Sleepless nights made the morning mushroom harvest a struggle. At least there were no snow leopards this time.
A bitterly cold wind whipped across the mountainside, battering Hypha and his meager harvest. He managed to find two mushroom caps—the first time in nearly three months he’d been successful two days in a row.
“That’s a good omen,” Cumulus said when Hypha returned to the temple.
Hypha clutched his robes, still feeling the bite of the wind. “You really think so?”
“Omens often disguise themselves in the mundane.” Cumulus flashed a wry, wrinkled smile. “Get something to eat, then come back to the temple.”
Hypha stood up straight. His tiredness vanished. “For more training?”
“No. Hirruck’s already on his way to the lower villages to gather laborers. They’ll be here in a few hours.”
The news made the hair on Hypha’s neck stand up. A part of him had hoped yesterday’s conversation had only been a bad dream. “How many?”
“However many want to help. But no more than ten.”
Ten ponies under his command. Ten outsiders, no less. The thought was enough to make his stomach flip.
Cumulus saw the grave look on Hypha’s face and laughed. “Remember what we said yesterday. We believe in you.” The smile gave way to measured apprehension. “Are you having second thoughts about your decision?”
“I... no. If you trust me, then I trust me, too.”
Cumulus patted Hypha on the back. “You have the potential to be a good leader. Just relax. You’re not leading an army. Just harvesting wheat.”
Hypha did what he was told and departed to get some breakfast before Hirruck arrived with the outsiders. All of a sudden he was very hungry and very angry. But for the life of him, he couldn’t force down breakfast any more than he could put words to the feelings that turned his stomach..
It’s not leading an army, he tried to reassure himself. No soldiers here.
From the moment they appeared on the horizon, the outsiders were a sensation in the monastery. For a few of the younger acolytes, it was the first time they’d ever seen outsiders. Hirruck brought back six of them in total: two younger boys, an older married couple, and two travelers in maroon cloaks.
Since every monk knew how to fly, no one had ever bothered to build stairs of any kind. The only way the outsiders could even get to the monastery in the first place was to have Hirruck pick them up and fly them over the walls. There was a door built into the side of the wall by the chicken coops, but it opened to a sheer vertical drop. The builders had an interesting sense of humor.
Hirruck made a show of flying the outsiders up one by one and parading them around the monastery. Once the six picked their jaws up off the ground, Hirruck led them over to Hypha, who waited by the entrance of the fenced-in farm.
“If you have any questions,” Hirruck said to the outsiders, “refer to Hypha. He is a trusted acolyte of our order, and will be overseeing your efforts today.”
Hypha put on his best intimidating scowl. The married couple saw right through and immediately started fawning over him. The mare, stout as a boulder, said, “Aren’t you precious!” and pinched his cheeks.
Hypha let out a very undignified yelp and leapt away. Hirruck, the colts, and the travelers shared a laugh.
“I’m sorry,” the lady’s husband said. “We’ve never seen Heavenly Peace monks before. We thought you were... I dunno.” A ghost of a blush crept across his face. “Grizzled kung-fu masters.”
“We are,” Hirruck said with a smirk. “We just prefer pacifism.”
A look passed between the two cloaked travelers, one Hypha couldn’t quite understand. It gave him a queasy feeling in his stomach, like he was being too nosey and saw something he shouldn’t have. But then all six outsiders turned their eyes towards him expectantly. For the sake of the task at hoof, he pushed his hesitations to the back of his mind.
Hypha found leadershipto be almost indistinguishable from doing grunt work, with the exception of being asked lots of questions he didn’t know the answers to.
Luckily, there was more than enough work to keep the party occupied. Between the monotony of harvesting wheat and the anxiety of having outsiders mere inches away, Hypha barely noticed the first four hours go by. By the time they took their lunch break around midday, they were well ahead of schedule, having cleared a full third of the excess farmland.
“Don’t wander off,” Hypha said in between heaping spoonfulls of lentils and bread. “We should rest for another hour, then get back to it.”
“Can we go play with them?” the two outsider boys asked, pointing to a group of acolytes playing soccer in the courtyard.
“No.”
“But—”
“No wandering off.”
A voice from behind Hypha said, “I don’t see the trouble in letting them play.”
Hypha turned around to find Elder Cumulus strolling up to the fence, a trademark placid smile on his face.
“I already said no wandering off,” Hypha replied, weaker this time.
“I could walk them over and supervise them.” Cumulus smiled. “But you’re in charge here. I defer to your judgment.”
Hypha’s frown deepened. Cumulus was being polite with his wording, but Hypha understood an order when he heard one. “Okay, you can take them.”
“And perhaps the others would appreciate a tour of the monastery.”
“They still haven’t finished their—”
He looked over his shoulder to find four sets of bowls and spoons stacked in a tidy tower in front of him. “Uh.” Cumulus had already wandered off towards the courtyard with the colts. “Okay. Fine. But we’re keeping the tour short.”
One of the outsiders in the maroon cloak flashed that same unsettling smile from before. “Fine with us.”
The married woman, Squeeze, was here with her husband Sifter purely out of boredom and a lack of business at Sifter’s blacksmithing business. As they walked the winding trails connecting the sections of the monastery together, they spoke at length about their children and how they all wanted to fly the coop as soon as they were old enough.
“I get it,” Squeeze said, “I was the same way at their age. But would it kill them to write a little more frequently?”
“I don’t see why not,” Hypha replied. Talking with these outsiders left him in a daze. They were nothing like what he expected. Come to think of it, he didn’t even know what he had expected in the first place. Outsiders had always been amorphous, a dark shadow lingering beneath trees and in the deepest parts of ravines. This married couple seemed downright domesticated.
“How often do you write to your parents?”
“The monks are my parents. I can just talk to them.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them. The order supplements its numbers by taking in a lot of orphans, so to eliminate favoritism we’re never told who our real parents are.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. They need us as much as we need them. Monks are only allowed to breed during full moons, so the birth rate’s naturally pretty low.”
“That’s, uh. Good for them.” Squeeze fell silent for a whole thirty seconds—the first time all day she’d done so. The silence eventually got the better of her, though, and she turned her attention to the two cloaked travelers. “What about you? Do you have children?”
“Nah,” the one with the gruff voice said.
“Ah.” A pause. “Okay.” Another pause. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I got around to asking your names.”
“Yup.”
Another pause. “So, you are...”
“Just travelers.”
Hypha decided internally to call the one with the rocky voice Gruff and the other one Grim. Something was off about them. Hypha couldn’t quite put a hoof on it, but he was sure they were up to no good. In a way, it was almost comforting. Gruff and Grim were exactly the kind of outsiders he was expecting. He would have to keep a close eye on them if he wanted to make it through the day without incident.
“Could we take a look at the temple?” Gruff asked.
“Absolutely not. The temple is for members of the order only.”
“What if it’s just a teeny tiny peek?”
Hypha shook his head. “Even if we were allowed to, the doors are impossible to open without special spells.” He threw in an impulsively barbed, “I don’t suppose you know how to do those?”
Gruff’s lips peeled back in a toothy, manic smile. “Can’t say I do.”
When Hypha and the odd couples returned to the farm, they found no sign of the younger boys. Hypha took a lap around the complex and found them sitting beneath the shade of a stonewood tree next to the temple entrance, talking in hushed voices with Elder Cumulus.
“Hello, Hypha!” Cumulus pointed to his hind legs, currently twisted into a lotus position beneath him. “Perhaps you could help me. It seems I’m stuck.”
Hypha dutifully dumped Cumulus onto his side and untangled his legs while the two outsider boys stifled their laughter.
“I need the outsiders back,” Hypha said.
“Them?” Cumulus asked innocently.
Hypha frowned. Cumulus knew he hadn’t bothered to learn the outsiders’ names. What was the big deal? “Yes, them.”
Cumulus shot him a disappointed look. “Alright Brek, alright Skip. Our time’s up.” The two boys groaned. “No fuss, now. Good work is just as rewarding as good play.” He placed a hoof on Hypha’s shoulder, halting him in place. “I need to speak to Hypha for a moment. I trust you two to find your way back.”
When the two boys were out of earshot, Cumulus straightened himself up and cracked his neck.
“You could have just floated up to get out of that lotus,” Hypha said. “Why’d you do that?”
“I let them beat me in soccer, too. Did you know they’re both orphans?”
“I didn’t. So what?”
“They came here to work because they need food. At any point today, have you stopped and asked yourself where these ponies are coming from?”
“I know where they came from. Outside.”
“They’d make good acolytes, Hypha. It’s never too late to join the order.”
Confusion clouded Hypha’s head as he made his way back to the farming area. Was this whole thing some strange new recruiting campaign? If it was, why wouldn’t Cumulus just tell him? The elder monk was holding something back. Hypha could feel it.
He was so lost in his thoughts, it took him almost ten minutes to realize Gruff and Grim had disappeared.
“They said they were looking for the bathroom,” Squeeze said with a shrug.
Weird. Hypha had already shown them where the outhouse was. With a grunt of effort, he took to the sky and saw two maroon cloaks fluttering towards the temple.
His heart grew heavy. He sank back to earth. Cumulus was going to kill him.
He took a more direct route to the temple so he would beat the two pegasi without being noticed. When Gruff and Grim arrived at the temple entrance to find Hypha waiting for them, their faces registered surprise, if only for a moment.
“This isn’t the way to the bathroom,” Hypha said.
“Our mistake,” Grim replied. His voice was smoother than the finest silk, deep and low and authoritative. “We just wanted to take a look around.”
“I told you, this place is off limits.” He felt terribly exposed by himself. Two on one, he thought. But that was silly. This was a farming job. No soldiers here. Right?
“For the tourists and the brats? Sure. You and us? We’re all grown-ups. Let’s have a peek. Real quick.”
Hypha puffed out his chest. “No.”
The smile dripped off Grim’s face. “You got a problem?”
“Do you?”
A moment passed. The air bristled like the negative space between lightning clouds. Waiting for something to slip and set it all off.
Grim broke first. His features relaxed. His shoulders drooped. “No problem here, kid. Just curious, is all.”
Hypha let out a silent sigh of relief. Maybe he was being too harsh on these ponies. The memory of his conversation with elder Cumulus came back to him. It’s never too late to join the order. These ponies didn’t strike Hypha as particularly interested in joining the order. But maybe that wasn’t really the point.
“It’s okay,” Hypha said. “If you wanted to learn more about the order, I’m sure the temple historian would be happy to give you a lesson once we’re done working—”
Grim lunged at him.
The two collided and tumbled across the temple dias. The back of Hypha’s head cracked the stone floor. His vision flashed white. He let out a gasp as someone kicked him in the ribs. He felt something inside him crack.
All of a sudden, Cumulus was at his side, drawing runes in the air above him. An icy cold numbness, a healing spell Hypha recognized from a time he’d accidentally flown into a stonewood tree as a foal, froze the pain.
“Can you hear me?” Cumulus asked. Hypha nodded and tried to sit up, but Cumulus gently held him down. “Don’t move until the spell is complete.”
From the corner of his vision, Hypha saw a dozen monks hovering around him. Spears dangled from their hooves like hornet stingers. They floated so serenely, their faces masks of perfect focus.
He heard Grim’s voice, smooth and diplomatic, say, “I thought you were pacifists. Pacifists don’t lure unarmed travelers into a trap and stab them.”
“I said we prefer pacifism. And who’s trapping who?”
That was Hirruck. Hypha couldn’t see him. Where was he? He tried to sit up again, but Cumulus put both of his hooves on Hypha’s shoulders.
Grim spoke again, his voice all gravel and poison honey. “Y’know what? You’re right. I think I prefer pacifism, too.”
“Right now, I’d prefer to tress you and throw you off the mountain.”
“Please let me explain. This is a big misunderstanding.”
“What’s the design on your cloak pendant?” Hirruck asked. Hypha heard nervous hoofsteps on stone. The monks in the air tensed.
“I don’t know what—”
“They’re Derechans!”
More monks appeared, swords and spears and maces clutched in their hooves. Tension condensed in the air, thick like fog rolling unstoppably down the mountainside.
“We’re taking you down the mountain,” Hirruck said in a tone that made it clear there would be no negotiation. “If we find you within a mile of the monastery after sundown, we’ll fill you with arrows.”
“I’m not sure I trust you to carry me all the way down. Accidents happen.”
“You’re right. Accidents happen.” To the assembled monks, Hirruck said, “Someone get me a rope.”
There was a commotion and a fluttering of cloaks, and for a moment Hypha thought the two scouts were going to fight rather than allow themselves to be tied up. But after a moment, the sound of hoofsteps grew distant. Hirruck and a contingent of armed monks peeled off to fly the Derechans away.
“It’s alright,” Cumulus whispered into Hypha’s ear. “They’re gone.”
“Did they—”
“They didn’t get in the temple. You stopped them. You were very brave.”
“The others,” Hypha murmured. Speaking made his head throb, but he couldn’t help himself. His vision spun into kaleidoscopic spirals. “Brek. Skip.”
“Don’t worry. They’re safe.”
Hypha shook his head. “No—you should throw them out too, just to be safe.”
The healing spell worked its way through Hypha’s body at a glacial pace. Cumulus told him it took longer than normal because of the sevarity of his injuries. The Derechan scout had broken two ribs and fractured his skull. Injuries like that took time to heal.
“Everything will be back to normal in a couple of hours,” he promised. “Just stay still.”
In the hours Hypha was immobilized, the other four outsiders were expelled from the monastery. After some protest, they were allowed to take their portion of the already-harvested crops. The leftovers were abandoned in the field.
A council meeting was scheduled for the following afternoon. Hypha worried they would expel him too for screwing up his task. Cumulus insisted he did nothing wrong, but deep down Hypha was certain it was all his fault. He knew something like this was bound to happen. It had been his job to handle the outsiders. Someone had to take responsibility.
Hypha tried to imagine what Wrender would say when the expulsion order came down, but drew a blank. It hurt too much to think.
By the time the healing spell finished mending Hypha’s skull, it was nearly dark. The clasp of one of the Derechan scouts had come undone during their hasty exit. Hypha saw it shining on the stone floor and went over to examine it. Their sigil, two outstretched wings and a square spiral in the center, was stamped into the metal, along with a numeral, “V.”
An unseasonable frost hit the mountain that night. The crops that hadn’t already been harvested froze to death in the field.