//------------------------------//
// Ch 11: A Price too High 
// Story: Meta Gamer in Equestria Bonus Chapters: Archimedes's promise 
// by reflective vagrant 
//------------------------------//

The two birds flew off and towards the cliff up the path as Ebony Nexus looked at me with a smug near-disbelief.
"If I hadn't seen the Animus Mundi teach you that spell with my own Astral Judgement, I wouldn't have believed it even if you told me."
She cocked her head up as the hood around her fell to her withers.  "So, what did the rock doves have to say in exchange for the bread?"
I took a bite of the biscuit half I hadn't offered them and put the remainder back in my pouch.  Shifting it to one side, I answered her.  "They have seen other creatures that stand on two legs like I do above the cliff they live on, but they have been traveling on the road that leads away from the cliff and towards the fortress for a while now.  They also saw no large creatures on the other cliff.  The canyon should have no patrols near it right now."
Ebony Nexus nodded.  "Then all we have to worry about is the one outpost on the cliff edge.  At least we will know if we are caught."
I looked at her as she put her hood back up and carefully brought the others out of the trees.  "Why is that?"
We made a beeline for the cliff edge as she explained.  "This canyon and the surrounding area is a divination dead zone.  A few bad spells mixed wrong here in a fight a while back and the result made it to where no magical detection or communication can make it through here.  Illusions that affect the mind directly instead of tricking the senses can't even work.  If the outpost is to send a signal, they have to do it in a non magical means, which means either a very slow messenger, which we will be long gone by the time help arrives even at a safe pace if that happens."
She did a quick check to make sure every creature was accounted for as they hugged the wall of the canyon entrance.  Upon getting a nod from the midway guard, she glanced back at me and continued.
"That, or by a signal that can be seen from far off, like one of those fancy flare signals or a bonfire.  At which point, we give up cover and run like our lives depend on it, because they likely will."


* * *


The plan was going smoothly for a while.  We had gotten most of the refugees out of the line of danger.   The guard post building was manned, but it was easy enough to smuggle the refugees through the hardest part by going across a gap under it, in its blind spot.  The gap looked like it once led into an attempt of a mine in the bottom of the canyon before it was abandoned for lack of things worth mining for.
Combine that with some good timing from a lookout watching, and giving a signal in the form of a series of bird calls when the guard was looking in the direction they needed, and we had managed to get almost every creature through the choke point and to safety.  Ebony Nexus the satyr leader and his youngest son were all that were left.
The boy had been crying in fear and was held back, lest his noise alert the guard when they came close.  As much as I wanted to comfort the boy and get him through the scary part, we couldn't risk it.  Once the path was discovered, it was as good as closed for all future smuggling.
That's why we had the mid guard.   He wasn't going to stay with us, but if the group had gotten caught, it would likely have been split.  Those that had gotten through would be led by either Ebony Nexus or the front guard, depending on where she was at the time, and those left behind would have been under his command if their elder was on the far side at the point of discovery.


The plan was just about over, with Ebony Nexus taking the last two across the aged, but oddly not rickety bridge beneath the outpost when it all went to shit.
A blast from somewhere in the canyon's brush struck the outpost and it started crashing down towards the bridge.  I was on the early side of it, but Ebony Nexus was rushing to the middle, where the child and his father was.
I saw what was coming at them. Sharp bits of lumber and bits of rock.  There was no way they would survive the pummeling or get out of the way.
With neither false life nor expeditious retreat available, I cursed myself silently and dashed forward.  The only consolation was that I had the longstrider spell already in effect.   I needed to mitigate the damage in whatever way I could, not just block it, so I cast featherfall on as much of the nearer derbs falling as I could and upcast the largest casting of magic missile I could on the stuff further out than my featherfall spell could reach.   Ten rocks were blasted away and six more fell so slowly that the rest of the outpost caught up with it just as I caught up with them.
Quickly drawing a pentagram above me, I enacted the blade ward spell and transformed into my polar bear form, hunkering down over top of them and hoping for the best.
Rocks and boards pummeled my form so fast, I only managed to throw in one good healing of my beast form before I was pummeled so hard again it hardly mattered and I was thrust out of my wild shape.
The bridge also fell apart and we fell about twenty feet into a pit in the mine area below.
I heard a scream to my side as I landed hard.  I did a quick check to see I was badly hurt but stable and quickly realized the rocks had stopped falling on us.
I looked up and saw a disk of magic blocking the rest of the rocks.
"Oh, dear...  If that's what I think it was, then that's going to complicate things in a few hours."  I heard a very cold sounding Diary call out as she came and pushed some of the rubble clear from the disk that blocked the only exit from the pit, straight up.  Most of the rocks had slid off already, due to a slant in the casting, but some lingered.
"I don't suppose you have any healing magic, do you?  It would save me a load of trouble later.  Technically I have a little myself now, but I can't call upon my master here with this being a divination dead zone to cast it.  If I could it would defeat the whole purpose of trapping you here."
Looking where she was pointing, I saw Ebony Nexus impaled on one of the boards from the bridge,  the board was going right through her gut, almost at her spine.  The wound was not a clean cut either.  I could see the board splintered in half, poking out in two spots.  As I saw the blood splattered on the wood sticking out of her, I knew that crystalline blood refracting in what light was available in the pit was her life blood, slowly draining from her.
"So this is it, is it?"  I heard her call in English.
I pulled out my vial and pushed my last bit of healing mix in.  Just as I was adding the water, I heard her call out.
"No.  Don't use it on me."  I heard her call feebly, "The wound is too big."
"Really?  Just one potion?  That's all you have to heal?" Diary called out as I finished the mix.
I looked up and glared at her.  "That will barely fix the kid.  And before you ask, no.  I can't let you out."
She gave a posture showing she didn't care as she pointed to another in the pit.
The father satyr was sitting there, scratched up bad but stable.  All his thoughts were on the child cradled in his arms.  The child was bleeding out from a bad injury his dad was holding shut on what was left of his mangled leg.  The only reason he wasn't screaming was him being in shock.
I looked back and forth between the two patients, both desperately needing help, and hesitated.
"Moss, I'm as good as dead already.  The wound is too severe to even let the potion buy me time.  The moment I'm moved I'm gone.  Don't cry for me.  The future belongs to the young.  Save the boy."
I felt a little in shock myself, like it wasn't really happening, but a part of my mind remembered a detail.  "Towards the end of the first rift war, she died trying to heal another."
In order to preserve the timeline, she had to die while healing another.  Soon enough I found I had pored the potion down the boy's throat, letting his circulatory system decide what needed healing the most.
With the boy's leg still mangled bad, but not bleeding anymore, I nodded in confirmation of him being stable.  With his mind coming to as the potion countermanded the physical shock, his father got to work hugging him as he cried, letting out the emotional shock.
With my heart finally catching up to reality that my mind had blankly processed, I snapped up at Diary, still not wanting Ebony Nexus to die.  "Go! Get! Help!"
She just put her paw to her ear and called out "I can't understand you, Moss.  And If you're asking me to help, I can't.  Just say your goodbyes."
"Don't waste your energy, Moss.  It's obvious she's following her master's orders to keep you here.  They know they're too vital to the resistance now to get punished for this."
I looked at Diary one last time with a stern glare, then back down to Ebony Nexus.
Her eyes were getting weaker by the minute.
With a quick pat down of my equipment, I found nothing I could artificer cast with.  In desperation, I placed my hands on her upper barrel gently, and called out to Archimedes.  "Heeelp!"
I started breaking down as I knew what was unfolding in front of me was an event that had to happen.  Still, a part of me cried out again.  "Partner, help..."
But nothing came.
"Auntie..."  I tried to call out for a second, hoping she would answer my call.  Naturally, even if she could hear through the divination barrier, she still only saw me as an outsider, and so my words made no connection to her, and no help came.
But just then, I felt something.  The connection between Archimedes and myself flexed in a weird way.  Like a rubber band that had snapped shut after being let go.  I had never felt anything like it before, but it stirred new hope into me.
Grabbing onto hope like there was no tomorrow that Archimedes could hear me, that somehow he was with me in this dark moment, I called out again.
"Heeeelp!"  
But despite the hiccups I felt, banking on a miracle... Nothing came.
"Moss, please..."  I could hear her weakening breath call out to me.
With my heart wrestling my mind for control over which was in charge, I broke down and threw my head to the ground in prayer.  "Please, dear god all mighty...  Help..."


But still, nothing came.


I just about fell into a deep darkness deeper than my depression had ever led me to when one final whimper broke what would have been silence, save for the boy's crying.
"Sing... for me?"
It was in that moment I realized, this was the key moment of my penance.  The power of life and death taken from my hands.  I saw it coming and still wanted to fight it.  This was the true price I had to pay for what I did seven years in my past.  This time being unable to save her life and forced to only witness it being taken.  For all the power I had gained, I was powerless in this moment.
Now that I knew it was going to happen, what was my response going to be?  Breaking down like a child?  Anger?  Hatred for yet another good soul dying in front of me?  I echoed her plea in my mind, as both my heart and mind didn't want to do it.  Like chains tying me down to sadness, my heart didn't want to move and my mind still wanted to zoom through the alternatives again, though it had none.  So, with my mind wanting to do something, anything, I pushed through the stalemate of emotional inaction and mental panic.  With slow, agonizing movements as if every joint and muscle I called upon were grinding to a halt with rust, I pressed my amulet and granted her final request with the song.
Yet my words were mumbled beyond recognition for a could couple seconds, finally forcing them to clarity as the focus of the phrase came down "...whispered of wisdom, 'Let it be...'"
I was pretty sure she had faded shortly after the second or third line I sang, but I knew by the time that happened, she wasn't wanting me to sing for her.   She was wanting me to put my sadness into the song so that I wouldn't break.   So I sang.  I sang loudly.  I sang with all my fervor.  I sang with all my power and, despite my lessons, I knew I was singing it poorly by the time the song was done.  I hadn't even started on the right line and I had to loop back and repeat lines due to not even having my bearings on what part of the song I was on.
It was her dying wish to do my best to not be crippled by her passing like I had seven years in my past, to let my heart heal.  Yet I still felt pretty broken as the music ended.


But one big difference came from the singing.  I couldn't help but feel just as broken, but this time I was still functional as the dust settled on the reality of the situation.
Knowing I had to move forward, I did my best to hold back my desire to punish Diary.  Partially for trying to stay whole by not giving in to revenge, and partially because she still had her roll to play in the ending of the rift war.  Both were for Ebony Nexus's sake.
I had expected her to just be looking around without a care, but she was looking directly at me with tears rolling down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry we have to be on opposite sides of this, Moss, but my loyalty is to my master and my master alone now."
Spying the rod in her hand and the thick accent of translation gone, I realized she had cast tongues on herself.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, seeing I saw what she had done, she gave a bitter smile.  "I won't be able to forget the rhythm of that song or how that singing moved me."
She put her rod to her chest and gave a small bow.  "I know what it is like to lose someone.  To feel broken.  To want to hate.  Don't lie, either.  I can see it in your eyes and the quivering of your spell hand near your pouch.  For some reason you haven't given into it like I have, but the urge is there."
She wasn't wrong, a part of me was sizing the two of us up on if I had to fight my way out.  I was functional, but hurt bad.  It wouldn't take a whole lot to take me out, maybe a cantrip worth of damage, two if I was lucky.  I also didn't have any healing available to make up the difference.  My beast form was the last cheat for self healing I had, and now it was gone too.  She, however, was at full strength.
Her posture even showed me she had a few spells in mind that would take me out, even with her being a trickster style caster rather than raw power style.  The fact that she was glancing at the father and son satyrs showed me they would likely get caught in the middle if a fight broke out.
She basically held all the cards.  The only consolation was that she didn't want to fight and wasn't ordered to.
She looked at her casting paw and spoke more to herself than me, though I could hear it.
"I'm hardly any less a monster than the king I seek to spite, now.  The scary part is how little this disturbs me when I know it should."
She closed her paw in a fist for a brief second then shook her head.
"It's good to see you still have some logic in you, and some heart," she called out as she saw me relax.  "We are alike in some ways, both being rift sealers, or soon to be in my case.  While I might be more hardened a tactician, I can see you have made your own sacrifices in your own way.  I think the only meaningful difference between us when I look into your eyes is that you crushed your dignity into humility to achieve your ends, where as I just crushed my heart into dust."
She tilted her head,  "I know you don't like me, but let me give you two parting gifts, for wherever your path leads you from here."
"First, a consolation on our current situation.  I apologize on how I still have to keep you here, and please believe me that her death was not part of the plan.  I'll come clean to Bunny Angel when we get back.  It will mean I'll be locked away until I'm needed for closing the rifts, but honestly I'm fine with that.  I'll have nothing after my vengeance is finished.  With Bunny Angel knowing the truth, he will keep order in the resistance over her death and will not allow any of the blame to fall on you."
She turned back around and looked at the sky then tilted a little to just barely look at me.  "My second gift is some advice.  Don't think your dignity alone will always be enough of a sacrifice.  I learned long ago my heart alone wasn't.  I had to make sacrifices of many enslaved Fey to save other Fey.  I had to make tough calls to make the most of situations that could never end in a happy ending for everyone.  It's an inevitability someone is going to have to pay too high a price in some way at some point, or everybody will."
Despite clearly knowing what she had done, she turned and hardly payed me any further mind, looking up at the clouds.
"My master should have given the counter sign by now.  I've kept Moss here where he can't communicate with them.  What's wrong?"
Looking at the clouds myself, I saw something subtly terrifying.  The general shape of what was clearly a simplified drawing of Time Turner's box was etched into the clouds.
Discord was trying to break into the blue box.  The time machine.
I remembered Time Turner's words. "...don't worry about me leaving you, I can't close the bubble while the link between you two is intact...  I'm as stuck here as you are while Archimedes stays inside the TARDIS."
Discord had been listening in and put this together himself.  As long as I was away from the blue box and couldn't warn them, it was a sitting duck and Discord now knew it.


A few more moments passed as I found myself helpless to warn them, or even just not hinder them.
"What is taking him so long?  Bunny Angel is at the front and the outer barrier shouldn't be that hard for a being of his level to disintegrate.  Even I could do it given enough time."
She stretched her arms above her head in boredom.
"I mean, he did become weaker infusing me with his power, but only in that one way.  Even so, no native has found a way to wield quintessence."  She looked down at her paw and the multiple coat patterns covering her.  "Aside from this method, that is.  But no other immortal would be a willing donor without a great need, not even one of impure quintessence.  So his new weakness wouldn't be exploitable right now."
A loud mechanical whining came from right next to me.  With just enough room to fit inside the pit without disturbing anything, the blue box materialized.
"No!" Diary called out as she shifted the symbol of the clouds to show the blue box a bit more clearly, now encased in a definitive circle of no cloud, clear for all to see, instead of only those that were looking.
As soon as she had done that, she dropped her magic disk keeping us separate.  The remaining rocks fell into the pit and onto the blue box's outer barrier.
She blasted away at it just as the blue box finished becoming tangible.  With the clashing of her magic and the barrier, it felt like thunder was being created right there as she threw everything she had into breaking it.
"No time to explain!"  I heard Time Turner call from the box behind me.
By the time I had registered what he had said, I felt a familiar set of thorned vines wrap around me, pulling me into the blue box.
With my resilience finally expended from the damage of the thorns, I felt my world fading to black.
All I could see from the doorway of the blue box was Time Turner going to close the doors, and the screaming figure of Discord tearing at a flaw in the barrier with his magic rich lion claw and talon alike.
The doors slammed shut as I finally fell into that darkness.