//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 // Story: The Lyrist and The Tempest // by Valiant wind //------------------------------// Lyra felt as if her body was weightless. She was floating, her hooves sprawled out and touching the void. In front of her was an ocean of blackness, encasing her like the shell of a giant egg. Tiny spots of green light were visible at a distance. At first, she thought they were stars but soon discovered that their brightness was constantly shifting. She focused her vision, wanting to see what had emanated the light, but couldn’t get a clearer look no matter how widely her eyes gaped. Then, suddenly, the spots of light began to move. They flew in unison, drawing a wide emerald semi-circle arc on the black background, before shooting straight towards her. Their size enlarged rapidly, and Lyra felt a wave of panic. Somehow she just knew they were coming for her. She tried to wriggle her body and escape from their path, but her hooves and magic were not responding. She was helpless. The stars were upon her in merely seconds. Heat brushed against her mane as they dashed past her, entangling her in a web of dark green trails. Their motion landed a push on her side, spinning her body around. Her vision blurred and refocused, and Lyra let out a gasp. She was facing a huge planet. It was just like the ones she’d observed using the telescope at school, only that all of those she’d watched before were all bland and lifeless and nowhere as beautiful. The globe in front of her was mostly blue with fragments of green and grey continents, covered with an ever-changing layer of white clouds. It reminded her of a piece of gem she’d once seen in a jewelry store in Canterlot. She remembered it very clearly: it was a round piece of sapphire ornamented by a circle of green carnelian. There was a period in her life when she was very into jewelry accessories, and the piece had stolen her heart since the first time she’d seen it. There was no way she could afford such a piece at that time, of course, but it didn’t stop her from glancing at it every time she went to that store for magical supplies. And then there was that day when the sapphire suddenly disappeared from the counter, and it had given her a feeling of loss for quite a long time. She was having a similar feeling about this planet now. It was so majestic, yet so delicate. Oh, she wished so hard that it would stay that way, that it would remain beautiful and undisrupted until the very end of time. Then she saw the green light spots she’d seen earlier. They were just above the clouds, circling the planet at an incredible speed. After a few laps, they dove down into the center of a continent and disappeared behind the clouds. It was at that moment when Lyra suddenly felt a warmth on her back. Whatever was holding her body down relented at the same time. As soon as she zipped her head around, a green light engulfed all the space she could see, forcing her to close her eyes. The temperature around her was rising to a searing height, before sharply dropping back to freezing cold. Pain exploded throughout her, then retreated so quickly that there was no time for her to scream. When she regained her vision, all that was left was whiteness. “She’s awake!” She heard a voice. Lyra groaned. Her brain felt like it had just been sucked empty by a changeling. A grey shadow poked into the corner of the whiteness. She tried her best to focus her eyes, and the shadow slowly condensed into Nightjar’s face. Her expression was a combination of fear and relief. “Lyra!” She called urgently. She raised both her front claws, as if wanting to swoop her into a hug, but ultimately refrained herself and pressed them onto the sides of her head, “oh, thank Celestia—” What…what did I just see? Lyra stared blankly at her. She opened her mouth and found herself unable to make a sound. “Where…where am I…?” She coughed and muttered through her teeth. She felt so, so tired. “Your treehouse,” Nightjar said. She was desperately trying to sound composed, “your wound was too bad, we couldn’t risk—” “My wound?” Lyra moaned. She sat up and was immediately met with a sharp, numbing pain in her belly. She screamed and flopped back down. “Careful!” Nightjar exclaimed. Her irises narrowed into pinpricks, “those xeomorphs…they penetrated your belly!” “You have run into a particularly dangerous situation,” Lyra heard a second voice, “you are lucky to be still alive.” She sat up again, much more slowly this time. It was still painful, but no longer unbearable. She was on her bed in the treehouse’s bedroom. Nightjar stepped back from her, rubbing her red, sore eyes. The pegasus she’d seen at the bottom of the meteor pit was standing beside her. The burn marks on her coat were gone, and her curly grey mane was free of dust, revealing the long, bright green stripe running through its middle. “I have applied necessary cleaning and medicine. Your condition is stable now,” something about the mare’s voice seemed off, but Lyra didn’t have the strength to think about it, “My medicines are special. Your wound will be healed within twenty-four hours, while symptoms including pain and inability to move may last as long as two solar circles,” she turned to Nightjar, “the xeomorphs are still on the loose. I have to hunt them down. Excuse me.” “Are you sure you are alright?” Nightjar’s claws tapped the ground, uncertain, “back at the lake, you were…” “A minor magical accident. My conditions are optimal,” the pegasus said coldly. She then turned around and walked downstairs, “goodbye.” “I’ll…” Nightjar leaned forward, but the mare had already disappeared below the staircase. Lyra heard the sound of the door opening and closing. Nightjar sighed and came back to her. “You should lie down,” she said, “those xeomorphs really did a number on you…” “What even are xeomorphs…” “Those grey cloud-like monsters by the lake,” Nightjar cringed, “Grey Wind said they are extremely dangerous creatures—they could change into the shape of anything! She said they only existed in the northmost parts of Equestria, at the foot of the snowy mountains. Her town had been keeping them in check, but some of them had escaped recently. She’s been hunting them for weeks.” “Oh…” Lyra slipped down onto her pillow. She has learned about many magical beasts in school but had never heard about anything called xeomorphs. It was only by this time when she noticed that her belly was wrapped in thick bandages. “It’s all thanks to Grey Wind,” Nightjar smiled, “The way she speaks is a bit cold, but she was awesome! A single swing of her wings and those xeomorphs just went ‘pop’ and dropped down dead! Your wound was really deep, if not for her medicine and bandages…” She sniffed and wrapped her forearms around Lyra’s neck, “I—I am just so glad that you are safe, Lyra…” “Alright, I am still alive, aren’t I?” Despite the entangled mass of question marks in her heart, Lyra still managed to comfort her. She patted her back and sank into the blanket, “…I feel sleepy. I think I need a nap.” I need some time…alone. There was so much she had to think over. “Are you sure you’ll be alright on your own?” Nightjar asked in a caring voice, “maybe it’ll be better if I stay with you.” “I said I’ve been through worse…” it was a lie and Lyra knew it. She raised a hoof towards her to prove that she was really alright, “oh, and another thing…while you are back, could you please look through your attics again? I suspect mom might’ve left behind something else. Look for…” she paused for a moment, “…another key. A much smaller key. One that might fit into the lock of a small box.” Nightjar clearly did not understand the reasoning behind this request, but nonetheless nodded. “I’ll…look into it.” “Great,” Lyra flipped her body around, burying her head into the pillow with a yawn, “you are just the sweetest, Nightjar…” She kept that gesture until she heard Nightjar nervously pacing down the staircase and exiting through the door. She rolled in bed, staring into the green night lamp suspended above her. She tried getting some sleep, but the window had no curtains to shield the morning sunlight, and her heart was filled with a knot of chaotic strings that were impossible to untangle. This holiday has gone too much out of hoof, she thought with a slight annoyance. Her belly had stopped aching, yet it still felt stiff. A near-empty treehouse and a potentially-lethal wound—that’s all she’d got in her first two days in Memento. No means to open that box mom had left her, and not a single lead about her whereabouts. Mom…if you just wanted me to take care of this treehouse, why bother reaching me through Nightjar? Why bother waiting for a whole sixteen years? She thought. Tears were forming in her eyes, but she forced them back. Now was not the time to get emotional. Her mind inevitably drifted to the encounter earlier in the morning. That pegasus…what was her name? Grey Wind? She finally realized what was wrong with her voice. It was too flat, no, it was emotionless, still as a pool without a single circle of ripples. Now that she thought about it, it didn’t even sound like it came from a pony. It sounded as if it came from… …a machine…A chill shot down her spines, and…why was she healing so quickly? She was half-dead when I saw her! But, just a minute ago… “a minor magical accident, she remembered her saying, what sort of magical accident could have caused such an explosion…? Even in that case, magical burns also take weeks to heal…Every unicorn knows about that… Something about that pony felt wrong. Deadly wrong. She was almost certain by this time that there was even more to Grey Wind than all the strange stuff that meets the eye. She was developing this urge to give chase and hoof out every one of these questions out of her. And there was also that dream, thinking back, she could recall the whole image she saw before she woke up: the planet, the light spots, the black space, the blinding green spark…The images were all a blur, but there was one thing that she knew for sure (and had crept her out the most): that planet she saw was not Equestria. She had studied the world map of their planet when she was at school, and the shapes of the continent she saw didn’t match. She didn’t see Celestia’s sun or Luna’s moon either. She just had a dream about a planet located in who-knows-where in space and appeared to be, by the colors of the continent, teeming with life. Are ponies truly not alone in the Universe? That single thought was enough to make her shudder. And those emotions I had…that sense of…caring…she thought, feeling more and more doubtful and slightly, just slightly terrified, they did not feel like they belonged to me… This entire adventure was getting weirder and weirder. She was starting to suspect that she’d imagined the whole thing. There was no better explanation she could think of. She yawned loudly. All those thoughts were giving her quite the headache. In the end, she gave up on her thinking, closed her eyes, and soon started to snore. Quite unexpectedly, this time her sleep was dreamless and much more peaceful. The sky was just beginning to turn dark when she woke up, feeling replenished. The last rays of sunlight were climbing over the treetops, casting a pleasant heat through the window. Lyra sat up and tried her hooves on the floor, balancing herself on all fours, and was surprised to find that it didn’t hurt at all. Her belly still felt a little stiff, but it was far from unpleasant. She shook her head, arranged her mane with her magic, and whistled. There are still a lot of things I need to get to the bottom of, she thought with an uplifted smirk. Somehow she was feeling much more confident after a good sleep, time to get to work. Which lasted until she got to the first floor and found Nightjar standing in the doorframe, her one wing leaning down in defeat. “Is there really nothing else?” she asked a few minutes later, refusing to believe what she’d just heard. “No, nothing!” Nightjar sounded even more disappointed than her, “I searched through the entire afternoon! The entire attics! I even checked the cellar!” she sighed heavily, “Mrs. Heartstrings really should’ve made a list when she left those things to mom…” Lyra lost her words for a moment. Nightjar went forward and wrapped her wing around her neck. “Come on, don’t look so down…” she said, “I’m sure Mrs. Heartstrings must’ve left clues elsewhere. We just need to find them!” She met Lyra’s eyes, “but not after you take a timeout! You are stressed out like hell! Come, stay at my place tonight. I’ll show you around the town tomorrow, introduce you to the town ponies, maybe they’ll know something—” “Nothing else?” Lyra shrieked, “how could there be nothing else?!” “Lyra, just breathe,” Nightjar whispered. Her wing hugged her closer. Lyra took a deep breath. There was it again. She almost lost it. Keep calm, Lyra, she cursed herself, don’t let other ponies see you as a mental… “There you go,” Nightjar smiled, “I understand that you’re anxious, but we need to take things slowly! Tackle the problems one by one! Mom always told me that the only thing that could not do a single thing right in this world is a rush mind—” “It’s…it’s just…she left me something at the orphanage,” Lyra said, “a box that needs a key to unlock,” she lit up her horn and reached her magic for her saddlebags, “I—just look at it!” She knew something was wrong the second she floated them into the air—they were almost twice as heavy as they felt like yesterday. Before she could fathom anything, a grey cloud burst out of the left saddlebag and swirled towards the ceiling. It then made a sharp turn downwards and dashed straight for her chest. Out of pure reflection, Lyra pushed hard onto Nightjar, launching her away as the xeomorph zipped between them. The momentum robbed her balance as she crashed into the kitchen cupboard. Nightjar screamed, while the xeomorph screeched as it brushed at the surface of the round table, made another turn, and pointed its course at Nightjar’s head. Without a second of hesitation, Lyra called up all the magic she had left. Not bothering to form a spell, she simply gathered them on her horn and lashed them out in the xeomorph’s direction. A beam of ember light enveloped the grey cloud as it froze mid-air. There was a sizzling sound, and Lyra felt a strain on her horn. The xeomorph was struggling, disintegrating her magic and trying to break free. She could do nothing but pour more magic in. She was NOT going to allow it to hurt Nightjar. She focused her efforts, glaring at the xeomorph until it was the only thing she could see. Her horn was starting to spark. The struggles were becoming harder and harder, and her magic was depleting. Sweat rolled down her cheeks, the xeomorph swaying wider and wider. If this continues, it would— Clunk! Lyra felt her magic failing her. She was taken aback a few steps and leaned against a cupboard. Nightjar was reared up in front of her, holding a transparent glass jar with one of her front claws and pressing the lid shut with the other, hard breaths coming out of the nostrils on her beak. Inside the jar, the xeomorph was shrieking silently, bumping the jar’s glass walls, its motion becoming slower with every effort it makes. Nightjar had closed the jar around it in the last second. They spent the next few minutes in silence, putting their beating, un-stabbed hearts back to where they should be. “That…that was a close one…” she panted, “my…why would one of them be in your saddlebags…?” She glanced at Lyra’s saddlebags and shuddered. “Must’ve snuck in there when we were at the lake,” Lyra said. She stood up slowly and walked up to Nightjar, looking into the glass jar. The xeomorph had condensed into a tiny, withered mound of grey dust on the jar’s bottom. “good thing they are not resistant to magic…” “I thought I was dead…” Nightjar shivered. She carefully settled the jar onto the table and pressed a claw on her forehead, “I owe you a life, Lyra…” “Well, I did say I owned YOU one, so I guess we are even now,” Lyra made a joke. Nightjar took a solid deep breath and shook her head. “Good thing nopony was hurt…maybe we should go find Grey Wind and tell her about this…” she threw Lyra a questioning glance, “um, you wanted to show me something?” “Oh, right.” Lyra looked around her and spotted her saddlebags lying flat against a stool. Still rubbing her sore horn, she went over and picked it up with a hoof. When she opened the one that contained her stone box, however, her hooves, her expression, as well as every single cell that made up her brain were frozen in place. The stone box was not damp and irresponsive anymore. The patterns carved on the keyhole had come to life, emanating a faint, mysterious bright green light.