I slept soundly, and the next evening, I got up and returned to work. We weren't changing venues, so work was short, but the previous night's final wedding party had really trashed the place, so work was plenty hard to compensate. I put my back into it, noticing Procyon frequently hovering at the edges of my vision - it didn't seem like anyone else could see or hear her, but she was smart enough not to make me talk to ghosts in public.
Not that doing that would have changed much. I was already the mare who talked to machines as if they were people. Procyon told me that all the times I remembered doing that when I was younger, I had actually been talking to her, and my memory just made up the talks-to-machines thing to help patch what I did remember together after I forgot her. I wasn't so sure about that, though. Even now that she was back, saying hi to a centrifuge or stopping to admire an air circulation pump just felt right.
We hadn't talked about my memory-dreams. I wondered what she would have to say about those. Yesterday, I dreamed about my twelfth birthday party, and Procyon had been nowhere in sight.
But sitting down with Procyon and having a chat about whatever, be it dreams or the light spirit or our shared past, would have to wait. Because I had an airship to earn, and that meant tracking down the Griffon Empire's apparently-still-alive goddess, and that was probably best started by speaking to the friend Corsica told me about who was knowledgeable about the empire. And tonight, she had gotten me an invitation to do just that.
Meet me at the Eaststone Mall train station at midnight, Corsica had said. I'll show you the way from there.
And so I worked. I showed up early, and from the way everyone else kept their schedules, no one would mind if I left slightly before the preparations were done as long as I did my fair share. Slowly, the wedding hall transformed itself from a champagne-stained den of revelry to an under-construction warehouse to an unstained pre-revelry den ready for revels. As the appointed hour drew near, I slipped away with a nod from Thumper, boarded a train and went to find Corsica.
"Hey," Corsica greeted as I drew near, standing with her back to the Night District at the edge of the platform, her mane blowing in a light breeze. Wind was unusual in Ironridge thanks to the near-total shelter provided by the mountains, but it pushed the temperature down, so I was far from complaining.
"Hey yourself," I replied, strolling down from the train to meet her. "So where's this shindig we're heading to?"
"West," Corsica said. "And down a little. I'll show you the way. You ready for this?"
I raised an eyebrow. "You mean the direction I just came from? You sure we shouldn't have met up there instead?"
Corsica shrugged. "Might have been nice. But I have to show you where the meetup is. Can't just give you directions. 'It's in your mind, your secret's fine. Write it down, you get a frown.' That's the first rule of Lord Egdelwonk's Code of Chaos."
I tilted my head. "You what?"
"Weird job," Corsica sighed, waiting for a westbound train. "Egdelwonk has some arbitrary rules he teaches his employees to follow. Breaking them means you either get insults or a jump scare from the nearest trash can."
I glanced at the pocket containing Egdelwonk's contract on my coat. Maybe I shouldn't just blindly rely on that like I had been planning to...
"Nothing dangerous or onerous," Corsica told me, noting my discomfort. "Just weird. But when you see the other kinds of ponies who work for him... Everyone's at home with a little weirdness."
"Other kinds of ponies?" I asked.
Corsica nodded, keeping an eye out for any ponies within earshot and keeping her voice low. "The Junior Dumpster Despot Corps is a small place. You don't just pass an interview with Egdelwonk by being normal and ordinary."
I thought back to my own 'interview', when Egdelwonk erased my memory of our first meeting and I recalled it a week later in a dream. Was that the kind of thing he looked for in other ponies as well? Did his other employees have weird mental abilities, too?
"You know why he's interested in you," Corsica said, seeing my look. "I won't go digging in your private business. For me, it's what I talked about at that shrine the other day. You know."
I nodded. Her special talent.
"Just bear in mind that everyone else in the corps has something or did something to win his favor too," Corsica told me, our train pulling in from the east. "I haven't asked anyone what their story is, and no one's asked me. Guess I'm just too new. But watch yourself, alright? For better or worse, everyone in the corps is probably better positioned than anyone else in Ironridge to understand what we've been through."
Foreboding. I followed her onto the train.
The further we traveled, the more I began to suspect I not only knew our destination, but had been there before. With every turn we took, my predictions failed to disprove themselves. Eventually, we were there.
The Gates to the Underworld. The bar with the teleporter to Fort Starlight.
Go figure they were involved with Egdelwonk and his goon squad. I was starting to think that if you wanted to map out all the alliances and rivalries of Ironridge, you'd need a piece of paper bigger than the city itself.
We stepped inside, walking shoulder to shoulder. Several ponies were eating lunch at the tables scattered along the room's left wall, but the bar itself was empty save for the barkeep, who I recalled was known as just Barkeep. She looked up as we entered.
"Hey," Corsica greeted. "Wonky business."
"Your friends are in the back room," Barkeep said with a tired nod, then glanced at me. "So you two are friends, are you?"
I tilted my head. "You remember me?"
Barkeep shrugged. "I remember all my patrons. Especially the ones desperate enough to waste their time on old legends. You looked like you needed it."
Waste my time on old legends? What...?
I glanced to the dusk statue in the wall alcove next to the bar. Right. Last time I was here, Howe told me those statues were how batponies used to pray to the Night Mother, and I gave it a try.
If only it was the Night Mother Coda wanted me to find, and not Garsheeva. Having an old altar like that would be a great place to start my search.
For a brief moment, the reality of what I was doing crashed over me. So quickly had I gone from being Halcyon, the mare who looked for for gods to solve her problems for her because she was afraid of solving them herself, to Halcyon, the mare who solved her own problems by looking for gods so she could kindly ask them to please go away for a day.
My head spun. Maybe I'd come to my senses in a few hours or days or weeks and have a complete breakdown over this. Or, maybe, I'd been pushed so hard recently that I fully snapped, and was now free to chart whatever course I wanted, untethered from my old desires.
...Maybe it was sharing a room with Corsica. Now that I didn't have my own private space anymore, I almost never spent time just sitting and thinking about myself, and what made me who I was. Or about who I was, at all.
I wasn't sure if that equated to being lost, or to being free.
Now wasn't the time to think about that, though. Corsica was walking toward a back door, and I had a new acquaintance to make and some new leads to gather. Time to see what kind of company my best friend was currently keeping.
A door swung open into a small old room, lit by a single light, walled by stone, a central table made by tipping an old industrial cable spool on its side. Two ponies were already there, a mare and a stallion. Both pegasi.
I sized them up quickly. The mare had a forest-green coat, brown eyes and a messy charcoal mane. She was lounging upside-down on her chair with her hind legs against the table in an aggressively casual display, and yet I sensed a very slight, very deep unease about her, as if she had done and seen too much in her life to truly let her guard down even when she was trying to be at ease. Her age was hard to determine, probably mid-twenties, her appearance pushing me to think younger but something about her eyes suggesting otherwise. She was well-toned and well-fed, someone who got a lot of exercise yet more than had the diet to compensate for it, and as I watched her, I could see her lazily sizing me up, too.
The stallion, by comparison, was visibly young, perhaps a year or two my junior. A tan coat and a brown mane that tinged purple at the base covered his lean build, and he looked abundantly lithe and speedy. His eyes were sharp and a lot more restless, even though he, too, was visibly relaxing. Like the mare, I got the impression he could never fully be off his guard even when he wanted to, though he was worse at hiding it than she was. But perhaps he didn't want to. She looked bored; he had a bit of enjoyment in his alertness.
Neither of them had special talents, which was interesting. Sure, those were rare outside of batponies, but if anyone was going to get theirs, I would expect them to be ponies who had seen and done a lot. Like these.
I glanced up to Corsica for introductions, and an explanation on why two were here when we were supposedly meeting a single empire expert.
She nodded. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet Halcyon. Halcyon, meet the entire rest of the Junior Dumpster Despot Corps."
My jaw fell a little. Now that I realized this, Corsica's earlier comments made a little more sense: Egdelwonk's team was small, small. If I joined along with Corsica, together we would double his ranks.
"Unless." The mare waved a lazy wing. "That's my name. It's a cool one, so don't give me that look." She hefted a tomato with her other wing and gave me a warning look, daring me to call her name unusual.
"And I'm Gazelle," the stallion lazily added, a plate of mostly-finished food pushed to the side on the table in front of him. "I've heard about you, Butterfly. This is going to be interesting."
"Nice to meet you," I said warily, nodding to each of them. They were on alert, and Corsica had warned me, so I'd be a fool not to return the favor... "Why interesting? And why Butterfly?"
With a snap of motion so fast I almost missed it, Unless threw the tomato at Gazelle. He didn't dodge, and it splattered against his face, staining him with red.
I blinked.
Gazelle sighed, reaching for a towel to wipe himself off - I didn't question why there happened to be one nearby. "Some ponies are spectacularly bad losers," he observed, sounding more amused than anything. "You owe me money, Bats. Not fruit. Even though to you, they're one and the same..."
Now I was even more confused. "Bats?" I tilted my head at Unless. She was a pegasus...
Gazelle nodded to me, finishing his toweling, most of the tomato gone but stains of red still splattered across his face. "Don't mind her. Coming up with obviously-unfitting nicknames is a hobby of mine. Now allow me to formally welcome you to Lord Egdelwonk's Junior Dumpster Despot Corps, which is the right place to be if you think rules are for fools, want a little impunity to stick your nose where it doesn't belong, and are tied up in the fate of nations or some such. Or if you told the big cheese a really awful joke and won his favor by making him laugh."
Unless tapped her hoof against the table, staring at Gazelle and plainly waiting for something. Corsica stood in the doorway, allowing me to meet these ponies on my own terms and refusing to intervene.
Gazelle glanced around at the other two and huffed. "And if no one else is going to say it, Gazelle is the name of the most heinous conqueror and monster in Griffon Empire history, the last high prince of the imperial line who bore direct and immediate secondhoof responsibility for the continent's collapse. Not the name of me. I'm actually Papyrus, a humble and innocent Riverfall colt who was testing you to see if you really knew nothing about the empire you're supposedly interested in."
Unless shrugged at me. "Whoops. Sorry, kid. Figured you'd be more schooled than that. Any chance you wanna help pay down the bet I made on your behalf?"
Gazelle, whose name was apparently not Gazelle but Papyrus, sat up and faced me and grinned, showing teeth. "So you're a know-nothing nobody who aspires to become a know-something somebody, and in spite of knowing absolutely nothing you still were able to pass that clown Egdelwonk's magical meddling test..." He extended a hoof. "Perhaps it's worth getting to know each other for real. I find backroom discussions like this to be incredibly entertaining, because any fool with a mouth can say whatever they please and the repercussions are purely reputational, but being entertaining and being useful are different matters entirely. What say you we hang out while actually doing something? In the field."
I blinked and took a step back. "How much did Corsica tell you about me?"
"You're a scientist from Icereach who's interested in the Griffon Empire." Unless belched. "Which has ten degrees of shady written all over it, but maybe you don't know about that. Do you?"
"I know pretty much nothing about anything," I said, taking another step back. The ponies in this room knew far, far more than I did, that was for sure, and it left me feeling like the floor and gravity had both abruptly disappeared. Focus, Halcyon. Don't let yourself drift... "That's why I wanted to talk to you."
Unless stretched. "What Papyrus is trying to say..." She rolled right-side-up. "Is that Icereach, scientists and the Griffon Empire have occasionally produced some... dangerous results, when mixed together. I'm gonna guess that right now, you are legitimately clueless and not faking it, and have no idea what we're talking about. Probably feels like we know mountains of important context you're being kept in the dark on... At least, that's what I'm getting from the look on your face. So lemme spell this out plain and simple: we know a bit about who you are and nothing about what you're trying to do. You're clueless and worried about bungling in the dark? So are we. All we know for sure is that you're dangerous enough that Egdelwonk was willing to offer you a spot in the corps. And that doesn't happen without good reason."
"I mean..." Suddenly, things made a little more sense, though I was still at such a disadvantage I could physically feel it pressing against my chest. "I just heard you knew things about the Griffon Empire. An expert, Corsica called you. Guessing that's you?" I glanced at Papyrus. "Or both of you?"
Papyrus rolled his eyes. "I know far more than someone my age has any right to. But get with the program, Butterfly! Of course you heard we're smart and intelligent. I'm more interested in what you could do with anything I could possibly tell you. Or anything anyone else could possibly tell you. Or what you could do without knowing anything at all, just by blundering around. Spill us your motives, already!"
I blinked. "I... want to go on an adventure," I told them. "To the Plains of Harmony. Which I think are also called Equestria. Everything else is just in the name of getting there."
Unless threw another tomato at me. This one was deliberately slower, and I was barely able to dodge.
"Hey!" I protested, glancing back to see where it landed. "What was that for?"
"It's in your mind, your secret's fine. Write it down, you get a frown." Unless shrugged. "Just doing you a favor, kid. If you're going to hang around with Egdelwonk's crew, it's best you learn his rules quickly. Otherwise you'll have to learn them from him, and he's mega rude."
I glared pointedly at Papyrus. "But he was asking!"
Papyrus held up his forehooves in self-defense. "If a friend asks you to do something wrong, does that make it right?" He glanced at Unless and raised an eyebrow. "Although we really do need to know, so I'd appreciate if you could keep your compulsory fruit-throwing in check for the moment, Bats."
Unless blew a raspberry and put her hooves back on the table.
I blinked at Papyrus. "So what's your motive, then?"
"Funny story," he said. "I actually want the exact same thing as you. No particular reason, of course. Just woke up one morning and decided to fly off to Equestria without a care in the world..."
I blinked harder. "Seriously? I mean, you do?"
Papyrus grinned harder, showing teeth. "You're far too trusting."
"And you're starting to get on my nerves," I retorted. "I know what you really want is to find out who I am and what I'm up to, but how do you figure this is the way to get there?"
Papyrus shrugged. "Ponies are more themselves when emotions run high. Harder to keep up an act when you're steaming at the ears. Ever tried to get a politician to say what they really think? I've had tragically few opportunities to put it into practice, but let me tell you, the tactics they used to employ in the Griffon Empire would make your fur curl. A whole nation of plutocrats and elitists, filthy rich scoundrels scheming schemes to hollow out the empire and take what they could while the getting was good... See why a scholar of that tangled web could pick up some dangerous ideas?"
"Great," I told him. "So you're trying to goad me into losing my cool to see how I deal? Why don't we skip straight to the duel and be done with it?"
"A duel?" Papyrus had been talking to me seconds earlier, and yet somehow managed to look as if I had just barged into the room, interrupting an unrelated conversation with someone completely different. "You're a fighter, then? Brilliant!"
"Err..." I took a step back, feeling my bracelet around my leg.
"Fort Starlight," Papyrus said, urgent and eager. "You've heard of it? Yes, no...?"
"I've been there, but-"
"Fantastic!" Papyrus rose from his seat, grinning fit to burst, tail lashing. "That skips all the introductions. They have a sparring grounds I'm sure we'd be welcome to use. You, I think, I'll get along with just perfectly. Unless, referee?"
Unless belched, tumbling out of her chair and somehow landing on all fours. "Yup." She brushed back her charcoal mane. "Let's do this thing."
I stared between the two of them, and then looked at Corsica for help.
She shrugged. "You just challenged Papyrus to a duel. Go, see where it goes. I'm curious what will happen myself."
"I was... being sarcastic..." I grumbled to the floor. Punching Papyrus in an officially-sanctioned setting might actually be satisfying, though the ease with which he turned my remark into a demand warned me that he had probably practiced far more recently than I had.
Nothing happened to deliver me from the fate I had set up for myself as we passed through the teleporter, warping straight into the boat hull where Fort Starlight's end of the machine was built. I noted the control terminal as we passed, my brain trying to think about anything except fighting Corsica's co-worker in a duel he had basically goaded me into. That was probably where the pattern card plugged in that controlled the destination. Just like the card I had swiped from the Composer's hideout...
A crowd gathered to watch us fight. A large crowd, given that I was a random nobody and Papyrus was... whoever he was, but also a small crowd, given that Fort Starlight wasn't that huge and there were only so many places for ponies to be. The sparring grounds were a pit of loose sand that had likely been imported, set in a giant dish to stop it from getting scattered and lost. Several pipes around the edges made me think that when it rained, they piped in some of the water to naturally wash the sands clean.
"No weapons, then," Papyrus said, standing across from me, making a show of wearing absolutely nothing. "Honor rules. The point's not to win, it's to prove a point. En garde?"
I nodded, noting our audience - no one I knew was among them. And then I started circling, trying to get a read on my opponent.
Papyrus didn't circle. In fact, he didn't move at all, holding down his half of the arena and lazily watching me, curious about what I would do. Earlier, in my first impression in the tavern back room, I thought he was overly eager, overly alert. If anything, now that we were fighting, he seemed more at ease.
What a strange stallion. And, likely, a very dangerous one too.
I stepped forward, threatening his territory. He smiled, tail lashing.
I threatened it harder, and he pounced.
Papyrus pumped his wings for a single boost, jumping straight over my head and landing at my rear. I spun to face him. He raised his hindquarters and bucked.
It wasn't a kick meant to hurt, and I was fast enough to block it even if it had been... but just barely. Instead, it was a kick meant to shove. Now I had my back to the edge of the arena, and Papyrus was between me and the center, standing proudly on my half.
"Intriguing," he called out. "Whoever trained you was no acrobat, I can see that much. For a sarosian, you're painfully slow. But you know some fundamentals. Come on, show me your approach!"
I set myself in a wary stance. "I learned from yaks," I countered. "You're way more nimble than that. My usual approach won't work on you."
"Aware of your shortcomings, are you?" Papyrus raised an eyebrow. "Is that rational thought I hear? Don't show me your tactics, Butterfly! Show me your passion! Or do I need to do a little more first to raise your ire?"
Suddenly, he moved. Faster than I could track, Papyrus was in front of me, and a wing brushed the edge of my throat before I could blink. "If I was wearing a wingblade," he explained, already behind my side, "which by the way are an amazing weapon you should relish your ability to use..."
I tried to spin to block him, but he had already kicked me three times, each one just hard enough to tell me he was holding back and could have gone a lot harder.
"You'd have four holes, going on five," Papyrus calmly explained, reaching under me and grabbing my far hind leg, pulling it toward him beneath me in a direction that cost me all my balance and sent me crashing to the ground. "Two, three, four, five, right like that," he said, chopping me ineffectually four more times with his wingbone before picking me up with both wings and holding me out in front of him, upside-down and face to face. "Hello there."
He hadn't bound my hooves. I immediately tried to strike his face.
His forehooves had both been grounded when I started, but before mine could travel the short distance to his grinning mug, one of them left the ground, blocked both of mine and then slapped me three times, gently, in quick succession. And then he tossed me back to my side of the arena.
I was almost too overwhelmed to land on my hooves. Almost.
"It's clear you've never fought anyone possessing even a smidge of speed or reaction time," Papyrus lectured, pacing back and forth. "I can see it in your eyes. You're trying to plan, trying to analyze. That's costing you time. Fighting has to be on instinct! All the time you're taking to think is the time I'm using to talk at you, so hurry up and stop giving it to me!"
He was taunting me. I knew it, and yet it was working. Staying clear-headed and in control was the most important lesson Balthazar had taught me; how to focus and analyze a battlefield, how to not lose myself in the excitement of the moment. But my anger was rising, and I held onto those lessons frantically, praying they would be enough.
I growled and rushed him, trying to zigzag like I learned from Balthazar to obscure my angle of attack. But then Papyrus dashed to the side, trying to change the angle we would collide at. Which way was he coming? What was his pattern? I needed to-
"Fool!" Papyrus hit me on the opposite side I was expecting, lashing out and trying to trip me. I barely managed not to fall, but still, I stumbled, and that stumble was all the time he needed to pick me up again. "You stopped to think! And now you're doing it again! Say, mind if I look through your pockets while we do this? You've left me quite bored, and I've got all the time in-"
My frustration had already reached a fever pitch, and when he reached to open a pocket on my coat, I lost control. I lashed out.
This time, my boot connected with a satisfying thunk, forcing Papyrus to drop me and slide back. I landed upright once again.
"Good," he praised, polishing the spot where I hit him like a badge. "Feel, don't think! Fight me on instinct! I'm beating you and lecturing you and pickpocketing you at the same time, mare! Put some humiliation in those strikes!"
I rushed Papyrus again. This time, I wasn't thinking, a haze clouding my senses while lending strength to my limbs. I pulled on it, drew on it, focused all my strength to smash Papyrus...
Before my hoof could connect, he grabbed me again. Once again, I was held unceremoniously upside-down.
"Fool," Papyrus breathed in my face, touching me, too close for comfort, holding me as my blood surged. "Why did you abandon your tactics? Control your anger, Butterfly. Think, don't feel!"
My bracelet itched around my leg. I could set myself on fire, and him with me. And it would probably be a lot worse for his health than mine.
I wanted it. I could see him reaching for my pockets again, a fake-innocent curiosity on his face as he took advantage of my indecision. He was asking for it, shouting for it, pleading for it...
"Halcyon!" Procyon called. "Grab his wings! You're stronger than him, so he loses if you catch him in a grapple!"
I didn't think. I just followed her advice. Papyrus's wings were fully extended, holding me like a pinata, and it only took a slight shift of my own wings to trap his beneath mine. And then I twisted myself to the side, and he could no longer let go.
We fell to the ground in a crash. He tried to push me away, but my wings were like vices, and before he could stop me I had a booted leg around his barrel, and eventually he was fully pinned.
He struggled. It was futile.
"Talk all you want," I hissed in his ear, feeling utterly weird and wrong deliberately holding another pony against myself. "Maybe I needed it, but you still gave me the time to beat you."
"Hah," Papyrus sighed, going limp. "That was the point. I concede our bout, though the ultimate prize still is mine because I learned what I was interested in. You despise letting your passion get the best of you. Likely, you're afraid of yourself, or what you might do. Whether or not you think you can afford to listen to it, you have a moral compass. My dear Butterfly, I think you're going to be very much worth my time."
I let him go and took several steps back, the rest of the world irrelevant in my senses. "Who are you? How does someone so young learn to think like that?"
"Pray you never have to find out." He straightened himself up and brushed the sand out of his coat. "Also, Garsheeva's breath, are you strong. We could whip you into quite the capable fighter if the idea caught your fancy. Bats?"
Unless shrugged. "Yeah, she's good. A little on the slow side, though, even when she rage rushed you. We'd have to do something to compensate for that. Something that doesn't involve throwing all tactics out the window like you."
Papyrus blew a raspberry.
I glanced around to see the crowd dispersing, and felt cold. Some of the chill from grabbing Papyrus was still sliding off me like slick, heavy ooze, and another realization was settling in to replace it: in a matter of minutes, someone had almost gotten me to show off my bracelet's power in front of a crowd. If it wasn't for Procyon, I might actually have lost control.
That was frightening. I was supposed to be better than that. Had to be better than that, if I wanted to function. The layers of thought I kept between my emotions and the world, that I used to filter my actions... I didn't know what I would be without them, but I didn't trust the result.
Papyrus was right, I realized with a shudder. I was still afraid of myself. Something had certainly changed between the Aldebaran incident and today, but fundamentally, I was the same.
I squeezed my eyes shut, small and helpless, wishing and praying I could understand.
"So, Butterfly, I've got a capital idea," Papyrus declared, marching straight up to me and slapping an unwelcome wing over my back. "Want to hear it?"
I flinched, ducking out from under the wing. I needed some time alone. Very alone. "What?"
"Whatever you're up to," he said, pointing suggestively between me and himself, "I want in on it. I'll pull my weight, I promise! Smart, good in a fight, can destabilize most anything... All qualities your arsenal is lacking, right? And for my troubles, I'll get to see just what you're up to, and decide for myself how much of a risk it is helping some sarosian scientist meddle in the old Empire's affairs. Have we got a pact?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Maybe try saying a sentence that doesn't involve insulting me first?"
Papyrus cleared his throat. "I am wise. I am lovely. I am always right. There's three sentences, thank you very much." He batted his eyelids. "How's that?"
I narrowed my eyes. "You're not a very nice person, are you?"
"Never pretended to be." Papyrus shrugged. "But at least I'm honest about it, which is a lot better than you'll get from a lot of charlatans in this world. Come now, I feel like you're not giving proper consideration to how nice it would be to have all this meanness on your side..."
Part of me didn't feel like considering it... and then the other part of me got an idea.
"You know Lilith, right?" I asked him, keeping my voice low enough that only the two of us, Unless and Corsica could hear. "How would you feel about helping me burglarize her school?"
Papyrus's eyes lit up. "Say, now there's an idea. Can't imagine what you'd steal from down there that wouldn't either be useless or dangerous, but I've never liked the cut of her jibe."
I nodded. This was an idea that was likely to get out of control somewhere, but at the very least it would almost certainly be Papyrus's fault when it did, and I wouldn't feel bad at all about using him as a scapegoat. And there were some parts of my plan to break in and rescue Leitmotif that really needed some assistance. Namely, finding the entrance...
"That a formal offer?" Papyrus pressed. "I could never say no to the chance to smack Lilith around a little in someone else's name."
I glanced at Procyon, who was still hovering on the edge of the arena.
"I'm still getting my bearings here," she apologized with a shrug. "I have no idea how bad of an idea this is."
In other words, don't drag me into this. She didn't want responsibility for whatever happened if I said yes.
So, since it fell to me, I swallowed, took a breath and nodded.
"Excellent!" Papyrus clapped me on the back again, and once again I slipped away. "How's right now work for you? The best plans are the ones you don't make far enough in advance for anyone to react to."
I stared at him. "Remind me why I'm having anything to do with you, again?"
"Good question." Unless scratched her rump.
Papyrus preened a wing. "I was hoping having an odious personality would goad you into answering that for me. But if even you don't know, you apparently wanted to pick my brain for Griffon Empire lore that's too obscure or dangerous to find in a public library. We could skip this whole exercise if you could prove what and why that is, you know."
Public libraries. Right. Maybe one of the reasons I always found myself in situations like these was because I always chased fantastical solutions before settling for the mundane ones. Though in my defense, I had been raised in a colony where the library only contained what ponies wanted to read...
Corsica gave me an are-you-sure-about-this look. I stepped aside to speak with her.
"You alright?" she asked once Papyrus and Unless were out of earshot. "That looked rough."
"Shaken," I said. "These ponies are really your friends?"
"After a fashion," Corsica admitted. "But also colleagues. We stay on good terms because it makes our work easier. And to certain parties, much less entertaining."
I squinted. "What kind of work does he even have someone like that doing?"
She shrugged. "A lot of whatever, and a few odds and ends. Technically, I think all of us are still in 'training'. Which means errands, busy work, and a lot of tasks that feel suspiciously like puzzles someone set up on purpose with the intent of giving someone else a runaround, but still being solvable. The important part is the freedom and resources to pursue our own goals, like me learning about my special talent."
I frowned and looked away.
"This Lilith thing is about Leitmotif, right?" Corsica asked.
I nodded.
"Be careful," she said. "And good luck."
"That's all I get?" I cracked a weary smile. "You think it's a good idea?"
Corsica took a breath. "I don't think it's an idea that will cause anything insurmountably bad to happen. Like it or not, you're basically already a part of the Junior Dumpster Despot Corps. And Egdelwonk... He thinks of everything as a game, and likes letting experience be the teacher. If he doesn't stop you from doing this, odds are it could have consequences you'll learn from, but not ones that will take you out of the game. If anything really bad happened to you, Lilith would be starting a war she doesn't want to fight."
I looked her straight in the eyes. "You realize how you sound right now, right? You realize the way you're describing what's essentially a job being interns for a high-level government office."
"That's what this would be if Ironridge was sane." Corsica shook her head. "I realize. Someday, when all this is over and I no longer have to worry about my secrets, I'll tell you my whole side of everything I've been through. But I know for sure that something is deeply wrong in this city, Halcyon. I don't think any amount of context can explain away how it got the way it is. I'd love to be proven wrong. All I know is, I've been more and more tempted recently to use what influence I do have to give the whole place a good, solid boot in the rear."
I sighed. "I just want to get in a position where we can skip town as soon as possible, with as few regrets as possible. I'll... see you around."
And then I turned back to the arena. There was no point hemming and hawing about it. There was no plan. There was just Leitmotif, Papyrus and an underground school, and rules that were enforced by treaties instead of any real authority.
Last time, I got to stroll around that school like I owned the place for no reason at all. Time to see what would happen if I tried it again.