Time passed in Hono. One day turned into another, while they waited for the princess to rescue them. Soon all three of them had duties to perform. Iron worked in the air, flying high to trim branches and other areas that the kirin could not reach easily. As soon as the kirin realized Gus couldn’t fly very well yet, they sent him off to work with the butcher instead. He was still practicing, and he would keep getting better.
Gus didn't seem to mind that—if anything, he returned from each day of work with interesting stories about the kirin butcher and all the different things he was learning about their fishing and cooking practices.
Lotus and Iron, meanwhile, spent what extra time they could investigating the spell containing them, at least when they didn't think anyone was watching. They poked and prodded at the barrier, from high and low. But she could never get to the doorway unattended to examine the spell's inner workings. Day or night, someone was always there.
Maybe there was a way to open the shield from the other sides. But Lotus didn't have Searing Gale's spellbook anymore, or any of the mystical secrets it contained. She couldn't even reference the basic spellcasting lessons Luna sent in the journal. She was left entirely to her memory.
Lotus Cinder retained levitation with ease. She could exactly duplicate the Worldgate spell, though she had no idea what the consequences of that would be if she cast it here. Lotus had crafted that spell to bring them from Earth to Equestria, using a low place. If she invoked it while already here... nothing good would happen.
So, she kept her head down, learning as much as she could from the locals.
On the first day, Rain Shine quizzed her on a variety of magical topics, and Lotus failed every single one of them except thaumic mathematics and reading runes. She had no idea how to balance her own spells, how to involve the influence of the fundamental forces to manifest new effects. She couldn't even name them.
"And yet you were the one whose magic crafted a Worldgate to this realm?" Rain Shine asked, when she was done with her questions. "I'm struggling to believe it."
Lotus took the brush she'd been answering with, dipped it in ink, then levitated it over the testing page. She worked more quickly this time, not caring about getting every rune exactly precise. She put no magic into the spell, just drew the marks as she had when memorizing it the first time. "This is the spell I used. It's in the book you locked up."
The kirin took her page, looked it over, then tossed it into the hearth. "How long have you studied the arcane, Lotus?"
She shrugged. "I've lost track of time, to be honest. Less than three months, but more than two. Somewhere in there. It got hard to keep track of time once I burned my house down."
The village matriarch nodded solemnly. "The arcane is a difficult practice. You would not be the first to leave ashes behind you in your failure. That is why I ask that you practice out in the village, or on the riverbank. Do not learn new magic in your home. Once kindled, a fire may spread."
She nodded her agreement. Lotus Cinder didn't accept an eternal sentence as a prisoner, but that didn't mean she had to be obstinate about it. Everything Rain Shine taught her could one day help her escape, if Iron's imagined rescue didn't come. "I'll be careful. But I can't be the only one to have problems with my emotions every now and then. How is the village still standing?"
Rain Shine stopped beside the window of the town library, drawing back the rice curtains to leave a clear view behind. "We have suffered a thousand little disasters over the years. We have come to store what matters within stone buildings instead of wood and visit them seldom. The temple, castle, library, and fortress compound. The rest... has burned, all of it, in bits and pieces over the years. For the most extreme cases, there’s a punishment we can use on the offending party. But your discipline is adequate for your age.”
She touched one hoof to Lotus's shoulder, turning her from the window back towards the books. "It is why you will never enter this library without my immediate presence. While I stand beside you, I may preserve what we cannot replace. Many of these books have no duplicates—if they were lost, so would the precious knowledge they contain. Unlike those I'll leave with you." She levitated a few over to her, holding them still until Lotus grabbed them. "Be mindful. If you burn them, your older self will be required to scribe their replacements. Even the simplest of these required many months of effort."
Lotus nodded, accepting them into her magical grip. Holding them together as one pile made it easier than several floating separately. She scanned their covers and found titles so simple they were embarrassing. My first Runes, Foals Guide to Fundamental Essences, and I burned the House Down Again :(. From the spine of that last, the frown was indeed part of the title.
"Read and study each of those. I'll send someone to quiz you on their contents. When you've mastered them, we will begin with simple enchantments. A few hundred new light fixtures should be enough to build your stamina."
After that, curling up in her new home felt almost like a return to form. She'd spent months locked in front of a desk with a few spellbooks, and now she was doing it all over again.
The kirin living tree sure beat an abandoned asylum smelling like black mold, or the bedroom of her ugly square brick of a house. Besides, the company was better now that she could finally appreciate him.
It wasn't an overnight transformation. But since Gus knew, there was no reason she couldn't curl up next to him on their oversized sofa at night, while they plotted and planned for their escape.
Most secret plots probably didn't happen in front of a GoPro mounted to a tripod. But theirs did. Gus couldn't direct it himself, as he stood in the kitchen wearing an apron and working a cleaver across an entire fish.
A skillet sat under full heat from their stove—magical, not gas, so far as Lotus knew. The kirin had no running water, but of course they'd mastered fire long ago.
"I still don't understand why you're in such a hurry to leave," Gus said, stepping briefly out of the kitchen. "The evil sorceress doesn't have our half of the book. That's a win, isn't it? She'll never be able to threaten Equestria. I can keep recording until I fill up every SD card I have, if I want to."
"No." Iron straightened in his seat, though he kept one wing behind Lotus. They still hadn't returned his spear or armor, though there were plenty of other things they could use as weapons.
"When Searing Gale sent half of her phylactery into your world, she got free. Her Nirik half did, anyway. Free to burn across Equestria. I wasn't there to see what happened. But if the princesses had a way to stop her, they wouldn't be so desperate for us to get back. They could've taken their time, planned a rescue party, sent skilled ponies across to get me. Princess Luna worked hard to get Lotus to cast the Worldgate. They need us, badly."
Lotus lowered the book in her magic. Sure enough, I Burned the House Down Again :( had illustrations of young kirins losing their temper over various things and burning them to a crisp. Rain Shine must not have been terribly impressed with Lotus's discipline.
"I saw into her... mind, I guess," Lotus said. "I think it's like... while either half of her soul is around, the other one will always come back. Equestria can beat her Nirik half over and over again, but they won't ever win. She's back before too long, a constant menace haunting everything they do. Keeping her book locked up in Hono might stop her from ever becoming powerful again, but it also stops her from dying. She's immortal."
"Harry Potter rules," Gus suggested. "Except maybe kirins already have two souls? Is that how it feels to you now, Lotus? Maybe that's why you were so quick to adapt to being—"
"Careful." Lotus hopped to her hooves, resting one on the edge of his tripod. "Plastic melts. Just saying."
He nodded shallowly to her, then turned back to the kitchen to return to his cooking.
"I think we could get out," Iron said, a few minutes later. "I've been watching the gate guards. There's only one kirin there late at night. Right at the end of their shift, maybe four in the morning... I could knock them out. Then you use your magic to figure out how to activate the gate, and we run. Depending on when we do it, we could have hours. I could fly down to Haybale in twenty minutes. You and Gus just need to hide until the search party makes it up."
Lotus turned towards him, tail flicking anxiously back and forth. "We... could. But maybe we wait a little longer first? Attacking them probably means we'll have to fight to get Gale's tome back. Unless you know how to dispel whatever protections are on that vault. I don't. I can't dispel anything. That's not what I learned."
"The princess should be here soon anyway. I don't remember encountering her in dreams, but I must have. She's probably searching for flaws in the shield as we speak. As soon as she finds one—"
BANG! The ground shook beneath them, so violently that Lotus wobbled and nearly lost her footing.
"What was—"
BANG! This time Lotus made it to the window in time to see the source of the noise. It looked as though cracks were forming in the sky itself, high overhead. They spread from a single point of impact about fifty feet up, almost directly above the stone arch.
Iron gestured eagerly for the door. "I guess we don't have to fight anypony. Come on!"
"One sec!" Gus switched off the stove, tossing his cleaver into the counter with sudden force. "I have to get my stuff!"
Iron ignored him, breaking into a gallop towards the front door. Lotus followed, abandoning the kirin books as she ran. She didn't need any particular possessions, not since almost everything she owned was either burned or broken back on Earth. Only her friends mattered to her now.
Lotus was the first one through the door, but not the only one. Kirin stopped on the town roads or emerged from nearby tree houses.
Autumn was already halfway to her door when Lotus emerged. "Hey! Looks like—"
BANG!
This time solid chunks of light tumbled away from the point of impact. Where they fell, smoke poured through the opening, and the blue sky turned an angry orange.
"Did you do this?" The question came quiet and subdued, marked by a few nervous flicks of her tail. She backed away from the opening, staring up along with so many other kirin. "You led Equestria here?"
"No," Lotus said. "Nothing we did. But Equestria was looking for us. I crossed a whole universe to bring that book. They weren't just going to give up trying to find it!"
Gus stumbled out of the house a few seconds later. He had a fresh pair of real saddlebags from Hono, not the scraps of makeshift cloth he'd been wearing before. "Our ride?"
BANG!
The sky shattered. Huge chunks of solid light tumbled down from above, moving sluggishly through the air. As each new chunk fell, it tore away from those behind, shattering outward until the whole village was full of crumbling illusion. As they neared the ground, each chunk faded and shrank, until only a glimmering trail of sparkling magic remained.
It wasn't a powerful Equestrian fleet waiting outside, or even an Alicorn hanging in the air with her horn glowing with rage.
Lotus felt the heat first, as though the city were instantly transported from late winter to midsummer. That heat carried smoke with it, choking the sky and turning the sun angry orange. The mountain around Hono no longer grew vibrant, bursting with a forest of life. Instead, it was a barren wasteland, with skeletal trunks, blackened rocks, and only dead animals to blanket it.
The watching sentries turned and sprinted away from the gate, screaming in terror. As they already knew, these were no warriors.
The wall near them groaned, bowing outward. "Down!" Iron shouted, tackling Lotus with all the force of an adult stallion. Gus obeyed, but Lotus didn't see who else had.
She heard the explosion of rock and brick a second later. Stone shrapnel scattered through the air like a shotgun blast, shattering windows and tearing huge chunks in several nearby buildings. A few large pieces whistled overhead, but none struck them. This wasn't the attack; it was making an entrance.
Lotus peeked up from the ground, pushing Iron away from her head. Some part of her already knew what she would find. Maybe she felt the Nirik's presence, or maybe it was just a question of simple reasoning. Equestria wouldn't attack a peaceful village, certainly not if they wanted to get their artifact back without a fight. But someone else would.
She was even larger and more imposing than Lotus had imagined. She towered over any other kirin, except for Rain Shine. Her coat was blackened and shriveled, with flickering blue flames rising from her mane. Fangs extended well past her teeth, dripping with little tongues of liquid fire. Worst by far were the eyes, radiating a hungry, featureless white. There was something familiar about her—when Lotus looked like a Nirik, she resembled this creature. But this being towered over her, her body twisted and deformed.
This was her—the one who urged Lotus to burn her friends’ souls for magical power. The one who wanted her to conquer her planet as a demesne of the kirin empire. The same sorceress who had become such a plague on Equestria that she could not even be defeated, only contained.
Searing Gale had arrived in Hono.
Where she walked, living grass and gardens blackened and shriveled. But the smoke and heat did not touch her. No flame could burn one who was herself the fire.
"The days of your exile are over!" she roared; voice magically amplified to boom over the village. "Kirin of Equus, chosen and unburned! All these years you survived as a pale ember. Now you will be rewarded for your faithfulness. The day of your dominion has arrived!"