"Two centimeters. You realize that by scale, that can be miles of difference. Pay attention," Blueblood raved. Legs were thrown up as he railed against my attempt at a local map.
"I mean, yeah, but it's not that big, someone like the castle and forest. How often does anyone even go browsing the supposed, super dangerous forest of death?" I asked.
"Bah, such naivety, maps are a tool for survival, voyage, and trust. If you create a map one then uses, and it is wrong, it is not absolutely certain, you break that trust."
Blueblood was off his rocker. The anal-retentive tantrum had me silently screaming at the has been recluse. The last three days of visiting him had me drawing and redrawing a small slice of land. Degree and precision are his favorite edochts. I get it, but I can see why no one comes to visit Blueblood. He really needs a sedative or something.
"Okay, I get it. How am I going to draw the stars if I can't draw very traceable and replicable lines and dots? I apologize. Oh, great master of the map."
Blueblood tapped a hood to his chest and struck a pose only a pony of the upper echelons could. The dazzling white smile certainly gave it some authenticity.
"Prince, prince of maps if you please," Blueblood said.
I snickered and bowed. "My thousand pardons his divine provenance of locations across the realm. I humbly request thine forgiveness."
Blueblood ate it up and throughout a hoof in a grand flourish. "I will forgive your transgression. For that is what friends do."
Blueblood's smile faltered as the last few words caught in his throat. He dropped his noble facade, and eyes down, he shuffled back to his own work. I had to bite my tongue not to apologize. I don't think he needed one, not from me.
"Trottington, area, woodlands, seven-point three miles. Position three…"
Blueblood's words were lost to mutter as he scanned his notes. Sabre hadn't moved or seemingly noticed anything a miss. If he did notice, he kept it to himself. I sighed and turned back to my own work.
"Right, um, let's see," I said to no one in particular.
The atlas' I had opened held the local area, the castle schematics, the forest, and the town nearby. Ponyville, maybe I'd take a chance and see how the regular citizen lives. It'd shed a little more light on Nightmare's rule if we were lucky.
I also had one open to the grand north, near Yakyakistan. It was a barren land of ice. Every text I'd read of the area offered the same descriptions. Ice, snow, yaks nearby, and the occasional windigo sighting. That was all and all there was. I felt my brow crease as I scanned the portrait again. It was several centuries old, over five hundred, and yet. I could swear something was missing. I felt an inkling in the back of my head. A pounding that reached a pitch every time I looked back to that image.
"Hey, Blue?"
No response. Blueblood simply mumbled something and continued his measurements. I cleared my throat. And tried again.
"Blue, hey, Blueblood."
The unicorn blinked and wiped a hoof over his eyes. Once done, he slowly looked over at me. The bags under his eyes had gotten a bit better since the first time I met him, if only just. I bit my cheek as he stared back at me without a word.
"I have a question on the history o this area," I said and pointed to the tundra.
“Yakyakistan?” Blue asked.
"No, the lands before it, the barren ice fields. It feels like maybe I'm missing something. It just looks off, you know?"
Blueblood cocked a brow and stepped over to give my finding a look. He hummed and leaned a bit closer, eying the book hard. "Missing?" he asked.
"Yeah, just kind of incomplete. I dunno, maybe, I'm just losing it."
Blueblood took a step back and scoffed. "I can't say. I don't see anything. Mayhaps you ask your stars, yes?"
"Ask the?" The words died on my tongue. Blue had a point. Maybe it's all about perspective. It couldn't hurt if it got this niggling feeling to stop. "Maybe I will."
"Sir."
I looked back at Sabre to find him looking to Blueblood's chambers to find them wide open and a very vexed looking Solemn to be standing eyes dancing from me to Sabre and back to the entryway and those guards outside it.
"Good morrow, apologies or intruding. I hope your host of these walls will permit a moment. I have a word for my young student as it stands."
Blueblood barely noted Solemn before waving him off. "Do as you like, but don't touch my work."
"Of cource not, sir," Solemn said and motioned for me to follow him. Sabre took up the rear as soon as I'd cleared the doorway. The guards outside gave a single cursory look and then returned to their uncanny statue-esque focus.
We walked for several minutes in complete silence, except for our hoof steps and the clink of Sabre's armor. When Solemn finally stopped, his earlier trepidation had shifted to an uncomfortable squirm.
"Yes?" I asked.
"Well, I may have just received an interesting missive, as it were. One from our out-of-town friends, if you recall of whom I speak." Solemn cast a look over his shoulder and danced in place. The tension in his brow seemed ready to split whole.
"Our friends." I nodded. "About time. I was starting to think your takes were that of a mad stallion. Good to know I'm the crazy one."
"Was that ever in question, sir?" Sabre asked.
"I dunno. Bright can be a tad much, some days." I said.
"Gentlecolts, please. I would rather we discuss this in solitude, but unfortunately, neglecting your own goings-on, the noble court is gathering tonight. I, of course, will need to attend. As such, if and when you see Bright, do let him know that tomorrow we will need to gather to dissect the news in its totality, yes?"
Solemn's breaths were harsh as he once again looked about the empty dungeon way as if expecting ghosts.
"Should I go?" I asked. "To the summit, I mean?"
"No, you'd gain little from it and have more pressing matters. As our little congregation goes on and more are let in if only through the periphery, it is essential we not let any the wiser."
"He's right."
Sabre had managed to rally beside me without a single clink or clang of his armor. A bat I may be, but of the night and shadows, I was not. The same armor had been too happy to signal our journey not a minute prior.
"Right, the whole act normal bit, how fun. I get it. Thanks for the heads up, Solemn."
"Quite. I'd best be off before your friend back in his quarters elicits queries and questions."
Not managing more than a nod, Solemn was off before I had some much as an inking at another witticism. That had to be against the rules. Banter had rules, I think.
That done, I returned to Blueblood and the ever waiting criticism he no doubt has planned for my every etch. It was odd in reflection, using hooves to hold a quill. The frog seemed almost vacuous with how readily it stuck to any surface should I need it to. It certainly beats having the taste of a quill on my tongue should I have written that way. In this reflection, I watched the fluid motions of Blueblood's work with his horn. Every movement was so fluid and precise.
He'd seemingly noted my staring and offered a raised brow in countenance. I shrugged and looked back to the map summary he'd already managed. He huffed and twirled his quill in the air as he regarded my own work.
"Stargazer."
Blueblood pointed to my atlas' page once more with his favored quill.
"Yeah?" I asked.
"It comes to my ponderance as to your exact fixation on the lands between our northern neighbors and our own northern territories. It is in these thoughts I have come to a single conclusion. Beyond reasonable doubt, you are on the hunt for something very particular."
I nodded along. "I suppose so. What of it?"
"Simple, whatever you are so confident is there, must be a target erased like so much of our last millennium by our oh so benevolent queen. May her reign last forever."
I rolled my eyes. "You don't have to play politics with me, Blue; you don't like Nightmare. You have all the reasons in the world not to. To tell you the truth, I'm not all too thrilled with her rule either."
"Of course, you're not. What else would you be here, alongside me, if you did? A punishment I'm sure was least on your own thestral desires. A noble plagued with the task of dealing with a forgotten knave."
Blue tapped along his work table and turned back to his work. He didn't raise his quoll once more. He simply stared, lost in whatever mental deluge he kept returning to. I planted a hoof to my muzzle as I once again lost the cartographer to his past.
"Blue, seriously. You need to quit assuming the worst here. I am here for my own means, yes, But I return because you'll be left with shadows and doubt if I don't. A pair of friends no self-respecting noble should ever keep. I said we're friends, and I meant it."
Blueblood didn't answer, though I saw his brow soften a bit. That was better than nothing as it was. I could little but pick away at Blueblood's shattered ego and hope he'd loosen up. If the stick up his plot was thicker, he'd have apples growing on one end.
Several minutes passed in silence, though the tension had lapsed for the moment. The silence was ended by a cough from Blueblood, who'd looked back over at me. I absently looked between my various books and left my quill to the side.
"You never answered my earlier question."
"Didn't I?"
In truth, his questions all kind of blended into one deeper monologue.
"I asked of what you are searching, in the frozen wastes of yours. Your fixation seems a tad too cohesive to be simple curiosity."
I oh'ed in silence. I glanced back to the atlases I had open and rolled my tongue as I measured my answers, the truths, and half-truths.
"I had a dream. It, I dunno. It just feels like this is related. I have no idea why. It just feels like something is calling to me."
Blueblood balked. "A dream, you're languishing on a dream?"
"Yeah, I suppose I am."
"Sir?" Sabre asked from behind me. I had just realized I hadn't told him either. My dreams were becoming a bit of a problem, it seems.
"Crystals. There were crystals, and they lit up when I came near. It was dark, and the dark disappeared when I got to them. It was comforting, I guess."
"Luminescent crystals, and a fading dark. Hmm, that sounds familiar. How strange, coming from a mind-addled bat, very strange indeed," Blueblood mused.
"Agreed," Sabre said.
"Oh great, they're bonding."
I watched the two banes of my day share a smirk. I expected a few jabs here and there from Blue, but this was unfair. Sabre was officially a traitor, the jerk.
"Is that not what friends do?" Blueblood asked.
He had me there, all the more reason to focus. A thought just occurred. Blueblood was a very blunt proponent of Nightmare's unjust rule. He didn't bother to try to hide it at all. If he weren't helpful and a shut-in, I had a little donut. He'd have been smited by now.
"Hey Blue, what are your thoughts on the resistance?"
I could hear Sabre choke back a curse. His whispering wasn't very well-practiced. He really should be better at silence with his job and all. Perhaps the guards outside would give lessons. I'd have to ask them on our way out later.
"You mean that band of do-nothings, led by that self-righteous fool Shining, pah, a token attempt by a band of ineffective curs."
I chuckled as he vehemently cast those he'd almost certainly relate to aside like trash. The look he'd given when mentioning Shining, whoever that was. There was a story there.
"Well, that's quite the damning declaration."
"Yes, well, your attempt at recruitment has been far more persuasive than the meandering talk of justice and harmony. So, bully to you, for at least trying to be subtle."
I could feel my ear twitch as I was floored by Blueblood's assurances. He'd not even bothered to look my way as he did. He'd stood hoof to the chest, chin in the air as he lambasted the Night and the Resistance in a single stride. That, however, was barely a footnote as he so nonchalantly called my allegiances out with such certainty.
"I, um, I what?"
I couldn't even form a response. I sat jumbled mind and word alike.
"What, surprised?" Blue asked, his coy smile relapsing my surprise with baffled aggravation. I wasn't even sure what he was playing at anymore.
I'd have asked Sabre, but he seemed as stunned, just staring a hole in the back of Blueblood's head, mouth ajar.
"Oh, come now, I'm not simple. I may not keep abase with all the goings-on above, but you're not exactly the most shrewd of souls. Though, It means little rather I'm right or wrong. Was it Shining who sent you? Are you even a bat, I wonder? Not one of his bugs, no, far too awkward and honest for that. My friend, you truly underestimated my genius. I am Prince Blueblood, of the Solar court, wrought with Celestia's blood. I am no fool."
I didn't respond. I simply sat and stared over at the almost glimmering unicorn who declared himself without pause or worry. Where was this stallion minutes ago? We were nearly a completely different pony. I was beginning to see why Nightmare held him in such ill repute, why she tossed him into a cellar and why he'd survived this long as it was. Prince Blueblood was a whole other kind of dangerous.
"Blue, I, um, well."
"As I said, it matters not whom you align with. In this hovel, all that matters is my work. So, worry not. I have no mind to toss you to the wolves, as it were."
That was reassuring. The moment gone, Blueblood returned to his work without a second thought. The gusto and high of his performance did seem to drive his focus all the more. On the other hoof, I had no idea where to begin decompressing what I'd just witnessed.
"I do have one question, however," Blueblood said.
"Okay?" I asked.
Blueblood gently returned his quill to its well. "Whose Idea was the friendship ploy. Did Shining think such tricks would work? I would dare say he'd know me better than that. Perhaps the bug? I have a feeling she'd not be so base. To whom, then?"
"Who did what?" I asked.
Blueblood's face was an unmoving mask. He wore the stalwart look well. The face of a politician at work. Another proof of his noble background. He watched me as I stumbled tongue over thought and tried to rally any answer that'd actually settle the affair.
"No need for charades now. To whom do I owe the congratulations for such a cruel knife to my back. So tell me who, now."