//------------------------------//
// Politically Tenuous 
// Story: The Immortal Dream 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

"Before you say too much," I warned, "I really mean it. I don't have room on my plate for any big, noble causes to fight for. I'm just trying to stay alive and help my friends."

I stood in an executive suite near the top of the Wilderwind tower, a broad window looking out over red evening sky. Puddles was a few paces away, at my side. And across from us was Battalionlord Geirskogul, a griffon of probable importance who was probably about to try and drag me into something.

Geirskogul drummed her talons on one hand for a moment, producing a rhythmic ticking against her desk. And then, instead of shoving a contract in my face, she looked to Puddles and shook her head. "You just brought her up here because you're lonely and wanted company on the walk from your ship, didn't you?"

Puddles folded her ears, taken aback. "Meh..."

I blinked at that.

"Kid," Geirskogul sighed, still focusing exclusively on Puddles. "You... Nah. I should encourage you making friends. Especially normal ones who don't fancy themselves superheroes. Or washed-up warlords." She turned to me. "Though, former associates of Rhodallis is only a small step in the right direction... So why are you here?"

I swallowed, figuring I had nothing to lose from honesty. "She invited me, and I just didn't have anything better to do."

Geirskogul looked amused. "You make a habit out of consorting with important people for no reason?"

I had no idea how to answer that. Really. Being in situations where someone actually listened when I said I wasn't looking for more obligations just didn't happen to me. That said, I had followed Puddles up here simply because it sounded interesting... not that I knew quite how high up she intended to go.

Or what a Battalionlord even was, for that matter. But the decor suggested this was pretty high up.

"What do you want?" Geirskogul asked me, folding her talons. "Staying alive, protecting your friends, keeping your hooves clean of anything that doesn't have to do with you... There are many who wouldn't ask for more. Many who can't afford even that much. If you think you've got a shot at it, you're lucky. But I see you running around with this kid, and do you know what she wants? Has she told you her goals?"

I glanced at Puddles, who looked well and thoroughly put on the hot seat.

"She doesn't know what her goals are," Geirskogul said. "Hasn't figured them out yet. Still trying to be everything to everyone, in the shadow of her father."

She kicked back in her chair. "You think you've got a handle on what you're supposed to be doing with your life? Maybe if you follow her around, you'll rub off on her, teach her to settle for something she can put a name on. And then maybe the continent will see another apocalypse because someone coaxed its would-be savior into a happier life. And it wouldn't be any more your fault or her fault than the thousands of other people who didn't do just a little more, themselves."

I squinted, trying to parse that. "I feel like you're trying to talk me into two opposite things at the same time, here..."

"You came barging into my office without a good reason for being here, so I get to say whatever I like, whether you understand it or not," Geirskogul snorted. "And that's exactly what I'm doing. I both envy and resent your capacity to limit your ambitions. If you walked in here and told me you were willing to do anything to shift this nation from its present course, I could offer you jobs fit for an army of goddesses, just like I do for her." She jabbed a thumb at Puddles. "But when you come in and say you respect your own limits, all I can do is wish certain others got to experience the same, and then remind myself why they can't."

"I'm not lazy or sheltered, if that's what you're implying," I protested. "I just don't want to take on so much that I collapse under the weight and don't accomplish any of my goals."

Geirskogul stared me straight in the eye. "Whatever you've seen in your life, you've only had a precious few years to see it. I've been fighting for this nation some three times as long as you've been alive. If nothing else, you're sheltered from the passage of time." She turned to Puddles. "And you're being awfully quiet over there. Just going to let your friend do all the talking?"

Puddles shook her head, turning to me. "This is what I wanted to show you. Before the Empire's fall, Geirskogul was a rival of my father's. She's one of the last people in the Empire with honor befitting her authority. Can you see how tired she is, how worn thin? I don't know how much you've seen of the state of our society as a whole, but this is currently what it looks like at its best. My goal is to prevent the land my father gave his life to save from bleeding to death twenty years later."

"Ah," Geirskogul crowed sarcastically, "so you came up here to mock me. Well, this tired, worn-thin bird of war is currently your best and only source of information about places where a lone warrior can actually make a difference, short of tramping about looking for them on your own." She groaned. "I've been fighting on behalf of this land for a long time. And I won't have it be under my watch that it finally gives up the ghost and devours itself alive. I can't be picky about my allies, even if they're misguided youngsters who are only here to prove a point to dead relatives."

"And what do you think's going to happen here?" I asked, feeling like I had been successfully maneuvered into the question both of them wanted me to ask all along. "What are you trying to save the Empire from?"

Geirskogul gave me a smug, cheeky, tired look that said you finally asked.

"You asked who that griffon was on the billboard we passed, earlier," Puddles said. "Gottlieb Gallowsborn. He-"

"Hold on, Gallowsborn?" I interrupted, incredulous. "How do you get stuck with a name like that?"

Geirskogul shrugged. "His mother, being a heretic, was sacrificed to Garsheeva in accordance with law. But since she was pregnant at the time, his father - Lord Wilderwind - talked Garsheeva into a stay of execution long enough for the child to be born."

I blinked slowly at her. "You're pulling my leg."

Puddles rolled her eyes. "His father had nothing to do with it. Garsheeva made that exception for anyone. Thought it was bad taste to eat unborn children, for some reason."

Now I turned to stare at Puddles. "Garsheeva ate Lord Wilderwind's wife? For being a heretic? Wait, was that always the form of her death by ritual sacrifice thing? That the catacombs under Gyre were for?"

"Oh, not his wife," Geirskogul said, not at all hasty to correct the more alarming parts of my statement. "Sphinxes are born very rarely when one of the parents is a pony or griffon, and lords needed heirs to keep their own lines in power in their province. He simply had hundreds of children in an effort to get a sphinx."

My blank stare turned back to Geirskogul. "That's really not making it any better."

Geirskogul shrugged. "This province had a great deal of personal wealth, a greater emphasis on mercenary company than family, and a culture that believes strength is hereditary. Even offering nothing in return save for the slim chance at fame should they bear a sphinx, Lord Wilderwind had little trouble finding many who considered this to be an equitable arrangement."

I screwed up my face. "Maybe it's a cultural thing, but that doesn't sound like a very fair trade to me. Even if it was consensual."

"Call it a cultural difference, then," Geirskogul said, ambivalent. "Speaking for myself, I had no regrets."

I wasn't sure how much more confusion it was possible to fit in my expression. "Wait, you did this?"

Geirskogul nodded calmly yet again. "I did, once. My son grew up to be a scoundrel and deserter who abandoned his entire company - he was their leader - during a deployment in Ironridge, then lied about it to the entire nation afterward. Suffice to say, I no longer share my compatriots' beliefs about the qualities that are hereditary in a person. But I also can't hold Lord Wilderwind accountable for my son's failures, and so I have no regrets. But aren't we getting off-topic?"

"If the point of this story is those were the good old days, you're kind of making me worried, here," I pointed out, shuffling a hoof.

Puddles took a deep breath, stepping in. "The important part is, Gottlieb grew up to be a war criminal, assassin and mass murderer responsible for finishing what Chrysalis started. For several years after the Empire's fall, there was a period of relative stability and attempted reunification under House Everlaste, until he killed their entire royal family. He was subsequently captured and put to the sword by Everlaste's generals. But, unfortunately, his reputation is not as dead as his body."

"Politically, the Empire's lands are divided into two camps," Geirskogul said, sitting up straight again. "Those who are loyal to the way things used to be done, and those who aren't. The former group is mostly cohesive and concentrated in the south, collectively administered by the Neo Everlaste Consulate. They claim Everlaste's youngest son, Gustadolph Everlaste, lives on in a secret castle none but his consuls have ever seen, and that in him, the line of sphinxes endures. But every other known sphinx in the world is dead, and there is no proof that Gustadolph didn't join them fourteen years ago at the end of Gottlieb's blade."

Puddles nodded solemnly. "It's just a story, not one that anyone can prove. But a story is what those people want; something they can all share and believe in, even if it isn't true and even if it leads to being controlled by an organization no one knows anything solid about. They care more about having a direction to face and something to believe in."

"And everyone else?" I folded my ears, suspecting I knew where this would lead.

"Everyone else aren't a faction," Geirskogul said. "Just a bunch of people united under the joint banners of sphinxes bad and we do what we want. They - including almost all of Wilderwind - only come together to agree that they don't want any part of what the Consulate is selling. There is no cohesive system, and the half-systems that do exist frequently contradict each other in ways that no one acknowledges or cares about."

"What kind of contradictions?" I asked, hesitant.

"Well, here's a big one," Puddles said. "Most of the middle provinces - that's Goldoa, Izvaldi and Goldfeather, going west to east - have fallen back to a relatively feudal system, at least outside of the areas that swear allegiance to the Consulate. Towns take care of their own affairs and ignore the world around them. Those three provinces also control ninety percent of the Empire's croplands, and the remaining ten percent is in Stormhoof, which the Consulate completely controls."

"So the Consulate has all the farmland?" I tilted my head.

Geirskogul laughed. "No, barely a third of it. They benefit more from the threat of taking it than actually having it. The Consulate has something resembling an army, and these townships have only one means of defense: hiring mercenaries from Wilderwind. We accept most of the payment for our services in food. It's how we eat. But why trade for what we could take by force? There's nothing they can do to ensure we negotiate in good faith. Why not gouge the farmers with unfair prices for a necessary service? Why not assert our authority over their lands? We might be their political allies, but they're completely at our mercy."

"It's an unstable dynamic," Puddles said. "Caused by an imbalance of power, a lack of rules to keep that imbalance in check, and most importantly, a lack of anything tangible to give the armies of Wilderwind and the farming provinces a desire to unite. And so the Consulate rattles their sabers just enough to remind the farming provinces that they need to rely on Wilderwind, without actually trying to take any land by force."

"If nothing changes, eventually Wilderwind will try to take those provinces for its own," Geirskogul said. "The Consulate desires this because it makes us look like barbaric invaders and themselves as the preservers of order, and that's the narrative their followers want to hear. It will also be the truth. We will be barbaric invaders, by then too fractured and spread out to stand against them. And then the entire continent will be under the rule of an organization that no one knows the first thing about."

Puddles sadly nodded. "In life, Gottlieb was a Wilderwind mercenary. In death, he's becoming a symbol of what some in Wilderwind think we should do: take what we can and give nothing back. Fight the Consulate that still bears Everlaste's name. Is it a serious suggestion? Maybe they're bored troublemakers pretending to really mean it, and maybe they really mean it and are pretending to be bored troublemakers. But if nothing changes, Wilderwind will become the bad guys, with no good guys in sight."

"What do you even do about that?" I asked, ears down. "I'm no stranger to feeling like there are no good guys to side with. But if you're the same, like... what are you even planning?"

"I look to my father," Puddles said. "Wallace Whitewing. He was a hero to the entire Empire, a champion who fought for the people and for justice and gave them something everyone could believe in. But he died fighting Chrysalis during the Empire's fall, and someone like him is what the land today is lost without. So, I have to take his place. If I can become a symbol who can inspire everyone to become something better than this, then maybe I can save this land from another war."

I took a step back. That sounded terrifying. How could anyone take on sole responsibility for something like that without being certain the course they had chosen to lead everyone on was the right one? And how could you come by that certainty without being delusional?

And it didn't add up, either. "If you're trying to be a symbol," I hesitantly managed, "why hide in that armor?"

Puddles smiled a wide, sad, foalish smile. "Do I look like much of a hero without it?"

I didn't know what to say.

"Also," she said. "I don't want anyone thinking I'm just doing this because of Wallace. I don't want anyone to write me off because they think they already know what I'm trying to be. I'm trying to follow in his footsteps, not actually steal his legacy... and he didn't inherit his reputation from anyone else. Besides, it's easier to believe in my own course when I'm wearing a mask. That way, I can show everyone something that's just a hero. No extra bits left over."

A mask. To cover up her doubts about whether she was on the right path, and to make sure everyone else only saw what she needed them to see?

No way...

"It's a fool's hope," Geirskogul said. "She tries and tries, and yet she's still trying to graduate from the stage of 'Do they know who I am?' to 'Do they believe I represent justice?' At the end of the day, you can only sell people something they want to buy. And you're trying to sell to people who would rent out billboards to display a symbol of killing the other side in their sleep. But it's still more of a hope than anyone else walks through these doors with. For my part, I do my job as an administrator, and until death or senility take me I won't see the companies unite to wage any bogus wars. But I just don't know how many years I have left."

I sighed. "I thought you said you could furnish me with an army's worth of work to help change things, if you wanted to."

"Oh, I could." Geirskogul hammered her desk. "Some people are born rotten. Others turn that way because they've lost faith, and then some just don't have a choice. If you felt like helping someone out like this kid does all day and night, it might only be a drop in the ocean. But you'd have reduced the amount of desperation on this continent nevertheless."

I thought about that. About what I had already committed to, how incredible and unfeasible those dreams really were.

May I take over? Faye asked in my mind.

If she didn't mind switching in public? Go for it.





Faye forcefully wasn't self-conscious as she held her mask in a hoof, stowing it inside her armor. Puddles and Geirskogul both watched her.

"I don't know much about reforming societies, or about changing what people want," she said. "And even if I did, I really am at my limit with my own goals. But if you were being truthful about the limits of your knowledge, then I do know some things about Neo Everlaste that you might not."

Both of them perked in interest.

"I've been to their castle," Faye said, steeling herself under the sudden weight of Geirskogul's interest - Puddles was merely curious, but this griffon was fixated. "There's a reason why it's hard to find. It's an old ruin at the edge of the world, to the east of the Griffon Empire. The Consuls have some sort of power that lets them survive out there, and generate a bubble of livable space around it. I think they can also extend that power to airships they're traveling on to allow those ships to reach it."

"How did you accomplish this?" Geirskogul asked slowly.

"Rhodallis," Faye told her, choosing to omit her trip through the Lifestream. "I told you I'm trying to protect a friend, and am on the run from him. That friend is possessed by several windigoes, and he was trying to sell her to the palace's ruler. And the reason I'm on the run is because I stole her back."

"Now that's interesting," Geirskogul mused. "Very interesting... What else did you see in this palace? Tell me any details you can possibly remember."

Faye nodded. "There was something weird there. I didn't see anyone other than pirates and Consuls, but the entire place was covered in pipes that talked when you got too close to them. I think it said it was a life support system."

Geirskogul let out a slow breath. "What did Rhodallis seek from them? And did they try to get anything out of him? What kinds of transactions were they pushing for?"

"We left without making negotiations," Faye said, shaking her head. "Rhodallis wanted to speak directly to the palace's ruler, and the Consuls wouldn't let him, so instead he left. I wasn't able to tell if that ruler exists or not. But Rhodallis wanted to trade my friend for a prisoner he thinks is in that castle. And he told me the reason he wanted them was so he could kill them."

Geirskogul glanced to Puddles. "What are you thinking?"

Puddles nodded back to her. "What was Rhodallis visiting you about? Anything to do with her friend?"

"No," Geirskogul said. "Rhodallis is nominally incorporated in Wilderwind as the leader of a mercenary company. He has no loyalty to our flag, but uses this city as his primary port of business, and is frequently here for mundane reasons. Today, he wanted to borrow the Sword of House Wilderwind."

Oh goodie, magical swords. "What's the story behind that?" Faye asked, her interest piqued.

Geirskogul took a long drink from a neglected mug on her desk. "Wilderwind. Long history. Politics. Bleh. It's just a ceremonial blade that was passed down between the rulers of this city for generations. Wilderwind was unique among the provinces in that it never changed its name when a new line of sphinxes came to power to replace one that had just died out, and this blade was a symbol of that tradition. Practically worthless to anyone who lives here now, considering how they all feel about the sphinxes and their legacy. He offered a large quantity of material goods in exchange for the chance to borrow it for a week or so. Valuable goods, but mundane ones, nothing one-of-a-kind. I shot him down because as far as I know, this sword isn't currently any kind of symbol on either side of the conflict, but with its history it could easily be made into one by someone with nefarious intentions. Just didn't see a need for him to have it."

She put her mug down and raised an eyebrow. "Mean anything to you?"

Faye slowly frowned as ideas slid into place. "I stole my friend back in Gyre. He had just visited the Night's Boon there. I thought he was trying to sell her to them, but what he actually wanted was for them to help make it look like he was trying to sell her. He wanted them to claim they had bought her for a while, while he would actually hold onto her. And this sword... Everyone in the south would think it's really important because of its history, because even though you don't value that, they would. But he only wanted to borrow it, and was giving you regular, unremarkable stuff that wouldn't travel well in stories."

She looked up. "He wants to make it look to the Consulate like you bought her, even though he didn't even have her to sell. He's trying to convince them that he's serious about finding another buyer without actually getting rid of her - and he'll definitely be trying to get her back from me. This is all just a giant haggling bluff. He's trying to scare them into coming back to the table without revealing how much he actually needs to close the deal with them and them alone."

"Which means?" Geirskogul asked, watching her with interest.

"...I don't know," Faye admitted, starting to feel like she had shared enough of what she knew already. "I suppose the most likely answer is that the actual trade doesn't matter and what he really wants is to meet whoever is behind the Consuls. But he'd have to be pretty confident there actually is someone behind them to spend this much effort on it, when it's possible the Consuls are refusing him because they don't actually have a leader for him to meet."

She took a step back. "Listen, I'm telling you this because I really would like to help someone who has the Empire's best interests at heart. And also so you understand where I'm coming from when I say I have too much to worry about with my own problems. Maybe if you can't find a solution to what your own people want, you can find a way to do something about the Consuls instead, or at the very least determine what they want and how bad they actually are. So if there's any way you could pay me back, maybe by helping to steer Rhodallis off my tail, I'd really, really appreciate it."

Geirskogul slowly nodded. "I'll consider my options. You'll be safer in this city than in most of the Empire, at least. And Rhodallis is wary of Puddles. But watch yourself nonetheless. You make this friend of yours out to be indisposed. Are you her legal guardian?"

Faye bit her lip. "No, but I probably should be. I don't think she's got anyone else looking out for her."

"Rhodallis could claim the same," Geirskogul said. "Slavery is banned in Wilderwind, including buying and selling people as commodities. He can't attempt to trade her here without jeopardizing his relationship with us. But that doesn't prevent him from making a legal case to take her from you... and the only reason I assume you deserve custody of her in the first place is that I trust Puddles' judgement. Were it up to the law, you would have to pray that the finer details of your situation are compatible with a military idea of justice."

"Thank you." Faye swallowed. "For the warning. I'll... be careful."

"Now get on with your bad selves," Geirskogul demanded. "I've just exhausted my budget of free time for the next month on this social call."

"Thank you for your time." Puddles replaced her helmet, bowed, and led the way back to the waiting room.





Faye's thoughts spun, turning further with every step. The things she had told Geirskogul, some of it speculation made up on the fly... She had touched Rhodallis' heart, seen who he really was inside. That one-dimensional, all-consuming hatred, directed toward himself, and toward being forgotten...

And presumably to all others like him. The other Changeling Bishops. Even Chrysalis. If hurting them was his ultimate goal...

Did hurting them extend to killing them? She wasn't sure. But this prisoner in the castle, for him to spend so much effort on reaching them, they had to be related to his drive. Was it possible they were another Bishop?

For that matter... could Bishops even die in the first place? Or were they like her, bolstered by healing energies that somehow made them immortal? She remembered Rhodallis healing after their fight, but not all the way. Something wasn't right here.

Could it be possible that Gottlieb was the prisoner in the castle, and moreover, that he was a Bishop? She could see a world where he killed the Everlaste royals, was captured, tried, publicly executed, and then came back to life, only rather than admit it the generals hid him away where no one would ever discover that he was still alive. That still wouldn't explain what Rhodallis really wanted to do with him, unless he both had a way to kill him for good and really did want him gone. But why would he? Rhodallis also hated the imperial royalty. Shouldn't he be on the same side as someone who did a thing like assassinating an entire family?

And either way, why was Rhodallis so intent on using Coda as the bartering chip in this transaction? If he knew something about her unique value that Faye didn't, it clearly wasn't special enough to get the Consuls to close the deal on his terms. And if he didn't, why not try to barter with something else the Consuls were more interested in?

She had so many pieces, and yet there were also things that didn't connect to anything whatsoever. The castle's life support system was especially baffling; now that she had seen the remnants of Stanza down beneath Gyre, there could be no doubt that those talking pipes were the same as both there and Coda's throne. The voice she heard through them had called itself Canon. Canon, Stanza, what had Coda's throne been called? Fugue?

Could changeling queen thrones talk when sufficiently powered up? The sheer impact of being near the rift where Stanza used to be had almost overwhelmed her with hallucinations, but she felt like she remembered seeing Stanza talking, begging someone to help it die.

There was no doubt about it: there was a functional changeling queen throne in Neo Everlaste Palace. But Chrysalis was in Yakyakistan, and Coda's was on her ship in the Aldenfold, where they had ditched it outside Sires Hollow. So... whose was this one?

She needed to find the remains of Stanza. Maybe, possibly, there was a chance it could lead her to answers.

Out in the waiting room, that pegasus was patiently waiting for them, still with her salacious neon uniform and her lipstick and her rose-hilted rapier, a huge ribbon bow tied on her back. She bowed in a manner Faye chose to interpret as chaste, professional and equally aimed at both of them. And, at Puddles' grunted acknowledgement, she led them back into the elevator to the tower lobby.

As the elevator descended, Faye studied her. Usually that was something she tried to do discretely, but with how hard the pegasus was trying to get looked at, there didn't seem to be much of a point in hiding it.

Working as a dressed-up valet who escorted clients between their meetings with higher-ups and sat around doing nothing while waiting for them to finish sounded like an easy, boring job with no hope of advancement that was given as a reward to creatures who weren't important, but had pleased those who were. Would someone like this resent the status quo, or love it? She didn't look distressed, but the reason she kept trying to get a reaction out of Faye definitely could have been because she was bored.

Was that the kind of boredom that could lead to posting billboards showing the faces of dead criminals? Or to think that having a child with the ruler of your province sounded like a remotely good idea?

Whatever it was, it felt weird that someone like Geirskogul could work until her voice broke and her feathers fell out, in the same building where this pegasus could sit around for an hour in a waiting room looking pretty for someone who wasn't even there to see her. That felt wrong.

It wasn't Faye's job to fix this, and she didn't know the answers even if it was. But as they left the elevator and then the tower, the pegasus looking frustrated by her inability to get more of a reaction for her antics as they left her behind, she felt like she was starting to get an idea of the breadth of the problem.





Faye put me back on as we unlocked and re-entered Puddles' ship. Nothing appeared to be ransacked, and when I rushed to my room, there was Coda, right where I left her.

I sighed in relief.

"Well, buckets," Puddles said, stepping out of her armor. "That went... about how I expected? Maybe so, maybe not?" She tilted her head at me. "So what are you thinking?"

"Lots." I shrugged. "Might need to sleep on it. You don't mind if I keep staying here, right? I'm certainly not going to get in your way."

Puddles nodded. "It's going to take me a few days at least to get all these papers from Geirskogul in order to figure out what I'm doing next. My feelings about windigoes are sorta separate from the whole save-the-Empire thing, but if giving you a place to crash is what I can do, then it's what I can do."

"Izvaldi," I said, prompted by Faye. "Any chance any of your leads might warrant a trip there?"

"Did you mention going there already?" Puddles rubbed her chin. "I'm feeling some deja vu. Anyway, I'll see what this stack of papers has. But between this, maintenance for the ship, getting you some better gear, and whatever else, say so more forcefully if you want to set sail sooner than next week. With this kind of lifestyle, you learn to take downtime where you can get it."

A whole week?

I almost moved to protest... and then I stopped and stared. I was so conditioned to expect no downtime, ever, that I had no idea what to do with myself for that much time. Despite the fact that I had lived for hundreds of weeks. Thousands? Maybe almost a thousand. But still.

"Just to be absolutely sure," I said. "There's no potentially world-ending events scheduled within the next week that we need to be moving as fast as possible to stay ahead of, right? Odds are actually low that Rhodallis will just tear in here and grab Coda by force?"

Puddles slowly raised an eyebrow. "Aside from him, are youuu aware of any I should be aware of too?"

I shook my head and chanced a chuckle. "Nope. Just not used to that being the case. Maybe some downtime does sound great. Let's, err, see if I still remember how to figure out what to do with myself when basic survival is taken care of..."