Hypha tore away from the temple at a dead sprint. Pain bloomed in his front hooves. Bile bubbled in his throat. That didn’t happen, he thought. That didn’t happen. The moment was a black hole in his memory, eating everything. He strained against the pull and fell deeper into darkness.
He made it to the main gate without being spotted. Red and Blue followed close behind. They pressed their bodies against the wall and struggled to catch their breath quietly.
“Idiot,” Red panted. “Why’d you hit him?”
“I don’t know,” Hypha replied.
“He wasn’t gonna fight us.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you hear the way his head hit the ground?”
“I said—” he realized he was being too loud and covered his mouth. The monastery radiated perfect serene silence. He was a noisy intruder. An outsider. “I don’t know,” he said again, softer this time.
Red turned around to face him. Her eyes caught starlight and pulsed in the darkness. “I don’t care about whatever your beef with him was, but he was really nice to us.”
“Since when do you care about other ponies?”
She slapped him. Hard. The sound echoed back and hit him a second time.
“Street trash,” she said, her whispered voice falling like blows against his ears. “You don’t know anything about me.” She shimmied the gate open, slow and silent. Hypha followed them through.
Without any light, the edge of the steppe and the empty air blurred together. Hypha shuffled forward until he felt the lip and looked down. The faint sound of rustling grass reached his ears.
Blue was beside him. She simply materialized there—one moment she wasn’t, the next she was. Before Hypha could even register surprise, she punched him in the side of the head. He staggered sideways and bumped into Red, who hip-checked him right back into Blue. Two more blows connected with his face.
Everything went white. A sound like an avalanche filled his ears. When he regained his bearings, he was on his belly with his legs splayed out to his sides. Red stood on top of him, one foreleg on the small of his back, the other clutching his mane, holding his head up.
“What—” Hypha tried to breathe, but dust clogged his mouth and nose. He coughed.
The two mares glanced towards the gate in unison. “Be quiet,” Red said, her voice flat.
Hypha let out a great big sneeze.
Red sighed and dragged him to the edge of the step, until his head hung off the edge. Hypha shut his mouth. At least there wasn’t so much dust in his face anymore.
“Blue and I were thinking,” Red started. “You said you weren’t gonna follow us anymore. But what if you were lying?”
Hypha raised an eyebrow. “Let me up.”
“It’s no big deal to us if you go around killing ponies with rocks. That’s a you thing. We don’t care.”
“I said, let me up.”
“But what if I did something that goes against your dogma or whatever? You gonna hit me with a rock, too?”
“I would never—”
She yanked his mane. “Shut up.” Her eyes turned to his saddlebags. “Those mushrooms must be pretty rare if you were willing to kill for them.”
“I didn’t—mmhf.” Hypha grimaced. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Sure. But they are pretty rare.”
Hypha tried to shimmy out of Red’s grip, to no avail. Her hooves bit his skin like iron shackles. “He got kicked out of the order. He stole mother sky and sold it for—”
“I already said I don’t care, right? I don’t care.”
“I saved your life.”
“And we saved your life. And fed you. And plastered your hooves—which you broke, but no big deal. And carried you up this mountain.”
“It’s a steppe—” He gasped in pain and shut his mouth.
“Since we’ve been helping you out all this time, I think Blue and I deserve to try some mushrooms.”
“They’re not yours.”
“C’mon. We’re your friends, Hypha.”
“If you were my friends, you’d let me up.”
“Just a precaution. We thought that monk was your friend.”
“He wasn’t.”
“Well, my bad. I guess that means we’re the only friends you got.”
“I’m not giving you any.”
Red shifted her weight above him. He felt her face mere inches from hers. He could just make out her sunken eyes, the faint starlight inside. “You don’t have to.”
Blue reached underneath Hypha and undid the clasp to his saddlebag. He writhed until his underbelly bled, but Red held him down.
Once the bag was off, Red put her lips right next to his ear and said, “We’re not mad. Really.”
Then she pushed him off the edge.
If Hypha had been able to collect his bearings just a split second faster, he might have been able to fly back up to the steppe’s ledge and take his saddlebag back. But the last ten minutes had taken a tremendous toll on him. By the time his brain caught up with reality, he was already halfway down.
This must have been what it was like for Wrender.
Now was definitely not the time to let his mind wander. Not that he could help it. He sucked in a breath and forced himself to focus on the ground. If he landed at this angle and this speed, he’d burst apart on impact. He put his hooves out in front of him to brace the landing, thought better of it, and curled up into a ball instead. The tall grass cushioned his fall, but the impact still rattled him all the way down to his bones.
As he shook the grassy pulp out of his fur, blind fury gave way to panic. The mushrooms were gone. All of them. After what he did to get them—
He recoiled away from the thought. The memory seared everything it touched. He had to focus on the here and now. He was here. Red and Blue would have to climb down if they wanted to leave. He had to find the trail. He had to be ready.
And do what? Jump them? Grab the bag and run? Find another rock? His face contorted—the memory was still too hot.
No rocks. For now, all he could do was hide in the grass and wait.
The climb up had taken about three hours. Hypha waited for four before he started to grow nervous. Had they fallen off the sides somehow? The two mares weren’t stupid. But if they’d eaten the mushrooms—and that’s what it was, to them at least: nothing more than a snack—then the risk factor grew exponentially.
No. Not being stupid meant not eating potent psychedelics before a dangerous descent. They’d be down here eventually.
A fifth hour passed before Hypha finally heard a dragging sound coming from the trail. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and stretched his limbs. This was his moment. He had the element of surprise. He had speed. He didn’t have to fight. Just jump them, grab the saddlebag, and fly away.
He wasn’t prepared for what came down the trail.
Red and Blue crawled on their bellies. At first Hypha thought they were laughing, but after a moment he realized they were both hysterically weeping. Red had wet herself. Her lips were pulled back in a terrified grimace. As she approached, Hypha noticed her robe had ridden up over her tail. He saw her cutie mark, a cardinal clinging to a branch like the last leaf of fall.
Blue’s eyes were glued to the ledge. Her mane was caked with sweat, plastered in patches to the side of her face. She still wore Hypha’s saddlebags, though one of the straps had snapped.
Hypha kept himself concealed as the two mares inched their way forward. Upon reaching the ground, Red attempted to stand. Her knees buckled. Blue dove on top of her, as if shielding her from invisible arrows.
“C’mon, Blue.” Red tore herself away. Her voice cracked. “We gotta go. We gotta—”
A lone songbird flashed overhead. Red screamed.
Hypha was stunned. In all his years in the monastery, he’d never seen mother sky do this to a pony. Had she done this to make it easier for him to take the saddlebag back? That had to be it. He’d been right all along. He coiled his legs beneath him, ready to leap.
Elder Cumulus’s voice echoed in his ears. One of those lessons is empathy.
He almost went through with it. It would have been easy. He could have roared like a moosebear and they would have fallen over themselves to give him what he needed. Without the voice of Cumulus cutting through, there was nothing but the animal impulse to take what was his.
But he couldn’t ignore the voice. He never could. Not then. Not now. Empathy. Fine.
Slowly, moment by moment, the tension in his body eased. He stepped out of the tall grass and walked over to them, one hoof raised in what he hoped was a universal sign of surrender.
“How many did you eat?” he asked.
Blue opened her mouth and let out an ear-rattling wail. Hypha recoiled in horror. All of her teeth were gone. Her tongue had been cut out and cauterized. Only a glossy stump remained.