//------------------------------//
// The Plan Begins 
// Story: The Immortal Dream 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

We were too late. Despite my best efforts to hurry us along, the sun was rising with us still in the Day District. And Kitty was starting to panic.

"Noooo!" Kitty whined at a high enough pitch to hurt my ears, running in frantic circles around the trolley of cakes she was supposed to be pulling - a trolley the bakery had been kind enough to loan me, since apparently this happened often and they knew how it went. "It's too hot! Kitty's cakes are all melting!"

"This wouldn't have happened," I panted, trying to stay cool, "if you had taken my offer of a rein check so  could buy them... when it was cooler out..."

Kitty started shoveling cake into her mouth, which struck me as a terrible idea because sugar made you thirsty and so did heat.

I leaned against a wall as the sun peeked above the old dam to the east, rapidly heating the mountain crater around me. We weren't in direct sunlight yet, but the opposite side of the city was, and I could already see heat distortions rising in the air between me and the far mountain wall. Very few other ponies were out and about, and the ones I did see looked modestly rich - I vaguely recalled Gerardo telling me about how owning property where it was cool enough to venture outside in the daytime was something of a flexing contest among the bourgeoisie. Maybe these ponies were socially obligated to be out and about to prove their investment had worth.

It sounded dumb to me. I wanted to be anywhere but here. But from the looks myself and Kitty were getting, everyone else clearly thought we were the dumb ones.

As Kitty panicked, the cakes started looking slightly more solid, and I perked up in interest. How...? Right, her special talent could cool things off. I had forgotten about that after Jamjars told me early on.

What else had Jamjars told me about Kitty? That her talent was supposed to be kept under wraps because Cold Karma didn't like the signals it might send if someone else was waving around a way to chill things? With how much clout Kitty and Jamjars apparently had among Cold Karma executives, or at least with Lilith, I suddenly wondered if that was the whole truth. Kitty broke into a jail, hijacked a teleport and openly defied Lilith in the middle of her lair. Even if you could do those things, you wouldn't come even close if you were concerned with 'not sending the wrong message'.

In fact, when I put it like that, it didn't feel like a partial truth; it was flat-out bogus. That meant there was a reason Kitty's talent was kept under wraps that was good enough to lie about. But what could a reason like that be?

I wracked my brain, but couldn't find any remotely plausible explanations. Then again, nothing about Kitty's behavior and the way she was treated was plausible either, so maybe I needed some outlandish explanations instead? Like two wrongs making a right, or the square root of negative one suddenly existing again when multiplied by itself...

Well, there was one possibility. One I really didn't want to consider, because I was afraid it might make far too much sense if I gave it any thought: what if Kitty was a windigo?

I felt myself wince, just thinking it. It was the first thing I thought when I first saw her, too, and I brushed it off then as paranoia and a snowflake special talent, but... maybe Jamjars wasn't lying about Kitty's special talent sending the wrong signals after all. Ludwig, I remembered, had been extremely proficient at generating large amounts of ice. Suppose cake cooling was just a fraction of Kitty's true power, and if she went all-out, she could legitimately threaten Cold Karma's air conditioning market? For all I knew, she might even be able to cool the Ironridge climate. That kind of leverage would certainly let her push the executives around.

Furthermore, Ludwig had been a chaotic goof, and the Composer a skilled, yet childish actor. Kitty was both of these things. I didn't want to personality profile a species when I had only met two members, but... it made enough sense that I felt suddenly cold.

Her eyes are normal, I reminded myself. When Corsica was possessed, her eyes lost their pupils and her irises became disks. Kitty wasn't like that. That was how I convinced myself she wasn't a windigo in the first place.

Of course, I had a set of contact lenses that could make my slitted batpony eyes look round. And I had no idea if the iris disks were a universal sign of possession, or just Ludwig's fashion sense. This wasn't as solid an alibi as I wanted.

My one solace was that if I was right, it was fairly unlikely Kitty and the Composer were on the same side. Possible, perhaps, but the Composer worked for Lilith and Kitty felt like Lilith's enemy. In fact, it would make a lot of sense if some windigoes were on Cold Karma's side, getting their hooves on the Whitewing technology and airships for their minions and whatever else, and Kitty was uniquely dangerous to Cold Karma because she bucked that trend. Ludwig had mentioned, I vaguely recalled, that windigo politics were a thing.

...If that was true, the odds Cold Karma was cooling the coolant they piped around the city using windigoes were uncomfortably high.

I hated this theory. I wanted windigoes to be a thing of the past and bad dreams. But I knew the Composer was still here in Ironridge, I knew windigoes were somewhere among the levers of power, and everything I had just put together did too good a job at explaining things that confounded me before... I couldn't ignore this.

Quietly, I said a prayer to anything listening that I wouldn't be right. And then I started thinking of ways to test my theory.





"Wow, you ponyos are a bunch of killjoys. I cannot believe you do not want me dead so I can come back to haunt you from beyond the grave. Going once, going twice..."

I perked up in alarm. Ludwig! No... I was dreaming? Focus, Halcyon. Trying to get home...

Right. I was reasonably sure that I, dehydrated and exhausted, had finally gotten Kitty and her cakes onto a train home, my brain working in overdrive the entire time, and now... I guess I had fallen asleep on the train. That was inconvenient. Hopefully Kitty was in a mood to wake me when we got where we were going.

Also, go figure I would dream about this. Served me right for thinking so much about windigoes.

"Fine," Ludwig pouted, hovering in my old Icereach apartment, "I did not want to be killed by a bunch of wimpy shrimpy losers like you anyway. Losers."

My apartment was packed. Me, Corsica, Mother, Elise, an unconscious changeling Rondo, Leif, Ludwig, an incapacitated Composer, and half a dozen yaks all filled a space meant for a tiny family, the air crackling with tension. My body felt weighted with chains; my dreams were realistic enough that I could still feel my old physical and mental state as if it were the present. This was hardly a vacation... but maybe I could make use of it. A chance to inspect the two windigoes up close again could give me a pattern or tell I had missed before.

"But hey, thanks for playing with me!" Ludwig carried on. "Stop by my hole again sometime if you ever want to look at my cool machines, or you are the underdog and need an expert in making the other guy feel like garbage!"

Now that was a thought. If I straight-up asked Ludwig how to tell if someone was a windigo, odds were he'd humor me. Unless he'd lie and try to trick me into making false accusations and starting a fight with an innocent. And it wasn't like I had a way to go visit him in the first place...

Actually, maybe I did. I had a teleporter destination pattern card that, perhaps, was pointed at another teleporter that in turn was set to visit the hideout. Why make an exit without an entrance? But there were so many reasons that was a bad idea I couldn't even begin to count.

Time fuzzed, the dream speeding forward.

"Why would you believe Ludwig was doing that?" the Composer was saying, trapped between two watchful, suspicious, muscular yaks. "It may have said I forced it to act, but what measure is the word of a creature of chaos? I presented a convenient scapegoat, and Ludwig made use of it. The creature was merely following its impulses, both in returning here and in leaving. There is no more logic or meaning to it than that."

Elise looked calmly unconvinced. "And what is this ideology you share?"

The Composer watched her, glowing with the icy blue I now associated with windigo magic. "Our goal? It is simple. Find our creators and ask them why we were made. And, if we find the answer lacking, kill them."

In the dream, I hit my head against the couch. But now that I had more distance between me and this episode, I was curious: had that line been repeated often enough that it might be true? Where had windigoes come from? Who made them, and why? It sounded like the Composer knew the first half, but not the latter. What did an air conditioning megacorp in Ironridge have to do with finding out?

"And how does this relate to taking me or these children captive?" Elise pressed.

The Composer glowed. "That was not my doing. Rather, it was that of my associates. I do not keep a close watch on their moonlighting activities. If you are curious, perhaps you should ask them instead."

Internally, I hesitated. Ludwig and the Composer had brought me no end of grief during our brief meeting, and the Composer made a point of greeting me when I first arrived in Ironridge. But, aside from being generally insane and often annoying, Kitty didn't seem to have it out for me, and in fact sometimes did things that could feasibly be construed as helping. Like getting me through the Flame District, which I still couldn't wrap my head around but suddenly made a lot more sense if she had the kind of powers that let Ludwig-Corsica go tromping around through a blizzard...

That did it. I was officially convinced Kitty had windigo powers. Too many things made sudden sense that had no explanation otherwise.

The point, though, was that windigoes in general might not actually have it out for me. They apparently left the general population of Ironridge to their own devices, and Kitty sometimes kept me safe in her own weird little way. Maybe if I minded my own business and kept my nose out of whatever they were planning, their plans actually wouldn't involve me? It was a tantalizing thought, although I did still want to get back at the Composer for-

"Boop," Kitty giggled, repeatedly poking my nose with a hoof, her tongue hanging out and bearing telltale traces of cake frosting. "Boop! Boo-"

I blocked her with a swift wing over my face, sitting up reflexively before I could fully awaken. "Hey, what gives?"

"It's almost time for home, lady!" Kitty chirped, the train around us almost entirely empty. She burped a sugary burp and wagged her tail. "Wakey wakey!"

I tried to focus, realizing that the train was, indeed, sliding to a stop. "Oh? Er, thanks..."

Yeah. Maybe this wasn't someone I needed to pick a fight with. If Kitty was the one thing standing between me, my friends, Jamjars, and a sinister corporation, I could find bigger things to worry about than where she got her powers.





With a clatter of wheels, I helped Kitty force the cake trolley through the door and into Jamjars' apartment. "We're hooooome!" Kitty sang as we entered.

Jamjars was the first to appear, clad in a cozy robe with a novel floating in her aura. "Ah! Home in one piece, I hope..." Her expression turned wry when she saw the trolley. "You double-dipping little munchkin."

Ansel was hot on her heels. "Oi!" he yelled, barging past and making straight for me. "Hallie! What even happened to you? The first thing I know-"

"Hey," Corsica greeted, bringing up the rear and looking about as tired as I felt. "Big day?"

"Kitty gots a brain," Kitty was explaining to Jamjars, animated, in a voice slightly louder than necessary, her tongue hanging out in excitement. "Kitty got promised lotsa cakes to look out for Hallie-yawn, but she lied and didn't say she already got promised cakes, and got even more cakes, and now Jamjars still owes Kitty cakes, so Kitty gets twice the-"

Jamjars closed Kitty's mouth with her aura, but was unsuccessful at getting her to retract her tongue. "I can see that, yes, you're very smart. You can have more after you finish what you already have."

Kitty wagged her tail.

"You bribed her with cakes to come follow me around?" I glanced at Jamjars, then at Kitty. "And you got me to give you even more? Sneaky git."

Kitty wagged her tail harder.

Ansel was hovering, clearly looking for a way into the conversation. "Hallie, about what happened in the Earth District, look, I'm-"

"I know." I gave him a reassuring nod. "And I'm alright, but I'm dead tired, so if you wanna make it up to me, can you help the cake monger there get her haul downstairs? And then maybe return the trolley for me tomorrow? I'll talk about it after I crash for a bit."

He hesitated. "Er, yeah. Leave it to me."

"Hey." I nodded to Corsica, as Ansel and Kitty turned to wrangling the trolley. "Gonna go sleep for three days. If I'm not up by then, wake me with the smell of food, yeah?" I cracked a smile.

"Glad to see your psyche made it through in one piece," Corsica replied. "I've heard about what was going on. Sweet dreams, I guess. But take a bath first. You smell like a boot that stepped in Egdelwonk."

That was a good idea. So I did. I opted for a shower, suspecting I was filthy enough that sitting in my own bathwater would do more harm than good. Water pounded against me, streamed from my mane and my tail, the air misted and the drain gurgled. I was back home, safe and sound. This past night had definitely brought back memories of the Aldebaran incident, not least because Leif herself was involved, but... it had been easier, this time. And I hadn't even gotten stabbed at the finish.

I remembered the series of contrivances and miracles that conspired to keep me safe last time, as I fumbled and floundered and tripped over my compulsions against giving it my all. This time, I didn't feel as though I had sabotaged myself, but I had also been undeniably lucky. Even if there was a reason - Kitty - I had made it out of Lilith's lair intact, I was lucky to have Kitty in the first place. I was lucky the police hadn't been more aggressive in the aftermath of whatever happened in that weapon store. I was lucky Fort Starlight had been filled with vaguely sane and reasonable ponies... Only vaguely, because Valey existed.

It wasn't impossible to wonder, once again, if something bigger wasn't out there, looking out for me and seeing me safely through to the end of the day.





When I finally awoke, Corsica was doing her mane. I didn't immediately let her know I was awake. For a while, I just stayed where I was, relishing the normalcy.

But it couldn't last too long, after all. I had made a promise to myself to go back to the Flame Barracks and look for Leitmotif within three days, and I wasn't sure if the previous night counted as day one or day zero. At some point, I would have to get up and face the daunting amount of risks and work that would entail...

Did I? I had work today, and tomorrow. A half day now, a full day then. I was presently free of any overeager executives, passionate police or shifty shokeeps. I could just forget about all this until it inevitably reared its head again, and try to be normal.

It was a tempting possibility, all the more so now that I was safe and stable in my own bed. And yet, I knew this stability wouldn't last. I looked at Corsica; she didn't see me watching her, but there was a tiredness in her eyes that spoke to too many things on her mind. I knew too little of what she did, day to day, working for Egdelwonk and his junior dumpster despot corps. And I knew nothing of what Ansel was up to, other than that he regularly prowled locations as seedy as Blueleaf. Even if I could sit back and enjoy this, could my friends?

Maybe I should ask them.

But, before I did anything else, I needed to have a chat with Jamjars.

"Morning," Corsica greeted as I rolled out of bed, looking for my coat.

"Morning?" I looked at her sideways.

"Yeah," she said. "You slept through the whole day and the whole night after. Jamjars said not to worry about missing work. We washed your clothes, by the way." She pointed at my coat and boots, neatly folded by the door.

I glanced self-consciously at myself. My stomach growled. Apparently, I really had been that tired.

"Thanks," I said, getting dressed.

"For?" Corsica was still working on her mane.

"I dunno. For worrying about me," I said with a shrug. "You looked like you had a lot on your mind when I got home. Now, too."

Corsica brushed. "...Thanks for noticing. Now get on with your bad self."

So I did, hoping Jamjars hadn't gone to bed yet and that there was still food to be found at this hour. Fortunately, I was rewarded: not only was she in the kitchen, but she was fixing herself a snack.

"Well, if it isn't the mare of the hour," Jamjars greeted, heating up some frozen hay fries. "You sure slept for a while. Hungry?"

"Yeah. Thanks." I took a seat, wondering how to begin.

Eventually, Jamjars seated herself too, food in tow. She took a bite. It didn't seem like she was going to speak first.

"So you sent Kitty after me," I eventually said. "When you heard we got arrested. To look out for me?"

"I did," Jamjars sighed. "And I'm sorry she fleeced you for it when I was already promising a reward. I can see you're just overflowing with questions about how a crackpot little kid with her tongue hanging out has that easy of a time pushing ponies around?"

"I've got a few theories," I answered, choosing my words carefully. "I know it's an act, though. She... talked normal for a bit when I promised her the cakes."

Jamjars' eyebrows went up in surprise. "Did she, now? Intriguing. She usually only does that for ponies she trusts substantially."

"How much do you know about where I went last night?" I asked.

"Blueleaf, jail, Lilith's school, Flame District, and I heard you went through Fort Starlight on your way out," Jamjars told me. "And in case you were wondering, that's not the intended entrance or exit to that school. It has a front door. I've already had a talk with Kitty about why she didn't use it. In her own words, she wanted to impress you."

Something clicked in my mind: when I last parted ways with Ludwig, he had seemed fervently interested in making me believe I could somehow kill windigoes, possibly through the power of my bracelet. I had no idea if that was true, but assuming it was, and assuming all of my earlier theories were correct about Kitty and Cold Karma windigoes and all that other speculation that sounded much more tenuous now that I was out of the heat of the moment...

What if Kitty was trying to court me because she wanted my help fighting her kin?

Nah. That one was a little too far past my suspension of disbelief.

"She did a good sight more to confuse me than impress me," I plainly stated. "She did ridiculous feat after feat of acrobatics that would have been far past impossible even for someone who didn't have me on their back, wasn't in sweltering heat, and wasn't holding their breath and closing their eyes against noxious fumes. Some of which weren't even necessary to get where we were going, like jumping up a staircase." I gave Jamjars a look, clearly asking for an explanation.

Jamjars looked away for a moment... and then sighed. "Fine. I'll tell it to you plainly: you know Kitty only pretends to be sweet and innocent and insane. She and I have... a contract, of sorts. This little family thing is a cover we wear that makes both of us less conspicuous. Part of that contract is that each of us doesn't speak on behalf of the other's secrets. We each get to choose to whom we tell what. I can't tell you how or why Kitty is the way she is, but that's the reason for it. However, given that she's shown and told you as much as she has, I wouldn't be surprised if she'll tell you herself if you ask the right way."

"Why'd you make a contract with her?" I asked. "What are you trying to get out of this? She's got leverage over Cold Karma, and you're trying to use it to get closer to the top brass?"

Jamjars chuckled. "All this time together, and you think I'm a petty gold digger? Both of us have leverage. And didn't I already tell you my endgame? I'm searching for Writs of Harmonic Sanction for my friend, whose namesake fortress you just visited."

I munched. "Is that the whole story?"

"Nothing is ever the whole story," Jamjars replied. "But it's enough of the interesting parts to answer your question, unless you're seeking something more specific."

I thought about trying to press, and decided to take an adjacent tack. "So what do you know about Fort Starlight?"

"Far too much," Jamjars lamented. "You remember my complaints about Gerardo, correct? My sad and tragic tale of how once upon a time, we traveled together, until events conspired to take Starlight from us, that we might need all those writs to be reunited? Gerardo, at least, has the dignity to keep traveling the world in search of more writs, albeit not the brains to put aside his pride and work with me to get enough. That fortress, on the other hoof, was founded and then tastelessly named by the cowards who not only wouldn't help me, but gave up on doing it themselves, too."

I looked up. "So then Valey...?"

"Was our old captain," Jamjars acknowledged. "Myself. Starlight. Valey. Shinespark. Gerardo. Slipstream. Maple. Amber. Grenada. Harshwater. Felicity. Ten mares, a griffon and an airship, wandering the world in search of whatever it was our fearless leaders were searching for. Those were the days..."

"Was Valey always so... rude?" I asked, gnawing on my fries.

Jamjars chuckled. "Yes and no. She used to be the biggest wuss imaginable. But then she got over herself. If only she could actually put all that energy somewhere constructive, instead of biding her time holed up in that fortress."

"And what about Shinespark?" I asked. "I've heard about her. What was she like?"

"Broody," Jamjars said. "Understandably so. The Steel Revolution was largely her fault, after all. She was a foolish child who would up destroying most everything she held dear. These days, she's such a hermit even I don't know where to find her, though I'm sure Valey does. I swear, those two were my OTP until both of them walked out on Starlight the way they did..."

I tilted my head. "What's an OTP?"

Jamjars whistled innocently. "You don't know? I mean, what? I never said anything."

I sighed and dropped it. "While I was at the fort, I heard the public blamed Shinespark for the revolution, but it was actually the Yakyakistan ambassador's fault?"

"Wars don't happen because of one person," Jamjars told me. "Commanders pulling the strings, merchants selling the weapons, troops fighting on the ground. Truth be told, it was both of their faults, though Herman was evil and Shinespark was just stupid."

"What did she do?" I asked, aware that Jamjars reeked of bias, yet had still been there in person and was probably more reliable than hearsay.

"Kept her side well-armed and perpetually in a fighting mood," Jamjars said with a shrug. "To hear her talk, it was supposed to be a raise-their-spirits thing. And to be frank, they needed it. The Ironridge economy back then was awful for their senses of self-esteem, and for whatever reason no one ever learned to be self-satisfied and self-sufficient. A bunch of fools, in my book. Anyway, poor little Shinespark was completely shocked and surprised when tensions rose a little and suddenly her precious little militia went from talking about fighting to actually fighting, and all of a sudden... They're the reason the old skyport is the ruin it is today."

"How'd a militia cause that much damage, anyway?" I tilted my head, remembering the blown-out ruins I had explored.

Jamjars sighed. "Ever seen a storm come down from the Aldenfold? Mountains to the south? They can get ferocious. The way the skyport was designed involved liberal application of powered anti-weather enchantments. And since the war destroyed just about all of Ironridge's power generation capacity..." She huffed. "By the time they got enough mana wells rebuilt to spare the amount of power the skyport took to keep standing, it was a lost cause."

"I..." I thought about what to ask next. "If I asked all this to Valey, you think she'd tell me the same?"

Jamjars shrugged. "Who can say? She and I had vastly different experiences of the revolution. I spent it in a refugee camp, and she was up in the skyport stealing airships and dueling mercenaries and putting a knife through Herman's back. I doubt she'd lie too egregiously, but you'd certainly hear a different side of things."

"So how come you had a falling out?" I pressed. "You said she stopped helping you find writs? Why?"

"She stopped helping me along with all the others from the very beginning," Jamjars insisted, "because I tried to make it so we wouldn't even need to get them in the first place and everyone else was too complacent to back me up. They deserve not having my help. As for why she stopped trying to get the writs altogether? Would that I knew." She shook her head. "It happened about a year after we parted ways with Starlight. She and Gerardo and some others from our original crew went gallivanting off to Yakyakistan. Supposedly, prior to this Gerardo was owed a writ by the church, and they figured their first stop would be to collect that one. Months later, they returned, and Valey just didn't feel like trying anymore."

I thought on that for a moment. "What about everyone else?"

"Everyone? They did their own things." Jamjars leaned back in her chair. "Not everyone valued Starlight as much as I did. Some parted ways with us and went off to live their lives. Others stayed with Valey in her fortress. One even took a writ and crossed the border on her own to go seek Starlight out in person, and didn't wait to finish collecting enough. I'd have loved to do that myself..."

"Why didn't you?" I asked, curious.

"Reasons." Jamjars gave me a that's private look.

"Fine..." I sighed, changing the subject. "I... Look. Different topic. I dunno what Lilith wants with me, or what the police want with me, or what anyone wants with me, but for some reason I'm a hot topic among the Cold Karma executives. And I'm guessing you know at least enough about that to send Kitty to look after me, right?"

"I try to stay abreast of happenings in Cold Karma," Jamjars acknowledged. "This isn't a place where it's good to be blindsided. You're curious what it is they all see in you?"

I nodded. "Any leads or theories, even if you don't straight out know."

"I'm afraid I've got nothing for you," Jamjars apologized. "They do as they do. But what I do have is a guarantee that if you try to do anything about it, you'll at least have a safe base camp here with me. While I tragically lack the influence to keep trouble from starting in the first place, I do have enough resources to bail you out more often than not should you get in too deep. That's the duty I signed up for when I offered to let Graygarden send you here, and it's the duty I intend to fulfill. Don't take them lightly, or anything. But if you want to throw your weight around a little and see how hard you're capable of hitting back, I'll be here to make sure it doesn't go too badly wrong. Alright?"

Slowly, I nodded again. "I can trust you with that?"

Jamjars offered me a hoof. "I'll swear it on Starlight."

I took the hoof and bumped it. I hadn't voiced to anyone my plans to go to Egdelwonk and see if he could help me against Lilith, but if I had... this felt close enough to Jamjars' blessing.

The rest of today would be a very interesting day.