The Sparrow in the Storm

by The 24th Pegasus


1-12

Typhoon perched on the protruding beam of a half-timbered house’s roof and scanned the marketplace below her. As the sun rose over Boiling Springs, the merchants busied themselves with unpacking their stalls and stocking them with fresh goods for the day’s sales, and a few other early risers wandered along the dirt and cobble streets on errands or morning exercises. The rising sun marked Typhoon’s third morning in the town, and despite spending every waking moment between sunup and noon observing the market, she had failed to witness any sign of the elusive wizard’s appearance.

That didn’t deter her, at least. Not yet. She was a soldier on a mission, and having a goal to attain helped keep her grounded and sane. As a young milite, she had learned to appreciate menial and repetitive tasks for occupying her time and hastening the arrival of her leave; as a legate, and later a praetorian, goals gave her a direction to orient her energy and stratagem around, a beacon of results in a dark fog of uncertainty. Finding that wizard was her beacon now, and the only directions she had to go on were the words of the town guards she encountered when she first arrived three days ago.

At any rate, when Typhoon was not busy assuming the role of Boiling Springs’ gargoyle watching over the market, she dedicated her time to tracking down the wizard in other ways. By day, she would pick a direction and fly three hours out to see if she saw any sign of a tower occupying the distance, only to return empty-hooved for dinner. By night, she drifted between taverns and inns, questioning those that would talk to her if they knew anything about the wizard that visited the town market. Both avenues had gotten her nowhere, and Typhoon felt herself growing increasingly agitated as the nights went by. It didn’t help that her ruined dreamcatcher failed to protect her rest, though she’d found out after the second night that a feather of whispersalt usually kept her down enough to have dead, dreamless sleep.

The hours ticked by, one after the other, a relentless march of time dragging its hooves onward. Typhoon scarcely moved, hardly daring to breathe in case she missed something in the market. The higher the sun drew, the more ponies filled the open space, wandering between the stalls, haggling and laughing, then hauling home their day’s provisions. The ponies of the town guard occasionally gave her looks from down below, their mismatched armor rattling as they clumsily patrolled the streets, but by the third day, they’d grown used to watching Typhoon’s shadow stretch across the square as she silhouetted herself against the sky. But for all her patience, as the crowd began to thin out around the lunch hours, Typhoon only released an annoyed sigh and let her wings droop ever the slightest in disappointment and frustration. It seemed today would not be the day this mage made his appearance.

The creak of a hoof on rusting metal perked her ears, and Typhoon glanced over her shoulder with a sharp eye to catch a pony hesitating on the final rung of the ladder fixed to the side of her rooftop roost. When she saw a blue and a pink eye looking back at her, startled and anxious, Typhoon stood up and turned around to face the intruder. “Back again?” Typhoon asked her, her mind going back to the incident at Eagle Springs only a few nights ago. “You’re either brave or foolish. Maybe both.”

That admonishment got the unicorn to blink, and her nostrils flared for a second as she took a sharp breath. A moment’s exertion and the unicorn hauled herself onto the roof where, after a short scramble onto the center beam of the roof, she started to walk toward Typhoon. The old soldier watched her warily, keeping one eye on her horn and the other on her hooves, until the young mare stopped just out of reach and summoned the courage to look Typhoon in the eyes. “You’re a legionary, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice wavering with a certain uncertainty.

Typhoon gave her another look up and down, noting the scars, the bruises, the split lip on her pale brown muzzle that never healed properly. Her eyes, one a vivid pink and the other an icy blue, were unusual less for their color and more for the bright sharpness to them, that glint of ambition and drive that Typhoon had seen in the eyes of many promising legionaries and decorated officers. She brimmed with a warrior’s spirit, a soldier’s spirit, but it was trapped in the shell of a street urchin, a lost mare to whom comfort was a stranger, not an old friend.

After dissecting the mare with her eyes, Typhoon finally gave her head the slightest inclination. “Was,” she said, watching the unicorn’s face for any response. “Not anymore.”

She waved her wing and turned around, her eyes scanning the sky for her next flight while dismissing the unicorn. “Your friends are in Eagle Springs working off their punishment. If I were you, I’d join them. It’d get you off the streets.”

“Was?” the unicorn asked. “You don’t stop being a legionary. Just because there’s no Legion doesn’t mean there’s no more legionaries.” When Typhoon continued to ignore her and started to open her wings, the unicorn stomped her hoof down. “Ante Legionem nihil erat.”

Typhoon paused, and after a moment, she looked back over her shoulder. “Et nihil erit post Legionem,” she murmured back. Finally, closing her wings, she turned about to face the young mare again. “Those are old words. Words that have no more meaning.”

“They must mean something to you,” the unicorn said. “They made you stop. They wouldn’t if you weren’t a legionary anymore.”

Typhoon frowned, and with a sigh, she shook her head and sat down. “Fine. What did you say your name was again?”

“Sparrow,” the unicorn answered her. “And I never said what it was in the first place.”

“One of your friends blurted it out when you tried to rob me,” Typhoon said with a shrug. “Doesn’t matter. It’s an odd name for a unicorn, though. You have a pegasus parent?”

Sparrow pawed at the ground with her hoof and looked away. “Something like that,” she muttered, and then she stopped her pawing with a stomp. “I want to become a legionary. I want to protect ponies like the Legion did. It was the only good thing out here in the frontier, and now it’s gone.”

“Go join the town guard or something,” Typhoon said. “Or go to Everfree and join the Royal Guard. They’re the army now, not the Legion.”

“Exactly!” Sparrow exclaimed. “They’re not the Legion. The Royal Guard never protected us. When the spiders started sinking towns, the Guard was more concerned about charging into the tunnels to strike back than they were pulling ponies out of the webs and rubble. The Legion did that. They dragged us out of there and got us away from the death.” Then she scoffed. “And have you seen Boiling Spring’s town guard? Half of them won’t buy armor from the blacksmith because they think he charges too much and he was a Legion smith. They hate the Legion, and so they’re marching around in their stupid hand-me-down armor just so they don’t have to buy anything from him. And those that do buy things from him have no idea what they want so they cobble together these big suits of heavy armor and they're useless.”

“Then you’re out of luck, kid. You can’t become a legionary when there’s no Legion left. You can’t just will it back into existence.” Typhoon stood up again and opened her wings in preparation for her flight. “My advice? Go find something better to do with your life. You can’t live off of stealing forever. One day, you’ll steal something from the wrong pony, and nopony’s going to care when you get a knife in your ribs in a back alley.”

Sparrow scowled sharply at her. “Fine. Maybe I’ll go see if the Lost Legion wants a new recruit. Maybe I’ll learn something from them.”

“You think a bunch of legionary bandits are going to take a unicorn into their ranks?” Typhoon asked her. “Good luck finding their camp, if you can even reach it. It might be on a cloud somewhere.” Then she shook her head. “I’ll have to pay them a visit after I find this wizard,” she muttered to herself.

That made Sparrow cock her head. “The wizard? You mean Deep Blue?”

For a moment, the surprise made Typhoon’s stomach flip. “Deep Blue? That’s his name? You know him?”

Sparrow nodded, and a crooked grin erupted on her muzzle. “By accident. Juniper and Wren and me met him, uh, the same way we met you. We tried to rob him and he caught us, and we had to give his things back. But I managed to slip away this big blue gemstone he had and he had to come back to town after he teleported away to find us and get it back.”

“I’m surprised you’re still alive,” Typhoon said with a shake of her head. “Wizards practicing in the Frontier only really do so because they got kicked out of the Academy in Everfree. And the only way to do that is to mess with something the Academy outlaws.”

“He's grumpy but he's not mean,” Sparrow said, and her grin only grew wider. “He kinda thought it was impressive that we got away with what we did. Said that nopony in Everfree ever pulled one over on him like that and got away with it, even for a little bit. He gave us some money for the stone back, and uh… well, he kinda asked us to keep an eye out if any merchants came into town looking for gemstones. Blue ones specifically.”

By that point, Typhoon had closed her wings, and she subconsciously took a step toward Sparrow as she told her tale. To know that the mage was this close, that somepony not only knew him, but knew his name… “I need to speak to him,” Typhoon said, urgency dripping into her voice despite her best efforts to remain neutral. “Can you help me do that?”

The moment Typhoon saw Sparrow’s smile twist into a gleeful grin, she was reminded of another annoying unicorn that bothered her years ago at a similar age, and she could only brace herself for what she knew was coming.

“Wellllll I could,” Sparrow all-but-sang as she pointedly angled her shoulders away from the old soldier. “But only on one condition.”

“I am not training you to be a legionary,” Typhoon flatly stated. “I’m too old to deal with another young mare who thinks the Legion’s all guts and glory and isn’t mature enough to take it seriously. I’m not going to train somepony who doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”

“I know what I’m getting into!” Sparrow protested, and her gleeful grin turned into a frustrated pout. “I know it’s not all glory! I know it’ll be hard! But I can take it! I’ve slept on the streets every night for the last ten years! I’ve been beaten and robbed and cheated! Whatever you think I can’t handle, you’re wrong!” But when Typhoon remained impassive, Sparrow harrumphed and turned away. “Fine! Guess you’ll have to find Deep Blue yourself!”

Typhoon could see the carrot dangling from Sparrow’s statement, knew that the young unicorn was doing her best to bait Typhoon into giving her what she wanted… but with a defeated sigh, Typhoon let her wings sag a bit and rolled her eyes. “Fine. You want to learn how to fight like a legionary? I’ll show you. But if I find out you’re lying to me, I’m going to drag your sorry flank back up to Eagle Springs and freeze you to the ground in ice so thick it’ll take days to melt free. You understand?”

“Crystal!” Sparrow sang, and when she turned back to Typhoon the young mare was practically prancing on her hooftips. “When do we start? What will you teach me first? Do you have a sword I can borrow?”

“First we start by visiting the blacksmith,” Typhoon said. “I need to pick up my new armor from him. Maybe he has a piece of scrap iron you can borrow or something.” Turning around, she launched herself into the air with a beat of her wings, swooping out over the market as she gained some altitude for her brief flight. “Meet me there.”

“Hey, no fair!” Sparrow shouted in frustration, hopping and stomping on the rooftop. “I can’t fly! Slow down!”

“Should have thought about that before you joined the Legion, kid.” Typhoon shook her head as she flew away, leaving the young mare’s protests behind her. At least the gods had seen fit to give her wings instead of a horn. It made leaving annoying noises behind so much easier.