Hypha invited both mares to morning meditation. They spent an hour in awkward silence, half zoned out, half clued in on him. He tried his best to ignore it, but by minute thirty he was all but crawling out of his skin with anticipation. They were waiting for him to say something. He knew they were waiting. Meditation never felt more like torture.
Right as minute fifty nine ticked over to minute sixty, he blurted, “So how are we feeling?”
Slowly, Red opened her eyes. “Kinda chilly.”
“I meant, how are we feeling about the mission?”
Her eyes flicked to Blue. “How do you feel?”
The question made Blue pause. She’d been ready for ten years. But now that they were so close to actually going through with it, the question felt like a million tons of earth and stone hanging over her head. All it would take to set off the avalanche was pulling a single pebble out of place.
Blue took a deep breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. This feeling was an illusion. The anticipation was all in her mind. There was no avalanche waiting to sweep down the hill. Those rocks had been set in motion a decade ago. They’d already been falling. All that was left to do was see them to their inevitable crushing conclusion.
She nodded her head.
Red’s eyes narrowed. Then she turned her attention back to the horizon. Hypha’s lips drew back into a tight frown. He nodded.
Based on the information gathered by Red, they chose the following morning to strike.
While the moon was still high in the sky, the three ponies trekked to the city’s edge. There, they divvied up three portions of mother sky mushrooms and meditated in silence. Hypha sat perfectly still with his eyes closed. Blue focused on the ghost of the horizon as it came into focus. Red whirled and spun and lifted herself on her front hooves, mirroring the movements of the city behind her.
When day broke, they retreated back to their hideaway. All their earthly belongings went in a nearby dumpster for safekeeping. Hypha took extra care to bury the remaining mother sky mushrooms at the bottom of the pile, along with the spiral-bound book of rune spells. Leaving it here felt wrong somehow. He tried to remind himself that if everything went right, they’d be back in a few hours. But such thoughts did little to assuage the fear rising in his belly like the tide.
They went by rooftops and alleyways, steering clear of the main roads. The whole way there, Hypha couldn’t seem to find a point of balance. He kept coming back to that final memory of elder Cumulus racing into a flurry of Derechan legionaries. The mental image had been polluted by all the other new memories stacked on top of it. He could barely recall the old monk’s face anymore. The more he tried, the faster it faded.
The trio practically trembled with energy as they moved into position on the rooftop overlooking the senator’s courtyard. Blue breathed in through her nose, then exhaled a billowing cloud of glowing smoke from her mouth. It rolled off the rooftop and trickled into the senator’s courtyard.
A few minutes later, they heard hoofsteps in the near-light. The vague shapes of three ponies appeared in the courtyard.
“Sorry Dream,” Red murmured.
Something still felt wrong to Hypha. Horribly wrong. This was nothing like stealing food in the markets. Or even ambushing those ponies for their clothes outside of town. This was dropping on a defenseless pony knife-first. Just like the legionaries at Roseroot. Oh gods. His blood ran cold. He was them too, wasn’t he?
Blue stepped backwards and melted into the shadows.
Red crouched beside him. “Okay, go.” Hypha hesitated. “Go, dufus.” Another moment passed. She kicked him in the shoulder. “Come on!”
Hypha snapped out of it. He hooked his hooves under Red’s shoulders and leapt into the air. He glided down at a steep angle, aiming for the middle pony in the row.
The ponies on the ground didn’t see him coming. He chucked Red into the middle pony as hard as he could.
The two collided and tumbled across the cloudstone. Hypha landed beside them, rolling so as not to place too much weight on his front hooves. As he recovered, he saw Blue explode from the mist like a wolfbear. Her eyes glowed with magic and fury. Her face twisted in a toothless snarl.
Pure panic took over. Hypha hit the ground and curled up. Blue leapt over him and tackled one of the senator’s entourage mares. A wet crack filled the air. The shape beneath Blue went still. Blue got up, found the other mare, then pounced on her.
When she was finished, she flicked the blood off her hooves and walked towards Red.
Red and the senator grappled on the cloudstone, rolling over each other in a desperate bid for control. Red was the better fighter, but the sheer mass and size of the senator made it an even match. He was on top of her, trying to hold her down with one hoof and land a punch with another. Red writhed beneath him, kicking and biting, dodging the blows as fast as they came.
Blue bucked the senator squarely in the ribs. He let out a groan. Red’s hoof found his chin. He doubled over.
“Help me,” he wheezed. He took a stumbling step towards his cloudstone complex. “Help.”
Red grabbed his muzzle and squeezed it shut. The trio turned their attention to the senator’s complex, squinting through the haze for signs of movement.
A flash of black flew from the fog and hit Blue in the chest, just below her collarbone. She frowned, dazed, and touched the black shaft of an arrow embedded inside her. Then she collapsed.
Red screamed and dove over Blue’s body. More arrows flew past, skittering like snakes over the cloudstone tiles. A dozen guards clad in red and black armor spilled into the courtyard. Several moved to help the senator. The others spread out to surround the trio.
This was all wrong. There weren’t supposed to be guards. Blue wasn’t moving. She could be dead. His mind raced. Should he grab Red and bail? He couldn’t carry both of them. Red would want him to take Blue. But leaving one of them behind wasn’t an option. They’d sworn oaths. He had to figure something out right now.
He never got the chance. Just as he was about to reach his friends, a black-painted spear flew from the fog. It struck him in his right foreleg, went all the way through, and lodged in the flashing between two floor tiles.
Splinters stabbed through sinew. The momentary numbness of a new wound boiled away into pure agony. He couldn’t breathe. The world collapsed into twin tunnels of fog.
“Alive,” the senator wheezed. “Take them alive.”
Panic took hold. Hypha spun around to face the advancing guards, ignoring the agony of the spear moving inside him. Feel it. Receive it. let it go. He drew magic to his hooftips, drew a blank circle on the cloudstone floor, and bucked it with all his might.
A beltone vibration ran through every bone in his body. The mineral shell protecting his degloved hoof shattered into pieces. The agony was like his whole arm turning inside out. The closest cloudstone tiles exploded, sending shrapnel flying into the formation of guards.
A few went down, clutching bloodied faces. Most shrugged off the shrapnel and continued their advance. Someone threw a net over Hypha from behind. He whipped his head around to find more guards pouring in from the other side of the courtyard.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Red hoist Blue’s limp body over her back. She found a break in the guards’ line and made a break for it.
Just as the fog was about to swallow her up, she looked back. Her eyes found his. There might have been remorse. But Hypha couldn’t tell. Red had always played second fiddle when it came to speaking with looks.
The fog disappeared in the blink of an eye. A cloud of aides swarmed the senator, while no fewer than fifty guards took up positions around the courtyard perimeter.
In order to free Hypha, the guards pushed the spear all the way through his foreleg, a process exactly as painful as it sounded. Once it was out and Hypha stopped screaming, they patched him up, bound him in chains, and dragged him into the administrative section of the senator’s complex.
The interior of the mansion was made of the same cloudstone tiles as the courtyard. Large crystal lights hung from the ceiling by thin meal chains, casting a cold glow across the building’s common area. An open reception area splintered off into several similarly-lit hallways. Ponies laden with parchment poured in and out, occasionally pausing to gawk at Hypha before being directed by the guards to move along.
There were also half a dozen cages in the corner of the reception area.
Hypha spent the next few hours inside one of those cages, fretting himself to tears over the fate of his remaining mushrooms. Prairie Sky had proven they could fetch an ungodly sum of bits on the open market. If Red was willing to leave him to die, there was no doubt in his mind she’d be willing to sell the mushrooms too.
Liar. Everything inside him burned away, until only the hate was left. He opened himself up to her and she lied. Even his thoughts were consumed, reduced to ash. With nothing left to cling to, he clung to the hate.
A few hours passed before the senator reappeared, flanked by squads of legionnaires. He wore a striking floor-length purple cape which partially concealed a thick bandage around his midsection. Butterfly bandages sealed the cuts on his snout and forehead.
The senator walked right up to Hypha’s cage and asked in a booming performative voice, “So this is the pony who thought he could kill me.”
Hypha said nothing. He wasn’t really sure what to say. The pain in his foreleg made thinking all but impossible.
The senator knelt down and rested a hoof against the cage. “Why do you want me dead?”
“I didn’t want you dead,” Hypha said. His tongue felt like dry leather as it scraped the roof of his mouth.
The senator laughed. The whole palace flinched. “So you weren’t out there this morning? You didn’t attack me in my own home?”
“I wasn’t the one trying to kill you.” Confusion clouded the haughty look on the senator’s face. Hypha tried to clarify, “The two mares wanted you dead. I was there to fly them in, then fly them out once they finished.”
“Then what were they? Radicals? Mercenaries?”
“Blue...”
“The blue one?”
“She’s your daughter.”
The air in the room went from balmy and bruised to frigid in an instant. The smugness melted off the senator’s face. His eyes narrowed, razor-thin. “Do you know who I am?”
A lightbulb lit up in Hypha’s head. An absurd smile cracked his lips.
The senator’s face went beet-red. His voice burst like a thunderhead. “What are you laughing at?”
“I—” Hypha paused to reign in his laughter. “Blue never told me your name.”
“My name is Senator Giesu Popa.” He thrust his hoof at Hypha. “You will call me senator. Street trash like you aren’t allowed to speak the names of their superiors.” The senator stood and straightened his cape. “My memory wanes with age, and I’ve had a great many daughters. But I don’t recall naming any of them Blue.” He spat the last word out. “Her name is Azzurra Scuro. And even now, she serves my ends. She’s still my faithful daughter.”
The senator nodded to one of the guards, who opened a false cloudstone panel in the wall. Inside was a control panel inside lined with dials and switches.
A moment later, Hypha found out the cage was electrified.