The trio waited until the last trace of twilight surrendered night before slipping out of their dormitory room. They moved single-file down the hall, heads down, tails swishing silently behind them.
Be like a snow leopard, Hypha thought. A faint afterimage of jagged teeth and claws flashed through his mind. He tuned it out. He was a pony on a mission. Focus was key.
Once outside, they crossed the grassy rotunda at a dead sprint. A few lights were on in the cafeteria, as well as a few in the dorm they’d just left. But the monastery grounds themselves were empty. Nopony stopped them as they made their way down the temple stairs.
Red and Blue paused at the bottom to gawk at the massive dome. Firelight from the eternal flame danced across their faces.
“Culty,” Red surmised.
After a few wrong turns, Hypha managed to retrace his steps back to Prairie Sky’s office. A torch still burned inside, but the room was unoccupied.
“Who leaves an open flame in a room full of books?” he muttered.
Red and Blue didn’t bother answering. They attacked the desk, stomping right over the fragile parchment on the floor. Hypha flinched.
“Be careful,” he whispered. “Don’t make too much noise.”
“Go do your mushroom thing,” Red said over her shoulder. Another old document crackled under her hooves. “We got this.”
“Last time we split up, you almost left without me.”
“You’re not coming with us, remember?”
Hypha lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching them work. Then he sighed and took off further down the hall.
The ultraviolet lights of the hydroponics room painted Hypha’s fur a luminous shade of purple. He blinked away spots, unaccustomed to the light after so much time groping around in relative darkness.
The first thing he did was take a notepad and pencil from his saddlebag and make a sketch of the entire operation. Then he got granular. He used a canteen to remove a sample of the water from the tank in the corner in case he needed to examine the mineral content. He studied the rubber tubing delivering water to the rocks, the frequency at which they misted the mushrooms. He took samples of the thin soil. He unplugged one of the ultraviolet crystal lights and stuffed it into his bag for good measure.
Then, with religious reverence, he plucked each of the mushrooms from their rocks and placed them in a separate compartment in his saddlebag. Handling so many mushrooms, even these toothless half-children of the real thing, made his heart race. A mountainous weight pressed down on his shoulders. With each rock he stripped clean, he recalled the face of another Roseroot monk. Cumulus. Hirruck. Wrender. This was for them.
When he was done, he paused by the exit. His eyes flickered towards the water container and the dozens of tubes snaking onto the now-empty rocks. A pen knife sat out on a small work bench next to the container. The blade gleamed in the light.
Hypha picked up the knife and drove it into the bottom of the water container. He jerked it free, and a thin stream spilled onto the floor. He slashed the tubes next. Then the wires connecting the lights. That was for Roseroot, too.
When the sabotage was complete, Hypha crept back up the hallway to Prairie Sky’s office. Red and Blue were still rifling through his paperwork.
“Have fun?” Red asked. She tore through a ream of legal ledgers with important-looking signatures on them, ripping half of them in the process and scattering the rest.
Hypha shrugged. The treasures in his saddlebag shifted awkwardly on his back. “Any idea when you’ll be done?”
“No.”
Blue’s head emerged from behind the desk. She shot Hypha a sympathetic glance, then dove back in.
Hypha stood outside the office until the sound of tearing parchment got under his skin. He limped off to the main room and sat in front of the eternal fire, not quite meditating, not quite thinking about anything. He felt himself dozing off, and decided to let it happen. Red and Blue would wake him up, intentionally or not, when they went to leave.
As he drifted off, he heard a voice behind him say, “I knew I’d find you here.”
Hypha shrieked and leapt into the air. His front hooves came down hard. The mineral seal held, but it didn’t numb the pain of the impact entirely. Hypha fell onto his side. The load of mushrooms in his bag compressed.
Prairie Sky stood before him, his eyes shining in the firelight. Patches of wispy mane jutted off in every direction. His mustache drooped. It looked like he’d just rolled out of bed.
“Sorry,” he said, chuckling. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you—”
“I’m okay,” Hypha snapped. He caught himself, took a deep breath, and sat up on his haunches. “I’m not good with surprises.”
“I should have known better than to sneak up on you. I’m sorry.”
Hypha went back to staring at the fire. “It’s fine.”
Prairie Sky took a seat next to Hypha. “So you’re leaving?” he asked, his voice neutral.
Did Prairie Sky suspect anything? Maybe he thought Hypha was merely paying his final respects to the architecture before slipping away. “Yes,” Hypha finally said. “Tonight.”
“Even with everything that’s happened, I still consider you a brother. You’ll always have a place here.”
Hypha felt a twinge of guilt. Even after everything Prairie Sky had done to the order—stolen their secrets, pimped them for profit—even after all that, Hypha couldn’t ignore the kindness in the false elder’s heart. He was a paragon of monkly virtue. In a way.
“I haven’t been the best guest,” Hypha said. “But I’m grateful for your hospitality.”
“You’ve been through so much. It’s an honor to care for you.”
Guilt twisted Hypha’s gut. “Thanks.”
“What about your friends?”
Hypha stiffened. His ears swiveled to the hallway he’d come from. He couldn’t hear the two mares trashing the office from here. But that hardly eased his anxiety. “They’re leaving too.”
He nodded. “Right. Official government business.”
“Is that what they told you?”
“Yup.” The two shared a knowing laugh. “They’re good ponies, but they’re on a bad path. Try not to let them fall into despair.”
“What makes you say that?”
“They’re burdened by hate. That’s my read on them, anyway. If you spend enough time wrestling demons, you start to see them in others.”
“You think you’re a hateful pony?”
“I know it. I’m weak, Hypha. Sometimes I worry I’ve pulled the wool over all these poor ponies’ eyes. That I’ve manipulated them.” He stared deep into the fire, as if he was searching a scrying mirror. “But I have to keep going. If I really believe what I’m doing is right, then I can’t let anything stop me. Nor should it stop you.” His eyes fell on Hypha like red-hot coals. “It takes bravery to do the right thing. Others might tell you it’s stupid. You might even convince yourself it’s not worth it. But if it’s really the right thing to do, then you have to do it. You can’t stop until it’s done.”
Hypha’s face went red with shame. To Prairie Sky, it must have looked like a blush of pride. “I’m not a strong pony.”
“You’re one of the strongest ponies I’ve ever met. You came all this way just to save a bunch of strangers. That’s strength.”
Hypha’s words turned to foul-tasting smoke in his lungs. “I’m not... I...” he trailed off.
Prairie Sky put a foreleg around Hypha’s shoulder. The warmth in the older pony’s eyes and the way the shadows flickered across his face made him look like a reflection of elder Cumulus.
“Where will you go now?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I guess back to the mountains.”
“Can I give you some advice? Don’t.” Prairie Sky met Hypha’s challenging look with one of equal resilience. “Don’t go home. There’s nothing left for you up there.”
“Says the pony who got thrown out.” The bitterness in Hypha’s own voice surprised him. But it didn’t seem to bother Prairie Sky.
“If you go back now, you won’t find what you’re looking for.”
“I need to bury my friends.”
“You already did. You survived. You honored their sacrifice.”
“They’ll get eaten by birds.”
“They’ve already been eaten by birds. Hypha. Look at me.” He couldn’t. He tried, but Prairie Sky looked too much like Cumulus. He just couldn’t. “Don’t throw your life away for something that’s already lived and died. There’s so much more to life than chasing away birds.”
Prairie Sky reached into his saddlebag and produced a slim spiral-bound book with a dark blue cover. It was the same textbook Hypha had been pouring over with Hirruck.
“Never hurts to study the fundamentals.” He pressed the book into Hypha’s hooves. “For whatever it’s worth, I think you’ve passed enough trials for ten lifetimes. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a monk.”
Prairie Sky stood up and walked away. It took Hypha a moment to realize he was walking towards the hallway leading to his office. The office Red and Blue were still currently ransacking.
“Where are you going?” Hypha called after him.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d get some extra work done. You’re welcome to join me if you’d like, but I understand if you’d rather get going.”
“Wait.” Hypha’s mind raced. “Stay here with me. Please.”
Prairie Sky’s face unfolded into a fatherly smile. “Okay.”
Hypha breathed a silent sigh of relief and went to tuck the rune spell book into his bag. As he did, he accidentally jostled the contents. Two of the glass sample containers clinked together.
“What’s that in your bag?” Prairie Sky asked.
At that exact moment, Red and Blue burst from the dark hallway, triumphant smiles on their faces. Red held a decaying scrap of parchment in one hoof. “We found it!” she shouted.
As each successive repetition of her voice echoed back in the temple chamber, the horror on Hypha’s face grew. The jig was up.
For the first time since he’d appeared, a look of mild concern drew across Prairie Sky’s face. “What’s that?” he asked, his voice flat.
Red stepped in front of Blue. The mask went up. “We lost a document while we were touring the temple.”
“Official government business, right?”
Red’s eyes narrowed. “Right.”
“Why does it look like your document was ripped out of my client ledger?”
For a long moment, only the fire moved. The flames found a vein of moisture trapped within the wood. A whine of escaping steam filled Hypha’s ears, louder and louder, until it drowned out everything else. Prairie Sky saw right through him. He knew. And if Hypha didn’t do something fast, then Prairie Sky would do the same thing every other outsider did: attack.
Hypha did the only thing he could do. He struck first.
He drew a blank rune and bucked the floor with his hind legs. The chamber resonated like a tuning fork. The fire trembled. A piece of stone the size of a baseball cracked and dislodged.
Prairie Sky frowned. "Hypha, hold on—"
Hypha picked up the chunk of rock he’d dislodged and swung it at Prairie Sky’s head. The impact sent a meaty thud echoing through the dome.
“Run,” Hypha breathed.
When he reached the stairwell, he risked a look back. Prairie Sky laid on his side, his face towards the fire. A thin line of blood poured from his temple, anointing the floor.