A few moments of solitude were all that separated me from a task I had sworn to myself I would do, yet wasn't looking forward to at all.
Corsica, as if she could magically tell exactly what I needed, stood guard, deflecting attention as Papyrus made unknown preparations and Unless wandered off as well. And so I leaned against a wall and breathed, trying to blank my mind and reset my thoughts and psych myself up for breaking into Lilith's weird batpony school and rescuing my imprisoned mortal enemy. Things I had to my name? My wits. Egdelwonk's contract, which I could pull out at any time and allegedly use as a free get-out-of-jail card, though now that I thought about it, I wasn't sure what being unaffiliated with Egdelwonk actually did for me when Papyrus was coming along. And then I had Papyrus himself, an even bigger wildcard than Kitty - and last time I nearly drove myself to panic with the possibility of her doing something stupid. This time, I was bringing Papyrus on purpose.
Oh, and I had a ghost that was apparently the real me.
Nothing in my life was stable. I didn't have a home that I trusted - Jamjars was all but certainly affiliated with Aldebaran, and likely owned the hideout where we had been kidnapped. I barely even knew the mechanics of my own head, and what I did know told me there were at least two other ponies in there whose thoughts were completely hidden to me. My self-control, usually ironclad, had nearly been compromised by a few minutes of fighting with Papyrus. Searching for the light spirit was the closest thing I had to a cause to be loyal to, and my reasons for doing that had been far from the most important thing in my life ever since the Aldebaran incident.
On the one hoof, it felt like I was doing something stupid purely because I had nothing to lose. On the other, maybe risking danger and taking a chance on an old enemy was exactly what I needed in order to get something to lose. If Leitmotif betrayed me again, big deal. I'd been there before. If things somehow didn't turn out like last time...
I didn't know, but it would be better.
"You know, I'm disappointed to say this..." The voice of Papyrus interrupted my musings. "But that thoughtful look on your face really makes you look almost like an academic."
I blinked at him. "So?"
Under his wings, the pegasus was carrying a pair of gas masks attached to respirators. "So I've known a hundred and one academics in my time who looked like sticks in the mud, until you poked and prodded so much that you actually got to know them and discovered they really were sticks in the mud because they had learned some awful existential truth about reality which they then share with you to try to get you blue too. Yech." He scraped at his tongue in a show of disgust. "Actually, I think I've only known a small few of those, but my point still stands. Tell me you're not the same, Butterfly."
"I don't know any existential truths about reality," I said, turning to face him properly and taking a step back. "Where'd you get those? And what are they for?"
Papyrus flipped a helmet with his wing and caught it. "Well, tragically, I've never died and been reincarnated as a sarosian, which is about the only way I'd ever be shown through the front door of that school. That means we'll have to do our burglary the boring way and go in through the back. Which, since the place is underground, means dealing with a bit of mine gas. And I for one would rather let the place be some other scrub's problem than clean it out myself by using my lungs as a sponge."
I gave him a look. "For such a professional you sure take a lot of words to get your point across."
"It's a sad story," Papyrus sighed, offering me the other helmet. "To make it a short one, I love to talk and have nothing productive to make of it. Probably for the best. All the fools in charge like me precious little when I'm not up to anything, Garsheeva forbid I should get some goals for a change. And so I run my mouth. To whomever will listen." He gave me a pitying smile. "Like you."
Procyon hovered nearby, watching and evaluating.
"As long as you can shut it if we need to go stealth mode." I took the respirator and examined it. "So we're going through the Flame Barracks, then?"
Papyrus raised an eyebrow. "You know the way? Excellent! Then I shan't have to lead!"
"I know about it," I protested, putting a hoof down. "I've never actually been-"
"Hey, goon squad. What's up?"
Suddenly, Valey was here.
I jumped a little. "Where'd you come from?"
"Shadow sneaking." She shrugged. "You know about it, right? Yeah, of course you do. Nice fight, by the way, but tip from a pro: neither of you should be messing with real soldiers. Now what's all this about sedition against Cold Karma I'm hearing?"
My ears twitched in alarm. "Were you eavesdropping?"
"Was she?" Papyrus tilted his head. "We have been discussing this in the middle of a public courtyard."
I glanced around, craning my neck. Fortunately, we were in a slightly secluded area and there weren't too many normal onlookers, but Corsica was still here, and she didn't look incredibly pleased... "Yeah, but you were the one who started..."
Papyrus shrugged. "They also aren't my secrets to hide."
Valey raised an eyebrow.
I tried to make myself small. I didn't want to do this anymore. If I was so distracted and drawn into myself that I couldn't notice my basic surroundings, I was in an awful state to attempt a heist. I just wanted to go home...
But I didn't have a home to return to. The closest thing I had was Jamjars', and that no longer felt like home. My home was waiting in the future: an airship I could live on, that could be my own. And tonight, I had to do everything in my power to reach that future.
"Just trying to make sure I've got this straight," Valey told us. "You and you are planning to use those gas masks to go through the Flame District, break into Lilith's school through the back entrance, steal stuff, and come back out the way you came in. Got any contingencies for when something completely unpredictable goes wrong?"
"Were you just listening to every last thing we said?" I took a step back.
"Yup." Valey gave me a serious look. "What have you got up your sleeve?"
A flame bracelet, a contract that could supposedly summon Egdelwonk to bail me out, and a partner I really wouldn't mind letting take the fall if the opportunity arose. "What's it to you?"
Valey shrugged. "Some random griffon asked me to keep an eye out for you a week or two ago. You are aware that, as a batpony, you can completely legally march through that school's front door and do whatever you have in there that needs doing, skip the toxic caves and leave Mr. Trouble With A Capital T out here where he belongs, right?"
Papyrus groaned. "Come off it, lady, stop preaching sense to the mare! I never get to do anything around here!"
Valey swiped the respirator I was holding with deft ease. "You plot your bad ideas out in public, you don't get to complain when I intervene. Now, you wanna tell me anything else about your plan so I can replace it with the sane and sensible alternative that doesn't involve a death wish? Maybe starting with the reason you wanna mess with Lilith, because I dearly hope you're not dumb enough to miss that she's bad news."
Papyrus's tail flicked in irritation.
I sighed. Not like I had good reason to trust any authority figured at all, but if I had to pick one... Then again, for all I knew Valey and Leitmotif were enemies. Leitmotif was my enemy, and I already felt some conflict about whether or not to save her. Outing my full plan probably wasn't-
"Nope," Valey told me flatly. "No thinking about how to lie in a way that gets me on your side. I'm already on your side, in the talking-dumb-kids-out-of-bad-ideas way that dumb kids usually hate. I'd know; I had a lot of bad ideas when I was younger and no one to talk me out of them. You wanna tell me in private without this bad influence around?"
Papyrus cleared his throat indignantly. And then another voice did, as well.
From what could better be described as a debris heap than a trash can, Egdelwonk was peering. "Oh, Valey, I dearly hope you're not asking my minions to divulge secrets they'd rather keep."
Faster than I could follow, Valey picked up a scrap board from the ground and threw it at him like a javelin. He was already gone.
"I'm not your minion yet," I muttered to the trash heap. "I just wanna be free and not have all this garbage following me around. Is that so much to ask for?"
"...Yeah." Valey gave me a solemn look. "Sometimes, it is. Some folks are just cursed to never be free of the baggage in their lives. Believe me, I know. Now talk to me here, kid. You wanna come back to my office?"
"Not particularly." I took a few steps away. "I just wanna be left alone."
"Alone with your friends?" she asked. "Or alone, alone?"
I shook my head. "The latter."
"Then head up to my office anyway," Valey said, waving a wing. "It's empty. And with my say-so, it'll stay that way. Go get the space you need."
I sighed. I nodded. And then I left to go do just that. It was tempting to shadow sneak and stay behind and listen to whatever they would have to say once I was gone, especially once Papyrus started ranting about killjoys, but I just wasn't feeling up to it. If Valey was legitimately offering me solitude, that was the most precious gift I could receive.
Valey's office was much the way I had seen it last, only this time devoid of shadow-sneaking faces in the floor for me to step on.
The place had once been the stern of a ship, now raised high above Fort Starlight's main clearing and set upon a mountain of other hulls, its polished dark wood still intact and beautiful to look at. I shut the door behind me and took in the silence, breathing for a moment the still air.
There were memories in this room. History.
Not suffused throughout the room itself, as if the history had been made here. It was more like the things that had been brought here had histories of their own. I couldn't explain how I felt it, deep in my heart, but I did. Behind Valey's desk, in a small display case, there was a pony bust wearing a golden pendant that had an empty, hoof-sized slot where a large gemstone could go. This pendant, for example, had an incredible story, and I knew none of it.
Maybe I was oversensitive. Easily overwhelmed by other ponies doing things outside my control, yet able to pick up things like this without even trying. I had always been able to read ponies by the things they left behind. So, maybe...
I opened my heart, and listened to what this room had to say about its owner.
There were pictures on the walls, and they drew my attention first. The biggest one showed a multitude of ponies, far too many for me to count. It was a deck party on a sea ship, floating in front of a pristine white beach with a harbor nearby. I had seen pictures of the ocean before, but something about this one felt more vibrant, even though it had been taken at night. About a dozen ponies stood in the foreground, with countless more behind them, all young and fit and a few looking like they had just finished work at a construction site. Without exception, every last one of them was smiling. The smiles looked real.
A griffon was there, I noted. A younger Gerardo? Valey was there, looking exactly the way she looked now, wearing a ragged beret and with a pendant clasped around her neck that I realized was probably the same one in the display case. Next to Valey was an orange mare with a short, spiky red mane that was trying to disguise the fact that she was a unicorn. She had the look of immeasurable weariness and a survivor's determination side by side on her face. The two of them were standing close. I remembered Jamjars mentioning that Valey and Shinespark used to be close. And while the statue of Shinespark in Dead Herman didn't have any colors, the mane was the same.
Speaking of Jamjars, she was there too, with an impish grin and a mane just as poofy as the present day. She was a filly in the picture. It was nice to see evidence that at least someone got older as time passed.
There were others in the front row, too. A purple unicorn who looked exactly like Shinespark save for the coloration, and made me suddenly unsure which of the two was actually Shinespark. A tan mare with a long, brown, braided mane and orange eyes, standing over a little lilac unicorn filly who looked unhappy at being near the center of attention. A yellow earth pony who was posing with some of the ponies in the back row, looking the happiest out of anyone to be there. Two pegasi, one of whom I realized must be Slipstream, even though she had a completely different manestyle and wasn't wearing a sweater. I even saw another batpony, a heavyset mare with a long, thoroughly-groomed red mane.
Along the picture frame, I realized, was a title: Kinmari restoration of the Immortal Dream.
The Immortal Dream, huh? I wondered what that was.
There were other pictures, too. The next one that caught my eye was in a long, windowless room, the floor and walls and ceiling all made out of reddish-orange stone, a few carved support pillars and some stone trim decorating it without removing the utilitarian feel. A few refreshment tables lined one side, and a lot of paperwork tables were clustered against another. Valey stood in the center with several griffons - no Gerardo - and an assortment of other ponies, all of whom looked distinctive and powerful. The most eye-catching of the bunch was a pegasus who was built like a gorilla, flexing mightily in the back row.
Organizing the Empire's final tournament, the picture frame said.
I moved on and on and on, each picture equally vibrant even though in many of them, the ponies looked worn or beaten down. And, eventually, I had seen them all.
The last picture was of the lilac filly I had seen in many of the others. Her purple mane, often straight and well-groomed, was a windblown mess that hid its usual teal stripe. The sun was low on the horizon and out of the frame, tinging the mountain peaks behind her with the colors of dawn. She was standing in front of a carved wooden railing, and beyond was a barren field strewn with immeasurable chunks of stone, as if an entire mountain had fractured and fallen apart. Her eyes carried a weight befitting a world leader, and yet she wore a shaky smile, a smile so battered that it might have been rescued from a long imprisonment in the depths of the Flame Barracks. But still, a smile.
All the frame said was Starlight.
Jamjars' voice drifted back to me on the currents of my memory, telling me about her feud with Valey across a host of conversations. Valey and everyone else had walked out on Starlight, Jamjars told me. All they needed to be reunited was a sufficient quantity of Writs of Harmonic Sanction, and after a year of searching, Valey just didn't feel like trying anymore.
But these weren't the decorations of a pony who wanted to forget the past. Even the pictures that showed smiles had a sense of regret about them, like someone wished they could go back to those times and choose a different path. Whatever Valey was doing here, sitting around and ruling Fort Starlight, I knew for absolute certain that she had somewhere else she would give anything to be.
"What happened?" I whispered, staring into the picture of Starlight. "What made Ironridge the way it is? I know you were involved..."
Procyon hovered up through the floor. "If you'd like to ask her, Valey's waiting at the bottom of the stairs."
I tilted my head at her, snapped back to reality. "How'd you know that?"
Procyon shrugged. "I'm not fully a figment of your imagination. Whatever the magic is that allows us to exist like this is - and it is magic, it's not just a quirk of the mind - I have my own eyes and ears." She tapped her face. "I see what I see, not what you see. Just can't go too far from you."
"You don't know how our powers work either, then?" I raised an eyebrow, more interested in this than the fact that she could see on her own.
"I know some things you probably don't," she said. "And given that I've been gone for two and a half years, it's very possible that you know some things about us that I don't. I made you afraid of learning more about yourself and your capabilities, didn't I? I certainly didn't do that because I knew for certain everything across which you might stumble."
Oh.
That smarted a little, hearing that there wasn't even as good a reason for the fear as I had always been led to believe... but whatever. I was feeling a little better. I felt like I had a window into the things Valey cared most about, and exploiting me for personal or political gain didn't factor in. In fact, political gain entirely seemed to be missing from this picture. If I trusted her... maybe it would be okay.
"So," I said moments later, after descending the stairs and letting Valey know I would accept her offer to talk, and now back in her office once again. "What do you want with me?"
"Same thing I want from everything in general," Valey said, sitting at her desk. "To keep this city from exploding again, like it did two decades ago. It's wound tighter than you can believe, though I know you've seen a lot of it - I've got eyes in a lot of places." She folded her forehooves and leaned forward. "Now let's be very clear about something. Ironridge is a place where the only people who can trust each other are fools and fire-forged friends, and sometimes not even that. You don't trust me. I get it. I've got power and I can threaten your goals. But it goes both ways: you've got power and can threaten my goals."
"You think I've got power?" I took a step back. "How do you mean?"
Valey shrugged. "You've got powerful friends. Jamjars, Egdelwonk, Papyrus, Corsica. And Cold Karma's interested in you. They don't take interest in folks who don't matter. And I'm sure you know plenty of stuff about yourself you wouldn't like anyone else to know, too. Papyrus did a pretty mean job figuring that out, pardon me for eavesdropping. But the fact that you're even considering breaking into an underground bunker tells me you have the will to change things, and we both know you have the ability to at least try. So yeah, you've got power. And most everyone who's anyone knows it."
My mind slowly drifted to Mother's bracelet. "And what if I do?"
"Then it stinks to be you," Valey said. "Because you'll have a lot of problems coming your way, and you have exactly three options: try to fix them, try to profit from them or try to foist them on someone else. None of which are guaranteed to work out in your favor."
"How did Ironridge get like this?" I asked. "Surely that's not the way things always used to work. You talk like no one can trust anyone. It can't have always been that way."
"That's a long story," Valey sighed. "It started, oh, forty years ago. Maybe more. When airships were invented, it promised to change everything. You see, geographically, Ironridge is right smack in the middle of the known world, but in terms of actual trade routes it was far removed from anything else, on account of the mountains and wastelands cutting it off from Yakyakistan and Varsidel. You had to go way round and about to get here, up the Yule river from the eastern sea. But things changing creates winners and losers, and there was bound to be a fight. I'm sure you've heard at least some about the Steel Revolution. The point is, Ironridge was already backwards and upside-down, and then it got broken by a tiny little war fought over a single night that destroyed three quarters of the city's infrastructure. Ever been doing crazy gymnastics, throw out your back and suddenly you're paralyzed for a week? I haven't, but I've heard it's like that. Point is, Ironridge got beaten down, tried to come back... and then it came back wrong."
I lifted my ears.
"I dunno what other answer I can give you," Valey said. "The city got taken apart. It had to be rebuilt. And different folks had different ideas of what to build it into, and eventually you got what you see today. There's no one actually benevolent in charge, no one with any interest in governing. You see, when Ironridge got leveled in the wake of the revolution, it was down a lot of infrastructure, but it did have two things in abundance: ponies with nothing to do, and food to keep them alive. Untapped potential, looking for a purpose. Ironridge used to be a city where ponies took immense pride in their professions, you see. Ponies' jobs were their identities. Take those away, and suddenly you've got an enormous amount of energy yearning for a way to go back to normal. And so the way we got how we are now is that a few crafty dudes figured out how to tap that energy to further their own personal projects."
I stayed silent.
"Cold Karma does the bare minimum it can get away with to keep Ironridge a livable, functional city where the lower and middle classes can live more or less like they used to," Valey went on. "The ponies don't want to change. They spend an incredible amount of effort to avoid doing it, whatever hooffull of loudmouths might tell you otherwise. And the small few at the top have learned how to take that effort and put it towards their own goals, regardless of weather or not those goals have anything to do with anything."
"And what are their goals?" I asked.
"Could be anything." Valey shook her head. "I don't know the full extent of their schemes. All I know is, for every last one of them, Ironridge is nothing more than a means to an end."
"And you're trying to change that?" I tilted my head.
Valey stood up and walked to the frosted glass windows. She didn't answer.
"Why does Jamjars say you abandoned Starlight?" I asked.
Valey sighed bitterly, but still said nothing.
I frowned. "Don't just tell me to come up here and talk to you and then have nothing to say."
She gritted her teeth.
I waited.
"You ever... thought about doing anything really big for the world?" Valey asked. "Like, trying to fix all these problems yourself? Or even just trying to get revenge for all the ways they've inconvenienced you? Problems like Ironridge being ruled by that circus at Cold Karma, or there being no cosmic sense of justice."
"Honestly," I told her, "I'd rather just run away and try my luck somewhere different. The moment I'm able, I'll skip town and happily leave Ironridge to its own devices. So if you want me not to muck around in your stuff, all it takes is-"
Valey hissed, then slumped against the wall in resignation. I tried to figure out what was going through her mind, and couldn't come up with anything.
Doing something really big for the world, though... Before she told me about Chrysalis, Coda had generically talked about saving the world with the power of love. I wondered if there was at all a possibility Valey was worried about the same thing.
"Are you alright?" I asked, the idea crossing my mind that she might be clamming up to avoid spilling sensitive information I already knew. Though that didn't quite seem to match up with her demeanor.
"Jamjars said we abandoned Starlight because, technically, we did," Valey said. "Specifically, we ran into a barrier on our quest to find Writs of Harmonic Sanction that we weren't willing to pay the price to surmount. Before you ask, it wasn't a price we could have paid... Not technically, at least. It was a price we would have been signing up Starlight to pay, down the road. And keeping her from paying anything more is why we parted ways when we did."
"How's that work?" I looked at her sideways. "Someone wanted you to take out a debt in a filly's name?"
Valey gave me a dead serious look. "You are not going to repeat this outside this room."
I swallowed and nodded.
"There are two sources of writs in the world," Valey told me. "The Griffon Empire, and Yakyakistan. Both of them get their writs from Equestria, at a rate of one per year. The writs going to the Empire got... suspended after it fell, for political reasons south of the border. So our two ways of getting them were to go to Yakyakistan and try to monopolize their supply for a few years, and go to the rest of the world and try to buy them from collectors and stuff. Birdo - err, Gerardo - he's been doing the latter for pretty much as long as you've been alive. We tried to do the former, initially, immediately after Starlight and us parted ways."
She stared at the window. "Yakyakistan gave us a bargain for all the writs we could need for the foreseeable future. In exchange, they wanted... a certain harmonic relic of mine. Not the kind of thing I could part with easily. They needed it because the windigoes beneath the Yak Hoof Glacier - I know you know they're real - were woken up about sixty years ago, and Yakyakistan wanted my stuff to reinforce the seal down there. If this seal were to break, and all the windigoes get free at once, it would probably mean the end of the world. Or at least the north. Windigo power grows exponentially the more of them are present at once. You come from a snowy wasteland. I'm sure you can imagine what they could do."
I waited.
"Starlight," Valey went on, "would not take kindly to me giving up this... relic. She'd probably want to get it back for me. And something you should know about her is that she can, under very specific circumstances, kill windigoes."
Corsica had told me that, back at the rocket crash shrine, hadn't she? I nodded. "I think I heard that."
"It's true," Valey said. "She saved Ironridge from Yakyakistan's windigoes during the Steel Revolution, even though she didn't want credit for it and everyone who knew her helped to obscure it. But the leadership of Yakyakistan's church knew. You see, this artifact of mine wouldn't actually seal the windigoes forever. If it was left alone, they'd eventually get strong enough to break free anyway. What Yakyakistan really wanted it for was bait, to lure Starlight under that glacier to solve their windigo problem for them. And she'd hate doing it, hate needing to do it, but mark my words, she would come. World salvation, powered by a forsaken child."
I stared.
"So, I told them to get bent and come up with their own way to deal with the windigoes that didn't involve our filly," Valey told me. "Said bye-bye to our entire prospective source of writs in the process. Bananas, I sure hope they actually found a permanent solution, but me and them haven't really been in close contact since, so for all I know the world could be about to get windigo bombed whenever those cretins decide it's a good time to break their seal once and for all. Don't think it's already happened, either. Any isolated agents you've met or heard about are only a prelude to the full host."
"But isn't that urgent?" I whispered. "What are you doing sitting around here in a makeshift fort when there are problems like that out there to be solved?"
Valey waved a wing. "I did my time playing hero and trying to solve all the world's problems. Actually did a really lot of good at points, too, for all it did for my state of mind. But I know my limits. You try to do everything and you wind up doing nothing at all. What I'm doing now is a lot more than most ever accomplish: I've got a tiny slice of Ironridge that's still free, a tiny little paramilitary spy network helping me keep it that way, and a few friends who still have heads on their necks as a result. You see, modern-day Ironridge works by making ponies desperate, then trying to suck up desperate folks and get them to put that desperation to use for someone's agenda. Anyone I can get to land here, instead of, say, Lilith's school? It's a win in my book."
She sighed. "Back in the revolution, me and Starlight and everyone else who helped to save Ironridge didn't do it because we were free and powerful and benevolent and woke up one morning and decided to do the right thing. We did it because we literally had no other choice. It was do or die. We were at the end of the line, tired and terrified with no ground beneath our hooves. I can't speak for them, but me, I had just thrown out a stable, cushy job for a complete gamble that having friends might actually be worth something. Now, Ironridge is wound just as tightly as it was back then, or maybe even tighter. We need some new crazies who can do the impossible and buy the city another chance. But, before someone can take those kinds of risks, they have to be really, truly, desperate... At least, for it to happen the same way as it did for us."
Valey looked me in the eyes. "So that's what I'm doing here. I'm spent. I know what's coming and don't have another round of heroic antics in me. But if ever there was going to be anyone who did, I'd want to leave them a path to that, without letting them fall in with some goon who just wants to use their desperation to advance their own agenda, like Ironridge is so full of these days."
"How do you live like that?" I asked, looking away. "Discounting what you're capable of and waiting for someone else to come save you? I really want to know." Particularly because I had lived much of my life like that before.
Valey shrugged. "Focus on the concepts, ideas and plans. Don't dwell too much on the feelings. And if you do start to dwell, that's what we're linked to a tavern for."
"So much for adults having all the answers," I told her. "No offense, but that's really lame."
"I earned my happily ever after long before you were born," Valey insisted, pointing a hoof at me. "It is lame. I was complaining about how lame it was to anyone who would listen, and occasionally punching out jerks who disagreed with me. But you know who earned her happily ever after even more than I did? Starlight. I don't know what kind of news she gets about the north these days, living her life in Equestria. We left her there so she could grow up and be normal and be free from all the pressures of our adventure, and we swore to finish our goals and one day fly south together and live together again. Maybe we've failed, maybe it's too late and we're too tied up with Ironridge and trying to keep the world from exploding to hunt writs anymore, maybe we'll never get to cross the border as a team and go look for her. But even if we can't keep that half of our promise, we can keep her from needing to come find us and get involved again. As long as we draw a line somewhere and keep the north's problems in the north... then we won't have failed her completely."
I didn't know how to answer, other than that I knew this wasn't right. "And how do I factor into it all? Why are you telling me all this?"
Valey shrugged. "'Cuz you wanted to know. You're just a refugee kid whose mother Shinespark helped get a place in Icereach. Physically, you've got nothing tying you to Ironridge, but your history is inextricably tied up in all that stuff that happened twenty years ago. I just... Bananas. You said your ideal solution was to keep moving on and looking for a place that's better. That's how we got started, all those years ago. I just don't wanna see you wind up like Starlight. But, I dunno how to do that, because I did what I thought was best with her and it worked out... Well, you know."
"Why do you think I might wind up like Starlight?" I pressed. "Do I look like a windigo-killer to..."
I trailed off, remembering how Ludwig and I had parted ways during the Aldebaran incident. Ludwig, in my own house, trying adamantly to convince me that yes, I really could kill him. Me, deciding not to test because I didn't want to know.
My eyes widened. I lifted my bracelet and stared at it.
Valey nodded. "The last thing I wanna do is give you something to worry about that you don't need to know. Didn't work out so well with Starlight, but what would you do, try to pile more and more on an already-troubled kid? But I don't think I need to. You know at least something about what you can do. If you wanna make a splash in Ironridge, you can do it. And everyone else who knows anything about what you can do is very interested in what kind of splash you'll make, if not controlling it to their own ends. Maybe you could walk away. Maybe you could break something. Maybe you could even fix something. If you're anything like me, it'll probably be all three at once."
I lowered my hoof. "What makes me so special? And why?"
"It's always gotta happen to someone," Valey replied. "If a pony's one in a million, then take a million ponies and the special one will have to be somebody. Maybe we're just the ones who didn't get lucky."
"What if I gave you this bracelet?" I asked. "You said you're all out of heroics. You think I've got so much potential, you want some of mine?"
Valey chuckled. "No way. I'm just as strong as I always was. It's more of a mental thing. I'm tired, I've got obligations, I can't afford to risk myself. More accurately, Starlight can't afford for me to risk myself. Even if we'll never see each other again, she needs to be able to trust me not to go get in any situations where she needs to save my rear, which has happened a lot more than I'd like before. Wish I could do the same to keep you out of harm's way, kid. But, bananas. I'm only one mare."
"That's... That's fine." I shook my head. "I've gotten saved before, and I've tried and failed to save other ponies before, and if living in peace and quiet is off the table, I'd rather be the one doing the saving. But I don't have any obligations toward Ironridge. Your city hasn't been great to me, and at this point it feels like the generous thing would just be to walk away and have us leave each other alone. If you're scared of me, I've got no plans to make things worse, but that's about all I can offer."
"Guess I'd be greedy to ask for more." Valey stretched. "Thanks, kid. So, you're still plotting for who knows why to break into Lilith's school?"
I slowly nodded.
"Snazzy," Valey said. "Then let's get you a crash course in making intelligent stupid plans so you can maybe avoid a novice bump or two along the way."