In the mountains at the edge of the world, a line of legionnaires worked their way up a treacherous mountain slope.
“They don’t even bother naming the stupid things,” said one legionnaire, an earth pony named Border Storm. “That’s how many of them there are.”
“The monks have names for them,” the legionnaire behind him, Cherice, replied.
“We don’t got names for ‘em.”
Snow crunched under the legionnaires’ studded boots. They’d somehow been resupplied with fresh winter clothes a few days ago, after half the company broke through an ice shelf and got drenched in an underground river. They were back on the trail now, their meager possessions strapped to their backs, trudging slowly up a series of switchbacks and narrow escarpments that seemed to go on forever.
“Whaddaya think this one’s called, Cherry?” Border storm asked.
“My name’s not Cherry. It’s Cherice.”
“C’mon. What’s this one called?”
“Shut the Fuck Up Mountain.”
Border Storm laughed. “Don’t get mad.”
“Too late. Just because you got the stupidest name in the whole legion, doesn’t mean you get to ruin mine too.”
“You think Border Storm’s a bad name?” Border Storm puffed out his chest. “It’s badass.”
Border Storm’s hoof slipped. A spray of snow hit Cherice in the face. “Watch it,” Cherice growled.
“Sorry. I think there’s ice under this powder.”
Border Storm slipped as the last word came out. Icy sludge dripped down Cherice’s neck and into his undershirts. Border Storm let out something that sounded like a laugh. Cherice took two big steps forward and wrapped one hoof around Border’s coat collar.
Just as he did, the snow under Border Storm’s hooves gave way with a muffled crack.
Border Storm, along with a good portion of the trail in front of them, disappeared in an explosion of white. Cherice dropped to the ground, hooves splayed out in a desperate attempt to distribute his weight.
When the avalanche subsided, Cherise realized he was still holding Border’s collar. And Border was still in his coat, dangling limply off the side of the cliff.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered, spitting powder, “I’ll be more careful Cherry, I promise. I swear, I’ll be careful.”
Cherice and the ponies closest to Border Storm hauled him back onto the trail. “How about we name this mountain after you?” Cherice said. The extra layers of clothing concealed his heaving chest. Keep it cool. Keep it steady. “We’ll call it Bumblefuck Mountain.”
“Whatever you say,” Border Storm said. His hooves trembled, and not from the cold. “Whatever you say.”
The following day, the company commander called Cherise to his tent. When Cherise stepped inside, he was shocked to see general Romulus standing beside the commander, cradling a steaming mug of coffee in his hooves. His red general’s cloak hung around him like a shroud, shielding him from the cold.
Cherice saluted. He tried to click his hooves together, but the snow got in the way.
“At ease,” the general said. “I understand this is a rest block for you. Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Not a problem, sir.”
“I won’t keep you long. Your commander told me how you saved legionnaire Border Storm from a nasty fall the other day.”
“Uh—yes, sir. It was nothing major.”
“If you hadn’t caught him, it most certainly would’ve been major.” From beneath his cloak he produced a small rectangular box. “I’m giving you a field citation. Your quick thinking and courage saved another pony’s life. Excellent work.”
Cherice took the box and examined the silver medal inside. “Thank you, sir.”
“This is for you, too.” He reached into his cloak a second time and pulled out a can of pinto beans. “You deserve a better meal than that, but that’s all I’ve got.”
“Thank you, sir. That’s very generous.”
“Least I can do.” The general saluted Cherise. Somehow, despite the snow, he made his hooves click as effortlessly as if he were on a cloudstone parade ground. “That’ll be all. Get some rest. We got another ten million mountains to climb before we reach the next monastery.”
The next monastery they came across had no accessible walking paths. From the nearest trail, it was a five hundred yard gap to the monastery walls. In the occasional breaks in the clouds, Cherice could just barely make out sets of pointed roofs jutting up above the wall. He also saw a slim wooden door built into the wall, leading to nowhere.
“Kinda funny,” Border Storm said. “Why do you think they put the door there?”
“Maybe they have a sense of humor.”
Border Storm laughed. His voice had this way of tucking upwards that made Cherice want to tape his mouth shut. “Good one, Cherry.”
The fighting at that monastery was brief. The pegasi legionaries found a protected overhang a few hundred yards up the mountain and farmed loose rocks to drop on the monks below. The earth pony reserves didn’t need to be flown across the gap to join the fray. Cherice and his earth pony friends sat the whole thing out.
The next monastery was accessible to the earth pony parts of the legion. They stormed the walls and saw heavy fighting. Border Storm didn’t make it, but Cherice survived with barely a scratch.
He was thinking about Border Storm’s laugh one day, for no reason in particular other than he was bored and he kinda missed being constantly annoyed, when nearly a dozen pegasi from the general’s personal guard detail landed in front of him.
This didn’t bother Cherice. What did bother him was when the leader, a brown-coated bird with enough muscled to be mistaken for an earth pony, said, “General needs you. Come with us.”
Cherice glanced over his shoulder at the mountain opposite them. He could see the general’s big white tent billowing in the breeze.
“Sure,” Cherice said, flapping his forelegs theatrically. “Lemme just—”
He paused. The soldiers looked serious. And one of them was holding up a pair of hooks that were only ever used for clipping one set of armor to another. They were going to fly him over.
“Oh,” Cherice said.
“Yeah,” said the big pegasus commander, and readied the hooks.
One short, gut-wrenching flight later, Cherice walked into the general’s tent to find some sort of meeting already underway. He groaned inwardly. Meetings sucked. His armor chafed horribly from the flight over, and he was in no mood to receive a briefing of any kind. That was what superiors were for.
The general looked up from his table and nodded at him. “Cherice, thank you for coming. First thing’s first, your corporal died this morning while out on patrol. I’m bumping you up to take his place.”
“Oh.” Cherice didn’t even have time to come to attention. A corporal. Damn.
“Secondly, as I’m sure you know, we’re approaching one of the more populated monasteries in the range. It’s big and the tunnels run deep. Our scouts are already out there gathering intel, but it’s tough with the fog playing against us. Cherice, I want to give you a leadership role in this operation.”
“Me, sir? I’m—”
“Spare it. You’re decorated. You’re good to go. The legion and I are behind you a hundred percent.”
Cherice didn’t feel particularly decorated. His head was still spinning around the question of whether corporals got extra rations.
Romulus continued, “I want you and your team to go into the temple once we’ve cracked the doors open and see what you can find.”
“Okay.” He realized ‘okay’ probably wasn’t a sufficient answer given his new rank. “What should we be looking for, sir?”
“Anything and everything. I know your team’s been dinged in the past for not being aggressive enough, but in this case that conservative approach fits the mission type. Keep an eye out for records, treasure, I don’t know what else. I want to know what’s in that temple. And don’t destroy anything you don’t have to. Understood?”
Cherice replied automatically, “Yes, sir.” Then he thought better of it and added, “Sir? I might need more ponies. We’re a few short from the last fight.”
“Sure, volunteer whoever you need. I’ll leave it to your discretion.” The general paused. “Who died? Just Able and Doxov, right?”
“And Border Storm, sir.”
“Oh.” The faintest hint of a frown crossed the general’s face. “After you saved him on that cliff, too. Damn.”
The fight for the next monastery, which was called Roseroot, lasted nearly all day. Cherice and his team waited anxiously on the opposite mountain as the sound of clashing swords and screams rolled across the gap. Archers took pot shots at a couple of fleeing monks, and one even managed to nail one with a spear, but other than that he saw almost no action. With all the fog, they couldn’t see much of anything.
As the sun went down, so too did the sounds of battle. A tremendous crash seemed to split the mountain in half. A red firework burst through the haze.
“Alright,” Cherice said, “let’s go.” The earth pony team hooked up to their pegasi cohorts and took off into the fog.
When they arrived, the temple dias was drenched in blood. The pegasi slipped and crashed as they tried to alight. Most of them simply stayed airborne so as not to dirty their hooves. Cherice fell face-first in it and came up looking, for lack of a better word, as red as a cherry.
“Who bleeds this much?” Cherice griped. He stood around for a few moments, blood dripping down his armor, until he remembered that he was the one in charge of this little detail. He pointed to the open doors, great stonewood monstrosities cracked open just wide enough for one pony to squeeze through, and said, “Uh, move out.”
The interior caverns seemed to go all the way down to the center of the earth. Even with strong torches, they stumbled through a near-total darkness. A weight hung over their heads. Cherice felt an irrational fear crawling up his spine. What if the whole thing collapses?
One of the first rooms they came to was some sort of meditation room. Aside from a few brightly-colored tapestries, the room was nothing more than bare rocks and thin mats.
The next room contained forty weeping foals.
They sat still as rocks in one corner, huddled up in their orange robes and sniffling softly. Their eyes glowed in the torchlight. They all seemed to be looking directly at Cherice, like somehow they knew.
“I didn’t sign up to kill foals,” one legionnaire said.
“No one’s killing anyone,” Cherice said. Hilarious, considering the amount of blood congealing on his armor.
After some thought, he left three guards to watch the foals and pressed on. The corridors got thinner and thinner, until it became impossible to pass through with armor on. The remaining guards reluctantly left their plates behind, set their spears against the wall, and squeezed through single-file.
Just ahead, they saw a room with a faint light glowing inside. Cherice, who was second in line, paused the column and pointed to it. The other legionnaires nodded their heads and undid the clasps on their swords.
The first pony got to the doorway and looked inside. His eyes went wide, and he opened his mouth like he was about to scream. Then a spear flew into his neck. The torch fell from his hands, illuminating two teenaged monks clutching knives between their teeth. One went low and doused the dropped torch. The other crawled up the wall like a spider.
The monk on the ceiling distracted Cherice. This would have been the death of him, as he forgot about the monk on the ground long enough for him to line up one good slash at his neck. But with all the chaos and flickering shadows, the monk missed Cherice’s jugular and swiped his shoulder instead.
Dark blood sprayed out, but Cherice didn’t go down. In fact, the wound just made him angrier. Without thinking, he swung his torch like a club and smacked the monk over the head. Sparks flew. A few landed on the monk’s robes and caught. In a split second, the monk was engulfed in flames. He screamed, pawed at the air like he was reaching for a bucket of water that wasn’t there. Then he stumbled off down the corridor and collapsed in a heap.
The other monk was so horrified by the sight of his friend being burnt alive he didn’t even let out a sound as another legionnaire skewered him with his sword. He fell to the floor. The remaining legionnaires, Cherice included, dogpiled him.
Inside that room, they found thirty pounds of mushrooms drying atop kiln racks. Cherice made a note of it, moved his fallen comrade out of the way, then continued on down the hallway.
In total, they found over a hundred record books detailing the history of the monastery, in addition to the mushrooms and the children. The children refused to come out of their hiding place, not even at spearpoint, and no one wanted to be the pony who actually hurt one of them. So they let them be for the time being.
Cherice had a table from the records room brought up to the dias. There he placed his findings for inspection. When Romulus arrived, he went straight for the biggest book in the bunch. He motioned for Cherice and the other legionnaires to gather round.
“Look at this.” Romulus turned the book open to the first page. “This is the most recent entry. Dated 3,012 YSA. That’s their year, like how our year is After Hurricane. Now...” He turned the book all the way to the back, where the pages were yellowed and barely held together with a magical weaving buff. “997 YSA.” He shook his head in awe. “This place is twice as old as Derecho.”
“Sir,” Cherice started, “there’s still the matter of the foals.”
“We’ll leave some auxiliaries behind. When they get hungry, they’ll come out. Then we can chain them up and ship them out, same as the others. Speaking of getting hungry...” He turned his eyes to the mushrooms. “Has anyone tried these yet? Are they safe to eat?”
The legionnaires, remembering the way the monk defending the mushrooms had danced as he burned alive, shrugged.
Cherice had a sudden thought that, if he ate with Romulus, it might mean higher favor from him somewhere down the line. So as the general reached for the dried mushrooms, so did he.
Romulus smiled at him. “Bottoms up.”
They both scooped up a big heaping hooffull of mushrooms and horked them down. They tasted bitter and slightly dusty, nothing like the fresh hydroponically grown kinds back on Derecho.
Nevertheless, he chewed them up and swallowed hard. “Tastes like dirt,” he surmised.
“Odd they were keeping these in the temple,” Romulus said. “They had the most incredible lentil stew and bread in the kitchen. They should have worshipped that instead.”
Thirty minutes later, Cherice started to feel strange. A film of brightness stained everything. Sunlight reflecting off snow seemed more intense. The wind cut deeper. Then he stopped feeling the cold. Then he passed the body of a monk tangled up in his bloody robes, and tears started to spill down his cheeks.
“Hey. Uh. Sir?” One of Cherise’s subordinates tapped him on the shoulder. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, yes.” He was fine, too. He wasn’t upset. There were just tears. But there were so many of them, he didn’t have any idea what was going on. “Must be allergies.”
Just then, one of the shadows at the edge of the monastery moved.
Cherise put his hoof on his sword. The other legionnaires bristled. “What is it?”
Cherise peered closer. The shadow was just a shadow. “Nothing,” he said. “Let’s keep—”
A roar like an avalanche split the air. A gust of wind beat at Cherice’s face, knocking him to the snow. He yanked his sword out and scrambled to his hooves.
General Romulus came stumbling over, a dagger clenched between his teeth. His pupils were dilated and his breaths came out in short, vaporous puffs.
“Cherise,” he said. He noticed the tears. “You too?”
The entire convoy of ten thousand ponies and all their wagons and chariots of equipment ground to a halt.
Cherice and Romulus holed up in the monastery’s old kitchen, barring the doors despite the protest of the general’s personal guard. They stoked a small fire in the oven and watched the shadows dance on the tall clay brick ceiling. The place smelled like blood and bread. Whatever affliction was upon them, they resolved to wait it out and hope for the best.
“Who was the pony who you saved on the pass?” Romulus asked. “The one who fell.”
“Border Storm.”
“How did he die?”
“A monk flew above us and dropped a rock on him. Broke his back.”
Romulus nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“We weren’t close.” Cherice regretted those words the instant they left his mouth. He and Border Storm had known each other since training. They’d spent nearly every day marching together since leaving Derecho. He didn’t like Border Storm. But did that mean they weren’t close?
“That elder,” Romulus said. “The one who fought on the dias—”
“I wasn’t there for that,” Cherice admitted.
“Oh. Well, this one elder fought off twenty of us on the temple dias. He’s the reason it’s so bloody. He—” He paused to swallow a lump in his throat. “When we finally killed him, he smiled. He got ripped to shreds. It was brutal. But he was smiling. How...” He let out a long sigh. “I don’t know how someone smiles at a time like that. These monks are different than anything I’ve ever seen.”
A noise from outside grabbed Cherice’s attention. He turned to look out the window and saw a lithe shadowy form pass by. He leapt to his hooves. “Something’s outside,” he murmured. “Sir, something’s outside.”
The two ponies trained their eyes on the next window. It was getting dark outside, but Cherice was certain he’d seen something.
Sure enough, a few moments later, the shadow floated by again.
They both jumped a little and strained to see if it would pass by a third time. This time, it stopped at the window, and they both got a clear look at it. It was a snow leopard, its teeth sharp as jagged rocks, its breath fogging the glass windows in rhythmic puffs.
“The troops,” Romulus murmured. “The troops are—” He let out a holler and leapt to his hooves. “The troops are out there. We have to warn them!”
Cherice wanted nothing more than to stay inside where the doors were locked and the hearth was warm. But when Romulus raised his voice, it felt like the whole building was going to come down around them. They had to go. There was no other option but to go. Not fear, not cowardice, not even the dim hope of survival could overcome it.
So they drew their swords and bundled up and kicked open the kitchen door with a great roar. The door, three lengths of solid stonewood, flew off its hinges like it was made of plywood.
“To arms!” Romulus cried in a wavering voice. “To arms! Beast in the camp!”
But there was no beast devouring his men. Not exactly. What they found instead were dozens of funeral pyres for the legionnaires and monks who’d been killed in that day’s fighting. Every shadow came to life and danced with the sparks of the roaring fire as they floated up to the sky. The snow leopard was nowhere to be found.
Cherice and his team got good at dashing into dark places and finding important things. They became Romulus’s go-to artifact recovery group. The regulars all got promoted to specialists, and they got to wait out the worst of the fighting from the safety of camp.
That wasn’t to say the position was an upgrade, however. The experience of crawling through the dark, cramped interiors of the underground temples and fighting in the dark made Cherise yearn for pitched battle under an open sky.
One of the final monasteries in the range was called Shining Rock. The mountain had a natural artery of beautiful silver crystal running through it, which the monks harvested to use in their architecture. Below ground, the crystal glowed, like those in the crystal empire.
Cherice and the team had ditched their armor and torches and went in with only their swords. They’d just passed a big meditation room that looked like a great place for a last stand, but had turned out to be empty. Soft white light from the crystals bathed them in as they crept deeper.
Ahead of them, perhaps thirty or so lengths, they spied a single monk in tattered robes blocking the way forward.
“Surrender!” Cherice called out. His voice echoed up and down the corridor.
In response, the monk pulled out a ball peen hammer.
The legionnaires tightened their grip on their weapons and inched closer. “Watch the rear,” Cherice said to the last ponies in the row. “This feels like a trap.”
As they inched closer, the monk raised the hammer over his head.
“Put it down.” Cherice heard his own echo and realized he wasn’t being very compelling. Really, he just wanted to get out of this cave. But if it meant sticking this monk and stealing his book of records, so be it.
The monk let out a piercing wail. Cherice’s blood went cold. The monk struck the vein of crystal running the length of the walls, shattering it.
As the crystal shattered, the light it produced went out.
Cherice had just enough time before the darkness swallowed them up to whirl around and see a dozen monks emerge from the meditation room behind them.
Above ground, Romulus had no idea about the ambush. While his legionnaires mopped up, he strode across the misty battleground. They’d captured one of the monastery’s elders, an ancient mare with a wispy white mane and icy blue eyes. Her hooves were shackled. Blood from half a dozen wounds seeped into her slate-grey coat. Someone had cut off her robe to check for hidden weapons.
Romulus knelt before her and pulled from his cloak a single mother sky mushroom. “I know you don’t want me to have this,” he said. “So you take it.”
He held it to the mare’s mouth. After a moment of hesitation, she took it, chewing silently.
“I took several last month without knowing what they were.”
“You don’t take mother sky,” she said.
“Sorry. I was hoping you could explain what exactly the effects are. When you...”
“Partake.” The mare drew the word out. “It’s an honor you don’t deserve.”
“Then I apologize for that, too. But I saw things. I want to learn.”
The mare barked out a laugh. “Don’t tell me you did all this because you wanted to learn about our religion.”
“No. But I’m here now, and I want to learn.”
“You have the power to stop this killing. But you don’t, and you won’t.”
“That’s true. I’m under orders. I’m here to compel you to agree to Derecho’s terms.”
“What are they?”
“Shining Rock and all the other monasteries bend the knee and sign formal treaties of vassalage to Derecho. We leave a garrison of Derechans in one of the empty monasteries. Once a year, you send us a modest monetary tribute. The monks can maintain autonomy on the ground level. No conscription. No buying or selling of ponies. We want your money and your land, not your lives.”
The mare raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“And, you take me in as your personal student. You travel with me and teach me about the mushrooms and the order.”
The mare mulled over his words for a moment before replying, “You’re an unworthy student.”
Romulus got right up in her face. “They make you see visions. But that’s not all, is it. They enhance your strength.”
“Those who chase power are doomed to be weak forever.”
Romulus rose. Anger gripped his chest. It wasn’t the old mare’s words that bit him. It was everything else. The wind, the cold, the smell of organs cooling in the snow. All of a sudden he felt more tired than he’d ever felt before.
“Tie her up and throw her off the cliff,” he instructed the guards.
The old mare laughed. “Is that all?”
Romoulus didn’t like the sparkle in the mare’s eyes. As the guards led her towards the walls, he murmured to one of them, “Poke her a few times for good measure.”
The guard did as he was told.
Cherice didn’t make it back to Derecho. But three large satchel bags full of dried mother sky mushrooms did. They were taken by Derechan couriers directly to his personal quarters, along with his cleaned and polished battle armor, his sword, and the book of records from every conquered monastery.