   ‘Weeding.’   She huffs. ‘I understand.’   ‘Good. You can fly ahead to the river, but wait for me at the falls.’   She barely waits for me to finish my sentence, and my entire coat ruffles in the wake of her mach-speed departure. I blow the bangs back out of my eyes, grumbling under my breath, and continue on toward the none-too-distant roar of the river.   It’s slow and careful going, and she returns several times to check up on me before I make it to the bank. The rocky, needle-strewn forest floor—the only certainty in the tidal avalanche of grey—slides by sedately beneath me, and the trees on either side. I’m careful to always keep one of the lush coniferous trunks in view on my left side; they never grow too close to the edge, here, and so I’m in comparatively little danger of accidentally throwing myself to my doom.   The river is wide but shallow: thirty yards or so across, and perhaps a tenth of that deep at its midpoint. The falls it feeds form the point of the sprawling V below; if conditions were better, the Mare’s legs would spread evenly to the north and south from this rumbling, gushing head. The waters themselves are choppy but not unmanageable, and strewn with enough boulders and other detritus carried down from its high-mountain source over the eons to make smooth going for even the least acrobatic of the regiment back in the day.   Was it Redmane or Tiberius who always slipped on the petrified log when we’d run obstacle drills up here? I don’t remember, though they both more than likely had their moments. I’m fairly certain you’ve never lived until you’ve seen a full-grown stallion drag himself out of the water, covered in murkweed and spitting like an alley cat.   Tartarus, who was it? One of them ended up being ‘Swamp-Thing’ for a while.   ‘Course, that’s undeniably the pot calling the kettle black at this point: I am, in fact, aging, and there’s no guarantee the old route is even there anymore. One particularly heavy winter, one good run of snowmelt in the last twenty years is all it would take to dislodge a boulder or plumb a mud-caked shallows. And that’s not even getting into the tenuous tree-trunk bridges we used to have to wrangle.   Fortunately for my dignity (and perhaps sanity), our path lies not over the river, but under it. Another trick of camouflage those ingenious sappers came up with however long ago: a narrow path, wending along the cliff-edge and under the lip of the waterfall, charmed and reinforced to withstand the pressure of erosion and mottled perfectly so as to blend in with the slate-grey walls of the valley itself. You’d only know it was there if you happened by while someone was walking along it, and even then it’d look like they were just treading air.   I whistle, and she’s back at my side in an instant. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she had a little of the Bat in her, though I suppose the Bird works just as well.   ‘Listen, we’re going to be going down a very narrow path along the cliff. You know how far down the valley the Dun looks from back up at the house?’   She looks at me quizzically. ‘Yeah . . . ?’   ‘We’re going to have to walk that whole distance to get down there, and we’re going to need to take it slow. I don’t know how well the rightrock spells have held up since I was last here.’   She groans a little, but touches down behind me.   ‘Got your pack? Got the torches ready?’   ‘Yeah.’   ‘Shield it with your wings, if you can. At least while we’re under the falls, okay?’   An affirming nod. She’s funny, in her small-child way: give her a hundred good reasons why something can’t happen, and she’ll accept about half of them, and even then only with protest; give her one thing to do and she’ll drop everything to get it done, no questions asked.   ‘Okay. Stay close, and watch your footing. You have any trouble, you tell me. Something cracks, you fly straight up and land on the cliff. You don’t worry about me.’   A nod, again. It’s hard to miss the look of trepidation, but she doesn’t give it voice and so neither do I.   ‘Okay.’  I steel myself for a moment, closing my eyes and feeling for the enchantments. They’re faint—always were—but between the general gloom and the extra layer of mist kicked up by the falls, they’ll be a more reliable guide at the moment than my hooves. Moment by moment, I map the contours from the waterfall back up the ridge, following the little sparks and lines of nascent magic, the familiar glyphs and hallmarks of the anonymous spellweaver who put the thing together. I can almost hear her humming in the rock beneath my hooves.   Ah—there. The last little concavities build themselves up into a path before me, slanting away under the rushing torrent. I make for it, carefully, and she follows along behind.   If we go carefully, it should be about three-quarters’ of an hour walk down, and—accounting for the incline—probably the full hour back. I’m glad we packed lunch.   The worn grey path is stable underhoof, and exactly as I remember it: slippery when wet (and it is) but wide enough that won’t be a problem unless one of us (me) truly goes ass over teakettle.   I open my eyes again as we near the falls proper, passing under a tall overhang. Once upon a time, this part of the path had been conceived as a blind: had the Dun ever been attacked from the cliff-tops or from the sea, spell-snipers and even archers could have been sent to pick off the attacking force from behind the waterfall. As a result, the stone shelf was necessarily wider here—pushed back further into the wall behind the falls for cover and to provide manoeuvring room to larger forces and materiel. Unfortunately, it seems that someone forgot to reinforce the overhang as well as they did the path, and what used to be dry ceiling has crumbled away to let the river in, slicing the mist and fog like icy daggers.   Architects.   I sigh. Wasn’t really expecting to get started so early today, but . . .   ‘Hey. Gonna need you up on my back for a minute, okay?’   She looks up from the little sparkling oil-bubble rivulets the water forms as it slides across the enchanted rock. ‘What’s up?’   ‘I’m going to need to shield us from the falls, and I can only extend the field so far.’   It’s a simple spell, but as yesterday and my still-clenched jaw will attest, even that isn’t a guarantee these days. My horn feels less like exploding after a night of . . . well, emotionally-drained sleep, if not strictly restful, but I don’t really plan on pushing myself any harder than I absolutely have to today.   Leisurely, that’s it. A leisurely walk into an abandoned military outpost that probably hasn’t been touched in the last decade. What could be simpler?   She hops up without further prompting, huddling between my shoulder-blades. Once I’m sure she’s secure, I step forward, horn awash in refracted rainbow glow. The waterfall slips around us in a hazy sphere, tracing the edges of the field I’ve set around us: a drumbeat of droplets, gentle as they are plentiful against the dome, against the inside of my head. It’d be wonderful if it weren’t so damn cold: rain on tarpaulin, the showerhead massaging the back of your neck.   I can hear the gentle intake of breath from behind me; can almost see her eyes shining in the soap-bubble reflection of the field. She’ll have so many questions later.  For my part, I’m having to actively focus on my footing—the wet rock glides mercilessly underhoof, and while the blind is wide enough we’re not as much at risk of a long and ugly tumble, a sprain or a bruised flank will put us off the day just as easily.   Was this always so hard? One careful hoof in front of the other, even strides, even as my knee creaks and my hooves slip ever so slightly, step by step. I used to do this in full patrol-plate, girded and armed—is one little bird-boned filly and a double-sack of provisions really all it takes to—   And then we’re through, and I hear her gasp aloud.   I’ve said more than once that this place feels like the end of the world—the great salt-sure expanse marking our eastern border, the sharp and sudden cliffs dipping down to it, the silence. But the atmosphere plays as much of a role in that as anything else: at this altitude, at this far of a remove from any weathermakers’ guild or seasonal schedule, the clouds have minds of their own, and twist in gorgeous and unearthly ways along their myriad courses.   The fogbank we’ve descended from fills the sky above us, dark and grey and thick as sharp-cut buttercream. Below, lapping along the walls, another, roiling slightly where the waterfall cuts through it, like the sea has risen three hundred yards and bloomed to cotton surety. Layer cake again, or perhaps the flat plane between two mirrors: the space between is smooth and even and bright with the refraction. Crystal clear, for all the haze that surrounds us; pristine infinities stretching to the dual horizon even as the world resolves to the narrow path we walk along it.   We stand there for a time, savouring, before I feel her slide wordlessly off my back to peer into the silvery depths below. Not that I can blame her: my own spine tingles with the familiar electric glee of experience. Where else in Equestria could you hope to see something like this? In what other time could you have hoped to catch a glimpse of it alone, and hold the ownership of it in your breast? All the same, I murmur a few words of gentle reproachment, and she scurries back from the edge to follow me again.   We continue our walk in silence, wending our way along the path, along the rippling, breathing cliff-face. The ocean of clouds rises and tumbles below; the iceriver sky above stays and echoes and refracts. Any closer, sandwiched tighter, and we’d see the ghosts of this place walking along beside. Wintermute and Whitefeather, Sandy Banks and Skylark Stele, armoured and free-coated, welcoming and reproving, familiar cries of greeting echoing on the wind.    And then my hoof scuffs on the rough-hewn cobble, and we’re there. The wide dead doors of the Dun yawn cavernously on the right, and the empty courtyard whispers with the sense of things long-gone and never-there.  I can feel it rushing in, the stillness between two flat planes—the weight of it. Everything whirls: the thick-cut pavers underhoof, the long low wall, the sea, the sky, the grey, the Dun. Peripheries and borders, like celestial spheres, slowly closing in. And there in the centre, me, revolving slowly, little fresh graduate in her big mare’s world—merry-go-whirlwind in my little shrinking snowglobe.   She cuts through the fog, flittering beside me; I don’t remember her going. I don’t meet her gaze—I can’t stomach the look of understanding I’m sure I’ll find there.   Another look, a proper one this time. The courtyard is as it ever was: the inlaid whorl of cobbles, spiralling out from the centre like a Vendragon stone-garden; the stone benches shorn from the low walls at the periphery, scuffed by the passage of many hooves and satchels, whetstones and lunch-trays. The great doors, hewn from the living rock—one still stands a stony sentinel; the other lies in pieces, spilled along the floor of the foyer beyond like so much forgotten clod dragged in after a rain.    The state of things had never been in question. If anyone had been living here—if I’d even suspected any of the old garrison might still be out here . . .   . . .   It’s one thing to know the old house is empty but for the dust; it’s always another to walk those halls again, and know they’ve joined a thousand others in that final stillness, that— ‘Come on,’ I say, hoarsely, and that’s all I let myself have.   She follows close beside as I step through the weathered crack-stone archway. It’s pitch-dark within—not helped by the general dourness of the morning, but also confirming for me that the various crystal capacitors we’d kept around the place have finally run down. Without the ambient magic of proximate Life to sustain them, so many of our little contrivances have guttered out their last; only fitting that the lights would share the same fate.   As I usher her inside, and prepare to start lighting the torches we’ve brought, my ear turns to a faint plip from the courtyard without. A few seconds later, another follows, and then another, and by the time I’ve dug my head back out of the pack slung over her back, we’ve descended into a full-on drizzle. I grit my teeth silently. With luck, it’ll clear up before we have to leave; the path back up the canyon is hazardous enough without the added joy of rain slicking the rock the whole way back.    I hoof her one of the torches—a shambolic little thing of dead branches and alcohol-doused rags. ‘Hold this against the door.’   She does so, and I strike the villa’s hearth-flint sharply against the stone beside it. There’s a spark, and a flash, and she starts visibly as the rag goes up. I smile a little to myself; still got the trick for that down at least, though what I wouldn’t give to be able to spare the oil for a lantern . . .   ‘Thanks, scamp. Here, pass it over.’   She looks incredibly grateful to be rid of the torch, and I lift it high before turning to her again. ‘We’ll hold onto this one until we find a junction, and light another then if we need to.’   She looks nervous. ‘Don’t you know what it’s like in here?’   ‘The layout, you mean? Yes, but there’s no guarantee there hasn’t been a collapse or a blockage somewhere.’   I may be overstating things. Even at its busiest, the Dun wasn’t much larger than a Whinnypeg office block, end to end—maybe a couple hundred yards square, and cut just far enough into the cliff to be liveable without obliging some architect to really bother lifting a hoof—but it was full of blind corners and oddly-placed load-bearing columns that made orienting yourself that little extra bit weird. Even if everything’s still as it was back when I left, it’d be wise to set up checkpoints along the way before we start getting as far back as the smithy or the kitchens.   She kicks up a little cloud of dust as I lift the torch higher and try to get my bearings. Before us, the hall stretches out of sight beyond the range of our little makeshift light; to our immediate left, flush with the door, the empty guard-post; to the right, an expanse of graven wall. The crystal-lamps, as I had surmised, are dark, their little refractive-quartz hearts long since stilled by the lack of any latent magic to draw from. I can perhaps see the stirrings of humming white life in one or two along the nearest wall, but that might just as easily be a reflection of the torch in my upraised hoof. Over everything else lies the thick grey cladding of accumulated dust, and in places, the self-same sea-rime that had claimed bits of the ladder and some of the metal fixtures around the house.   If memory serves, the main hall ran almost the full length of the muster and the barracks. Two sets of barracks, by the end: that latter addition had been the storage space they’d converted just before I left, just on the other side of this wall. That space—what we’d laughingly called the ‘walk-in closet’—had fed into the communal showers, and the other further down towards the rec room and kitchens, which themselves shared a wall and a chimney with the smithy. Everything else from there—the store-rooms, the officers’ quarters, the shrines, the places I’d never really had much reason to go—were something of a question mark.   The kitchens, the stores, and maybe the smithy if we had the time and room on our backs; everything else was strictly discretionary. I’m fairly well-stocked on the weapon front, so depending on what we can find in the way of dry stores and seed, we may be out of here quicker than I thought.  Hoped?   What was I doing here?   ‘Hey, do you see that?’ Her whispered question startles me from my reverie.   ‘Hm?’   ‘There, at the end of the hall.’   I follow her hoof, squinting against the darkness. I’d be surprised if there’s something I’d missed, but you always used to say Marigold had better night-eye than the two of us put—   I feel my heart stop, then leap into my throat with a sickening lurch. There, thirty yards or so down the corridor, just before the T-junction leading to the stairs: two tiny, flickering embers, burning yellow-gold in the uneven light of the torch. There’s no way—it has to be a trick of the light, a reflection off of some brass reinforcing-plate on one of those damnable columns.   There was nothing to feed them out here. Even if the garrison had stayed until the last, beyond and past the Pyre—it couldn’t be.   Could it?   ‘’Sblood,’ I hiss. ‘Stay behind me—stay close—and get ready to run if I tell you.’   I feel her fall wordlessly into position behind me, even as the familiar prickling shudders up and down my spine. I haven’t brought a sword with me, just the little utility knife I use for digging open locks and the gutted wood of old chests. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone here; there wasn’t anyone that was supposed to know.   They never liked the light, but the fact that it’s just—sitting there, crouched low along the ground, those self-same eyes motionless, glittering.   I barely breathe, pressing myself and the little one flat up against the wall of the guard post. Slowly—carefully—I pull another torch from my satchel, and brush its ragged tip against the other. The flame sputters wildly in the dusty air, rising up hot and bright against the druidic whorls adorning the walls. With only the barest hint of magical thrust to aid my throw, I heave the second torch as far down the hall as I can.   It comes to rest, as I thought it would, directly at the hooves of whatever low-slung horror is waiting for us at the end of the hall.   The torch gutters as it hits the ground, but flares up again just as quickly, to reveal—what? A loose collection of chitinous plating, heaped where it had fallen; the glassy husks of many-lensed eyes, staring blankly; the glittering points of a dozen-odd broken bolt-heads protruding from its side.   A Changeling, and a very dead one, at that.   I breathe out a sigh of relief and exasperation. ‘It’s alright, kid. Good eye, but false alarm.’   She peers out from around me, looking tentatively from me to the Changeling and back again. ‘Are we sure it’s dead? It’s not going to—’   ‘No. Look around the floor there. See the blood? And the fire isn’t running from it.’   ‘Good.’ She nods, fervently, but I can feel the shiver run through her as she hugs my hind leg. ‘But what about the Changing? Didn’t you say they were all way far away?’   ‘Out west, yeah. Don’t worry, we’re going to figure out what he was up to.’   She’s not wrong; last we’d heard, the few remaining boils had thrown in their lot with the Crystal City garrison—something about the Heart having birthed their Dead-Queen. Everypony had kind of scratched their heads at that, but word was they were as vicious in their defence of the Dawnspire as they ever were squaring off against the Guard, so I doubt anyone was really complaining.   As to what our late friend was doing back here? Frankly, who knows. With the Lusting Gestalt—their sanity and guiding light—gone, a lot of them just went feral, roving across the continent. You’d hear a ghost-story now and then, maybe the local constabulary would get a call, but they were never much more threat to the outlying townships than a timberwolf or a lost Ursa-Fae cub. Rumour had it that with the hive-mind broken, some of the individual personalities were starting to reassert themselves; maybe they’d served here, in life, and felt some call to return; maybe it was one of my old bunkmates.   Can’t say I’m the biggest fan of the theory, but . . . still, better than the alternative.   Moving a little closer, I can’t say that anything I’m seeing really sets him apart from other bugs I’ve run across—none of the maroon “officer” barding, none of the extra horns their equivalent of casters would grow—and nothing to distinguish him as somebody I’d have known. They say you’re supposed to be able to recognise their faces; maybe that’s supposed to be some kind of comfort. Personally, I’ll take the uncertainty.   The shots, though—too many and too evenly-scattered to have come from a single crossbow, even in quick succession; that much I can tell even from this distance. Probably some kind of jury-rigged defensive measure he’d been too addled or too careless to notice. I can think of a few ponies off-hoof who’d be up to something like that—for better or worse, I was probably one of them.   Just to be safe, I do a quick sweep of the halls with my horn: nothing magic-based, as far as I can tell, and none of the tell-tale holes-where-magic-should-be that accompany the average stealthing-hex. Mechanical, then, if there’s anything left to be tripped. We’ll need to be careful.   I watch her out of the corner of my eye as I scan. If the state of the body rattles her at all, she doesn’t show it; she seems more curious than anything. The usual gears are turning, the usual connections being made, and I can predict with uncanny exactness the spots her eyes will be drawn to, the particular plates she’ll run a hoof over. There’s a kindness to the motion as she slides the poor sod’s eyes closed.   It’s safe to let her touch, distasteful as it might be; he’s been dead long enough even the characteristic stink of their insectile ichors has receded. That, and the peculiar resistance of his ilk to disease, means there’s little chance of anything even being there to pass on. Their biology, so finely-honed to the spread of their own pestilence after two thousand years’ careful tending, permitted no contention: can’t have your horde losing bodies to plague, and can’t have inventive minds weaponising plague against you.   She’ll still need to wash up before she puts anything in her mouth, of course, but that’s nothing if not a given with her. Fastidious. So many damn words I’d forget if not for her.   She draws level with me as I finish my sweep, pressing hard into my side for a moment in a gesture of solidarity and—perhaps—protectiveness. Mine won’t end up like that, or something like it. I return the sentiment, leaning a little into her little shoulder before turning to face her again.   ‘Alright, it looks like things should be pretty quiet, but we’re going to need to keep an eye out for mundane traps. Remember that old coot we had to deal with in the woods? Outside Pittsbull?’   She nods, clearly not savouring the memory any more than I do.   ‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing to be on the lookout for. Bolthead bombs, bowrigs, wires, loose tile or turned earth—you know the drill. We’ll scout nice and slow, room by room, use light early and often, just like we did up at the house. Any questions?’   She shakes her head, then frowns at the carcass beside us.   ‘Are you sure he was the only one?’   I sigh. ‘No, but since we’ve been sitting here talking and they haven’t come screaming out of the walls for us, I’d say it’s a safe bet that anyone else here is dead, gone, or indisposed to attacking us on sight. Be good for us if there were, though—might have set off a few more of the traps.’   She studies me for a moment, nods. ‘Okay.’   ‘Any objections to starting with the bunks? Figure that’ll be quicker than the kitchens.’   ‘No, that’s fine. Are they closest?’   ‘Yeah, a little way back down the main hall.’   ‘Okay.’   She falls in behind me, and we head back down the corridor in the direction we’d come, tracing our hoofsteps back through the dust.   The bunk-rooms are almost perfectly preserved, but for the accumulated grime. Every mattress has been stripped, and the moth-eaten cairns of neatly-folded bedding on each of the row of side-tables attests to the orderliness of the retreat. All the personal effects will have been cleared out, then: they were abandoning the position, and no matter what anyone might have told them, by the time we started recalling the border forces, we knew we probably weren’t coming back.   ‘Hey.’ Again she cuts through my reverie. ‘Are you sure you’re okay? You’ve been really quiet since we got here.’   ‘I’m—yeah. Just mulling.’   ‘Mulled any traps?’   ‘Probably not in here, no,’ I reply, shaking myself a little. ‘But just to be safe, let’s give it a once-over with the torch anyhow.’   A pair of sconces flanks the opening onto the main hall, their dull crystal lamps reflecting only the flicker of the burning rag. With some effort, I slip off the housing and swap it out for the torch. The crystal disappears into my saddlebag, and another torch flares to life in my hoof as I touch the rag to its mate. The uneven light is little comfort in a room this size; the musty corners are still swallowed in cavernous darkness, and only the faintest glisten here and there along the high ceiling marks the cobwebs no doubt wafting there. Fortunately, a quick search reveals no tripwires or other signs of traps. It does make sense: with the official word being that the place would ultimately be regarrisoned, the barracks would more than likely be the first stop for future deployments. Let the troops get their packs off, give them a chance to settle in, and then start having them disarm the improvised popguns and rivet-mines.   I chuckle a little at that, and an inquisitive head turns back my way, but I wave her off. There isn’t much to see here—the beds are stripped, the trunks are open and empty, and the showers are dry and barren—but as we wander through the long rows, I notice that characteristic furrow beginning to show through her mane again.   ‘Something up, scamp?’   ‘I—hmm.’ She purses her lips at the nearest neatly-carved wall. ‘Why—no, never mind.’   ‘No, go on.’   ‘Well—I guess I don’t understand why they made the walls all pretty. It was only soldiers stationed here, right? And underground? Isn’t that a little . . .’ —she struggles for the word— ‘. . . not necessary?’   That gets a bemused chuff from me. ‘This from the girl who’s been living in a very fancy house for the past few months?’   ‘Ohhhh.’ She sticks out her tongue. ‘See? I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.’   I laugh. ‘No, it’s a fair question. It struck me when I first showed up, too—you can see more of it out in the hall. If I had to guess, well—even soldiers need to feel like they’re at home, right? You’re already stuck out in a rabbit warren at the edge of the world—shouldn’t you feel at least a little like it was built with you in mind?’   ‘But isn’t carv—carving? stone kind of a big deal? Like, it’s not as easy as drawing a picture or something, right?’   ‘Well,’ I demur, poking my nose into the second set of showers and finding nothing for my trouble but a centipede the size of my hoof that disappears down the nearest drain as soon as the light hits it. ‘I guess it depends on the artist, right? There’s a lot you can do by horn if you’re already trained. I think I remember someone saying that the rock around here was pretty easy to work, too.’   Another huff. ‘Unicorns have it so lucky.’   ‘Ah, don’t worry—if you really want to learn, I’m sure we can find you a rock-hammer or something to get started.’   ‘And books?’   ‘And books.’   She immediately perks up. ‘Hey! Is there a library here? Can we go look at that next?’   I lead the way back out into the main hall, adopting my best Ponyville hayseed accent. ‘Heh—naw, we weren’t that excitin’ out here, bucko. Jess’ maps an’ dirty dishes ‘n back.’   ‘Aw.’ Visible deflation.   ‘But, that said, if there’s anything left over in the officers’ quarters, I’ll let you have first crack at ‘em. How’s that sound?’   ‘Yay!’ I have to catch her by the tail as she goes zipping past me down the corridor.     The next few rooms have been scoured as thoroughly as the barracks; the guard-post is empty but for a single, salt-eaten wooden stool, and the most exciting thing in the muster is the sandbag training dummy. ‘Mr Smiley’, we used to call him, and he almost got his head taken off as the goofy chalked-on grin loomed out of the darkness at me in the dim torchlight. The weapon-racks are fairly dire, too: only a hoof-full of second-rate spears, axes, and a very dented iron hammer. Everything else must’ve walked out with the garrison.   The only item of real interest is the ballista tucked away in the far corner nearest the guard-post. It’s a monstrous thing, easily two or three yards across at the cams, and probably twice that in length, and in obvious disrepair: the limbs are buckled and uneven, and the tensor-cables have all but rotted away. Even if I could string the thing back together, I’d need to make two or three trips just to get the whole assembly back up the cliffside.   Besides, what exactly would I do with it? Nail the passing wildlife? These bolts were meant for dragons, for skies’ sake—they’re as big around as cherry-trunks. And as comforting as the promise of friendly artillery is to any soldier, there are only so many wolves and snakes one can reduce to a fine mist before it starts to lose its amusement value. I think the little one would object in any event.   Passing by the great doors out onto the patio, it’s evident that the rain has no intention of abating any time soon; the steady patter and dribble of drops along the wide stone platform is equal parts familiar and aggravating. There’s plenty for us to do here, and plenty of time in which to go about it, but that nagging part of me that’s developed so acutely this last couple of years yearns to be back inside my well-shielded oil-slick cocoon of enchantments and comfortable paranoia.   She, on the other hoof, is quite clearly making herself at home down here. After the initial scare, and a single stern reminder about tripwires, she’s found herself—in order—diving excitedly under the beds in the barracks to hunt dust-bunnies (she’d apparently forgotten the distinction until I reminded her); trying in vain to lift a horn-axe; and holding an animated, sotto voce conversation with Mr Smiley when she thought I wasn’t looking.   For whatever it’s worth, I did politely pretend I wasn’t. It’s . . . well, it's reassuring to see her back up to her usual standard of bounciness, especially after this last few days. She’ll always have the Pyre in her eyes, but that spark still needs tending. Only risk is carelessness, and that’s what she’s got me around for, right?   Right.   . . .   I know. It’s the same look I catch her giving me from time to time—beyond calculation, beyond knowing, wanting.   She’s found one of those beautiful plumed parade helmets in a back cupboard while I’ve been surveying the artillery. It’s comically oversized, of course, and it rattles around her head like a Nightmare Night rat-skull lantern. As the heavy visor slides down over her eyes for the fifth time in the last minute, she asks me excitedly if I ever used to wear one of these—beams when I chuckle out my assent. I lift it over her head, careful not to let the cobwebby straps get caught in her mane, and brush the dust out of the beautiful purple-pink colonel’s plume. She sits back on her haunches, enraptured, as I explain the meaning: rank, stature, heraldry, royalty, godliness.   Bitter. That’s a word. And all the worse because I’m aware of it.   It would be so easy to fault her for it. It would be so easy to fault myself for recognising it. Knowing I’ll never hold my baby girl again, knowing that for all the cavorting, all the eager questions and the attentiveness and the hard work she puts in, she’ll never be the little filly we used to chase giggling through the White Tails after the autumn runners, or drag out of the fights she’d picked with the big mean boys at school.    It was never hard to fault myself for wanting her to be.   I can’t—I don’t have the luxury of indulging this. Not now, not when there are monsters and traps and skies know what else afoot, here in this dusty little memory at the edge of the world. And I know this isn’t getting better; the last few days have been proof enough of that. The more time I have to think, the less imminent the danger, the more I wander.   And that’s the real Tartarus of it, I know: if it were just as simple as lying down and relaxing for an hour, a day, finding someplace safe enough for both of us to let those walls down, I could almost—almost—see myself doing it. But so long as we’re still on the road, so long as there’s still a duty of care to be done, I still get to be of two minds about this. Just as with the horn, my magic, slipping.   And all the worse because I’m aware of it.   I take a steadying breath as I slide the helmet into my bag. Useless in a stand-up fight (of course), but gold is worth its weight in rations if we should chance to meet an entrepreneurial sort on the road between this house and the next. And if all else fails, it’s a good conductor for magic—assuming I can find a way to slag it down into proper filament, I could probably wring another two or three hours per casting out of the wards, assuming I could find the right runic arrangement.     She’s standing impatiently by the door, sneaking what I suspect she thinks are surreptitious glances at the chitinous husk mouldering at the far end of the hall. I don’t keep her waiting long.   The T-junction and the length of corridor leading to the kitchens are mercifully free of traps, though I do find the device that caught the Changeling: little more than a tin of black powder and arrowheads, as surmised. I pull her behind the adjoining wall, warn her to cover her ears, and roll the tin down the length of the junction—two more thundering pops, in quick succession, and we’re home free. I admire the delicate patterns the barbed points make in the dusty walls as we pass; cold-iron constellations, flickering with reflected light.   It’s a fleeting comfort. Even as I guide her to the kitchens at the far end of the rightmost branch, the sickly-sweet stench of rot assails the both of us, overpowering—we can write off the fruit preserves, then, and maybe more. The little one gags audibly beside me.   ‘Oh, eww,’ she groans, looking at me with undisguised distaste. ‘This smells worse than that house outside Manehatten. Could I have a bandanna, please?’   ‘One step ahead of you, kiddo,’ I murmur, halfway through my saddlebags. I’d made her wait outside that house, and I’m still damn glad of it. ‘Pink again?’   ‘Yeah.’   I keep a half-dozen kerchiefs and sundry-cloths in the bottom of my saddlebag for exactly this sort of thing. Cotton-mix is just about ideal for our purposes—warm in the winter, cool in the summer, moisture-wicking enough for sweat and thick enough when soaked to keep the worst smells out. They used to sell these things by the bushel at every gift shop and grocer’s stand from here to San Palomino, so even when one inevitably does start falling apart, there’s two-score standbys in hoof’s reach.   She does hers up deftly, dabbing water from the canteen across the muzzle; I do the same with mine. It’s a little musty, and the excess damp dribbles clammily on my chest, but the rancid pall wafting out of the kitchen is abated somewhat.   ‘Ready, my little bandito?’   ‘Mhm!’ She beams at me from behind the floral pink print. Alas, it was more than just the preserves. Whatever the garrison didn’t pack for the road, the rats appear to have made quick work of in their absence: grain-sacks torn, seed-packs scattered and gnawed-upon. A dozen carelessly-placed mousetraps—some sprung, some still occupied—litter the floor near the far wall   And as for the preserves? Of the four casks I can see from the doorway, at least two have split and are weeping a sickly, pale-pink mush coating the rough-hewn tile from stove to pantry. A thousand-thousand pale somethings writhe in the cracks where they’ve pushed the staves apart—the idiots didn’t even bother to air-seal them properly before they left.   ‘Damn.’   ‘Is it that bad?’   ‘Yeah. Do you see the—’   ‘Oh.’   ‘Yep,’ I sigh. ‘Goat-skulled morons, the lot. Come on, this place is shot.’   ‘Was there something you really wanted to find in there?’   ‘Well, there was this one cooper who really knew his way around a peach . . .’   I tell her the story as we round on our heels and make for the smithy—Cobbler’s ranch background, a little of what he’d shared with us about his family and the longstanding feud with the prominent families of Ponyville. He was a sniffy sort, and probably a poorer fit for the Guard than he or his family would’ve ever admitted, but damned if he couldn’t whip up a gourmet dessert out of nothing but fruit and reconstituted flour. It seems to distract her well enough.   The smithy is connected to the kitchen by a shared hearth, so it's still masks-on in here. Fortunately, however, it seems to be in much better repair than its neighbour—the in-progress jobs are neatly stacked on the several low stone workbenches lining the walls, and several buckets of scrap-iron scattered throughout. I nose carefully through the buckets, picking out a few of the choicest bits of scrap. There’s plenty there that’s free of rust, and a quick sniff at the bandanna suggests the smith was generous with his oil. Somepony around here could be counted on to do his damn job, at least.   That would suggest that the forge is likely in pretty good condition too. I briefly consider bringing the thing back online—at least long enough to work on some of the weapons here, or those we’ve sequestered back up at the house—but, no. Even assuming the rats hadn’t completely blocked off the chimney, the smoke would (and always had been) a dead giveaway. It’s a shame, though—there’s plenty here that we could use. I grab a couple of spare whetstones, make a few mental notes in case we ever end up finding ourselves down here again, and lead the way back into the hall. There are no traps along the other arm of the cross-hall, save one about halfway down its length—a thin, well-oiled length of piano-wire, roughly neck-height, and taut as bowstring. I can see the little one’s eyes go wide as I oh-so-carefully cut the thing down.   That leaves the shrine, and the officers’ quarters upstairs. I’d never had much cause to find myself in either, really; there were plenty of avid practitioners among the soldiery (and I personally still think Whitefeather was a closet Luminate, with the way she’d go on about Ascension), but I kept my head down on that front as well as I did with the upper crust.  I sweep my hoof around the door, but—no, nothing. The solid oak glides gently along its hinge as I push, the familiar runic relief swirling cool and smooth under my hoof. I know if I stopped here long enough I could trace the whorls as easily as the spiralling pavers outside—the same door, always, from here to Vanhoover. Every shrinelet, every cathedral I’ve ever set hoof in, ever seen blown to smithereens by a mad-eyed cocksure prophet bore the same mark.   Welcome friends.   It’s a small and cluttered room that greets me as the door bumps softly off the wall. Nothing grand or ornate—no ethereal beam of watery light pouring in from a convenient crack in the high stone ceiling, no poignant, scattered ornaments of forgotten spirituality. Four little altars at the corners, four cramped pews facing them, and a small dry fountain filling the space between. It’s dark, and dusty, and perhaps a little forlorn in the flickering light of the fresh torch I drop into the bracket by the door, but otherwise well-tended. Even the tale-tapestries along the altars seem to have escaped the worst of the cavern mildew, and shine with their usual rich weave of thread and minute gems.   I hesitate on the threshold.   The door, the torch—reflex action. A quick sweep for traps, a quick stock of provisions, soldier and scavenger, again and again, as I would for any other room in any other garrison in any other corner of the world. Flickering in the dim light, caught in tableau: one hoof flung wide out to hold back the little one, one held high with torch or sword or timeworn tool. That was never the hard part.   What am I doing here?   The little one, who’s been craning desperately over my shoulder for a better look, ducks under my outstretched hoof and trots a few paces into the room, pulling down her bandana. She turns this way and that, eyes wide, taking in every part of the dusky space—the altars, the elegant fountain, the busts. A whispered ‘wow’ is all she can manage.   It’s enough. I follow her in, haltingly, and swing the door softly shut behind us. The torch burns bright in the sepulchral space, in the churning chasm behind her eyes.   ‘What is this place?’ she murmurs, turning around and around and around.   ‘A shrine.’   ‘What’s that?’   The words almost won’t come. My eyes are fixed on one of the busts—the golden one, phoenix-wreathed, beatific. ‘A place ponies would come to be close to the Sisters.’   ‘Their sisters?’   ‘Sorry—the Tetrad. It’s another name for the Four.’   ‘Ohh.’ Her forehead wrinkles slightly, trying to follow my gaze. ‘But—they were there, right? Way back when, all they had to do was go and talk to them. Wait . . .’   Her eyes light up. ‘Ohhh! I get it! These heads were magical, right? The sisters could talk through them any time they wanted! That’s so c—’   ‘No.’ I don’t mean to cut her off, but it’s that or choke. Hate. ‘They were just ponies, after all. As good as they were, they couldn’t be there for all of us at once. They had to raise the sun and the moon, govern their lands, eat, sleep—all the things we’ve talked about. So if someone—a soldier—felt lonely, or worried, they could come here and . . . ask for help, or guidance. Or comfort.’   ‘So they couldn’t speak through the heads, but—could they hear?’   ‘Plenty of folk thought so, yeah.’   A pregnant pause.   ‘Did you ever—’   ‘No.’ Still too quick. Damn it.   ‘Oh.’ She fidgets a little. ‘Well, um—would it be okay if I asked for help? For—’ She swallows, trying to read my face. ‘For both of us?’   I blink, very hard, lean down, touch my forehead to hers. ‘Of course you can.’   She relaxes into me instantly, a rattling exhale shaking her tiny frame. I let her choose when to break the embrace.   She does, eventually; looks around, sniffling a little. ‘So, um. Which of the Sisters are still alive?’   I point to the corners nearest the door—to the polished obsidian bust, stern and unwavering; to the coral, eyes alight with laughter and love. She nods, squares her shoulders, and trots past me towards Dawn.   I leave her to it, taking a moment to sneak a look behind the fountain and the other shrines. A few small coins are scattered around the base of the fountain, and a small, tasteful bouquet of dried flowers has been laid on Dusk’s altar, but beyond that there’s very little of value here. Should probably have expected that.   When I turn back around, she’s clambered up onto one of the pews, looking helplessly over her shoulder at me.   ‘I don’t—I don’t know what I’m supposed to do? Is there something you’re supposed to say, or—’   I am not the pony for this.   I stand there for a moment, then falteringly make my way over to the fountain and settle on the rim closest to her pew. ‘Well—Tartarus, kid. What do you want to ask?’   ‘That we, uh—well, that we’re safe, y’know? And that there’s lots of food and shelter and books to read, and—’ She studies me for a moment, lost. ‘And that—that we’re okay, y’know?’   ‘We’re always okay, kiddo.’   ‘But forever, though.’   ‘Well—’ I bite my lip, change tack. ‘Mm. As I understand it, there’s nothing you really need to say. You just . . . talk. Out loud or in your brain. Like—like wishing on a star, right?’   I’m grasping, but it seems to take; she frowns, but nods. ‘Thanks.’   ‘Any time, scamp. Do you—do you want me to stick around, or . . .?’   ‘No, it’s okay. Did you want to check upstairs? I can come join you when I’m done.’   A moment’s hesitation. Then: ‘That works. Just keep the door shut until you’re ready to come up?’   She nods emphatically. ‘Mhm! Don’t worry, I’ll be safe.’   I ruffle her mane. ‘Alright. See you in a minute.’   ‘Okay!’   A smile forces its way onto my lips as I rise and slide carefully behind the pew towards the door. I cast one last look over my shoulder at her—at the bust rising behind her, eyes glittering in the flickering torchlight.   --maybe we’ll both get what we want.   I roll the echo on my tongue a moment, watching as she settles into the bench: a little pale dust-bunny with a little pink scarf wrapped around her neck. Then the door is gliding shut behind me, and the stairwell looming darkly ahead.     It’s not a long escapade, unfortunately. Something gave—or, more likely, detonated, considering the state of our Changeling friend down the hall—in the ceiling along the upper floor, burying it and the upper part of the spiralling stairwell in its wake. The rest of the structure is sound enough that I’m not worried about it collapsing on our heads, but just the same, it’d probably be best if we didn’t stick around too much longer.   Is it a loss? Possibly. As far as I know, the records-room was up there alongside the officers’ bunks, but beyond some general strategy documents and the locations of a few local emergency stashes, there’s likely not much we missed. Maps we have aplenty, and I’m familiar enough with the local geography to get us past the mountains again if we need to.   That’s what I tell myself, at least. There’s always the niggling little worm of a doubt that there’s a magical flying spear buried under the rubble up there, or one of those magic endless tablecloths our favourite fairy tales used to bang on about, but there’s no point frustrating myself (or my stomach) with indemonstrables.   The little one isn’t finished yet, which gives me some . . . time. Not the most valued of commodities at the moment, I’ll admit—too much chance of another wander, especially given what I know is lurking on the other side of that door.   Ugh. Too many memories, and none of them pleasant. I forcibly push them aside, pulling open my bag and—belatedly—pulling down my own ragged bandana. The sepulchral must of the place sweeps into my nostrils again, familiar as discomfiting, and after a moment, settles into the background. I shrug off the saddlebag, and poke through it in search of a reasonable distraction, focussing firmly on the dim contents of the bag.   After a brief shuffle, I remember the sandwiches we’ve brought, and unwrap a thin stack of bread, pressed wheatgrass, and a relish of indeterminate pantry origin. It’s vinegary, and a little sour, but the expiration date wasn’t for another ten years—how awful could it actually be?   It’s quiet. It’s . . . comfortable, almost. I chew; I swallow; I take another bite. No screaming, no panic, no wild-eyed excitement over the latest bit of flora or fauna. Just me, my cud, and the sweeping stone patterns guttering in the torchlight. Perking an ear past my own chewing, it sounds like the rain has stopped—thank Tartarus for small favours.   I polish off the sandwich and a small bag of long-stale hay-chips before the door creaks open and Herself wanders out. She grins when she smells the relish, and wordlessly, settles in next to me. I hoof over another wrapped sandwich, and she tucks in with gusto.   For awhile, we just sit there, chewing steadily through our rations, in companionable silence. Then she gets that look in her eye, and turns to me, mouth full of daisy, and—   There is a distant clatter on the pavers outside.   Everything stops. We lock eyes for a moment, and scramble into silent action. Wrappings are carefully stowed, bags closed, bodies pressed flat against the wall. I slide forward as stealthily as I can, and she follows close behind.   The Changeling is where we left him—good. The corridor behind is empty—lit, obvious, but empty. Equally good. I slow to a crawl as I approach the corner of the cross-hall. My hooves barely brush the packed-dirt floor; she, feather-light, I can barely hear breathing. A chunk of rubble from the stairs floats silently in my field.   Tense seconds pass as I wait at the corner—a sign, another slip. There’s no sound but the crackling of torches, and the low thrum of my steady heartbeat in my ears. If there’s someone there, he’s being as careful as we are. No obvious shambling gait, no characteristic choking breath. A live one, then, assuming it wasn’t just a falling bit of masonry.   Another soft scuff, and a stifled curse. That’s it, then—he’s inside, the amateur, about halfway down the corridor. Maybe level with the barracks? I can hear the water dripping from his coat, the slight shuffle of a jerkin. Is he even trying?   My mind whirls. There’s no way that anyone is out here by chance, no way he could’ve made it down here without seeing the house. That leaves two options: either he’s the lucky scav that somehow scored himself a map of military installations along the coast, or—   Then I hear the characteristic whirr of spellcraft—feel the gentle probing touch of another field against the contours of my own, and my decision’s made. I whirl out from around the corner, magical sling poised to put a dragon’s fist-sized chunk of crafted stonework through his horn.   We lock gazes for perhaps half a second, and I see you in his eyes, see Ponyville in the burns scarring his tattered scout’s vestment.   ‘Major?’ he whispers, and the rubble drops from my field with a clatter.