Back at the cave, Darklight was once again playing the role of medic.
Her resilience gone, and extraordinary energy used up, Derpy lay on the bed in the master bedroom, halfway between blissful sleep and grudging consciousness. Her body was covered in bruises from her own difficult training, as well as burn marks from Twilight's magic attacks. Her efforts that day had been heroic; she had done everything she had been asked to do cheerfully and willingly, and would do so again the next day. For now, she was content to let Darklight cast healing spells on her.
Twilight was more problematic. "Who does she think she is?" she repeated.
Darklight turned to look at her. She was sitting upright in a chair, with the fiercest, most malevolent scowl he had ever seen on her swollen and battered face. Twilight had been this way the whole evening, staring off into space as she devoted her vast mental abilities towards revenge. This particular question had already been asked three times, and the answer he gave the first time had only made her more angry. He said nothing.
He turned his attention again to Twilight's wounds. There were no burn marks, but she had plenty of bruises from the fights she had with Raven's Wind, along with scrapes from when she was thrown into the ground. She showed no sign that she noticed his presence as he quietly cast healing spells. He could have used Twilight's help with his own wounds, which were as extensive as Derpy's, but it would have been impossible for her to see them with the darkness covering him. She was clearly in no mood to be helpful anyway, and he was used to taking care of his own wounds anyway.
"I get it now," Twilight said to nopony in particular, "She hates me. She enjoys seeing me suffer. She enjoys humiliating me. It's the only logical explanation there is."
Darklight, perhaps foolishly, contradicted her. "I think you are reading her actions wrong. Raven's Wind has a lot of responsibilities. She is a high-ranking elected official, a well sought after teacher, and she has a large family to care of. She only devotes her time to the things that she loves, so she must think that it is very important that you get this kind of training." Then he made his big mistake, "If it is any comfort, this is how she trains all of her students, including her children."
"So, she is guilty of foal abuse as well," Twilight replied, "Is there any limit to her crimes against pony-kind?"
"No, they weren't... "
"I swear, if you say ONE more nice thing about that mare, Darklight, I will hurt you!"
"I'm sorry, I just... "
"DEEP... HURTING!!" she warned, looking straight at him, for the first time that evening, with a terrifying expression.
The scowl began again, and Darklight went back to his duties as medic. Nothing that he could say seemed to satisfy her. It had started when Darklight refused Twilight's request that he teach her all of the most colorful words in the Barbaroi tongue that would express exactly what she thought of Raven's Wind, and the
He thought about his own first impression of Raven's Wind. At first he thought of her as some kind of invincible iron pony with absolute confidence in herself and no flaws, but over the past few years he had learned differently. Even that day, he had seen the signs: the sad looks, the wincing that made it look like she was in physical pain, the faraway stare at nothing in particular. Nopony was better at picking up the signs than Eagle's Talon, and when propriety allowed he would put one of his golden wings around his wife as a show of support. Her family would do the same, but sometimes there would be the look of worry that someday they would be burdened as well. It was the torture that was The Sight, the flood of images of the future that were impossible to block out. It was this knowledge of the fates of ponies that made her feared by her own people. They loved, respected, and trusted her, but they were always fearful of what she had to say about them. Darklight wanted to help her too, but it was not his place to do anything. Though he was welcome, he was still an outsider. He asked many times to take the initiation rites, to become one of The Unconquered, and perhaps even join himself to the house of Silverblade, but he was always turned down. "Someday, you will find the land where you truly belong, and your real family," was the only explanation Raven's Wind ever gave. He wondered if that were even possible. He felt no connection with the ponies in the Dragon Spear Empire. He was never allowed outside the grounds of Father's mansion, and the noble ponies who came to visit Father had nothing but contempt and disdain for Darklight, treating him like he was a sideshow freak. "Is that... him?" they would ask, doing little to conceal that they knew something about him but revealing nothing else. As for family, he always knew that Father was not related, but he was unconvinced that a monster like him even had parents.
His mind drifted back to the conversation he had with Raven's Wind following the day's training. He had remarked that she may have been a little hard on Twilight.
"I am surprised that you think that way," Raven's Wind had replied, "I thought you had seen enough of my lessons that you would understand my teaching methods a little better. The question you should be asking is 'Why are you being so easy on Derpy, and on yourself?' I am not being any harder on Twilight than I have been on any of my other students. It is the only way I know to prepare them to be equal to the challenges I know they will face. They never appreciate this while they are my students, and I have no doubt she will be up late tonight thinking of ways to smash my face and gouge out my eyes. The educated ones can be very creative." She chuckled, thoughtfully. "They always want to go after my eyes. Well, Eagle's Talon loves my eyes, so why should I care what anyone else thinks of them."
She paused for a moment, thinking, and continued, "When I look at each of you, I see three ponies who are trapped. Derpy, for instance, is trapped by reputation. The ponies in her homeland see her as being clumsy, foolish, and unreliable, but all they know is her caricature. I can relate: there were plenty of ponies who thought it was a waste of time to train a timid, clumsy filly such as I was, and I will forever be grateful to the teachers who took a chance on me. So I am helping her discover the real Derpy.
"Twilight is trapped by pride. She has been taught by the best teachers in the world, can draw upon vast stores of accumulated knowledge, and has extraordinary magic abilities for a unicorn her age. She believes that she has reached the top of the mountain when in fact she is stuck on a plateau. What perplexes her the most right is why a pegasus pony would presume to believe that she could teach her anything of value about fighting a creature that can only be defeated by magic. But I see a much greater darkness beyond the golem that I must help her prepare for, and she does not understand that the 'home' that she longs for will be a very different place when she returns. At any rate, she will soon be ready to face that darkness, and you can tell her I said that when she asks, though she won't understand you.”
How do you know all of this?, he had wondered. How was it that she knew so much about ponies that she had only met a few days ago, who were unable to communicate in a common language? From the first time they had met, Raven's Wind had always given him the impression that she knew a great deal about his background, perhaps even more than he himself knew.
"I know you understand this as well," she continued "I find it interesting that you have taught her two of your best spells, neither of which will be useful to her during the battle with the earth golem. It is almost as if you trained her to defeat you."
Raven's Wind was silent after this, but she could be just as profound with her silence as she could with her speech. 'How am I trapped?' was what Darklight wanted to ask her, but he was becoming uncomfortable with how the conversation was going. He had made a promise to his father that he would not talk about the future, about his final mission, and he would continue to keep that promise.
"I've tried to explain your ways to Twilight and Derpy," he said, trying to steer the conversation in a new direction. "Before I came here, I did my best to learn your language and culture, but it always bothered me how little I could find that was accurate and unbiased. I want to help them understand the truth."
"I am grateful for your efforts," was her reply, "But it makes little difference to me what other ponies think of my people. If they want to call us cowards because we choose not to sacrifice thousands of our sons and daughters to replace one palace tyrant with another, they are free to do so. If they revile our good name because the price of our freedom is too high for them to purchase with flattering words and empty promises, I will do nothing to stop them. If a collection of scary stories can keep my people at home and our Watchers abroad safe, so much the better. I really do not care if they call us cannibals, savages, 'ghost ponies', or 'Barbaroi', because none of those names have any meaning to us. We are The Unconquered, and any pony who wishes to learn the truth behind that name is welcome to meet us on the battlefield, as many have already done. Our friends will know the truth, and anypony who believes the nonsense spoken about us does not understand themselves."
Darklight was getting uncomfortable again. He was moved by her words, but he couldn't help thinking about how they contrasted with those of his own father.
Raven's Wind watched him as he lost himself in deep thought, and sighed deeply. "Darklight, you are a true friend to The Unconquered. All of us understand this. Even Prism Heart, for all of his bluster in the grand council chambers, understands this as well. I love you like you were one of my own sons, and I see the goodness in your heart, but even the best ponies can find themselves on the wrong path. Are you certain that the path that has been prepared for you is the right one to take?"
Long suppressed images suddenly began to course through his mind, and he momentarily forgot his promise to keep silent about his final mission. "I... I know what I saw." he blurted out, "I have to do something to stop it. I have to save them." His eyes had a haunted look in them, a look that spoke of unspeakable memories that scar and poison the soul. "I wish I could tell you more. I want to tell you and Twilight everything. But... "
Darklight expected her to pelt him with questions he wasn’t allowed to answer. He waited with dread for her to speak, but felt relieved when she, unexpectedly, changed the subject, or so he thought. "Do you understand the purpose of the Library of Truth?"
Nervously, he answered, "Only what you and the others have told me, that it is a record of world history through the eyes of the Watchers.”
"On an academic level, that is what it is, but to us it is a weapon against the lies of leaders who wish to corrupt history for their own gain. Finding and recording the truth can be a very difficult thing, and sometimes our own personal bias and misunderstandings get in the way, or we are lead to believe the lies because of the actions of other ponies, but we find that the best ways to overcome these problems is to have multiple eyewitness accounts and to observe the evidence. My question to you is, are there any ponies who seem to contradict what you thought you saw?
Darklight thought of Twilight and Derpy. How would anypony who had experienced what he knew they had gone through be as trusting and happy as they were? It made no sense, but he said none of this to Raven's Wind.
She bowed her head in sadness. It broke her heart to see the fear and anguish in Darklight's eyes, but there was little more that she could do. Raven's Wind was not the pony who could heal him. "I will honor the promise that you made to the pony you call 'Father'. I will say only this: Twilight will soon be presented with the pieces to a very large and complex puzzle. When she has all of the pieces assembled, when she discovers the whole truth, I ask that you will listen to what she has to say."
Darklight was suddenly pulled back into the present when Twilight's hoof slammed down on the table next to her, knocking several medicine jars to the floor where they shattered and spilled their contents.
"This is STUPID!" she yelled, "What does hoof-to-hoof combat training have to do with fighting a one hundred foot tall slab of rock?! Why is she wasting my time with this?!"
"Raven's Wind told me," he offered, wanting to say more but afraid to do so, "That soon you will be ready to face the darkness ahead."
She sneered "And what, pray tell, is that supposed to mean?"
Never in her life did Twilight look less beautiful than she did just then, but Darklight was finally beginning to understand the feelings he felt when he saved her from the golem. Darklight was in love, and all he wanted now was to be with the mare he loved, to find joy in being a part of her happiness, but it was a dream that could never become reality. Darklight was trapped by fate, and the final mission was the only thing that lay before him. Father had told him many times that Darklight would be bringing freedom and joy to millions of ponies who for generations had been without either. Still, he knew that when he did complete his final mission, even if he survived, that there would be no place for him in Twilight's heart.
I love you Twilight, he thought to himself, And I want to tell you everything.
He said nothing. Twilight didn't notice.