Feel it, receive it, let it go. Feel it, receive it, let it go.
Hypha poured all of his focus into the tips of his hooves. He could feel magic tickling his fur like static on silk. He repeated the mantra again, let out a breath, and pulled down. An orb of light coalesced on the tips of his hooves.
A surge of excitement rushed through him. He glanced down at the rune spell book at his hooves and drew a shaky circle in the air before him. His circle wasn’t nearly as elegant as elder Cumulus’s spells, but it also didn’t blow up in his face, so that was a start. He filled in the circle with a diamond shape made up of two symmetrical triangles.
The whole rune collapsed in on itself. Hypha flinched away, blinking back spots. When he looked back, he found a condensed orb of light the size of an apple floating before him.
Hypha let out a whinny of excitement. He reared back and punted the orb into the air as hard as he could. He counted to five, then took off after it. Fast air flowed around him, flinging sweat off his face. His tail splayed out behind him, whipped by the wind. Even in the thin air, gravity fought against him, willing him down. He pushed back harder, surging forwards.
Right as he reached the orb, however, a burst of pain erupted behind his eyes. His ears filled with ringing temple bells. The world pitched and rolled around him. Then he was falling.
He pulled up too slow and hit the cloud hard, bowing it like a trampoline. As the magical headache subsided, he rolled onto his back and watched the little orb of light rise higher and higher before finally disappearing into the jetstream. With what little magic he put into it, it wouldn’t last more than five minutes. Still, he imagined it whipping around the world, seeing places he couldn’t even imagine.
Once he caught his breath, he tallied that morning’s totals. Nine successful light spells and eight successful retrievals. Not bad for a morning’s work.
Not good enough, he reminded himself. He had to be better than perfect if he wanted to stand a chance against Romulus.
Over the course of the morning, the hideout floated to the opposite side of the city. Hypha didn’t bother going back, instead making his way into the city’s downtown core. The streets turned from raw packed clouds into immovable cloudstone cobbles. The buildings rose in height and grandeur block by block, until he arrived at the looming facade of the colosseum, an intimidating monolith of cloudstone that served as the centerpiece around which the entire downtown area was set.
Hypha made his way inside. No shows were slated to take place today, but the entire structure still hummed with activity. Pegasi buzzed around the bleachers, polishing stone and repainting signs. A team of unicorn engineers in the upper decks puzzled over a blown-out crystal floodlight. A hundred earth ponies labored at ground level, dragging in new stones to replace cracked ones, sweeping seats, and bringing supplies to the system of tunnels underneath the colosseum itself. The cloudstone arches holding the whole operation together gleamed bone-white in the sun.
In the center of the arena stood an impressively tall earth pony stallion with a bullwhip cutie mark on his flank and a second, much less symbolic whip hooked to his belt. His eyes scanned his subordinates, searching for sloth. He must be the foreman.
Hypha hopped into the pit. He froze as his hooves touched the natural cloud basin. The floor conducted a fearsome amount of energy. Ponies had bled and died here. They’d snarled and fought beasts. They’d killed.
Hypha put it out of his mind and walked over to the foreman. “Excuse me, sir?”
The foreman turned his head. His lancing eyes made Hypha’s skin crawl.
“Who’re you.”
“Uh.” Hypha balked. “I’m looking for work.”
“We got that. How long’re you in town for.”
"Two months. Maybe three."
The foreman’s eyes lingered unabashedly on Hypha’s mangled front hooves, still tinted black by the mineral casts. “I got no work for you.”
“I’ll do whatever the other workers don’t want to do. I’ll clear sewers and break rocks.”
The foreman took hold of one of Hypha’s hooves and held it up for both of them to see. "Quit wasting my time.”
“I’ll do anything you need. I just need work.”
“Anything. Okay.” The foreman nodded to the unicorns huddled together in the upper deck. “They’re having trouble mounting their new stage light. Do it for them.”
The foreman probably expected Hypha—a flightless earth pony—to realize the impossibility of the task, hang his head, and shuffle off to beg in the markets somewhere. He turned away and almost missed Hypha lift off.
Hypha made it all the way to the upper decks before the strain of flight forced him to land. He walked the rest of the way to the unicorn engineers, who’d stopped what they were doing to gawk at him.
“Foreman’s orders,” Hypha said, and took the bulb in his hooves. It was light despite being as large as a pony. It had a crystalline color that reminded Hypha of the crystal lamp Red had stolen from Median.
The empty socket was one of several mounted on a metal frame atop the highest part of the colosseum. Hypha hopped into the air, but almost immediately an aching throb in his head forced him down. The engineers lunged forward, ready to catch the bulb should he drop it.
Hypha shocked everyone, himself included, when a snarl escaped his lips. The engineers stopped short, their eyes wide with fear.
Hypha leapt back into the air. This time, when the pain came, he was ready for it. He swam through it, slowly but steadily, until all of a sudden he found himself level with the socket. But his strength was failing, and he knew it. He threw himself onto the metal light frame, perching atop it like a wingless bird.
When the ringing in his ears subsided, he noticed the arena below him had gone quiet. He peered down and found a hundred tiny ponies looking up at him. The force of all those eyes hit him like a stiff breeze. He tipped one way, then the other, then slipped off entirely.
With a herculean effort, he reversed his fall and forced himself into a hover. He pulled himself along the light frame until he reached the empty socket. He jammed the bulb inside. Nothing happened.
He pulled it out then stuck it back in again. Still nothing. He twisted the bulb around and felt something in between it and the fixture, preventing it from locking in and lighting up.
He felt himself starting to dip. Bells rang in his ears. His mane was made of white-hot filaments clinging to his scalp. He wasn’t going to get another chance. It had to be now.
Someone screamed at him from everywhere at once, Don’t stop! The shock sent fresh adrenaline through his veins. When he leveled himself with the socket, he saw the blockage: the remnants of a bird’s nest. He cleared the debris and shoved the bulb in place.
The bulb lit up. Searing white-hot light sent him tumbling backwards. The last of his strength gave out, and he went into a dive, desperately blinking away the spots in his eyes. He leveled out just above the arena floor, coming to a skittering stop a few paces away from the foreman.
“Got the light,” Hypha panted. He sucked air through gritted teeth. “You saw me do it, right? I can work.”
The foreman checked off a box on his clipboard, then pointed to a rusty plow with a long raking attachment sitting by the main gate. “Rake the arena floor. Work til dusk.”
Elation surged through Hypha’s heart. He held back a cheer and asked, "What's the pay?"
"You'll get paid at the end of the day."
"But how much?"
The foreman had already wandered off.
Hypha returned the next day to find all of his carefully-raked lines had disappeared. The natural cloud floor of the colosseum had reverted back to its natural curly, chaotic state.
The foreman nodded to the plow again. “Get to it.”
The foreman refused to answer Hypha’s questions as to why he was doing this apparently pointless task. He had no choice but to stow his questions and put his mind to his toil. Each line he raked blurred into the next, a strange mirror-image memory of his time spent farming in Roseroot rendered in liquid mercury.
Finally, on the fifth day, the foreman came up to Hypha and said without any prompting, “The cloud layer’s only a foot thick. Beneath that, it’s all cloudtone.”
Hypha poked the ground. The ground jiggled a little. “I see.”
“These clouds don’t get moved around like they would if they were in the air. So we have to treat them manually. Otherwise they won’t retain their spring” The foreman assumed a wide stance. “If a fighter needs to do this—” he swept his leg in a wide arc in front of him, ruining the line Hypha had just made. “The cloud needs to yield to this hoof and hold the other ones in place. Regular clouds’ll do that. But if the cloud’s just been sitting here for a few weeks, it’ll feel like mud.”
“Why don’t we just put clouds all the way down?”
“Bodies fall through clouds. The cloudstone’s there to catch them.”
“Oh.”
The foreman nodded. “Unhitch yourself and follow me.” He walked through the carefully plowed rows, ruining an entire morning of work without a second thought.
They went down into the belly of the colosseum. The cloudstone turned a deep shade of indigo. Without the sun’s warmth, the air gained a frigid bite. Deep recesses in the walls served as prison cells for the nearly two hundred prisoners slated to fight in the next tournament. The majority were crammed into communal squalor. A few more famous fighters relaxed in relative luxury. But they were all equally behind bars.
Around the corner, Hypha found a cart with a pair of massive steel pots. One was full of semi-rancid rice. The other contains beans tinged with a metallic arsenic smell.
“One scoop rice and one scoop beans per mouth,” said the foreman. “If there’s any left at the end, you can have some. But if you take one grain of rice out of the prisoners’ mouths, I’ll flog you to death. Got it?”
Hypha gulped. “Got it.”
The prisoners didn’t try to hurt Hypha. They didn’t push or shove. They stood in orderly rows and passed their bowls through the doors. The silence, broken only by the scrape of his metal ladle against the pots, sat heavily in the cool air.
One prisoner, a zebra with an impressive mohawk and a large collection of festering lash wounds on his right flank, lingered by the bars. “They’ll put you in here too,” he said in a low voice.
“I’m just a laborer,” Hypha said.
“So was I. Get out while you still can. It’s not worth the bits.”
Hypha tried to ignore him and focus on the work, but his words burrowed their way under his skin.
“Did you really do this job before me?” Hypha asked.
“Really really.”
“Why are you—” Hypha gestured to the bars.
“What did the foreman say would happen if he caught you stealing food?”
“Uh. Death by flogging.”
“He lied.” The zebra tapped the bars. “You go in here.”
Hypha turned to the other prisoners, who sat clustered at the back of their cell, savaging their food. “Were you all servants?”
“They can’t answer,” the zebra said. “This cell tried to break out just before I got here. They all got their tongues cut out.”
The silence grew heavier.
The zebra’s name was Walik. For the next five days, he spoke to Hypha on behalf of the cell, informing him of the urgent medical needs of the prisoners, the lack of water, the lack of blankets—the lack of everything but bars, really. Hypha struggled to come up with any meaningful answer beyond shrugs and sorries.
One day, Walik surprised him by asking, “What were you before this?”
Hypha stirred the pot of beans and considered how much he wanted to give away. Eventually, he settled on, “I lived in the mountains.”
“The eastern mountains?” Walik whistled. “There are demons in that mountain. Big cats.”
Hypha frowned. There was a crusty spot on the inside of the pot where the beans had fused with the metal. He scraped at it hard. “They’re called snow leopards.”
“Did you ever come in contact with the order of monks that lived up there? Heaven something or other.”
The ladle slipped from Hypha’s grasp and disappeared into the beans. “Heavenly Peace,” he said. His head swam. The spin of the city accelerated. “I’ve heard of them.”
“I heard they train with dragons. They can fly and breathe fire.”
Hypha stuck his whole leg into the pot to fish out the ladle and didn’t even feel the burn. “There’s no dragons.”
Walik eyed Hypha with a mixture of bemusement and concern. “I hope you washed your hooves.”
One of the mute ponies in the cell died the next day. Walik dragged the pony’s body to the front of the cell and got Hypha’s attention. Hypha didn’t know if it was his job to dispose of bodies, too, so he left it in the cell while he went to consult the foreman.
Walik seemed upset at him for that. Maybe it was a bit callus, but touching food after touching a corpse didn’t seem like a good idea. Hypha wanted to ask him what was the matter, but he held back. He didn’t want Walik to rattle off another list of horrors he and his cellmates had suffered which Hypha was powerless to prevent.
It was Walik that broke the silence. “Do you believe in soulmates?”
The question took Hypha aback. “Uh. I dunno.”
Walik chuckled. “I take it you don’t have a soulmate.”
“No.”
“Maybe you do, but you just don’t know it.” He smiled. “Now that you mention soulmates, I’m in need of something extra.”
“For what?”
“For my soulmate. She’s here with me.”
Hypha’s eyes scanned the mass of tongueless prisoners behind him. “Which one?”
“No, she’s not here physically. She’s here spiritually.”
“Spirits don’t need rice and beans.”
Much to Hypha’s surprise, Walik nodded in agreement. “So true, my pony friend. Soulmates survive on spiritual sustenance. And right now, he rspirit is starving.”
“I don’t get it.”
Walik’s smile fell away. “I need parchment. For a letter.”
“Are you allowed to send letters?”
“Of course I am. If I could just have a piece of parchment, I could relay to the foreman what an excellent job you’ve been doing.”
Hypha half-assed a look through the food card, and was surprised to find an ancient half-filled out request form crusted to the bottom of the cart.
Walike’s face lit up. He clutched the paper to his chest and said, “The spirit has been fed.” Then he turned and retreated to the back of the cell.
When Hypha returned the cart and walked back through the prison block at the end of his shift, he noticed Walik was having trouble seeing what he was writing in the dim light.
“Walik,” Hypha called. He thought, feel it, receive it, let it go, and pulled an orb of magic into being. A murmur rose up from the prisoners. Walik stared, his eyes wide and shimmering. Hypha drew a shaky circle, then a diamond shape made out of two triangles. The rune collapsed into a ball of steady white light.
“It’ll last for ten minutes,” he said, passing the orb between the bars. “Don’t tell the foreman.”
Walik flashed him a strange smile. The light from the orb cast his face like a mask. Then he was back in his corner, feverishly scribbling away on his piece of parchment.
The next day, Hypha returned to work to find the colosseum in complete anarchy.
A merchant caravan had parked in the center of the arena. A group of Saddle Arabian merchants hawked exotic animals to the foreman and a group of nobles in purple cloaks. Earth pony laborers and pegasi masons scrambled around like ants preparing for war, polishing stone, clearing errant clouds, barking commands.
The prisoners in the cage could sense the energy above. They grunted and groaned and pressed up against the walls. Even Walik, ever the voice of reason, had a frantic edge to his voice.
“Did you see what animals they were selling?” he asked Hypha as he served them lunch.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see.”
Walik pushed his muzzle through the bars. His mohawk drooped pitifully to one side. “You were just up there. You had to have seen.”
“There was a lot going on. I don’t know.”
“Please. It’s very important. What kind of animals were they?”
“I told you—”
Walik grabbed Hypha’s hoof and twisted. Fur tore. “What were they?”
Hypha panicked. He brought the metal serving ladle down on Walik’s hoof. The zebra let go with a hiss of pain. His grip was alarmingly strong for someone so emaciated.
Walik retreated further back into the cage, his head lowered. “I’m sorry. That was wrong of me. You’re just doing your job. Could you go up to the arena and see what kind of animals they’re selling?”
“I have to serve lunch.”
“We’ll skip lunch. We’re not hungry.”
“If I come back with full pots, I’ll get in trouble.”
“I see,” Walik said, his voice low. “Perhaps you could hurry then, and try to catch the merchants after you serve us.”
In a single motion, every last prisoner in the cell stuck out their bowls in unison. A chill shot up Hypha’s spine.
Idiot, he chastised himself. They’re mute. Not deaf.
By the time Hypha dished out the prisoners’ food and went back up to the surface, the merchants and nobles had all gone. An earth pony servant was raking even lines in the cloud floor where the cart had once sat.
Walik’s shoulders slumped when Hypha delivered the news. The primordial instinct that drove wild horses to stampede flickered in his eyes. “I see,” he said. “I see.”
“Why do you care what animals they were selling?” Hypha asked.
When Walik looked up again, Hypha was surprised to see his face twisted with anger. “Idiot pony. You’re so soft. You’re so—” He growled and stuck his muzzle through the bars again. Hypha jerked back. “You’re so stupid! What do you think this place is?” He pointed towards the end of the hallway. “In two days, there’s going to be another event. Whatever animal those ponies up there bought from the traders—that’s what we have to fight.”
The day before the event, the lower chambers of the colosseum echoed with the sounds of chains and weapons and hooves scuffling over cloudstone. The foreman pulled Hypha off feeding duty and instructed him to run errands between the various labor leaders. He barely saw Walik or the other prisoners, except for a few furtive glances as he rushed past their cell on the way to deliver one communication or another.
The mute ponies collapsed in a corner, their unmoving bodies frozen in place, spilling across the cell like a wave. The dim light filtering through the cloudstone tinted their bodies a cold shade of indigo.
Walik sat in the opposite corner, furiously scribbling on his scrap of parchment.
At the very end of the evening, Hypha said his goodbyes to the foreman and snuck down to the cell to speak with Walik. At first, the zebra didn’t acknowledge him, so absorbed was he in his note. Only when Hypha rattled the bars and spoke his name did he look up.
“Hypha.” Walik leapt to his feet. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, but he wore a grim smile. “I knew you would come.”
“You did?”
Walik surged across the cell and stuffed the parchment into Hypha’s hooves. “You can’t let them see this. It’s a message for my wife. Her name is Celiah. She’s a servant in the noble district north of here. The address is on the note.”
“I—”
“No talk. Give this to her. She doesn’t know where I am. I have to let her know what happened.” Tears spilled down his cheeks, but his voice went on, strong as ever. “You’re one of the monks, aren’t you. Heaven Love.”
“Heavenly Peace.”
“Heavenly Peace.” Walik smiled. “One day, there will be no need to hide peace away in the mountains. It will be everywhere.”
Hoofsteps echoed down the corridor. Walik retreated deeper into the cell. His eyes burned in the dim light, fierce and alive.
Someone turned the corner. Hypha took off running.
The sun set, a slow process that painted rainbows onto every surface in the city, all the way down to the deepest parts of the colosseum complex. Hypha wound through the labyrinth, avoiding workers where he could and keeping his head down where he couldn’t. He wasn’t strictly forbidden from being down here by himself. But walking around down here without a direct task to complete would be very suspicious if someone were to stop him.
And just as the prison’s main worker exit came into view, the hulking form of the foreman stepped into view.
“Hypha,” he said, his deep voice echoing off the walls. “I thought you left.”
“I was leaving,” he lied. “But I was pulled back to help clean some cells.”
“Which cells.”
This was the most idle chit chat he’d ever heard from the foreman. The intensity in his voice made Hypha squirm. “Four through six. Just sweeping.”
The foreman nodded, ingesting the lie. “Good. Thanks.” Hypha nodded and turned to leave, but the foreman said, “Wait.”
The word alone stopped him cold. “Yes?”
“You’ve been doing good work.”
“Thank you.”
“If you stick around for a few more weeks, you’d be one of the more senior laborers on the team. I could increase your pay.”
“That would be nice.”
“Wait until after your first event’s over to make the decision. Clearing out the old and bringing in the new can be ugly. But if you can handle it, it’s stable year-round work.”
Year-round. Hypha’s mind wandered to numbers. How many prisoners had been through these cells in all the years this colosseum had been active?
“Can I ask you something?” Hypha asked. “About one of the prisoners.”
“Sure.”
He hesitated. “What was the zebra in for?”
“Which one.”
The foreman didn’t seem to notice Hypha’s face flush with shame. The zebra had a name. Why hadn’t he used it? “Walik.”
“Aah, Walik. He’s an interesting case. He used to be a laborer for us.”
Hypha swallowed a lump in his throat. “Really?”
“Really. That wasn’t all he was doing, though. We caught him setting up a poisoned booby trap in a senator’s private booth.” The foreman let out a laugh. “We let the senator he was trying to assassinate pick the animal for tomorrow’s event.”
Hypha paled. “Well, I’d best be headed home.”
The foreman placed a massive hoof on Hypha’s shoulder. Hypha went rigid.
“I know one of the prisoners slipped you a note.”
Hypha’s blood ran cold. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Someone saw you and ratted you out.”
“I didn’t.” Hypha’s eyes flashed to the whip on the foreman’s belt. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I’m not going to punish you. You’re a better worker than the pony who tattled. And one note’s not going to hurt anyone.”
“Then why would it matter if I had one?”
“Because—”
“If.”
“If. We can’t have every prisoner in the complex penning letters to their whole extended family every time there’s an event. We don’t make parchment up here. I don’t even know where that prisoner got it from.” The foreman held out his hoof. “Give me the note and we’ll forget it happened.”
“No one gave me any note.”
The foreman took a step forward. He was easily a head taller than Hypha. “I thought you were on my side here.”
Hypha’s mind flashed back to what Walik said about one-time workers becoming full-time prisoners. He reached into his tunic pocket and produced the note. It read:
they’re beheading us
don’t worry
i close my eyes
and you are there
like the kiss of the sun
lingering on my skin
after it has set.
i speak your name
and peace persists
like the promise of
sunrise
On the bottom was an address for a house in the perpetually north side of town. Hypha read it and repeated it internally, committing it to memory.
The foreman cleared his throat. Hypha hoofed the note over. The foreman folded it neatly and placed it in his pocket before producing Hypha’s wages for the day. The bag was much larger than Hypha was expecting.
“I take care of ponies who are on my side.” He patted Hypha’s shoulder. His hoof was large and radiated killing potential. “You’re a good worker,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” said Hypha. “See you tomorrow.”
The next day, Hypha arrived at the colosseum at the start of the work day. He stood outside the gate, listening to the sounds of hammers falling and laborers hemming and hawing. He felt himself reach a moment of impasse. In or out.
He chose out. He turned on his hooves and walked past the colosseum, due north.
This was a stupid idea. Monumentally stupid. Bailing on work, on one of the busiest event days of the year, no less, would surely mean demotion. He could kiss every future paycheck and the progress they represented goodbye. Those bits were crucial to his mission. The mission. The only thing that mattered. The thing he’d suffered for. What were these outsiders to his mission? What were they to him personally? He was here for the order, not for them.
Yet every time he slowed, some jittery tension manifested in his heart and his mangled hooves, forcing him forward. Maybe it was mother sky. Maybe it was guilt. At this point, it made no difference. It pushed him all the same.
He found the address Walik had written on the note, a smart summery villa that shared high walls with its two immediate neighbors. An older zebra answered the door and eyed him undisguised suspicion. “The lady Girasole is not accepting solicitors at this time.”
“I’m. Uh. Not here for her,” Hypha said.
The zebra raised an eyebrow. “Are you some kind of suitor? We’re not accepting those, either.”
“Are you Celiah?” The sound of her name made her bristle. She went to shut the door, but Hypha said, “I knew Walik. Know him. He’s still alive.”
Hypha expected shock. Or apprehension. Or hope. He didn’t expect anger. He also didn’t expect her to haul a broom from behind the door and jab him squarely in the chest.
“You know nothing of Walik,” she hissed. “And you know nothing of me. Keep my name out of your mouth, street trash.” She went to close the door.
“Please. He had a message.”
“No.” She swung at him again. “We have bodyguards. I’ll call for them.”
“Please,” Hypha said, dodging another blow. “Please listen.”
“I’m calling the guards.” Her blows with the broom became more frantic. Her voice rose. Ponies passing by looked their way. Hypha withered.
“Celiah—”
“Guards!” she cried out. She let the door swing all the way open. Behind her, at least a dozen mares crouched in the adjacent room, brandishing pots and pans and knives. “Guards!”
“He wanted you to hear this. He wanted—urk—”
Celiah caught him in the gut with the broomhandle. “No!” she cried. He collapsed on the street, clutching at the spot where the welt was forming. She raised the broom over her head, but instead of hitting Hypha, she hesitated before swinging it sideways to strike the doorframe. “You know—” Another blow. “Nothing.” Again. “You don’t—” Another. “You don’t know!”
The broom snapped in half. Celiah let out a wail. It started low in the back of her throat, a desperate animal cry, and glided up into a wavering falsetto.
On any other street in Derecho, the natural clouds would have dampened the sound. But this particular street was long and straight, and the buildings and roads were all made of cloudstone. Her cry echoed all the way down to the center of town.
By the time the echo faded, Celiah had regained her composure. “I’m sorry. That was rude. You said he had a message?” She extended a hoof to Hypha. “Please come inside.”
The interior of the manor was an explosion of green. Most houses kept a natural shade of cloud-indigo inside. Not this one. Vines clung to cloudstone walls. Potted plants with real soil sat in every room. The foliage alone must have cost a fortune.
Hypha’s primordial earth pony mind longed to stick his hooves in the soil and smell it, but he did his best to restrain himself.
Celiah hustled him to the courtyard, past the crowd of mares. Most looked at him with pity in their eyes. A few gave him distinctly flirtatious glances.
Outside, the two sat on the edge of a burbling rainbow fountain, where the high walls provided some shade. While Hypha was finished reciting the note, Celiah put her forelegs around his shoulders and wept some more.
“What else did he say?” she asked. “I need to know.”
“He didn’t say anything else.”
“I need to know. Tell me.”
Hypha thought back to the conversation. He remembered the thing Walik had said about the nobles buying animals, and a fresh rush of terror filled his heart. “There were other ponies in the cell,” he started, slowly. “They all had their tongues cut out. Everyone but him. He was trying to get them food and water, because they couldn’t speak for themselves.”
Celiah let out a bitter laugh. “Were they spies, too?”
“No. Everything he did yesterday was to help those other ponies. He barely had time to write that letter.”
“What happened to it?”
“One of the foremen found it.”
Celiah took his hoof in hers and squeezed it. If she noticed how mangled and black they were, she didn’t show it. There was none of the regular revulsion in her eyes. Only fear. Fear, and love. “Are you going to report me?”
“For what?”
“My lover was a spy. I might be one, too.”
“Are you?”
She looked down at the pool of liquid rainbows collecting in the basin. “Derecho’s moved a hundred miles just this year. Could one zebra pull it backwards? Could they even change its course a little? Walik thought he could.” She stood up suddenly. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“What?”
“You’re not supposed to be here.” Her face hardened into an unreadable mask. She pulled him towards the door, past the gaggle of mares and their wide, curious eyes. “Thank you for informing me of Walik’s whereabouts. Now get out.”
“Are you really just—”
She dumped him out the front door like yesterday’s chamber pot.
Traffic started to solidify as a mass of early risers queued up outside the colosseum. Hypha wandered aimlessly through the crowd. His stomach flipped, and for once it wasn’t because of the city’s spin.
How had he dug himself into this mess? The colosseum was a colossal vortex of violence, and he’d let himself get sucked in. Walik and all the prisoners were going to be ripped apart, and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it. Not that anyone in this city would. The way they crowded around the entrances and chatted away—they wanted this. They were animals, carnivorous creatures who’d stolen the skin of real ponies. They strutted around with their slapdash disguises like they owned the world.
He tried to shut the noise out. He didn’t want to care. Couldn’t care. He’d already let his emotions get in the way of his mission once. He had to remember why he was here.
To help him focus, he set his mind on a memory of elder Cumulus and Roseroot. The memory was twisted at the seams and full of white noise, but if he focused he could just barely pick out the movement of Cumulus’s lips, the words coming out of his mouth.
“One of those lessons is empathy.”
It was like elder Cumulus had spoken them directly into his ear. Hypha leapt in surprise and whirled around. The crowd surged around him, a single massive organism of flesh and noise squeezing him, consuming him.
He turned around and started walking again, his mind flying at a hundred miles an hour. Was that a sign? An idea started forming in the back of his mind, and the more he pushed it away the more momentum it gained, faster and faster, screaming down the mountain of his mind, leaving a trail of destruction behind it.
“No,” Hypha said aloud. Empathy. He had plenty of empathy. He had empathy for every monk in the order, every acolyte in every hovel. He carried that burden from dawn to dusk and deep into his dreams. There were so many faces to remember and no one else left to do the remembering. It all came down to him. The thought of forgetting a single face or name, even one, made his heart drop.
Wasn’t it enough to get revenge? Wasn’t it enough to carry the weight?
No, came the voice again. The crowd squeezed him until he was certain he’d pop. If it wasn’t enough, then what could he do?
He thought of Walik, alone in the cell, unable to speak with the ponies beside him. Alone. An outsider to outsiders.
The answer crystalized in a perfect moment of clarity. Hypha turned around and started pushing against the stationary crush of the crowd.
Hypha couldn’t save Walik. But there was something else he could do for him.
Back at the shanty in the alley, Hypha tore through the piles of trash and stolen valuables to find his saddlebag. He carefully placed a few mother sky mushrooms inside, then slung the saddlebag over his back.
Red emerged from the dumpster, a curious look on her face. “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?”
“I asked first.”
Hypha huffed. “Monk stuff.”
Red gave him an appraising look. Then she shrugged and dove back into the dumpster.
The square outside the colosseum had devolved into an immobile mass of bodies. They grew antsy as the sun dropped lower in the sky. No one wanted to be stuck on the outside once the show began.
The only relief came when the gates opened and the crowd poured inside. Hypha blended in as far as the main gate, then bolted down a service tunnel. From there it was a straight shot into the colosseum’s underbelly. Rattling chains and distant shouting echoed down the passageway. His run turned into a full-blown gallop. One more turn and he’d be at the prison cell. Almost there. So close. So—
A massive hoof grabbed him by the scruff and hoisted him into the air. Hypha’s hooves pumped hard but met only air. The bellowing voice of the foreman filled his ears. “You were supposed to work this morning.”
Hypha tried to hide the terror from his voice. “My hooves,” he finally stammered. “They were acting up. Lotta pain.”
“But you’re here now.”
His heart hammered. His mind raced. The mushrooms burned through the lining of his saddlebag. “How could I miss this?”
For a moment, neither spoke. Hypha was certain the foreman would toss him into the cell with Walik and the others. But instead, he let out a big belly laugh. “Typical. All play and no work. You young ponies don’t know anything about dedication.” He set Hypha down. “I’m sure there’s a place in the wings you can stand and watch. Come with me.”
The foreman turned and walked in the opposite direction of the cell. Hypha felt the moment slip through his hooves. He turned to follow.
The full fury of the crowd smacked Hypha across the face as he emerged from the tunnel. Ponies packed the arena, shouting and drinking and laughing and stomping their hooves. Above, the air was thick with pegasi lounging on clouds. The lights Hypha had helped install on his first day baked the crowd. Sunset surrendered to a black, starless night.
The foreman led Hypha to a service entrance where servants dashed around refilling baskets of fruits and fried hay. Every nerve in Hypha’s body screamed, Fly away.
“Not a bad view,” the foreman said, surveying the colosseum with a satisfied smile. “This is your day. You and all the other workers. You made it happen.”
Hypha tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. A familiar sensation, the moment right after the first spear dropped from the sky in Roseroot, rolled over him.
The foreman grinned, the glib confident smile of an abusive father. “Look for the way the blood bounces on the clouds. That’s my favorite part.”
A chorus of trumpets exploded from on high. The colosseum shook as forty thousand ponies leapt to their hooves and cheered.
Hypha heard the familiar clank of a chain gate opening. A group of about thirty ponies in rusty piecemeal armor rushed out into the arena. Hypha caught sight of Walik at the head of the group.
A second gate opened on the opposite side of the arena. The foreman bellowed, “There’s my boys!” as a pack of snarling wolfbears emerged from the darkness.
Hypha snapped. He turned on his hooves and threw himself into the air. He made it a full half mile before he came crashing back down—his longest flight since leaving Roseroot.
First light found Hypha on the edge of the city, sitting in his usual cross-legged position on his usual cloud. His knees ached from holding this pose. Long-dried tears matted the fur on his face. He stared straight at the sun with glassy eyes and waited for it to finish rising.
One of those lessons is empathy.
When it was done, Hypha picked himself up and headed north.
Celiah answered the door. She looked, for lack of a better word, like she’d done three rounds with a wolfbear. She took one look at Hypha, let out a curt, “Nuh-uh,” and went to shut the door.
Hypha stuck his left front hoof out to block it.
The impact cracked the mineral shell. His knees wobbled. Stars shot across his vision.
“Go away,” Celiah said, her voice laced with venom.
“You said yesterday,” Hypha said, “that I know nothing about you. Or Walik. Well, you know nothing about me.”
Celiah paused to consider this. Then she slammed Hypha’s hoof in the door again.
The shell shattered. He let out a howl of pain and sank to his knees. Blood beaded where half-healed keratin met skin. “I’m from the mountains,” he said in a trembling voice. “Walik knew where I was from.”
Celiah paused. “The eastern mountains?” Hypha nodded. “You’re lying. There’s only dragons out there.”
“And monks.” Hypha summoned all the will he could muster and floated himself off the ground. He brought himself up to full standing height, then set himself back down on his hooves.
Celiah gawked. “Wah di rass,” she mumbled. “You’re a demon.”
“No. I’m a pony who wants to help.”
Celiah laughed. “You want to help! You could have helped him escape.”
“No, I couldn’t.” Hypha felt his face grow hot with shame. “I couldn’t help him.”
“You—” Celiah drew her hoof back like she was about to punch him. It wavered in the air, trembling. “You... little rat.” Her voice cracked. Her face contorted. “Street trash.”
Slowly, so as not to scare Celiah, Hypha undid the clasp on his saddlebag. “Fear and hate start in the mind. They can’t be treated like other diseases. They need special medicine.” He opened his bag and produced a cap of mother sky. “This should have gone to Walik, but I couldn’t get it to him in time. So it should go to you instead.”
For a long minute, neither pony spoke. Hypha shuffled awkwardly from side to side, trying not to get any blood on the cloudstone. Celiah stared at the floor. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. She reminded Hypha of a monk in the throes of meditation.
Celiah looked up. “Come back tonight. You can fly, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then fly over the garden wall and hide behind the rainbow fountain until I come for you. Don’t make a sound.”
She shut the door in his face. He saw it coming this time and kept his hooves clear.
Lying prone behind the base of the rainbow fountain, the slow rambling sunset and the gurgle of the liquid rainbows gave Hypha all the mental real estate in the world to reconsider what he was about to do.
Twice he got up to bolt back over the garden wall. Every learned instinct told him to disappear. What if he was making another mistake? He’d barely survived mother sky’s retribution the first time. Even now, the blood still flowed from his broken hooves. And Prairie Sky—
The memory hit him like a lance through his stomach. He killed Prairie Sky. He was a murderer. He was no different than the wolfbears that ate Walik. Prairie Sky was a thief, and a liar, and an outsider turncoat who wanted nothing less than the erasure of everything Hypha held dear. But for every sin Prairie Sky committed against the order, Hypha sinned to match. He hated Prairie Sky because he was Prairie Sky. Hypha was every murderer and outsider, every thief, every liar. His love contained his hate. He had always been an outsider, just as much as he’d always been an acolyte. There was so much within him it threatened to split him apart. He was Prairie Sky. And Cumulus. And Red and Blue. And Walik. And the wolfbears, too.
This moment was a gift. He could run. Or he could stay. For the first time in months, he saw the path laid out clearly before him.
He laid his cheek against the ground and let the cool cloudstone sap the nervous energy from his body. He pictured ash rising from Canary’s Cage, blown across the grassland for a hundred miles in every direction, diluted by rain, saturated into the soil. Feeding new growth.
A voice beside him whispered, “I can see your tail from inside the house.”
Hypha shot to his hooves. It was Celiah, sitting on the lip of the fountain, staring at him with her intense golden eyes.
She scooted over and motioned for him to sit. Together, they watched the colors in the rainbow fountain as they overlapped. Reds and blues turned to purples. Purples turned to lavender. Lavender touched a yellow streak and turned into something indistinguishable in the low light.
“Are there really dragons in the mountains?” Celiah asked. Her voice took Hypha by surprise. It was soft, almost childlike, without a hint of harshness.
“No. But there are lots of other animals. There are these big cats called snow leopards that grow twice as long as a pony. They have a big bushy tail and sharp teeth and paws as big as my head.” That got a little chuckle out of Celiah. “What kind of animals are there in Zebrica?”
“All of them,” she breathed. “All of them and more.”
Hypha took out the mother sky mushrooms. He popped one into his mouth, then gave the rest to Celiah.
“Tell me about them,” he said.