//------------------------------//
// Blood On Her Hooves 
// Story: The Immortal Dream 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
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"Huh," Mother said, chewing slowly at a wad of bubblegum. "Figured you would have flown the coop ages ago. Why now?"

My ears twitched, and I took a deep breath. "Maybe I'm just ready. But also because Elise and Graygarden say it's a better time than usual. There's a griffon called Gerardo who flew into town. An old friend of Elise's. He gave them some intel, and might be persuadable to give me and Corsica and Ansel a ride out."

Mother looked lazily intrigued. "He's still alive? Gerardo Guillaume?"

"You know him?" I leaned in, curious. "From the Empire?"

"Friend of a friend of a friend," Mother grunted. "Didn't see him much. Always thought he was a buffoon. Must have wizened up since those days if he's not kicked it yet."

"A buffoon?" I frowned. "Does that mean you don't want me going with him?"

Mother continued our conversation, and I watched, letting my past self speak for me. This wasn't a day I needed the help of dreams to remember: sitting on the couch of our bigger, post-Aldebaran apartment, still in Icereach. The day, or perhaps the day before, I left for Ironridge. My nineteenth birthday.

Not even a month ago. And half of that month had been spent on an airship, flying from Icereach.

It felt like a lifetime.

In my mind, I reached a hoof out, grasping for the past. My hopes and wishes, the way I had felt back then, all those thoughts and feelings were brought so close by my dream... Fear and uncertainty, yet there was hope and wonder in the uncertainty too. This was a day when I grew, stretched my wings, tested shackles that had been decaying for months around my limbs and tried to remove them once and for all.

I remembered yearning for the horizon, for Ironridge, for things I didn't know. I remembered the light spirit, and my quest to understand the miracles that saved me six months prior - coincidences that were too contrived to be anything but fate. I remembered my wish to hunt down Aldebaran and find meaning in our ordeal, the stifling confines of Icereach's walled-off academia, my fear at taking a chance yet willingness to gamble that the future could be brighter.

And in the last few days, how far I had come.

Once again, I was on an airship with Leitmotif, and this time, I had all the answers. I knew why Aldebaran had come, why Icereach was closed off, the truth about changelings and what was waiting for me in Ironridge. I saw the vastness of Ironridge, and now understood that it was the same as Icereach, only at scale: a bigger city meant more schemes, more lies, more things done for purposes that ordinary folk knew nothing about.

In my quest to understand, to keep my head above the water and become able to read what was truly going on, I was finally succeeding. I might not have plumbed the deepest depths of the city's secrets, but I knew more than countless others. I had learned to stop jumping at shadows, to stop freezing up at the possibility of my past traumas being repeated. I had practiced and strengthened my pragmatism, setting and achieving real, consequential goals like rescuing Leitmotif, and working toward others like protecting Coda. But, looking at myself like this, on the day I decided to set out and the reasons I decided to do it, I had lost something, too.

My excitement.

I was trying to help Coda because I cared for her. I helped Leitmotif because I thought it was right. I was trying to uncover Cold Karma's web of schemes as an act of self-preservation. But even when I succeeded in my original goals, the ones I held starting out, like finding a meaning to the Aldebaran incident, it didn't happen because I was playing detective with that as my goal. Leif just... told me. After I saved her for unrelated reasons.

Now, Leif had a vested interest in helping me get down to the ether river beneath Ironridge, and it might actually happen. But I hadn't taken any steps toward going there myself, not of my own volition. My passion had bled dry, too many other things like getting arrested or trying not to fall in with the wrong crowd sapping my attention and energy and time. If we did get down there - and between our combined competency and abilities, I had a hunch it would eventually happen - it wouldn't be because of my thirst for answers. I still had my old need to know things, but now it was a matter of survival. And that made it no longer fun.

The light spirit? Unnrus-Kaeljos? I had two other versions of myself floating around in my head who knew much more about it than me. And I hadn't even asked them or pressed the subject. What if I was still blessed? What if I was still supernaturally lucky? The miracles that saved me during the Aldebaran incident... What if that same power was keeping me safe down in Lilith's school, was the reason I had walked in and out and just gotten what I wanted without a plan or a price?

All that could still be happening. And yet the price of everything I had been through in Ironridge, the price of staying much more functional and on my hooves that last time, was that I no longer had the capacity to care to find out. I just didn't have the energy. The resources. The time.

One day, I promised myself, looking out at the humble interior of what was, until a month ago, my new home. One day I would leave, fly away from Ironridge and keep exploring, and it would all be different. One day I would leave these pressures behind, carry everything I cared about on my back and try again, and one day I would find the kind of wonders this younger version of me left home to chase.

I couldn't find it within me to be excited by the prospect right now, but the me in the dream did. I could just do what she would do, right? If there was one thing I had a talent for, it was acting like other ponies.

"It's just power," Mother said, the conversation having moved on to my bracelet. "It does what you need. Strength. Stamina. Hurting things you attack. Blunting things that hurt you. Usually all at once. I could never focus it well. Felt like a beast struggling at its chains. I'm surprised you don't know this, wearing it every minute of every day. You already control it well enough to use it for light. Shouldn't need me to explain all this."

"Where did you get it?" the me in the dream asked, after an extended moment of thought.

"Stole it." Mother shrugged. "Sometimes you have to do what it takes to stay alive. Other times, you have to do what it takes to live with yourself after you survive. This was the latter. Either way, it's yours now."

Imagine if the light spirit had nothing to do with it. I didn't understand how this bracelet worked. What if the miracles I kept meeting with were because of it, all along?

Not like I had any evidence to back that up. I could trace its history back to Mother, and then, the trail went cold.

Of course, I didn't know much about fate, either. And the bracelet did have powers. Even if I was wrong, how bad would it be to put two and two together and trust in the bracelet as the thing that kept protecting me?

It probably wouldn't change a thing, whether I did or not. But as long as I didn't use it, as long as I never fully explored or understood the depths of how it worked, I could always choose to believe.

Heh. Despite everything, I was still me. Still working ever to understand things, yet paradoxically eager to trust in the unknown.

"Let's go see those yaks," Mother said. "How long have I got until we leave?"

Dream me stopped in surprise. "Wait, we leave? You're coming with us?"

Mother gave me a look. "Am I not invited?"

"Well..." I fidgeted. "We were going to ask Gerardo if we could hitch a ride on his ship..."

Unbidden, I remembered the last thing Mother said to me, as we finished packing our bags and left for the surface: Knock 'em dead, kiddo. Try not to get in too much trouble. And once I've got my muscle mass back, I'll be right behind you.

I awoke, my chest tense, Coda's airship humming around me. Mother wanted to follow us into this mess... But she was already in it. Icereach was to be the first staging ground for Yakyakistan's invasion, Leif told me. Maybe Mother would come here, make good on her promise and follow me, and get caught up in everything that was going on now. Maybe Icereach would close itself off to foreigners, as Gerardo had warned me was happening, and she would have to leave before she was ready. Maybe Yakyakistan would make the first move, and she would somehow be subsumed into their new empire.

What did I do with this realization? I took a few deep breaths, and no answer came to me. But I knew one thing for sure: this was happening because I moved, uprooted myself and went to Ironridge. I left behind someone I cared about, and now, events far beyond my reach were going to threaten that.

This was why I wanted to carry my home on my back. If I had an airship of my own, Mother could have just... come with. Whether this situation was a passing fear or a serious problem, it wouldn't be here if I hadn't had to leave her behind.





Sleep didn't return. In fact, now that I had realized a concrete way the coming war might hurt me or things I cared about, it only got farther away the more I dwelt on them. My mind demanded a plan, a contingency, but half-formed thoughts and ideas were all I could get. Maybe I could find Garsheeva, then get Coda to give me that airship, then fly west and go looking for Mother back in Icereach? Now that I thought about abruptly leaving, I realized how many unfinished plans that would leave me here. What would Leif do? What about Coda? Or my friends? Would the city itself be alright?

...Leif asked me not to get involved, not to feel like I would be responsible for its well-being if I knew what was coming. I knew she had a point. But it would take no small amount of effort not to flunk that request.

I got to my hooves, rolling free from the very comfortable bed, and decided to give myself a tour of the ship. Not like I wasn't a welcome guest...

My cabin, roughly the size of my small, old bedroom, had no windows and opened out into a hallway along the starboard side of the ship. The hallway was lined with windows, wide enough that a group of ponies could stand around chatting and someone could slip past them without too much trouble, and I looked out to see the sun approaching sunset across the Ironridge crater, the heat causing it to ripple like a reflection in water.

To my right, the hallway connected with the ship's main lounge, which I knew to hold stairways to the second floor. To the left, it curved around toward the prow, past another cabin and into a windowed viewing lounge, where my hooves carried me.

A mare I hadn't seen before was there, looking out at the Aldenfold as the sunset washed the wood floor in deep golden browns. She had a short, pink mane and a mid-gray coat, batpony wings and a special talent that looked like an ear listening to a vibrating line.

"I don't recognize the sound of your hoofsteps," she said, not turning to look at me. "You're one of the visitors we picked up today?"

Her voice was soft. A little too soft, as if something had crushed it and it never quite recovered. I couldn't put my hoof on it, but something about her was... different from other ponies. Maybe it was that she was a real batpony, rather than a unicorn in a costume like the rest of Coda's clergy.

"Yeah," I said, nodding even though her gaze was fixed out the window. "Name's Halcyon. You?"

"I am Nyala," she said. "I've lived here for some time. You are the one Coda refers to as a princess, then."

I hesitated. "You don't call her any of the honorifics and stuff? And, er, yeah? I am."

"I have the privilege of not needing to," Nyala softly said. "I imagine you..."

She turned toward me and trailed off. If I had been the one talking, I would have done the same.

Nyala had three eyes. Two of them were normal, meek and sky-blue. But in the middle of her forehead was a third, golden and alive, so much more vertical than any pupil I had seen before that its slit was wider at the top and bottom than in the middle.

My heart thumped loudly in my chest.

The eye didn't blink or change.

"I-I'm sorry," Nyala said, hurriedly getting up, looking at me like I was a ghost. "I have to go..."

She hurried swiftly away, leaving me too stunned to move.

What... Was that a drawing? A sigil? It couldn't have been real. I must have been hallucinating, or-

"If I'm hallucinating, the look on your face says it's not just me," Procyon said, floating up through the floorboards. "Any idea what it means? Or why she ran away from you?"

I glanced at her. "You've got none, then?" I whispered.

She shook her head. "Not a clue."

Before I could put together anything else to say, Howe poked his head around the corner. "Oh, it's you! Her honorable ladyship back there came flying out like we'd been boarded by the pirate king Rhodallis himself! You see what spooked her?" He glanced shiftily around. "Not to knock your mojo, dudette, but you look a little spooked yourself."

"I... err..." I unfroze like a key clunking around in a rusty padlock. "Sanity check me. She doesn't have any weird or unusual features, does she? Nyala? The mare that was just here?"

Howe shrugged. "Well, having the hottest bod this side of Mistvale is pretty unusual, but ol' Howe's assuming you aren't talking about that?"

"Err, no?" I blinked, then relaxed. "I'm gonna take that as a no, then..."

Howe pursed his lips. "Mega weird. No pirates or poltergeists, then?"

"I think I was what spooked her," I admitted, feeling just as lost as I had been on my first day in Egdelwonk's office. "I found her here, and she was talking to me normally, and then when she saw me, she sprinted."

Howe scratched his butt. "Then the Howenator doesn't have a clue."

I shrugged. Neither did I.

"Who was she?" I asked, hoping that even if my apparently-supernatural questions couldn't be answered, mundane information would at least be available instead. "Nyala. You make her sound important."

"About as important as you can be around here," Howe said, wandering forward and causing a chair to groan in protest as he took a seat. "That majestic set of curves dressed up in the coat of a mortal mare is little Coda's mommy dearest, believe it or not."

I gaped. "She's Chrysalis? Get out."

Howe shook his head. "There's more to parenting than whose belly you hitched a ride in, my girl. Turns out that while evil monster queens aren't too good at raising their kids once they've had 'em, neither are cults. Someone had to get Coda from a lil' suckling babe to a not-so-little princess who can understand what her own cult has to teach, and it wasn't gonna be the cult."

My backwards ears fell. That made a whole lot more sense. I was adopted, after all, and I still thought of Mother as... well, my mother. "So Nyala was just there for the part that mattered?"

"You're talking like the part that matters is over," Howe remarked, looking out the window.

I didn't know what to say.

"Can ol' Howe give you some advice, dudette?" Howe raised an eyebrow, still not looking quite at me. "It ain't advice he gives too often, but it's good stuff."

"Shoot," I said.

Howe waved a wing. "Ponies have a funny way of getting stuck up on things that happened in the past. This here ship? Most everyone on it is caught up trying to right a wrong that happened before you can remember. A wrong they were complicit in, see. Maybe you've heard the story, but all these clergy, they used to be Griffon Empire scientists working for the mad fool who made Chrysalis into what she is today. And hey, better that they repent than continue down the path of evil darkness or apathy, right? But at some point, you gotta ask yourself, why are you doing this? And who are you doing it for?"

"They don't ask themselves that?" I questioned quietly.

"It's all well and good to try and rid the world of evil, of course," Howe went on. "Better goal than most of the cults the Howenator has crossed paths with. You want one that's messed up, just look at those clowns in the Night District. But where does it end, little dudette? Where does it end?"

"What do you mean?" I leaned forward, waiting.

"That kid they're worshiping..." Howe leaned back and sighed. "She's got real power, alright. And she's got blood on her hooves, insomuch as her existence was the catalyst that sent Chrysalis off the deep end... Way ol' Howe's heard it, the thing that finally broke her was seeing that filly for the first time. See, her lover at the time was a griffon noble - friendly fellow, if a little desperate - and so she thought her kid would be a griffon, seeing as batponies always breed true. Guess they didn't realize she'd been made into something not a batpony anymore. He thought she cheated on him. She couldn't explain it. And she'd had a pretty bad life up until that point anyway, and just... snapped. Two leafy ears and two leathery wings, a new baby bat no one knew at the time was a queen herself, and a spark that burned a continent to the ground."

As he was talking, my mind started to fog, and I found myself able to listen less and less. Something deep beneath my mask shifted, and an ancient fear threatened to rise like bile, warning me to get away. A wordless voice yelling, screaming desperately that these were dangerous words, words I needed not to hear.

I swallowed and forced it down, suddenly queasy. I was stronger than that. My curiosity was stronger than that, but more importantly, I was strong enough to bear whatever secrets the me under the mask wanted to keep hidden. And as desperate as she was to run, I was desperate to know why she wanted to run.

Howe kept talking. "So let ol' Howe ask you a question: that war might not have happened if not for her. And she has the power to do not everything, but a little something to put things back to rights... maybe. But how much responsibility does she have to do it? If Coda wants to make the world a better place, should she do it because it's her duty, or because she wants to? The Howenator's curious to hear your opinion, but from where he's looking, maybe it ain't the fairest thing, blaming the kid for something she had no control over. Or maybe fairness has nothing to do with it, and that's just the way the cards were dealt. What do you think?"

I swallowed again, beginning to feel a cold sweat coming on as I resisted the fear in my stomach. "Of course it's not fair. She shouldn't be on the hook for that solely because of the circumstances of her birth. That's what you're asking, right?"

"Ol' Howe figured you'd feel the same." Howe nodded. "There's a whole bunch of ponies in this world with grand ideas about what's right and wrong, but not so many who have the strength to back up their ideas. And far too many of the ones who can make a difference wouldn't put their money on the table without other folks dragging them into it. It starts out as a fine idea: let's raise this monster kid, give her a life that's better than her mother's, give her a chance to use her powers for good and all. The Howenator's been keeping tabs on this group for a while, and they're nothing if not dedicated. But, to be honest? He was sorta hoping they'd give up the crusade and settle down and live normal lives by now."

"You're going to ask me to look out for Coda, or something, aren't you?" I guessed, having a pretty good idea where this was going.

Howe winked. "A week or so you've known her and already she listens to you more than anyone else on this boat, especially yours truly. Like it or not, that's a pretty big responsibility, little dudette. But, hey. It's a chance to do some good in the world that's a lot more realistic than what she's trying to achieve with her holy war."

"Is there something concrete you're asking me to do?" I asked, my head still foggy. "Sorry, I... just woke up. I'm already her friend. If there's something you're hinting about, you'll just have to be explicit."

Howe sat up on his haunches, crossed his forelegs and sighed. "Alright. No fancy talk, I'll spell it out for you: Coda hasn't yet put two and two together that the reason her cult are setting her on this course has nothing to do with righteousness; it's to assuage their own guilty consciences. She hasn't put together that she's a means to an end for them and they don't have any plans past that. And she hasn't realized, or hasn't let herself realize, that the reason her own scriptures say she has to fight Chrysalis is because that calamity was her own fault, for existing. Whether it's true or fair or smart or not, they say it. Chrysalis didn't lose her marbles because she had a perfect upbringing, and the How... I'm worried that, provided she doesn't wind up dead in a ditch on the losing end of a changeling queen battle, Coda is not going to have a happy existence. And I'd be real grateful if she could get a bit more substance in her life before she realizes what everyone means when they say she's gotta do this to clean the blood off her hooves."

My hooves itched. Covertly, I shifted, edging open the cuff on one of my boots and peeking inside.

Red, from about the halfway point down. As if I had waded through a sea of blood.

My stomach churned.

"Y-yeah," I said, absent. "I'll... try to smuggle her out and show her the city, or something. That good?"

Howe flexed a flabby flex, apparently not noticing my indiscretion. "You move to the Howenator's groove, little mare. And if you ever wonder why he cares about this kid so much, just remember: her mom? Hottest bod this side of Mistvale. Ol' Howe may have had a teensy dalliance or two in ages long past. Not enough to count, but sometimes you can't blame a stallion for dreaming of what he never had."

I understood. "Coda can read emotions, can't she? How does she not know all this?"

Howe pulled a flat bottle of something dark out of his pocket and sloshed it around. "If you got a taste of this, think you could tell what it was? Bet you they didn't have it in Icereach."

I wasn't sure that was a bet I wanted to take. "Not if I've never had it before."

"Then same principle." Howe put the bottle away. "Doesn't matter if you can read the script when you don't know the words."

He lumbered away without fanfare, and my stomach slowly settled, leaving me cold and clammy. So, that was how Howe thought of Coda.

What it would be like to have someone doing the same for me?

I let out a sigh, the sun much closer to the horizon, beginning to scratch at the peaks of the mountains. What was wrong with me? Had I done something? No, what had I done? Why did I react that way to Howe talking about... about Coda being guilty for something that clearly wasn't her fault?

Was it the avalanche? Was there something still buried about that, repressed in my memories? If that was the point where Procyon had been torn free, then maybe...

"Look at her hooves," a raspy voice echoed in my mind, welling up from a memory I didn't remember. "It's like they're covered in blood..."

I ran back to my room, slammed the door, and locked myself inside.





"What," I panted, the lights on and my front two boots removed, "does this have to do... with me? Why do I feel this way? What did I do? And when? If it's that bad, let me know! Please... I can handle it..."

Procyon appeared beside me, wearing a frown.

I held up my forehooves for her to see, my question already on my lips.

Her hooves were colored too, though they looked more like dawn than sunset, let alone blood.

"You heard what Leif said," Procyon told me. "About all batponies being changelings. She said the form you take, in your natural state and before you can shapeshift, is tied to your talent and your identity. But your talent is to change, and we've changed our identities. Is it so much to imagine that the way you look now is not the way you looked at birth?"

"So I originally looked like you?" I asked. I had more or less assumed that before...

"The pony you think of as yourself has always looked like that," Procyon said, looking away. "But your body... back when it was my body... did look like this, originally. Yes. Our change wasn't so noticeable to the public because I, too, always wore clothes. Corsica never looked at you, the original Ansel is dead... Surely Mother knew, but I never asked her myself. But that's beside the point. The point is, we are a pony who has some manner of say over our own identity. Because of that, it's a reasonable assumption that you look the way you feel about yourself. In other words, you look the way you deserve to look, because you are the only pony who can say what it is that you deserve."

"But I don't understand why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling," I protested. "Where are these feelings coming from? I must have done something not that great, and Howe was reminding me of it, but what was it, and why can't I know?"

Procyon shook her head. "That is for me to know and for you to be free of."

"Do I look free of it?" I stared her in the eye, my voice quiet in case the walls were thin. "Help me out, here. I bet you anything the reason I have this taboo against ponies looking at my hooves is because the red is supposed to be a reminder of something I did, isn't it? But it's enough for it to be a reminder to me, and I don't need anyone else seeing some old shame I'm not even allowed to have for myself. Is that it? They're a mark for you and the other me to remember by, and they're there for no one else."

Procyon hesitated. "I was... not... a very nice pony. You were created to face the future, and have at last grown up enough to do it. You shouldn't dwell on the past. Or you will find things that were my fault, and not yours."

"We're the same person," I insisted. "Just... in different pieces, or something. Like it or not, your burdens are my burdens and mine are yours. So work with me just a little."

Howe's voice echoed in my mind, this time, talking about Coda and how Chrysalis wasn't really her fault, even if causality suggested she played a role. Was this the same?

"...I'm sorry," Procyon said, retreating into a wall. "If it turns out you somehow are strong enough to handle it, that would make me the weak one for trying to take the easy way out and disappear. And I don't think I'm strong enough to handle that."

I stretched a hoof out, unsure how to answer that. "Wait...!"

Too late. She was gone.

I no longer felt the fear. It was still there, a deep seed that had retreated to its old position, but was no longer buried. The barrier in my mind that separated from me and the other me was damaged, weakened. I could feel some things I hadn't felt before, and as I pried at those chips, a few more memories came to me.

It was a dream. One in which I was very young, or perhaps I just wasn't getting any visuals - but it felt like the dreams I did remember, the ones where my eyes were too new to focus and I had no control over my body. Those words I had heard... the raspy voice, my hooves being covered in blood... Those must have been spoken to me long, long ago. Long enough that dreams were the only way I could remember, even without my other selves interfering.

This was a bad dream, the kind I would wake up and take off my mask and erase from my conscious memory whenever they happened. I couldn't remember the full dream itself, but I was fairly confident that, if I dreamed it again, this time it would stick with me.

I wasn't sure whether that excited or frightened me. But I felt like I was ready. I had weathered all my impulses to run while talking with Howe. I could face the others' fears. Seeing Procyon back away like that just filled me with determination to see it done. Whatever this terrible secret in our past was, I had a hunch it was at the heart of everything, the reason I couldn't just go on living as one pony with a normal, complete brain. I would learn what was in our past, and I would show them that I could go on living.

...And maybe, if Howe was right about Coda and she did eventually realize that her cult was predicated on blaming her for the circumstances of her birth, I could be an example to show her the way. But it was best not to get ahead of myself. I had to find the way, first.

I took a breath and steadied myself. Maybe I would see if my friends were up... Or actually, maybe I would go and talk to Howe again. By this point, I was all but certain I trusted him. More than most other potential confidantes, at least.

If he wanted me to help out the filly he saw as his daughter, I could do with a little help first for me.