Faye could feel the gears turning in Rhodallis' brain as they climbed back up to the Night's Boon's base. She had a lot to think about, too.
The climb was almost easy, thanks to her bracelet - once the fight was over, it had stayed on her leg where it belonged instead of returning to the Immortal Dream, and it was trivial for her to tune it right to give a small strength boost and nothing more. Halcyon's crystal was tucked safely away in a pocket on the inside of her armor; filling her other half in on what had transpired below was probably better done outside of Rhodallis' presence and the green fumes.
Fumes which, as part of her final attack to fell the pirate king, she had taken into her emptiness.
It was impossible to judge how that was working out for her while she was still surrounded by them externally. All she could do was bank on her ability to expel them and clean them out once she was in a less-polluted location.
They left the buried city and returned to the tunnels under the ziggurat, Rhodallis leading the way, continuing to dispatch revenants despite the beating he had taken. Most of the damage had healed by now, but a few stubborn burned spots remained, a lingering testament to their battle. Faye wondered if they would ever fully disappear, or if her bracelet had scarred him just as it had done to Mother.
If so... that was proof it couldn't hurt her in the same way, or at least had vastly different conditions for doing so. It was an invitation to use her bracelet more, experiment with it and lean into its power. And as hard as she had just used it, she couldn't shake the feeling that it could be turned even brighter if she was really trying.
She might need that power if she was going to free Coda from the windigoes, even if she saved her from the pirates first.
They reached the stronghold, and were admitted by an acolyte in the same manner as before. And, in the central room adjacent to Lente's office, Bernard was waiting.
"Well, well," he greeted politely, standing guard near Coda's ice block, keeping his voice to a library tone. "One of you looks distinctly better than the other, I see. Things didn't go as planned?"
"You could say that," Rhodallis growled. "We're getting out of this place. The situation has changed, and I need to be able to think clearly to adjust our plans."
Bernard raised an eyebrow at Faye. Her input mattered to him, huh?
"Your boss bit off more than he could chew," she said. "And didn't make himself out to be particularly trustworthy, either."
"And yet you're still traveling together," Bernard pointed out. "Was this a... matter of convenience, or is our business still on?"
Faye hesitated. Was this really the best place to press her case? Coda was right there. Rhodallis wouldn't be a problem in a fight; she had beaten him at his strongest just moments ago, and now he was more removed from that place of power. The Night's Boon wouldn't like a fight in their sanctum, but if she started something, it would effectively be just her versus Bernard, fighting for Coda. If she waited, she could have more pirates to contend with, and potentially get forced into some kind of deal. Maybe... she'd go it gently.
"Depends how you treat me going forward," she said. "For one, I think they say that to the victor go the spoils. If we're going to part on good enough terms to have anything to do with each other in the future, I want Coda, no questions asked."
"Ah, so it was that kind of change in situation." Bernard smiled sadly. "Well, I suppose that's between you and His Eminence, then. In matters of his property, I am but a servant."
He looked to Rhodallis.
Rhodallis' eyes were closed. "You want her enough to take her by force?"
Faye blinked, then looked at Coda.
Rhodallis glared at her. "I said, you want her enough to take her by force?"
"If I did," Faye countered, "could you stop me?"
"Non-committal as ever." Rhodallis rolled his shoulders. "What'll you do if you get her? You know she's no good to anyone in that state, right? Save as a bartering piece."
About half of the monks in the room were watching by now, and the ones who were trying to look disinterested or focused on their own tasks were clearly listening. Faye swallowed.
"...I think I can work with this," Rhodallis mused. "Actually, this could be great for us... Sure. You win, kid. Go ahead and take her. You did beat me, after all."
Faye braced herself for the but.
"But consider her taken by force," Rhodallis continued, confirming Faye's fear. "Both of you are rightfully mine, and wherever you go from here, whoever you get to take you in? I'll just consider them on the hook for both of your prices. At the rate things have been going, that'll be a more effective way to make a sale than what I'm currently doing! You get what you want, I get what I want, everyone's happy... and if you manage to befriend someone with deep enough pockets, we can even consider things settled between us for the future. Hahahah! Hurry up, Bernard, we're leaving."
Bernard tossed her the rope for pulling Coda's cart with his signature smile. "That's how the cookie crumbles, eh? Take care, Moneymaker Halcyon. I'll miss the extra source of income you put in my pockets."
Rhodallis swaggered out, and Bernard followed him, and before Faye could even process what had happened, Coda was hers... and their ticket out of Gyre was gone.
She stared into the ice block, her reflection imposed over Coda's frozen form. All that effort, all that luck, to get right back where she had been on the day she left Ironridge. Except instead of among friends, she was alone, without resources in a cursed city in the middle of nowhere on a foreign continent... But still, it was a victory. One she should probably celebrate before moving on and facing that grim reality.
Halcyon had been the one up front whenever they were around Coda, though. This was Halcyon's victory to relish more than it was hers. She should-
"That was an interesting exchange," said a voice behind her. It was Lente, the elderly stallion Rhodallis had been dealing with earlier who probably led the Night's Boon.
Faye folded her ears and turned to face him. "You want something?"
"I don't know the first tenth of your stories, or your reasons for being here," Lente told her. "I do have an extensive history of dealing with Rhodallis, and a lot of knowledge about how he operates. We just established earlier this day that the Night's Boon will not pay the price he seeks for that filly, and so you'd best not count on finding long-term shelter with her here. But we are a charitable organization, and I don't think he'd read into it too much if we sent you on your way with some advice and supplies, and let you stay the night."
Faye sagged in relief. "Actually a friendly stranger for a change? I'll take it. Even if it's too good to be true, I'll take it."
Lente shook his head. "You were arguing against his proposed usage of that filly when he tried to sell her to me. After hearing you and him part ways, that's enough to give you the benefit of the doubt for a night. Now then, if you'll follow me..."
The room Faye was given was decorated in much the same fashion, with wooden walls that hung paintings likely made by the monks, and furniture carved by hoof and talon as well. If the Night's Boon had a mess hall, Lente didn't volunteer its location; instead, she was offered a pack of dense grain bars with some sort of rehydrated berry paste. The opposite of gourmet, but it was portable and probably had a long shelf-life, which she supposed the creatures here valued more.
There was one light fixture, one table, one dresser, and three beds. That was interesting. Were the Night's Boon short on space? Perhaps they were bracing for an expansion, or had just suffered a loss in membership. Maybe they didn't like sleeping alone, or maybe they had a carpenter who really liked making beds. Either way, if at all possible, one of those beds was going to Coda.
Faye sized up the ice block on the trolley. It had been solidly attached, with climbing crampons gouged into the base of the block and tightened against the platform's sides, so that Coda didn't fall off when being carried on someone's back. She poked at the ice, trying to get a feel for whether it was really as solid as it looked.
It met her hoof with a presence both hostile and curious, dangerous and familiar. A spark of resentment and childish anger, approaching her not as an enemy, but as a potential co-conspirator.
What were her grudges, the ice asked? Any good ones? Any plans to act on them? How would she like a little help seeing them through?
This was an opportunity, the ice wanted her to know, to act on them in ways she never even dreamed before were possible.
Faye sighed and withdrew her hoof. The barbaric, conspiratorial urges of windigoes were deeply familiar to her, especially after carrying around Ludwig for a time. But where Ludwig had been a speck, a flicker, an ever-present annoyance and nothing more, this was a solid wall, a block so thick she couldn't feel anything of the filly inside. How many windigoes did the Cold Karma core even have? Even if she could contain all of that, she needed a better way to help Coda than just trading places with her.
After a quick examination of the beds, she decided not to risk putting the entire trolley on one.
Instead, she doffed her armor, hanging up the greatsword by the wall and leaving the rest of the pieces sitting in a chair where they would be slightly easier to don again than if they were strewn about on the floor. Nice of Rhodallis to leave her with the equipment to fight her way out of here, even if it was probably the last thing he was thinking about.
She lifted her foreleg and examined her bracelet. There was no damage to the fur where it was worn, aside from the slight impression it always left. No sign of the injuries she had given Rhodallis, or that plagued Mother. The bracelet itself had returned to its usual inert black appearance... though, if she looked hard enough, she swore she could still see the runes that had lit up on the surface, only now they were black on black instead of glowing emerald.
It felt right, having the bracelet back. Seigetsu was a different problem in a different world. But this bracelet belonged here. It was her power, and she needed it for the kinds of things she was picking fights with.
Next, she pulled out Halcyon's crystal. Better to reunite sooner rather than later... but she was bone-tired, and without the bracelet's glow, she found she could barely lift another limb.
Maybe Halcyon would appreciate coming back in the morning, instead.
It was night. Faye was surrounded by snow and ice, hemmed in by cliff walls to her left and right. Ahead of her - and behind her, she knew - was open air.
Her bracelet was glowing. Balthazar was standing across from her, watching, waiting in that patient fighting stance of his. And she was paralyzed by a very familiar fear.
Faye remembered this moment keenly, not needing a dream to tell her how it went. These were her final moments of being an abstract concept in Halcyon's imagination. They were at the hideout, in the Trench of Greg, and later this night Halcyon would become a ghost for the first time, stealing Ludwig's body and forcing her, Faye, to take control of their real one. This was the last time they had fought, the most viscerally they had clashed, fear of the past versus hope for the future, before realizing the dynamic between each other once and for all.
Her body thrashed as she tried to force Halcyon to put the bracelet out, flinging them down in the snow. Faye floated through the dream with a detached incredulity, an amazement at how far she had come, a sadness at how the tables had turned: it was her, not Halcyon, who at long last called to their bracelet and used it without holding back. In the dream, she was fighting, struggling to turn it off, and yet in reality, today she had fought to turn it on.
What had happened? How had they traded places? Could they go back? Should they go back? Was it healthy to have a voice for and a voice against, or should they be in harmony about whether to use their powers before actually using them?
The battle ended with both of them in disgrace, laying defeated and freezing in the snow. Balthazar stood by, watching as Halcyon grappled with herself. Faye - both past and present - took no joy in her victory.
The dream began to end... but just as it was fading, Balthazar grabbed her, pointing up in the sky at several small, approaching ships. Faye's memory sparked; she didn't remember this part nearly as well. Wasn't this an encounter with the Yakyakistani invasion force, the one presumably compromised by changelings? That was incredibly relevant, she needed to not wake up so she could...
Faye's eyes opened of their own volition, and she was back in the stronghold of the Night's Boon. Too late.
She groaned, holding a bare hoof to her forehead. That dusk statue down in the core, near the rift... That had been Chrysalis. Telling her to find her.
Chrysalis was with the invasion force in Yakyakistan, or somehow behind it, right? Faye didn't know. She felt like that was her assumption, but it was a dated assumption. All of her knowledge about this badly needed an update.
Hopefully, she could continue that dream the next night. That wasn't usually how it worked, but wasn't never how it worked, either. And a full, picture-perfect refresher on exactly what had happened that night in Icereach felt like very valuable information to have.
Faye shook her head. First and foremost, she needed to worry about getting out of here, and then about where to go next.
In the time it took to put on her armor, get Coda hitched up and make sure she wasn't forgetting anything, she settled on a few ideas. First, she was going to Izvaldi. Equestria was off the table since Coda didn't have a writ, Ironridge likely wasn't safe if Rhodallis had been able to take Coda from there in the first place, and she had no better ideas for places that would take them. But Izvaldi, at the very least, was where Rhodallis said Chrysalis's old throne was. Visiting and dismantling that wouldn't actually do anything helpful for her, aside from maybe for her state of mind. But it was somewhere to go, and she needed to be anywhere but here.
Second... she badly needed ideas on how to get there.
"I'm afraid your travel options are limited," Lente pointed out half an hour later, confirming her fears. "Most of the supplies we get are brought in by monthly hoof caravans - the revenants like airships a little too much, you see. A day's fast march from here will get you far enough out of the city that you won't run into any more of those things, but we usually have the wagon pullers go in shifts and rest on the wagons so they never have to stop and make camp."
Faye nodded. "I can do distance marching, but what I really need is a map."
"That's what this is for," Lente said, pulling out a folded up pocket brochure that looked to be a travel guide of the Griffon Empire, thirty years out of date. "Doesn't do much to reflect the latest geography, but it's what we've got."
She eyed the pamphlet, its map depicting my present location as a luminous blue citadel overflowing with mana light, not the green wasteland it was today. The Griffon Empire, she knew from her days spent studying in Icereach, was a mostly vertical strip of land, fairly small in all, bounded by the northern ocean to the west, the edge of the world to the east, the Aldenfold to the south, and Mistvale to the north. Mistvale was massive in comparison, a roughly banana-shaped continent that hugged the edge of the world as it curved north and west, with an expansive coastline and nothing but mountains.
Gyre, the Empire's northeasternmost province, was situated right up against Mistvale. If she felt like visiting the extinct homeland of her ancestors, all it would take was heading north and being ready for some climbing...
Since the edge of the world was probably a bad idea, that left her with south and west as options. West would take her through the Wilderwind province en route to the sea, and might be optimal if her end goal was to catch a boat and leave the eastern continent. South was the eventual direction to Izvaldi... and probably also her fastest route to civilization.
"Any idea how long it would take me to hike to here?" Faye asked, pointing generically at the Goldfeather province - halfway between Gyre and Izvaldi. "To any town where I'd be able to barter or do odd jobs to get some resources. I've got a lot more endurance than it looks like."
Lente shrugged. "That's the route our caravans take. It's three days and two nights nonstop to get here from a border town called Gorton's Holdout. We've got some good people there. If you wanted to head that way, there are caravan waymarks we've set up on the road so the caravans don't get lost. I'd wager someone exceptionally good could do the trek solo in a week? Which is about as much food as we're comfortable parting with, so I hope for your sake your legs are as good as your mouth."
Faye nodded along, extracting as much useful information out of the stallion as she could - what the waymarks looked like, potential useful contacts in Gorton's Holdout, dangers to watch for aside from revenants, and so on. But as the conversation dragged on, she began to feel more and more like the old stallion was wishing she would take her troubles and move along. And with her changeling queen powers, it was probably more than just a hunch.
"You've been a big help," she eventually finished. "But I need to get going if I want to clear the revenant zone by the time I need to sleep. If Rhodallis comes asking, you don't know where I am, alright?"
Lente shook his head. "Can't make any promises when that stallion's involved, miss. But I wish you the best of luck. And I'll send someone with you as far as the entrance to the ziggurat, just so you don't get lost."
The next hour was spent in awkward silence, Faye hauling Coda and occasionally resorting to lifting the trolley on her back to climb up staircases. That maneuver required a good bit more strength from her bracelet, and got her odd looks from the monk who was accompanying her - a monk who probably could handle themselves alone against revenants, and did chip in to help when she had to fight them, but always waited for her to engage first.
By the time they reached open air, Faye felt like she already would have been spent without the bracelet's power. Her monk companion departed, heading back into the ziggurat with only a nod.
The sky was clear and green, no airships lurking on the horizon. Swallowing, girding herself, Faye pressed out into the city.
The walls were Faye's goal. Going south didn't matter yet; all she needed to do was get out of the city's core, where she remembered the green fog was densest. Already, it had lightened tremendously from the depths of the ziggurat, and even compared to the area higher up around the Night's Boon stronghold, but if she could just get beyond those walls...
A collapsed building turned her back, and then another, the path she entered by with Rhodallis and Bernard proving impossible to retrace. Faye smashed her way through three revenants at once, uncoupling herself from Coda and surging with her bracelet as she brought her blade down on a quadruped's fiery back. Did it say anything that the revenants with the most exotic shapes were all down below, in the buried city and the catacombs beneath it? Probably nothing important, but science was how she distracted her brain from monotony, and as the hours wore on, she began to fear the monotony of walking, fighting, walking and fighting was exactly the same kind that had messed up her bracelet during the hike from Sires Hollow to Snowport so long ago.
It wouldn't do to have that happen again. She needed to be conscious of her power and use the bracelet for endurance without letting it become an echo chamber for her own desire to get where she was going.
Around noon, she finally crested the wall, the sky taking on a hint of blue that was visible through the fumes. There, with no revenants in sight, she sat down for a break, pulled out Halcyon's gemstone, and let her other half come out.
Halcyon materialized as a ghost, taking a moment to process her surroundings. She looked at the city. She looked at Coda. She looked at Faye.
"Sorry," Faye said, her emotions outpacing her thoughts. "I... You were frozen up again, so I took control. And I beat him. It's not all peachy, but we won, and... You remember, right? I tried to make sure you'd share my memories from down there, but the longer we've been treating each other as distinct people, the harder it is to be sure that's working the way I think it is."
"...Yeah." Halcyon nodded, floating in midair. "I remember. Just... trying to reconcile why I would have chosen there of all places to get paralyzed."
"It's weird, isn't it?" Faye asked. "Like we're in the opposite roles we used to be in..."
Halcyon nodded. "Yeah."
Evidently, she needed just as much time to think about all that as Faye did. And time was about the only luxury they had. The next hour passed atop the city wall; now that they were out of the inner city, Faye wanted to be sure they were heading in the right direction before proceeding any further, and that meant skirting the ramparts, which were blessedly intact and mostly free from revenants. Whoever had designed this city hadn't wanted anyone breaching the walls... odd, since they lived in a country where a majority of the population had wings.
Eventually, they descended, one of Lente's waymarks posted on a very visible and obvious highway running through the industrial wasteland. The highway was straight, flat, had no bridges or turnoffs, and sliced through factory after dead factory, passing warehouses and empty courtyards and several lesser revenants, these ones wandering solo instead of in packs.
"Weird, isn't it?" Halcyon asked, doing a flyby as the sun began to grow low on the horizon.
Faye raised an eyebrow.
"There's no water anywhere around," Halcyon pointed out. "Industrial stuff like this, you'd think it would be built on a river, for coolant or waste disposal or easy shipping. But they chose to build in a place that just doesn't seem suited for it."
By this point, Faye's mind was focused wholly on the task of putting one hoof in front of the other... and on not getting consumed by that task. "I guess. Do you see any places that would be good to stop for the night? I think... I shouldn't go much farther today."
"I'll start looking," Halcyon offered. "If I go high enough, you can really tell how we're leaving the green mist behind - I think we could probably be safe anywhere. And I haven't seen any revenants for a while. But it would be better to have proper shelter, so I'll see what I can find."
As she flew off, Faye turned and looked over her shoulder. The dusky sky was properly colored for real now, the green fog limited to thin clouds clinging to a stack of broken-down crates or an abandoned building here or there, rather than an omnipresent force. A stiff wind helped to disperse it, actually affecting the fumes this far out and preventing them from gathering or lingering. Behind her, in the distance, the city walls were visible enshrouded in a green bubble, the bulk of the miasma orbiting them and their core. The blotch representing the rift had finally grown distant enough to fade from her sight.
She let out a deep, deep breath, and for a moment, turned the bracelet all the way off, gauging how her mind was doing.
Her limbs were absolutely leaden, but that was predictable. More pressing, she found that she could feel the traces of green she had absorbed and not fully expelled, a jumbled, muttering, weeping lament.
But she was too tired to deal with that now. Maybe in the morning-
"Bad news," Halcyon announced, appearing again out of the sky.
Faye's ears fell in anticipation.
"There's a dust storm coming, it looks like," Halcyon said. "I've never seen one before so I can't be sure, but I'm not sure what else this would be. And I have no idea how bad it'll be or how fast it'll get here, but if there's one thing we learned from Icereach and Ironridge, it's not to take inclement weather lightly."
"Then we need to find shelter." Faye pulled her determination together and re-lit the bracelet, sucking in a breath. "Can't afford to be picky. What's the nearest building that doesn't look like it will collapse?"
Halcyon pointed right next to them. It was yet another purposeless industrial complex, surrounded by empty lots that had outlived their purpose. About three floors high, it was covered in towers of scaffolding and decrepit conveyor belts, some of which had fallen over. It had more green fog than Faye would like...
"Most of the roof has fallen in," Halcyon said, "but it's the nearest thing by a mile. Do you think we could give it a shot?"
Dubious, Faye nodded. It wasn't the worst building she had seen... But it was roughly average, with its slightly more intact walls balancing out the greater presence of green fog, and this probably wasn't a time to be picky. "We can go check it out. Keep looking for others while I see if there's any obvious danger."
Halcyon nodded, and flew off once again.
Faye left the road behind, entering the sea of concrete and asphalt surrounding the building. Most of it was hemmed in by a barbed-wire fence that had held up better than the rest of the facility, but a once-guarded checkpoint made for a convenient ingress, dead machines lining the path that had once been used to punch employee time cards. Whoever came here in the old days, she didn't want to be them.
Signs of twenty-year-old life grew more visible as she wandered the courtyard, moving towards the building's entrance. A forklift, abandoned in the middle of a path, clearly left behind in a hurry. An old lunch box sitting on the edge of a stack of iron girders where someone might have stopped for a break. Faye stepped around a pile of rubble that had been dropped when an overhead conveyor belt snapped-
"Run." Halcyon was back, urgency plastered over her face. "You don't have any time at all, that storm moved way faster than I thought it would!"
Faye canned her thoughts and broke into a sprint. The wind was blowing from behind the abandoned facility, blocking her view of the horizon, but it was about as strong as it had been for the last three hours...
And then she saw the dust cloud, looming up behind the building, taller than any storm had any right to be. In about five seconds, it doubled in size.
Faye turned her bracelet all the way on and dashed, heedless of the consequences. A wheel on Coda's trolley struck loose gravel and bounced, flipping the trolley on its side, but she forced it to keep going, the ice block skidding against the ground. But it wasn't enough, and when she was only a stone's throw from the entrance, the dust storm struck.
Instinctively, Faye rammed her eyes closed. Even in the lee of the building, it felt like she was caught in a cheese grater, receiving an enthusiastic sandpaper massage, needles blistering through her armor-
"This way!" Halcyon screamed over the din, her voice barely loud enough to be audible. Trusting it, eyes closed and head down, Faye pressed just a few steps further... and the storm's brunt lessened with each one, until she opened her eyes again, the sting of the dust particles rapidly fading as her changeling queen powers knit back together whatever wounds it had inflicted.
She was standing in the doorway to the building, a fixture that had once been the main entrance. It was the architectural equivalent of a bankrupt stallion trying to look rich, or perhaps of a used-cart salespony. But this was her only choice, and it was a miracle and a half she was even here, when she could be spending the night lost in a dust storm, waiting in torment for it to pass so that her body could fix itself again.
What would she find inside? Revenants? Dreary lodging? Or perhaps new insight to the sordid story of why the green mist, and Chrysalis, felt the way they did.
Without any better options, Faye brushed off some of the dust embedded in her armor, righted Coda's trolley, held up her bracelet for light and walked inside.