Vertigo overtook Typhoon as she followed Deep Blue through his portal, the magic that powered it tunneling her body across reality in all defiance of the natural laws of the universe. As the flash of light and the momentary motion sickness faded away, Typhoon grimaced and gave her head a shake to restore some normalcy over her faculties. Magical transportation had never been her favorite, but it had its uses. And when it came to breaking a hex cast by the alicorn of moonlight, Typhoon wasn’t about to complain about any magic involved along the way.
“I suppose in proper company this would be the part where I welcome you to my home and tell you to make yourself comfortable, but I don’t often entertain guests,” Deep Blue said, walking away from the portal without looking back at Typhoon or the young unicorn that scampered in after them. “I’m honestly not sure if I have a spare chair around here to begin with. My work is too important to be interrupted by distractions… but I’ll make an exception for your unique request.”
His voice echoed in the chamber, and as Typhoon craned her head around, she understood why. Rather than a tower ornamented with windows giving gracious views over the green grasslands, the three ponies appeared to have entered what looked like a large, vaulted cave. Plain, natural limestone formed the walls around them before curving into the ceiling, while streaks of miscolored water dribbled from spiderlike cracks in the stone and dripped down stalactites into a large pond dominating the center of the room. The pond glowed with a magical blue light, almost as blue as the clear skies outside, and its glow produced enough light to see inside.
Surrounding the pond were the artifacts of Deep Blue’s work and life. While the pond dominated the center of the cave, Deep Blue had made the walls surrounding it his own, with a wide pathway that delineated the circumference of the pond allowing access to anything he might need throughout a day. By the portal they had just left was a long table that followed the curve of the pond, with countless scrolls piled across its surface and spilling onto the floor. Clockwise from that, shelves, chests, and lockers contained anything the wizard needed to keep stored; from the crack in one stone chest, a chilly frost spilled onto the floor, not entirely unlike the frigid prosthetic hoof on the end of Typhoon’s foreleg. Further along the perimeter, a simple kitchen worked under some enchantment, with knives slicing carrots and potatoes of their own volition before tossing them into a pot of boiling water, filling the cave with the wonderful aroma of a fresh stew. Finally, a large and luxurious bed stood pressed up against the wall, the blankets left in a messy pile and spilling onto the ground near the water. But nowhere did Typhoon see a tunnel or path leading out of the cave itself; apart from the portal they had just walked through, there was no way in or out.
“I was expecting a tower,” Typhoon remarked. “Don’t all wizards have towers?”
Deep Blue sputtered and whipped his head back, fixing Typhoon with an offended glare. “Only wizards who are so self-conceited that they feel the need to remind anypony and everypony where they live and of some idea of social stature that they affix to themselves. I’ve found they tend to be more of a nuisance than they’re worth. They attract witless idiots who think they’re strong enough to steal some elderly robe-wearing unicorn’s treasures and then smear their blood into the tiles when a golem stomps them into paste. And then you have to maintain golems just to clean the mess up and deal with the smell before it gets rancid…”
He waved his hoof in disgust. “Much better to just set up a workshop somewhere unseen and unknown. You have to deal with far fewer interruptions and distractions to very important work. And I feel no need to display my own importance to the ponies beyond Equestria’s borders. When my work is finished, they will know my name, and know just what I’ve done for all of ponykind.”
“What work is that?” Sparrow asked as she cantered up behind the two older ponies, her mismatched eyes filled with wonder as she looked around the cave. “I’d kinda like to know where all those gems we’ve been finding for you are going…”
“Water,” was Deep Blue’s response, as if that answered everything.
Unfortunately for Sparrow, it did not. “What do you mean, ‘water?’ You want water? Boiling Springs has got plenty of it. And it’s warm, too!”
The wizard sighed in exasperation. “I didn’t invite you here to impart the deep wellspring of my wisdom on you. In fact, I didn’t invite you here. Only the legionary.”
“And what, I was just supposed to miss out on all this wacky wizard stuff?” Sparrow shook her head and trotted up to Deep Blue’s table, trying to make sense of the runes and notes scrawled across countless sheets of parchment. “Not a chance! I’m not gonna miss something as exciting as this!”
Deep Blue gave Typhoon a look, and the old soldier just shrugged. Then his horn lit up, and with a loud pop! Sparrow disappeared.
Typhoon’s wings flared. “What…?”
“She’s fine, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Deep Blue assured her. “I merely sent her back to Boiling Springs. She’s been helpful to me, and despite what Archmage Diadem lectures in her academy, not all of us left Equestria because we’re terrible ponies. Some of us just don’t want to be disturbed by auditors sticking their noses into important work to make sure we aren’t breaking any so-called ‘laws of magic.’” He snorted derisively and took a seat at his table, the only seat, and raised an eyebrow at the legionary. “But I’m not here to entertain you with my life’s story. I’d rather not entertain you at all, but as I said earlier, you’ve earned a bit of my time. And truth be told, it’s been a long time since I’ve encountered a hex. You’ve even earned a bit of my curiosity. But before I begin, I do have to ask: why not have one of the mages in Everfree look into it, soldier?”
In response, Typhoon removed her helmet and set it down on the table, letting her graying mane fall loose. Deep Blue squinted at her face, unobscured by armor, and after a moment, his eyes widened in surprise and recognition—but only for a moment. “If you know anything about what happened in Everfree,” Typhoon simply stated, “then you already know why.”
Deep Blue blew air at a strand of his damp mane hanging down by his muzzle and nodded. “Not much as I ought to, with the pegasus triumvir standing right before my eyes. Word doesn’t travel far down here. All I know is that the Legion is gone, dissolved by your hoof. Some sort of dispute with our dear Queen Platinum, third of her name. Who, despite being separated by some two decades in age, is your sister, if my knowledge of Commander Hurricane’s children serves me right?” He shook his head and fixed Typhoon with a questioning look. “Curious, then, that one sister rules in Everfree, and the other is fleeing from it—and haunted by a hex from the alicorn of the night.”
Typhoon awkwardly glanced away. “I never said that I was the one hexed.”
“There is magic about you, soldier. Even more than emanates from that Tartarus-chilled weapon you carry by your side.” He declined his horn in the direction of Typhoon’s sword for emphasis. “And even if I wasn’t sensitive to magic, it was obvious in your words. You wouldn’t go through all this effort to find me if you weren’t the one suffering from it… and desperate to get rid of it.”
Typhoon set her jaw, having no answer to the wizard. “The hex is not related to what happened between me and my sister. It’s an older slight that only manifested when I left Everfree and was no longer responsible for its protection. What I did for Luna to hex me is not important. Only getting rid of it is.”
“If you’d rather keep that your own little secret, I won’t pry,” Deep Blue assured her. “As I said, I understand wanting privacy. But even if I don’t know the reasons, I need to at least know what it is so that I can help you. Or at least, rather, point you in the right direction to somecreature who can.”
“Luna’s domain is the night and dreams,” Typhoon said with a shrug of her wings. “I would think it would be obvious.”
“Death is also her domain,” Deep Blue added. “There has never been a necromancer of her skill and prowess, even if her alicorn blood aids her in both. Perhaps the hex is upon your soul, not your sleep.”
That idea sent a shiver down Typhoon’s spine, and she fidgeted her wings as she pushed that unpleasant thought aside. “Then I should count myself lucky it’s only my dreams that she hexed,” the soldier said. “Since I left Everfree, my dreams have been haunted by nightmares of my past. I crossed Luna in a way that deeply angered her many years ago, and now she reminds me of it nightly. Peaceful sleep is impossible now.”
“You would be dead from sleep deprivation if that were true,” Deep Blue observed. “Even if you need less sleep as you age, every creature still needs some.”
At that, Typhoon dug into her saddlebag and pulled out her broken dreamcatcher, setting it down on the table and pushing it toward Deep Blue with a wing. “This has worked for a time,” she said as the wizard picked it up in his magic and looked it over. “I thought it was a useless charm at first, but the pony I got it from assured me it would help. He wasn’t wrong. But now it’s broken, and the nightmares are back.”
After a moment, Deep Blue let out an impressed hum. “This is spider silk,” he said, his magic giving one of the silk strands a gentle tug. “The great spiders that infested the tunnels beneath the frontier could give dreams physical form by spinning them into silk. Even now, just exactly how they can do this is a mystery we may never solve with the war over and their burrows torched. But since it’s made out of dreams, it knows, in a sense, how to entangle them. It would have indeed been effective at keeping Luna’s nightmares away from your sleep—when it was intact.” He paused, then looked askance at Typhoon. “Who made this?”
Typhoon’s nostrils flared for but a moment following a sharp exhale. “Mortal Coil.”
“Him?” Deep Blue asked, eyebrows climbing up his forehead. “Didn’t he die twenty years ago? Unless he knew about the spiders back then and didn't tell anypony, he wouldn't have been able to get their silk to make this. Equestria didn't even know about the spiders until a few years ago when they started sinking towns.”
At that, the old soldier merely shrugged, accompanied by a mumbled, “Well, he made it.” But she reached out with her wing and, using the tip of her feathers, dragged the mangled dream catcher back towards her. “Who do I go to to break the hex? And in the meantime, can you fix my dreamcatcher so I can sleep?”
Though the look on Deep Blue's face made it obvious that he found Typhoon's non-answer unsatisfactory, he sighed and let the topic drop.“As for who can help you, I have an idea.” Deep Blue turned toward the wall of the cave, and with a little tug from his magic, a map of the known world floated toward the table. He smoothed it out with his hooves, and Typhoon’s eyes wandered over the hoof-drawn borders, scanning first over the well-defined east and the old Compact Lands, abandoned to the torment of the last windigo’s winter, then to the west, where the sharply-drawn Equestrian coastline faded into vaguely-defined suppositions on what lay beyond the nation’s borders. It was there that Deep Blue put down a hoof, in the sketches of tall, dark trees that dominated what remained of the west edge of the map, beyond a murky sea. “If there’s anycreature in this world that could break Luna’s hex on you, it would be the elk.”
Typhoon furrowed her brow at that. “That’s a long flight. And we barely know anything about them. Other than the odd wizard or adventurous explorer, almost nopony has ever visited their lands.” She fixed Deep Blue in ruby red eyes. “How do I know you’re being honest with me?”
The wizard scoffed. “I have no reason to lie to you. If you think I am, feel free to disregard my suggestion and find your own way to break your hex. It matters little to me either way.”
Frowning, Typhoon eventually sighed and nodded, her wings sagging a little bit as if already weary of the journey that awaited them. “You’re right. My apologies. But that’s still a long flight, and I don’t know how many more miles I have in my bones. Are you certain they can help?”
“The elk receive visions in their dreams. They can even communicate with each other while they sleep. It is their second world,” Deep Blue said. “They navigate it as effortlessly as you pegasi can the sky, or us unicorns the threads of magic that hold the planes together. Maybe not just any elk can break your hex, but I see little reason to doubt that one of their most powerful seers would be more than a match for the alicorn of the night’s adopted stewardship over magic that is not ponykind’s own.”
After a moment, Typhoon allowed herself a small nod and a ruffle of her wings. “Okay. It’s… well, it’s something. I suppose I’m not exactly in a position to complain.”
“If you find your own means of breaking Luna’s hex without the elk, then by all means, go for it,” Deep Blue said. “But I would caution you against turning to a fey to break fey magic. You might end up losing much more than your sleep.”
“Noted.” Typhoon’s glance fell back down to her dreamcatcher, and after another frown, she picked it up and tucked it away. “There will be many nights between here and there, though. I won’t get far if I don’t get my dreamcatcher fixed. Can you fix it?”
“I can…” Deep Blue hesitantly began, but the way his words trailed off made Typhoon pause. “I have some spider silk. But only a few strands. It was all I was able to scavenge before the Royal Guard burned all the barrows it could find. That is not something I can just give away for free.”
Typhoon’s eyebrow climbed towards her graying mane. “Those sapphires I gave you…?”
“You bought my time and my advice,” Deep Blue told her, frowning sharply. “Not something as valuable as that.”
“Then what do you want for it?” Typhoon asked him. “I won’t make it to the elk without it.”
Deep Blue’s magic shuffled through the papers on his table and retrieved one covered with runes and sigils. Typhoon squinted at it, trying to make sense of the alien language, while the wizard rested his hoof on the scroll. “If you help me with my work, then I’ll fix your dreamcatcher for you.”
“I should know better than to get involved with the projects of wizards the Academy chased out of Everfree,” Typhoon said. But after a moment, she drew a breath and let her red eyes meet the blues of the mage standing across from her. “What is it?”
The wizard smiled back at her. “There’s a reason I know so much about fey. For twenty years, I’ve been trying to capture one. And you’re going to help me with that.”
Typhoon was silent for a moment. But ultimately, she sighed and let her wings droop.
“I suppose death is a nice substitute for restful sleep, isn’t it?”