Jericho

by Crushric

Chapter 24 — Canterlot

Very.

That was my rough approximation of just how far away the city of Canterlot was from Côrint. I took the train, mind you—all four of them, due to all the times I had to switch a train to continue on my journey. By the time I got to Canterlot, it had been at least nineteen hours since I left the Crystal City.

My ass was sore from sitting when I got here to Canterlot. And at least one train conductor had been hotglued to a seat to prevent him from telling me that I couldn’t walk around when I wanted to walk around. The fact that he wasn’t really a train conductor but just some single father traveling with his little filly who was annoyed by me galloping up and down the train car singing psychedelic songs from fifty years ago, however, never once really occurred to me until just now.

It dawned on me because now, at about Very Dark o’clock as I got off the train, I could hear his filly screaming for help with getting her father unglued from the chair I’d torn from the floor glued to the ceiling. With a blank face, I quickly trotted onto the station platform of Canterlot Grand Station and then made my way off the platform before I could be arrested. It was all fun and games until the child got hurt. Then it was comedy. Ah, Schadenfreude—the purest joy.

Speaking of being arrested, I couldn’t help but notice all the guards here. Despite the hour, and regardless of how much this train station was almost like a POW camp… Okay, well, that would be exaggerating, but the fact was that there seemed to be more security here than was necessary.

Or maybe the air was just messing with me. Canterlot was built partially into the side of the mountain. Not at the ground level, either. Hundreds of feet up the mountain, to be less precise. Mister Welch had once told me that Canterlot was a beautiful city, made more beautiful by the fact that it always looked about ready to fall off a mountain and kill thousands. I hadn’t exactly seen it yet, being that it was night by the time the train got here, just that all the distant lights looked pretty.

“It’s these bloody lowborn, I say,” some green-coated mare remarked. She was standing by two stuffed-looking suitcases off to one side of the massive station’s central zone, its floors a nice, short carpeting rather than the marble of Songnam’s station.

Her conversation partner was a stallion with glasses, rubbing his eyes as a colt and filly peeked out from behind his legs at the mare. “Honey, would you just quit—”

“Well, you tell me it’s untrue,” she huffed.

“I wasn’t argu—”

“Exactly!” She stamped a hoof. “Because you know I’m right.” She gestured to the station around her. “If it weren’t for all these lowborn in Canterlot, none of this would be happening! Ugh, it’s bad enough that Duke Elkington is so nice to them and those weird Neighponease and zebras and other rabble, but I will not stand for it here, in our glorious capital! Those sniveling lowlifes are the reason the economy is in such shambles as it is, I tell you.”

“Excuse me,” I interjected, stepping up to the mare.

“Oh, what now?” she groaned, turning her head to me. “More bad news? Who the bloody hell are you, even?”

“Just a concerned citizen, ma’am,” I replied, giving a slight pull of my hat’s brim as a cursory sign of respect.

“Citizen,” she spat. “What are you, some upstart from the Folkdom of Manehattan?”

“Now, I don’t pretend to be a wise stallion when it comes to all things economics, but I find it highly unlikely that whatever economic woes you’re in has anything to do with the commonfolk—you know, the people who actually do all the real work in any nation.”

“Just what are you saying?” she demanded.

The stallion sighed. “Now, honey, you shouldn’t get angry at—”

“Shut your mouth, Chandelier! If I wanted your opinion, I would have asked.”

“In a ludicrously passive-aggressive manner,” he muttered. The kids behind me exchanged nervous looks between themselves before looking up to me.

“Look,” I said, trying to steer the argument back on course. “All I’m saying is, your theories are despicably wrong, and you could really do for a lightening up.”

“Ugh,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “First I had some lowborn buck misplace my luggage, make me wander for hours, and annoy me—and now I’m receiving lessons in tolerance from a… from a bladeslinger! By Princess Celestia, just what in Fiddler’s Green has my life come to now?”

The stallion gave me a look that just begged ‘Help me’. Or maybe ‘Please kill my dog and feed it to my foals’. It was hard to tell. “Oh, come on, honey,” he said in a sweet, soothing voice.

“Shut it, you!” she snapped. “Oh, mother was right—I shouldn’t have gotten married.”

I tipped my hat. “Well, I can see you’ve got things covered over here, you hate-filled crone.”

She gasped. “Crone?!”

“It’s been fine chatting with you, ma’am,” I said, walking away. “And you, sir, are a very patient stallion.”

He mouthed a thanks as he threw an arm up and rolled his eyes. Were he a Konfessionist like me, no-doubt he’d’ve said “God, don’t I know it!”

As I left them, I could hear the crone of a mare bickering and yelling at the stallion who’d had the misfortune of marrying her. But I suppose that’s what you got in an isolated country on an isolated continent filled with princes, princesses, magic, and Juggernog: fantastic class- and racism!

Because, really, when the guy who just killed a bunch of kids only a few days ago—in terms of hours he actually experienced—is flaunting his moral superiority over you, you’re probably doing something really wrong with your life.

Finding my way out of the station was a trip. But I did find it, and exited out into the cool air of the night. Priority one was finding somewhere to spend the night. Priority two was trying not to commit any mass murders while waiting for the party. The last priority was that I get to this party.

Of course, I figured, looking around the clean, wide streets of Canterlot, it’d be a much smarter idea to just sneak into the castle now, when there weren’t a plethora of guarded ponies there. But where was the fun in making things easy for myself? It was time to get to an inn and plan my evilly heroic stealing of books for some deranged cultist.

Were I anypony else, I might have died just there. Of shame. But, well, I was myself. It was a lovely early evening, just as the party proper started. The aristoponies were arriving, and the musical guests were getting ready to prepare.

As for me?

Well, I was naked save for a codpiece and a speedo, drowning in glitter, face painted like a cheap whore, covered in feathers, and stumbling towards the Guards’ Quarters of Canterlot Castle.

“Oh, Celestia,” I moan in a voice that was just barely holding back sobs, “I’m sorry I’m late. Oh, Celestia, I’m so sorry!” I hobbled forwards as I rubbed my face, getting makeup and glitter all over my face. The two guards to the barracks just stared at me. “It was my daughter, and then I had to go get a rape-examination, and all those beeees.”

Both white of coat and wearing paltry excuse for iron armor, the guards just exchanged baffled glances. Behind them, the wooden walls of the barracks stood, and further behind it were the white walls of Canterlot Castle.

“I’ll-I’ll be right back out, okay guys? I j-just need to get my armor on, and I’ll be right back. I’m not shirking duty, I swear!”

“I…” one the guards tried, but just stared at me as I stumbled past him.

In a moment, I was inside, the door shut behind me. My heart raced faster than a shrew being chased by a flock of owls. Only they weren’t owls—they were potatoes with teeth! I sighed, rubbing my face and getting glitter in my mouth. Spitting the glitter out, I reflected on just how stupidly well that plan had worked. Mind you, the plan was essentially “Sneak in by baffling the guards so hard they don’t stop you”, but ’twas the kind of plan that toppled empires.

Thanks to well-labeled signs, I quickly found the locker rooms, where there were showers. A quick, shameful shower later and all the gunk and glitter and whorish paint was gone. Going into my bags—never leave home without them—I pulled out a mirror, some more makeup, and an outfit.

I painted a cheshire grin onto my face with black and white makeup, extending from my lips to my cheekbones. It looked really freaky to me, mostly because I as such a terrible artists that everything I drew ended up looking like either some eldritch horror or a rape threat. There was a reason why I had a court order not to draw.

That look was completed by tiny, specially designed sacks over my ears to make them look like cat ears and not pony ears, with the colors and everything of a black kitty. “Meow,” I said to myself. After putting on my suit and hitching my bags up, I went back out into the halls of the barracks.

These were the back halls of Canterlot Castle, where all the servants and other such folk moved about, doing their work in places that the proper highborn bastards wouldn’t see. A part of me was sad that I wouldn’t get to see the richer insides of this fabled castle, but from what I saw from the outside—its white walls and glistening, purposeless spires and towers—it was far less impressive than the massive masonry of the castle in Zentrum, die Zitadelle, the Citadel. Even Canterlot City, what very little I could see of it from where I’d been, didn’t strike me as being nearly as menacing or powerful as Zentrum.

Somehow, I ended up exploring and stumbling my way into an area that appeared to be a small studio. It was like a ghost town, but there were mirrors and little stations for ponies to put on makeup, racks full of fluffy, outlandish clothing, and a few doors off to the side. The general disorder of this room suggested it had been used recently; its performers must have been out already, playing and doing whatever for their patrons.

This place made me uncomfortable. Last time I’d been in a dressing room places, I’d had a dead leg, and then I’d been grabbed, dragged into a room, and almost raped by the Cherrypillar.

I heard the clank of armor, and two stallions speaking. Figuring they were guards, I ducked into one of the dressing rooms to hide, waiting for them to—oh, wait. Hello to thee, cliché. Totally should have seen this coming.

The grayish-gold earther mare sitting at the room’s vanity turned to me, wearing only a single fake eyelash, her cobalt-blue mane done up in pigtails. “Buh—wha’?”

A very twisted part of me instantly recognized her. I had her to thank for the lovely song I sang during the Songnam Slaughter. “Sapphire Shores?”

She managed to look embarrassed. “Uh, hello to you too, sugah. Yes, yes, I know I’m running behind schedule—you don’t need to come and bother me as I’m getting ready for my performance! First my carriage mysteriously caught fire, then my chauffeur caught fire somehow, and then the firefighters caught fire trying to put it out, and I’m an utter mess right now.”

“So, how long long will it take you to get ready?” I found myself asking.

“I don’t know, sugah. I’d hope Duke Elkington might have helped me out, but he’s off messing around with the North.” She frowned, ears drooping. “And I’d been so hoping he’d be here.”

“Ah, well, I’m a friend of Elkington’s.”

Her ears perked. “You are?”

He savagely raped me as I was tied to a bed and I still can’t shit without crying now, I almost told her. Really. I wanted to. Instead, what I said was, “Just yesterday, he helped me sign on some mare for a musical performance here, because I asked nicely. Only downside is that now I owe him a favor. Knowing him, he’ll have me assassinate some evil monsters again. One that his Caroleans can’t deal with.”

“Huh.” That was all she gave me.

“I would so presume in a cold day in June.”

“Riiight. Well, sugah, if you don’t mind leaving me to my own, I’ll be out on stage in just… ten minutes or so, and I’ll have my smooth jazz song covers all ready to sing.”

“Did you say ‘smooth jazz’?” I asked, a dangerous gleam in my eye

Sapphire Shores glanced at her reflection in the mirror. “Yes, it’s the musical theme—those darn aristocrats are finally letting somepony play ‘commonfolk music’, and I aim to teach ’em that jazz is awe… Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” I asked in a dark voice. The more I thought about it, the more that smile grew, displacing the already freaky-looking cheshire grin painted across my face. It wasn’t a very thought-out idea, but it was going to be fun and would let me get into the party proper.

“Like that. It’s freaking me out, sugah.”

“Oh, about that, Miss Sapphire Shores…” I lurched forwards, and in about a minute, Sapphire Shores was bound and gagged in the dressing room’s small closet. Hopefully, somepony would find her before she starved to death. Although finding out in a week that Sapphire Shores starved to death in a closet would totally make my day.

Taped to her vanity mirror was a little scrap of paper telling me how to get to where Shores had been supposed to go from here. Directions, that is. I took the note down, stepped outside of the room, and followed the directions to get to where I wanted to be, trying the whole while to hide the nigh murderous smile that was fighting to control my face.

My trip ended with me coming out onto the back of a stage. Fumbling through the curtains, I came out onto the stage meant to be seen by ponies. Before me stretched a titanic ballroom. It was filled with ponies in suits and gowns, standing up and talking, sitting at tables and talking, and doing other annoying things that made me very glad that local aristocrats were all executed on principle when the Reich liberated a nation. Their land and wealth made the Reich good friends when we redistributed it to the local poor.

What drew my eye most, though, was the dame wearing the red dress, sitting all alone at a table and looking lonely. She wasn’t looking at me since she was rubbing her eyes, but I recognized her. Selena.

A gray mare on the stage gasped. I turned to her just as she stammered, “Jericho!?” She was standing on her hind legs, stabilized by holding herself with her instrument, a cello.

“Hey there, Octavia,” I chirped, stepping up to the stage’s microphone. She wasn’t the only musician on the stage; there was a buck with what looked like a saxophone and another on a piano, to name the closest ones.

I tapped on the microphone, and instantly the loud room went quiet as everypony looked to me. A part of me wondered why Equestrian microphones, which shouldn’t’ve had any similarity with the ones we had in the Reich, looked so much like those we had in the Reich.

“Ladies and gentlecolts of the jury,” I said, voice ringing out across the whole giant room. “First of all, not guilty. Second of all, Sapphire Shores shall not be here tonight—her carriage and chauffeur caught on so much fire that she is now one with the fire gods and seeks to forever destroy winter. In the meantime, as we await our inevitable demise at the hooves of a pop-singing, vengeful goddess of fire, I have been so sorrily informed that your regularly scheduled jazz will, in fact, be sung by yours truly.”

They said nothing, just watched. Smiling, I pulled out several sheets of jazz music. Mister Welch had loved him some music, writing the lyrics and notes to various songs. I suppose I never could bear to part with any parts of him I still had. In any case, I handed the sheets out.

“Can you play this?” I asked.

Octavia read the music sheet. “I… I think I can. Anything for you, friend.” She smiled at me, and I tipped my hat to her.

“Um, I don’t think—” the piano-played tried.

“Hey!” Octavia snapped. “Jericho’s a good pony. If he wants our help, it’s the least we can do, Besides, without Sapphire Shores, there’s nothing really to play.” She flashed me another smile as the pianist grumbled an acceptance.

“Thankee, Miss Octavia,” I chirped, stepping up to the microphone. I had a good many songs, because Mister Welch had loved his music. Oh, Mister Welch, you crazy, free-thinking changeling bastard who taught me my perfected Equestrian. This was for you, buddy, wherever in the afterlife you were.

“And a one, and a two, and a three, four, five!” And the smooth jazz began.

“Say your prayers, little one.
To forget ain’t fun
So include everyone.
I tuck you in, wie ich bin,
Keep you free from sin
Till der Sandmann, he comes—”

“Go on and wring my neck,
Like when a towel wets.
A little discipline
For my pet genius.
My head is like horseshoes
Go on, dig your hooves in.
I cannot stop living.
I’m thirty-something—”

“Mother…
Tell your children to stay far away.
Tell your children not to speak my tongue
What I mean,
What I say,
Mother—”

And on for an hour more.

The thunderous applause was slowing down. In truth, I didn’t know how much of it was a polite applause that you were supposed to do, how much was honest enjoyment. Mine wasn’t the most trained singing voice, but it wasn’t godawful. Or so I thought. Octavia, though, had played her cello with ludicrous skill, especially considering that the cello wasn’t a traditional jazz instrument.

I was sweating. I could see sweat glistening off Octavia, too. “I think they hated it. What you you say? It’s national ironic applause day, most likely.”

Octavia chuckled. “Oh, that’s the most logical answer. Clearly, it had nothing to do with just some phenomenal music, great lyrics, and a good singer.”

“I like how everything but me got words like ‘phenomenal’ and ‘great’, but all I got was ‘good’.”

She gave me an almost conspiratorial little smirk. “Well, it was only so good. I think it’s because everything was just so impressive.”

“Like yours truly?”

“Jericho, you flatter me,” she chuckled, waving a hoof at me. “It’ll get you nowhere, you know.”

I shrugged, glancing back out to the ballroom. Ponies were still applauding, but many were now wandering around and getting back to socializing. “Flattery might get me nowhere, but it sure doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“No, no it doesn’t.”

Adjusting my masque, I said, “Alright, Octavia, always great seeing you, but I must go out into the crowd because the doors to the outside are on the far side of ballroom.”

“Wait, you’re leaving?” she asked.

Taking up my sheets of music and putting them in my bag, I hummed an “Mm-hm” to her.

“Might I ask why?”

“Yes—I’m up to no good, truth be told. Because ‘lies be told, I’m about to go into labor’ only works the one time.”

“I… okay.” She looked to the stage curtains. “Will you be back at all?”

“Can’t say.” I shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve to go commit some evils for the good of everypony. Or at least myself.” I stepped down off the stage, nearly tumbling into some buck wearing a fancy hat. With great care, I reached forwards and touched his hat, pushing it so that it sat slightly off-center. “There. Now you’re a rebel without a cause. Mares love that sort of thing, which means you might get raped by one now. See? I’ve made you rape-bait; this should hopefully distract them from me,” I said to him.

“Um, uh—farewell, Jericho!” Octavia called out, but I was too busy ducking and weaving through the crowd to respond to her.

Manys of the ponies offered me little words, compliments on my performance, questions regarding which noble house I belonged to—“Haus Faust,” I told those who asked—and all manner of stupid things that only inbred highborns cared for. Although a few complimented me on my makeup, that cheshire grin on my face.

With my newfound popularity, I was sure that I could probably wander around outside without attracting too much attention to any guards. Just one of the performers out for a breath of air. Nevermind that the Royal Archives were located in a separate building from the castle but still on castle grounds, which I could most easily get to by going outside. Yes, I knew that the idea of being more well-known helping me remain incognito made no sense. I was just trying to retroactively make some tactical reason for having smooth jazz fun.

Then I came across her table. Well, tripped on some mare’s dress and fell down, rolling into the little area round the table. It was isolated from the rest of the ballroom, despite practically being in its very center, like ponies just wanted to avoid it.

When I stood up, our eyes met. Her blue eyes were nice, but the mare herself looked bored, almost sad. Even with the bunny-ears headband she wore. There was a barely opened bottle of sangria on her table, plus four empty wineglasses.

“J-Jericho?” she asked, raising her head.

“Well, last I checked,” I replied. “Although I’ve been wrong before.”

Selena smiled bright and wide. “Well, aren’t you just a sweet surprise. It’s good to see you again.” Her horn glew blue, and the chair opposite her scooted back. “Hey, why not sit down? You’ve got to be tired from all these bothersome nobles. And look! I finally found a bottle of sangria.”

“I can see that,” I chuckled.

“So come on, sit down. I want to know what brings you to here of all places.”

I hesitated as I looked at her earnest little smile. “Ah, what the hay,” I muttered, taking her offered seat. “So, I didn’t figure you for a noblepony.”

“Nor did I of you.”

I adjusted my hat. “That’s because I’m not.”

“Good, because neither am I.” She flashed me a smirk, pouring herself a glass of sangria. She seemed to give it a second’s thought, then poured me a glass. I thanked her as I took the glace, taking note that the musicians were now playing a good background music.“So, what brings you to this most unlikely of places?”

“Well,” I said, “my first task for any place is to bring sexy back, as was the goal of my dear friend, Mister Welch.” She cocked a brow. “But being that I myself lack it, I suppose goal number two is to combat the sexiless evils. But in this case? I admit, I’m just up to no good.”

“No good?” she asked, and took a sip of her wine.

Glancing to the stage, I couldn’t help but notice all the little looks I got from a good few of the ponies here. One white stallion with a blond mane flashed me a dirty look, his gaze softening as he looked to Selena.

“Well, yes. I’m here because I’m a no-good, dirty thinking, spunky bad boy.” I made an overly dramatic face, saying in a scratchy voice, “In a world of evil and more evil things, only one stallion can save the world and teach it how to dance—Jericho, the Reckoning of the Seven Demon Space Whales From Outer Space! Coming to musical theaters this August.” I coughed. “Ow, that voice hurts.”

Selena chuckled, shaking her head. “Ah, it’s so good to talk to somepony who isn’t stuck-up and self-obsessed here. It’s rather like a cool drink of water on a hot day, really.”

“I prefer iced tea to water.”

She gave me an oblong, playfully ‘are you serious?’ look. “Then you’re like a cool glass of tea on a hot day. Happy now?”

“Ecstatic, ma’am. Now I can die a happy stallion.” I took a shot of the sangria. “Of course, the only way to die would be fighting to the death against evil for that one cause worth fighting for—love.”

Selena leaned back, giving me a strange look. “For love, hmm? Of what? Or of whom?”

“Of nopony in particular, I assure you,” I said, adjusting the brim of my hat. “I fight because I like people to stay alive. Because I’m more than happy to do the bad things that need be done so that the innocent needn’t sully themselves with evil. Because I like sitting back after a hard day’s work to see that everyone’s still happy, that children can sleep easy at night—” I raised my glass to her “—that the pretty girls get together with the nice guys.”

“How romantic,” she said in a teasing tone. Selena brushed some of her luxurious hair out of her eyes and smiled almost nervously.

I leaned forwards. “You know, where I’m from, we have a saying. ‘You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.’ Me? I’m pretty sure I should be somewhere in ‘villain’ territory, and the only thing keeping me in the heroic camp is pure, unadulterated denial.”

“A curious saying,” she commented, nodding. “And where were you from again, Jericho?”

I shrugged. “At this point, God only knows.”

The words seemed to hit her like a brick filled with yummy worms to the face. I could tell she managed to hide it well, but there was no looking a look of surprise when it came. “Did you just reference a deity?” she asked. “Like, that vague one you can find reference to in some of the really old history books?”

“Yes, that I did.”

“Weird.” She pursed her lips to the side. “I wasn’t aware said deity was anything more than a historical footnote anymore. It’s a terribly ancient cult. Although I’ve heard that in a few isolated parts of Equestria, some old faiths survive. Like, I know for a fact that the old religion of the crystal ponies is alive, though unwell, in the Crystal City up north. But the one you mentioned? To be frank, it’s the very last one I’d ever expect to ever hear mention of.”

I smiled. “In the free cities of Märakech, they call Him Rhalgað, the Father of Fire, who is locked in an eternal fight against the darkness. In old Neighpon, they called Him the ‘Third God’. The First God created the world, then left to watch over it as the sun. The Second God, Dägon, become the warden of the world, its protector, its patron. They said the Third God would come in the end of days; He would sink Nippön to the bottom of the sea, exterminating its ponies, and end the world in a symphony of frost and fire. They said that His representative on this world was Vikuta.

“To the far east, in the steppes and mountains of the continent of Tochara, they say He is the most powerful, the very first face of the Many-Faced God of Death, for all gods are simply a different face of their God of Death, and they say my countryfolk are the chosen of the Death God.

“But from the land I’m from? We’re content to usually just refer to Him simply as Gott, which is our word for God.”

Selena cocked a brow. “Fascinating. I had no idea that old cult managed to spread and survive elsewhere so well.” Well, technically speaking, it’s the world’s single largest religion, but whatever. “So, you’re a worldly sort, aren’t you?”

“Well, I’ve been around the world and have had most things try to kill me.” I shrugged. “If that’s your idea of worldly, then worldly am I.”

The mare glanced around, then drank half her wine glass in a single swing. “So then tell me, Mister Jericho, what’s such a worldly sort as yourself doing in such a place as this?”

“Well, I could tell thee, Miss Selena.” I tilted my head. “But that would be telling.” I finished my glass of wine and stood up. I walked around the table, heading for the door on the far side of the ballroom.

Some stallions did things to mares that they left behind. Many were known for leaving behind a trail of broken hearts and tears. Me? I left behind a trail of baffled, confused mares. I felt that this made me far more unique.

So, like a pile of snakes hotglued to a very hungry mongoose, I slithered my way through the nobles. Thoughts of how I’d find Snechta’s mystical book raced through my mind alongside images of me with my left eye and horn back. In that image, I was standing on a hill, holding my heavenly weapons, my duster fluttering in the wind.

Ah, and here were the double doors that lead in the outside gardens. And to think, all of this could have been avoided if there’d been a legal way for me to borrow this book. But no, there apparently wasn’t a way to do that. That would be easy. And the Universe couldn’t get off unless I was having a hard time. Still, I had a door to—

“Not so fast,” a mare’s voice said amicably as the lady in the red dress stepped in front of the door. The first thing I noticed was that the dress was cut to show off parts of her nice legs. She’s got legs and she knows how to use them, I thought idly. The other thing I noticed that was Selena was standing between me and my door, and I had no how she’d gotten here before me. “You slipped away last time, but not this time.”

“Miss Selena,” I said calmly, “I really need to get through that door. Why not just go back to doing what you were doing and forget about me and my boring tale?”

“Please,” she scoffed. “Anything is better than sitting there, being ignored by these aristocrats. You’re doing something interesting—the first really noteworthy thing I’ve seen all week from one of the few genuinely interesting ponies I can think of. If you expect me to just sit by and watch fun happen while I eventually get drunk off sangria, you’ve got another thing coming.”

I shifted my weight, giving her a skeptical look. “Oh, I doubt you’d have any real lingering interest in what I’m up to.”

She cocked a brow. “Hmm, call me harsh, but I think you’re lying.”

“Why, Miss Selena, I am offended. Everything I say is the honest truth.”

“Even the lies?”

I smiled. “Especially the lies.”

She tilted her head forwards, giving me a weird little smirk. “So tell me a lie, then.”

“As the lady wishes,” I said. “It’s a dark, nefarious goal that might just knock your socks off.”

Selena tilted her head to look down at herself. “Why, I’m not wearing any socks.”

“For the moment, at least. You might need to wear them for what I’ve got to say.”

“Mister Jericho, are you telling me that you’d like to see me in socks?”

I shrugged. “I’m not saying I’d be opposed to the idea.” I get the feeling that what I just said was the Equestrian equivalent to ‘I’d like you see you in nothing but stockings and a thong’.

Selena flashed me a wicked little smirk. “Why, you dog, you, Mister Jericho. I don’t think I believe what I’m hearing. Very improper.”

“Such a shame, Miss Selena.” I glanced over my shoulder. There were a few ponies glancing back my way, including that same white buck with the blond mane. Weirdo. “I’m a very improper stallion. Dirty thoughts, dirty mouth, dirty fighting, dirty dancing—all the height of improperness.”

The mare gave me a single chuckle. “Why, what kind of girl do you take me for?”

I shrugged, giving her a flat expression. “One who’s refusing to let me pass and go on my way.”

“Well, if I just let you go, that’d be irresponsible of me, wouldn’t it?” she said. “Do at least tell me what dark, nefarious thing you’re up to. How else am I supposed to know if it’s so bad that I need to put some socks on just so you can rip them off?”

I hesitated, then nodded. It was a dumb idea, sure, but… no, I had no real justification. “You know what, ma’am?”

“What?”

Instead of saying it, I reached forwards and grabbed her hoof with a smile. She shot me a hesitant look as I maneuvered around her and opened the door, holding onto her hoof. It was a heavy door. One that, combined with the noise of the party, would likely be able to block out even screams from the partygoers inside. Hopefully, she wouldn’t scream, but it never hurt to be cautious. I tugged on her, and she followed me outside in what were definitely the massive castle gardens, with bushes and trees and everything. High above, the moon leered down creepily at us.

“Do you promise not to tell?” I asked, closing the door.

Her eyes almost seemed to sparkle. “How can I promise if I don’t know what it is?”

“Because you’re willing to trust me, a total stranger with a penchant for danger and getting into trouble with the authorities.”

She seemed to consider that for a moment. “Alright, you win. I’ll bite. What dark, nefarious deed are you here to perform?”

“In short, Selena, I’m here because I’ve been tasked with stealing something precious from Princess Celestia.”

“What?” she asked slowly, looking at me like a piggy looks at a butcher. Selena took a step backwards, eyes narrowing. She’d better not scream. If she screamed…

“It was something she stole, something that somepony needs more than her. It doesn’t belong to her.”

The suspicious look didn’t vanish. God help her if she screamed! “That sounds more shady and crooked than nefarious.”

I flashed her a cool smile, maintaining my calm, friendly disposition. Rubbing my shoulder, I felt for the knife just ready to come out of my suit. “Only without context. What do you know of the Crystal City, Côrint? Or of Mançthwl, a big festival there?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Just as well,” I said. “See, due to a very whacky misunderstanding, I ended up in a gladiatorial competition, wherein I won due to such-and-such. That made me the Champion of Côrint, its so-called best warrior. Long story short, this means that I have to return to the empire a very precious book that Celestia stole from them.” I shrugged. “I’m just doing my duty as a concerned citizen and returning it. That fact that this also benefits me considerably is merely a joyous coincidence. Because I’m just nice like that.”

The look vanished, replaced by a little giggle. Thank God she hadn’t screamed… “Why, that might be enough for a single sock, Mister Bad Boy Jericho. For a fun sort as you, it’s all I’ll spare.”

“I wouldn’t dream of asking more of you.” Releasing her hoof, I stepped away from the mare, but she grabbed me by the arm. Her grip was stronger that I would have expected.

“Hold up, wait.” She gave me a look like a puppy covered in spikes. “Let me help.”

“Such improper actions from such a proper lady?”

“You seem to be doing something far more fun than literally anything else right now, and if it’s fun, I’ll jump on it. Besides, somepony has to make sure you don’t get in trouble. Much trouble, at least. And who better than me, hmm?”

“Didn’t you just call me a fun sort?” I asked. “Does that mean you plan to jump on me?”

Selena blinked. “I, uh, um… I didn’t mean to imply that, uh—well, that is—”

“Because I tend to reserve piggyback rides only for friends and foals.”

She rubbed her arm. Then, in a swift motion, she pulled out a bottle of sangria from under her dress. Just as quickly she took a deep swig of the wine before vanishing it back under her dress. Several deep breaths later and she said, “Well, who said anything about riding your back?”

I took several steps backwards, staring at her. “Did you just say… suggest…?”

Selena looked up and to the side as she shrugged, humming a “Hmm-hmmh?” My gaze remained on her. She looked at me, our eyes met, and she quickly darted them away. “It, uh, it sounded
much more clever in my head. Outside, it sounds sort of…”

“Well—” The doors to the ball creaked open, killing my thoughts as I grabbed Selena and darted into the bushes with her.

“Hey, what the?” she protested, but I shooshed her, pointing to the two armored stallions who were stepping out into the night. Selena narrowed her eyes as she peered through the bushes. “House guards,” she said. “Not royal.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

The two stallions looked at each other, shrugged, then turned to their left and wandered off. To me, the way they looked around suggest they were looking for something in particular.

“See the capes they’re wearing? First of all, Canterlot Royal Guards don’t wear capes. Second, those capes bear the insignia of a noble house, not the royal house.” She frowned. “Odd that they’re out here. Noble guards tend to stay out of these event, since the royal guards have it all covered. Also, why are we hiding here? We’re not doing anything wrong just by standing outside.”

I stepped out of the bushes, and she followed. Helping brush her red dress of little leaves, I said, “Well, because now that we’re in criminal league, we must play the part.”

“Playing the part,” she replied flatly. “Like how you’re dressed as a cat with an eyepatch?”

“Yes, because I’m Bootsy the One-Eyed Cat. If I took the eyepatch off, I’d just be Bootsy. And nopony—nopony—likes Bootsy.” Also, you’d get to see my eyeless eyesocket with the lid sown shut, which is a major turnoff. I poked the rabbit ear headband she wore. “And you’re my friendly friend, Doña Cutebunny.”

“Riiight.”

“Leeeft,” I said, and she giggled.

“Okay, that was odd. Never have I heard that response before.”

I looked around the gardens. “Yeah, I’m known for those kinds of responses. Snarky, weird thoughts are what go on in my head, and so snarky, weird things come out of my mouth.”

“And dirty,” she added.

I gave her a look, trying to figure out—oh, that’s what she meant. “Yes, those two. Snarky, weird, dirty thoughts and things. Now then, the biggest flaw in my plan is that I have no idea where anything in this castle is, so if I want to find the Royal Archives, I—”

“I know where they are.”

“Well,” I said, “that would be helpful. Do you know anything about how well guarded it is?”

Selena gave me a flat look. “It’s a library.”

“Yes, and I’m a pony. That doesn’t mean that I know everything about every other pony simply because I myself was born and raised as one. I mean, some ponies are stallions who get their gentials chopped off, and I most certainly don’t know anything about being them. Although, I know a thing or two about being a mare—please don’t ask me why.”

She ran a hoof through her mane, straightening it out. “In… any case, the Royal Archives are over yonder.” Selena pointed in the vague direction that those two house guards hadn’t gone. “A good portion of the castle grounds are outside, so we can get there without having to dart into any interiors.”

“Great!” I chirped. “See? I love it when a plan that I made up and then pretended to have been following this whole time comes together.”

Selena smiled, rolling her eyes. “Just try not to cause too much collateral damage, okay?”

“How do you know about my track record?” I asked darkly.

“You have a history of stealing books from archives?”

“Surprise plot twist! No, I have never stolen a book from an archive.” I took a step back from her. “Another surprise twist. We’ve got to steal this book within three hours or else something terrible will happen. And the prom’s tomorrow!”

She just looked at me.

“I’m… I’m raising the stakes here to create instant drama.”

Selena chuckled, shaking her head. “The real twist is that I was the cat the whole time.”

I reached forwards, pilfered her bunny ears, then put them on. Wasting no time, I removed my little cat ears and put them over her ears. “What. A. Twist!”

The mare fought herself to keep from laughing, but it was mostly in vain. “I don’t know what I’m even doing anymore. But I think I’ve laughed more tonight than I have for the past month, so I must be doing something right.”

Putting a hoof on her shoulder, I laughed and said, “Stick with me, Fräulein, because getting into life-threatening danger due to completely avoidable circumstances and laughing thereabout are two of my favorite things.”

“Halt,” I whispered, pressing up against a stone wall. Selena did the same. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since leaving the ballroom, but this damn castle just seemed so much bigger than I would have thought. Still, for all the stonework and masonry, there were enough little trees, grass, and bushes to make it unoppressive.

“What is it?” she whispered.

I pointed down the way we’d came. “Those house guards are coming this way, and now there’s four of them.”

“Four?”

“Yes, four. One less than five and the square root of sixteen.” I paused to think. Yes, my math was accurate. For a second there, I wasn’t sure if four was less than five. I didn’t pay much attention in school.

“What are we going to do about them?”

I shot her an oblong look. “Well, we’re not going to kill them, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“No, no, no! I wasn’t—”

“Because killing guards who are just doing their thing is wrong.” Said the Butcher of Songnam.

Selena took a breath, grimacing at me. “Look, I swear I wasn’t suggesting that, so—”

“Shh!” I hissed, gesturing to the little brick-laden path whence we’d came. The troupe of troops walked slowly down the path, not looking over to the wall and trees where Selena and I stood.

“Yeah, so now the Captain-at-Arms has requested all house guards in the area to immediately suit up and report to him,” one of the guards was saying.

“All because some singer broad got found tied up in a closet?” another asked.

Oh. Well. That certainly wasn’t something coming back to bite me on the penis, nope.

“Sapphire Shores?” I heard Selena whisper, barely audible.

“Ayuh,” a third, who was bigger and taller than the other three and had a face liked a slapped ass, remarked. “About half of the bucks here now are Prince Blueblood’s own. He seems to be freaking out more about this than everypony else.”

“Huh. Wonder why.”

“Dunno,” the big one said. “I only been workin’ for Blueblood since this mud season, if it do say.”

“Yeah—I don’t know what that is, cap.”

Then the big one said, “Mud season means ‘spring’, if it do say. Just some argot. Look, back on topic, Blueblood asked us to be on the lookout for a lady in red who disappeared out here.” I got chill bumps on the back of my neck when he said that. My eye swiveled to Selena. “I think milord has his eye on her.”

I watched as they went around a corner. “Selena,” I said.

“Um, yes?”

“The universe is an arbitrary harlot who enjoys stacking the deck against me.”

“I can see that.”

So. Great. Not only were the number of guards mayhap doubled or more, I didn’t know, but some horny noblepony was after Selena. And because I’d taken her as my partner-in-crime, that put me in the especial sights of a great number of guards. Yay. I didn’t know how, but this night could only get better from here on in. Right? Right? Oh, by the Prophet’s holy virginity, this was just the beginning, wasn’t it?

“Are you okay?” Selena asked. “You have a weird look on your face.”

In my mind’s eye, I saw myself sitting a table, dressed like a knight/serial killer. “Okay,” I told the Spielmeister, “if we’re going into this dungeon, can you make them all harder so we can gain more experience and better loot?” This in turn transformed the whimpy little shrimp-ponies into a bear-eating sharks that knew the tongues of ponykind.

“Who, me?” I replied back in the real world. “Of course. We just ramped up the difficulty but it means we’ll get better loot and level up faster. So, yeah, I’m all fit and well.”

“Uh-huh,” she droned. “Fit as a butcher’s dog.”

“I don’t know what that means, so I will ignore it,” I said. “So, where is the library from here?”

Selena gestured her head off to the side. Past a gazebo, some trees, and a little creek, I could see a large, white building that was topped by one of those spire-towers. In the dark distance, I could make out figures, ponies in armor milling about.

“God,” I groaned, “how is anypony supposed to actually get into the archives? Does Princess Celestia not care for freedom of information?”

The mare glanced at me. “Well, usually, it’s not exactly illegal to walk around Canterlot. It’s just that, A, it’s closed for the week; and B, we’re approaching from the Canterlot Castle side, where it’s generally considered trespassing to just mozy around for no good reason. And by ‘no good’, I mean the kind of nefarious stuff we’re doing. I wouldn’t think that Celestia would take too kindly to a couple of ponies nabbing off with one of her books, however harmless their intent.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Still, there’s a lot of guards running around.”

“Hmm, from what I hear, they’re all coat, no knickers.”

All I did was stare at her. “You keep using phrases I don’t know the meaning of.”

Selena shrank back, grimacing. “You don’t? I, uh, sorry. I-I just hear things and pick them and use them without really knowing what they mean or who understands them.” She took a deep breath. “So, are we going to actually sneak in there, or are we just going to stand here like idiots?” She blinked. “As the princess said to the gardener.”

I looked at her. It took me a second to understand that her last line was basically a less juvenile version of ‘that’s what she said’. So I laughed, trying to keep quiet so that guards wouldn’t hear. “My, and here I thought you were a right proper dame.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Mister Jericho.”

“Oh, don’t I know it,” I said with a gleam in the eye. “Don’t I know it.”

Selena smiled at me, pushing the long rubber cord into my hooves. “See? I told you a gardener’s shed would be a great place to go.”

“I never disagreed,” I said, looking at the great length of gardening hose. This led to me peering back into the shed, at all the little tools, the few dirty rags and bags of feed. A gleam sparked in my eye as I looked through the bushes by the shed and spotted a troupe of four guards, the single largest collection of guards this side of the Royal Canterlot Archives. “If I could lure them off, I might be able to beat them down, tie them up, gag them, and store them in the shed. But only if I can catch them by surprise. If they see me coming, I’m a dead stallion.” I took a breath. “Okay, Selena, you stay here and—”

She hit me with her flanks. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“But…?” I trailed off as she touched a hoof to my lips.

The mare closed her eyes, and when she reopened them, Selena looked like a bimbo—for lack of a better term. Eyes slightly confused, a lips curled into a nervous little O. “Oh, dear. I think I’m lost. You there, guards…” She flashed me a smile, the airheaded look gone.

“I…”

“Stay here, I prithee, and watch me work.”

“Prithee?”

“That? It’s an old but useful word, short for ‘I pray thee’,” she said. “It means ‘please’, but it’s far more forceful, like requesting something which cannot be denied. I prithee come here.” She leaned towards me and winked. “That means that you’d better come as I command you to.” Selena giggled. “Or else!”

Well, that’s not at all mildly rapey. “Uh-huh. And have you ever done anything like this before, what you’re about to do?”

“Have you?”

“Right.” I watched her put on that same empty look and sauntered away from the shed and around the hedge. From where I stood, I noticed she’d hitched up her dress to show more leg, a fact drawn suspicion to by the exaggerated way she swayed her hips. She looked like a parody of the dumb noble girl—so far gone that one couldn’t rightly tell that she was faking it.

“Oh, excuse me,” she said in an almost spaced-out tone. Selena put a hoof to her lips and looked around. “Um, hello?”

“Miss,” one of the guards said, the troupe stopping. “These grounds are off limits, you’ll—”

“Can you help me?” she asked, still looking around.

“Miss, you’ll have to—”

“I don’t know where I am,” Selena suddenly whined with a pout. “I was looking for the little filly’s room, but then there was this nasty, icky frog from the gardens that tried landing on me, and now I don’t know where the party is anymore!”

He pointed off in my general directions. “It’s over there, miss, now would you—”

“I don’t know where ‘over there’ is.” Her pout deepened. “Can you help me? Please?” She smiled like a beggar girl hoping to earn enough money for a loaf of bread. “I’ll be your best friend.”

“Miss, we can’t help you with that,” the stallion replied, but then the one to his left tapped him on the shoulder.

“Oh, lighten up, mate,” the other said. “She’s just a little lost. What kind of guards would we be if we didn’t help ’er out, yeah?”

In just a moment, the whole troupe had turned against the first, and he acquiesced. The idiot actually led his three cohorts plus Selena down my way. I grabbed four of the rags from the shed and lay in wait for the guards to come this way. This would teach them never to do a good deed ever again!

“For their mouths,” I called out just as they were passing me, throwing two of the rags to Selena.

“What in the?” the lead guard said just before I clocked him in the throat. Guard armor here had absolutely zero protection for the neck, face, or any of the lower body. He went down clutching his throat and choking. I went to slug the other one, but my arm froze up right before his face. Oh, yeah, the right arm has a thing.

“Shit!” he hissed, but that was all he really did. I didn’t give him a chance to do much else before I knocked him to the ground.

With a start, I looked up to see the other two guards. They had rags shoved so far into their mouths that I was surprised they weren’t choking to death. Selena was smiling up at me, the two stallions on their backs and pinned to the ground by the rags in theirs mouth. Because if they moved, I figured, just as they must have, they would choke and suffocate.

Good girl, I thought. In just a few minutes, they were all safely bound and gagged inside the locked shed. Selena made sure I didn’t hurt them, which was fine by me.

“That was so exciting!” Selena whispered. “I’d never done something like that before!”

“Could have fooled me,” I said, sneaking my way through the trees and bushes, going towards the archives. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“Well, if stallions are still stupid enough to fall for it, it’s their own fault.”

I laughed. “Amen thereto.”

She chuckled as she went back to approaching the archives. “Hey, now that I think about it, this red dress is probably holding me back,” she went on. “I feel a bit odd wearing it and doing this.”

“You could cover it up,” I suggested, crawling into the gazebo. I could practically taste forbidden literature. Also, mothballs.

“What do you mean?”

Sitting up, my back against the solid wall of the gazebo, I pulled out my black poncho. “Wear this, and you’ll look marginally like a bladeslinger.”

Selena just looked at me. Unlike me, she wasn’t stalking about, mostly because she probably knew that we’d taken out all the guards in the area, and thus had no need to feel cool by stealthing about. “How did you fit that in that bag? Looks a bit much to fit in there comfortably.”

“Well, it’s like I said: I’m surprisingly adept at getting—”

“Bigs things to fit into tight spaces,” Selena finished with me. “Yes, I recall.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Uh… Nothing, forget I said anything.” She shook her head as she put my poncho on. “Hey, do you have a knife?”

I produced it from under my suit and offered it to her. “Yeah. You want a weapon to complete the bladeslinger look?”

“No—” and she cut off a huge chunk of her lower dress. “This dang thing’s just a bit too frou-frou for me.” Selena sliced at bits of fabric, then tossed the cut bits unceremoniously to the ground.

“But your dress!”

Selena cocked a brow. She stood there above me, black poncho swung mostly over her back, bits of her torn dress swaying idly in the wild breeze. The look at once showed off more of her gorgeous legs and made her look like she wouldn’t hesitate to use those legs to break my throat. “What about it? I’ll just get another one. One more conductive to mobility, hopefully.”

I sat back, a dumb little smile on my lips, a borderline vacant look in my eye. “Yea verily, and so ye shall.”

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Some ponies hardly see anything. Me? I can see more in one fleeting glance than most stallions see in a lifetime.” I took a breath. “I’m just committing this image I see before me to memory.”

The mare shot me a look I couldn’t read, and that idea sat in my gut about as well as a liter of gin sat inside a small filly. Which was to say, it ended up on one of her parents. But in this case, nothing came out, and Selena said, “That’s rather flattering, in it’s own way.”

I continued looking up at her, staring into her blue eyes. Now that I thought about it, her eyes reminded me some a certain spectral mare I’d seen in my head before, had been seeing since I was dying in that swamp. And she had called me The Fool…

“You know,” I said, “you’re a lot more cohesive tonight then you were last we met.”

She shrugged it off like a lioness shrugs off her cubs because screw children. “Alcohol is a real great cure-all. Plus, I actually managed to sleep well last night, something I’d not done when last we met. In any case, we should get going,” she went on. “It may be the biggest library in the world, and it may be lightly guarded, but… oh, what was that phrasing about not pressing one’s luck?”

“It’s not the biggest in the world,” I scoffed, standing up. Get out of my head, Blue-Eyed Lady. Creeping out of the gazebo, I snuck to the bushes and trees around the path leading to the archives.

Behind me, Selena scoffed back. “As if there’s any bigger. From what I understand, it’s bigger, more robust than the mythical library of Marexandria.”

“I don’t quite know of that name, Marexandria,” I replied, staring up at the archives. “What I do know is that, even though it looks big from here, it’s nothing compared to the great library of Zentrum.”

“Tsen-troohm?” she asked. “What’s that?”

I gave her a look. “Far across der Zitternden See—the Shivering Sea, as they call it—in the great city of Zentrum, there stands a megalithic library, one which is the greatest bastion of information in the East: die Reichsbibliothek, the Reich’s Library. Even when Zentrum burnt to the ground nearly a hundred years ago, it—alongside the Citadel—stood proud and unblemished.”

“How do you…?” She let the question hang there.

“Well, I’ve been there. Like I said, I’m a worldly sort. Ich bin ein welterfahrener Mann, Fräulein. And I’m versed in a few languages, fluent especially in Equestrian and auf Teutsch, the language of the Reich. Both are very useful. Equestrian for Equestria. Teutsch because it’s the de facto language for all trade and diplomacy in the East. And, as the Teutsche like to say, it is the language wherewith to speak to God.”

Selena just looked at me as we sneaked up to the wall of the archives. High above, the moon seemed almost to be skeptical of me. Well, screw the moon and the so-called Equestrian goddess thereof! “Is… Zentrum the capital of that horrible empire, the Legion of the North that destroyed Neighpon, that horror story that mothers tell bad foals about to get them to go to bed?”

I smiled toothily at her.

“I bet they stole most of those books,” she remarked, looking up at the building. “With everything I’ve heard about those savages, I can scarce imagine otherwise.”

“So, how are we going to sneak into the archives?” I asked.

She hummed the universal sound for “I dunno”, shrugging for effect.

Flapping sounds. I looked up to see an small green bird—a Marolina parakeet?— flying around. It didn’t do much, then, as if answering my question, it flew towards the building, produced a spectacular dwunk as it hit, and then fell dead near my hooves.

“Huh,” I said in a toneless voice, looking down at it. “Well, that happened. How helpful.” It had crashed into a window just above us. One fairly close to the ground, but not impossible to reach with two ponies. By some miracle, it was a normal, household window, not even barred or anything. Selena and I exchanged glances.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.

“That two is greater than one but that one is the only number that neither prime nor unprime—” I gasped for breath “—therefore one truly is the loneliest number?”

“Yes, but besides that,” she replied.

I pressed up against the wall beneath the window. “Would you mind going up there and opening the window?”

“Not at all, Jericho,” she said, stepping up to me. As I helped her onto my, she said, “Hey, it looks like I was wrong. It was your back I’d be on.”

There was nothing to say to that. I just helped her higher, holding her up to get the window.

Selena worked with her magic, sticking out the tip of her tongue as she worked beneath the moon. Something clicked, and she asked, “You’re not looking up my dress, are you?”

I wasn’t, but it didn’t stop me from wondering why that would be a problem. Weren’t Equestrians always naked? Pushing her up and through the opened window, I kept thinking. I mean, maybe you’re just not supposed to look. It only becomes sexualized if you draw sexual attention thereto, but is otherwise innocuous? It’s not like those parts would always be in sight from every angle on a mare anyhow.

“You were!” she hissed in a tone that wasn’t exactly hostile.

“Huh?” I looked up to she that she was in the library, her head sticking out of the window, arms crossed over the window sill beneath her.

“You looked up my dress.” She stuck her nose up, closing her eyes. “How ungentlecoltly.” Selena opened and eye and peeked down at me, probably to make sure I was paying attention.

Staring up at her with a flat expression, I considered saying something cute. Something like Can you blame me? or Have you ever met the buck who didn’t want to see under your dress? or even It looked at me and now I feel so violated that I’m pressing charges against you for it. I watched as she brought out her bottle of sangria with a smile and took another swing. So, instead of defending myself against false allegations, I just continued doing what I was doing.

After what felt like ever, she looked down and frowned. “Um, are you well?”

“Do you wish to help me up, Selena?” I replied.

She pursed her lips to the side. “Well, I just don’t know if I can stand to be around so immoral a stallion as he who peeks up a lady’s dress.” Selena flashed me a little smile. “But I might be able to put this grievance aside for a little something…”

I shifted my weight in the grass, looking over my shoulder to see if any guards were coming. There were none. And that dead parakeet was starting to rot, I was sure. “If you’re asking me to get naked and dance in provocative ways before you as you sit back and nod like some kind of rich business executive,” I deadpanned, “then the answer is, not without a few more drinks. And the codpiece stays on.”

Selena put a hoof to her mouth and chuckled.

“I’m just a desperado underneath the window who most certainly didn’t look up your shortly cut dress,” I went on. “All I can offer is my word on this deal.”

“Fine,” she said, holding out her hooves for me, “but a deal’s a deal. Don’t forget that.” Grunting, she helped pull me through the window.

“I won’t.” Standing up and looking around the hall we were in, I thought, Technically, I just promised to prostitute myself to her. Huh. The halls were of rather upbeat-looking masonry, and stretched onto either side, slow curving as if in a large rotunda. “Because when you make a girl a promise, it’s in everypony’s best interest to keep it. But not if she has a penis. We stallions are just the expendable, unlikeable gender whom you can feel free to lie to, because we’re not really people nor do we have feelings.”

“Say what now?”

Turning slowly towards, I said in a dark, throaty voice, “Only the utter facts of my sad, gender-oppressed life.”

Selena glanced around. “O…kay.”

“Right, then.” I tapped a hoof on the reddish-orange carpet beneath me. “Do you know where Celestia might be keeping books that she recently stole from way up north?”

She put a hoof to her chin and hummed a “Hmmm… I think I might have an idea—the very bottom level of the Royal Canterlot Archives, storage.”

That was exactly where it was, in a whole area cordoned off for recent acquisitions from the north. The book matched the description Snechta had given me to a T. And the little drawing she had of the book helped. It was called Calêrhos, and its ancient cover depicted a doorway.

Getting here had been a bit time-consuming, but nothing hard. Selena and I had wandered through several huge rooms filled with row upon row of titanic bookshelves, kept well-lit by various hanging paper lanterns that couldn’t have been up to code.

In the very center of this place had been a sort of garden surrounded by more bookshelves, near to where the large front desk and its comfy-looking chair were. The little garden was filled with plants and other nature-y stuff that was, like all nature, simply unnatural. And it’d been in there that we’d found the stairwell to that lead us to this place.

Everything was going so smoothly. I had what I’d come for, we hadn’t been seen, and we knew a clean way out of this dark, oppressive basement.

When I realized all of that, I knew for a fact that I was probably going to bed tonight with exactly one and half less testicles than I currently had.

“What in the hoof?” the unicorn mare exclaimed.

It couldn’t have been more obvious if she had exclaimed “I am Balroth the Defiler, Testicle Destroyer—feast your eyes upon me and despair, ye testes!”

Selena and I exchanged glances. At the end of the very short, vaulted hallway was this mare. She must have entered through one of the side doorways, since the one nearest her was wide open. Half of the hallways was behind Selena and me, and behind this mare was the stairway leading up. Her eyes were a dick-shriveling shade of green, her coat a light shade thereof, with a mane the tone of dried piss from a mare who failed to be able to pee into a cup on command. Because, honestly, how the hell was a mare supposed to be able to pee into a cup? Sometimes there were benefits to having a penis. However, now was likely not one of those times.

“And who might you be?” I asked, like a lamb trying to figure out how to wear a wolf’s skin.

“I’m the Librarian,” she spat back at me.

“Ooh,” Selena cooed. “That’s Jade Singer, Royal Archivist, Librarian, and writer of two massive best-sellers.”

And in that moment, as I watched the murderous way Jade Singer wore her little glasses, I understood everything about Equestria. Or at least how they trained librarians. Every week, the Royal Board of Shadowy Figures came by each library in Equestria. There, they say hello politely to everyone—and then they brutally make librarians watch as they sacrifice a clown bloodily before their very eyes! I mean, if it’s any consolation, the clown didn’t actually die, since he was just an actor, so you can be content in the knowledge that the clowns gets to go home to his family. But the message was clear, and you couldn’t go back to your family. Being a librarian was serious, murderous business.

But in some places, like Canterlot, the Royal Board of Shadowy Figures has enough money to bribe the authorities, so that clown doesn’t go home to his wife and kids. And today must have been Clown-Killing Day—dot dot dot, dramatic conclusion.

“Is that one of my books?” Jade Singer, the great slayer of all that is scrotal, demanded.

I looked down at the book. “No—I mean, yes. I mean! Or am I? I don’t know. I could be completely innocent.” Nudging Selena, I said, “Okay, we need to run. We’re cornered here, but if we get a running start, we can find a way out.”

“Are you sure about this, Jericho?” she went, her blue eyes unmarred by the terror she should be logically facing.

“Look!” I snapped. “Run back the way we came and find another way out of here!” I adjusted the brim of my hat, centering my bunny ears. This was serious business. “I’ll distract her for you. Now go!” I gave Selena a forceful shove, and with that Selena went galloping down the hall. Soon she was out of sight.

Turning to face Jade Singer, I snorted like a bull. “Hail to thee, Ballwrecker the Severed Tentacles of the Rape God. I meet thy challenge and refuse to bow thereto, foul knave!”

“What?” Jade singer asked, tilting her head just like the monster she was, doubtlessly preparing the countless rows of porcupine-like spines that lined her vaginal canal like one-way mirrors lined an interrogation room.

A door behind me opened, and an earther mare came backing out of the room, carrying a satchel full of books, which contrasted hardily with the sheathed sword at her side. “Okay, Miss Jade librarian mare, I got the rare books here you wanted and… not-Readynoble?”

My heart utterly collapsed into my stomach. There, it was eaten away by acids and dissolved into a bloody paste. But that didn’t stop it from pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to dig a hole in me straight to Teutschland. This mare knew me. This peach-coated mare with hair as color of champagne knew me. And she had this honest-to-God smile on her face, her eyes star-spangled.

With a sound like a very, very tiny filly screaming at the top of her itty-bitty, literally bite-sized mouth, I shrunk back from the mare, towards Jade Singer, the lesser of two evils. God, what had I done to deserve this?

You killed a bunch of kids that one time.

Okay, but besides that!

Exactly. I’d done nothing to deserve this. Nothing!

Finally, two words tumbled out of my mouth. Two words which I’d thought often off, and dreamed never to have to come across again. Two words that just came out. It couldn’t be helped.

“Cherry Berry.”

Her face somehow get even brighter. “You remembered my name!” Cherry Berry bounced on the tips of her hooves. “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it! I never thought I’d ever see you again, mon cher, but here you are, which must mean you and I are bound by destiny, by fate, by—”

“By Oz, as C called it,” I whimpered.

“Yeah-yeah-yeah, all that stuff!” She squee’d. “Oh, this is so exciting!”

“Assistant,” Jade Singer hissed. “You know this charlatan?”

“Know him?” She laughed. “He’s my total soulmate!”

I turned my head to Jade Singer, shaking my head and frantically shouted, “Help! Help! By the Machine Spirit, help me!” Her horn sparkled, and them my mouth felt… wrong. Very, very wrong. I tried to ask, but nothing came out. It felt exactly as if my lips had been stitched together. Suddenly, I knew that Equestrians must be the most horrific torturers. You have no mouth and must scream, but hell if they care.

“This is a library,” Jade said. “No yelling.”

“So.” Cherry Berry clasped her hooves together. “I think I get what our problem was, uh…” She smiled, brushing bits of hair out of her eyes and looking away. “I, uh, never actually caught your name.”

“I think it was ‘Jericho’,” Jade Singer offered.

“Aw, that’s a beautiful name for a beautiful stallion,” she purred, rubbing the side of my face as I backed uselessly into a wall that had decided that it wasn’t going to move anymore for me.

“Stay back, thou witch! I bite!”

“I mean,” she went on, “Miss Jade Singer, look at him! He’s so hot he could start a match, right?”

“Um,” the librarian droned, giving her an odd look. “You do know that this buck stole one of our books, right? And that, as my personal assistant and guard, it’s sort of your job to arrest and confine such criminals.”

Cherry saluted Jade. “Gotcha, boss!”

But by then, I was already darting away, running for the stairs, because shit had suddenly gotten way too real for my tastes. I had a head start on Cherry Berry the Rapinator, and my legs were longer than hers. Guess who was winning this race? Exactly. I was!

“No running in the library!” Jade Singer barked, and I saw a flash of magical light.

Suddenly, my hooves felt like lead. I even look down to make sure they hadn’t been replaced with lead blocks, because lead poisoning wasn’t cool, kids. Which was why I stayed away from pencils. Not only did my hooves feel like lead, they moved just like they were lead. What had once been an gallop was now slower than an old granny without a hip.

“No, ya don’t!” Cherry giggled as my left leg exploded in a ferocious, burning pain the likes of which I’d known only once before. I grunted, collapsing to the ground and rolling. The mare was on me in seconds, pinning me. I tried to fight, tried to raise my hooves against her, trying to hurt her, even just hold her back, but it didn’t work. It just didn’t work. “You know, you really should invest in something to prevent yourself getting deadlegged, huh?” Then I felt the restraints come down, binding my limbs. If I hadn’t been able to move before, now even statues would be worried about how lethargic I seemed.

Because even though I could seemingly cut through armies, tear apart demons, deal with losing my horn and eye, and face angry ex-girlfriends, the thing that really defeated me was some old crone and a rapist mare.

In that moment, I learned a new smell. The scent of a cooked goose.

“And so while we don’t actually have any cells, I do have my own little private guard bunk here,” Cherryberry was saying. She gestured to a bed off to the side. “I basically live here part of the week, so that I’m always ready in case there’s a problem at the archives, kinda like how doctors live and sleep at the hospital sometimes.”

Narrowing my eyes at the room’s desk, I swear to God that I saw a long rope coiled under it. The same rope I’d once used to bind the Cherrypillar up with. Upon the table was most all of my gear, though she only removed my shirt in terms of clothing. I tried to speak, but nothing would come out but muffled little nothings. If I pulled on my arm, I could feel it chained to the radiator behind me. Its twin limb was likewise bound. And even if that wasn’t the case, for some reason, the mare had dead legged my other leg. Probably just because she knew I couldn’t walk without the other leg period. So, the best I could do was smile and constantly growl “Nyaaaar” as I dragged myself around on two useless limbs.

Cherry Berry sat down in her spinny chair and looked at me with bedroom eyes. I.E, eyes that just said one word again and again in a single, monotonous, endless tone. “Rape.”

“Did I ever mention that you just sorta smell real good, Jericho? Jericho. Jericho. Feels so weird on the tongue, but I guess that makes sense, since you did say you weren’t from here,” she said, and I grunted back at her though my magical gag. She let out a longing sigh as she stared at me. “You know, you have a really nice voice. Like, you should totally work community service hours with me on the weekends, reading story books to the foals. It’s a fun, rewarding little thing to do,” she casually, if a bit dreamily, went on. “Your voice is perfect for reading stories to little foals with. I could just listen to anything you say and touch myself the whole while.”

“Those are two things that should not go together!” I wanted to scream. For that matter, I couldn’t imagine her reading story books to little foals without her accidentally raping one or two of them. Or their parents. God, what kind of irresponsible parent lets the Cherrypillar read their kids a story!?

With all the ease of a snake, Cherry Berry left the seat and slithered towards me. She knelt before me, wearing an expression like a mother hamster looking down at her babies. For the record, hamsters are known to eat their young. I tried to struggle, but if she was good at one thing, it was restraining stallions.

Leaning towards me, she reached out a hoof. I twisted my head away from her until I could feel my neck ready to snap. As I found out, the pony neck wasn’t designed to be able to break itself. My shut eyes were closed as tight as I could close them as I felt her caress my face.

“When I look at you,” she said in a sweet, almost maidenly voice, “I think, ‘Gosh, what did I do to deserve such a stallion.’ But I’d like to think that was self-apparent, no?” Her hoof slid down my chest, tracing a solid line down my center like a surgeon marking where she’s going to cut her patient open to repair his alcohol-poisoned liver.

When her hoof reached its destination, I jerked, eye involuntarily opening. I saw her frowning face as she spoke, “Are you… are you wearing a codpiece? By Celestia, why?” She chuckled. “I mean, it’s not like you’re fighting or anything—it’s just little ol’ me, after all.”

If not for the fact that I hadn’t had anything to really eat or drink for this whole day, I felt as if I might have pissed myself then and there out of pure spite for her hoof.

“In any case, listen up,” she said. “So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the night we first met, and I mean a lot. I-I-I heard that if you really think about something, you can better remember it.” Her face lost all expression as she said, “Which is why I can remember every. Single. Detail. Of that night.” She perked back up little a fizzy soda you drank and were now vomiting back up. “And I think I realized where I went wrong that night.”

You clearly lie!

She leaned in closer, her one hoof pressing harder against my groin. For a moment, I was sure she would decide this was the wrong angle to go at it, and would instead try going through my pants, which was a far better way to literally squeeze a testicle until it died. Because my balls hadn’t suffered enough in the past forty-eight hours.

But nevertheless, I stared straight into her eyes the whole while. She blinked; I never once did. Well, I didn’t blink until my eyes got all blurry from not blinking, and I had to blink to in order to see again. But other than that…

“You’re the romantic type, aren’t you?” she asked, and I just stared back at her. “You are! I knew it! See, you’re the kind of stallion who doesn’t want to just rush into things.” Cherry Berry leaned in closer. God, I could smell her, which only confused me because she smelt vaguely of lavender, not like the cherries I’d been expecting—that was just weird! “You like the right mood, lights, outfits, incense, rose petals, music… everything…”

She glanced over her shoulder. “See, I know Miss Jade Singer wouldn’t approve of us, but that crotchety old hag doesn’t come around here much, so we should be safe if I tell her I’m trying to question you and somesuch. I mean, I rather like my new job, but…” She trailed off. “So, I’m gonna run to the store, pick up those things you like, and when next you see me, I’ll have my socks on and the mood will be just right. Just you wait!”

I never flinched as Cherry Berry brought her face up to mine and dragged her tongue from my chin to my mouth. Just. Breathe.

“Because I promise you,” she cooed in a voice no doubt meant to be seductive, but only made my penis shrink back in terror so far into my body that it entered negative space and became a de facto hole, “you’re gonna enjoy this.”

Cherry Berry winked at me as she stood up. She turned to leave. Just as she left the room, she bent forwards and flicked her tail in just such a way that I was supposed to get a teaser of what to expect. I saw the act out of the corner of my eye and nothing more because I was too busying staring staunchly ahead.

The mare left, closing the door behind her. I heard her lock the door behind her.

Breathing a sigh of… something, it wasn’t relief, I tried to take stock of my assets. Huh. Well, that was easy. I have none. So I jerked and thrashed, looking for a part of the wall or chains or anything that was weak.

There were none.

If this were a book or something, there would be exactly two places where someone would come through that door and save me. One of them was right now, just after the bad gal left. Gritting my teeth, I prayed to God and even to that angel I was supposed to have that that somepony would come.

Do I even have to say it?

So I sat back and just growled, gutterly rolling R’s from the back of my throat like some kind of… wounded… wolf… Huh. Now there was a thought. When a wolf was caught in a trap, they were said to chew off their own limbs to escape. With a single test of my restraints, a thought came to mind.

The way I was restrained, one arm was shackled to the radiator, the other was tied awkwardly around my back in such a way that doubtlessly would have been easy to untie if I could get a hoof to it. But the only hoof I could get to it was chained up. Of course, if I rolled around on my back enough, I could probably also untie it. E-eventually.

Deep breaths, I told myself. Deep breaths. I opened my mouth to—hey, look, my mouth opened. “Hello?” I asked, tasting sweet air on my tongue. “Yeah! Screw you, magic! Der Maschinengeist is with me today!” So. One. Last. Breath.

I opened my mouth as wide as I could, twisted my neck, and bit down as hard as I could on my chained arm. The pain was instant, the blood lagging behind by microseconds. I bit down again and again, ripping out chunks of flesh from my arm. Because, after all, at the rate I was going, if I lost another arm, I’d probably just get a new one. Maybe a metal arm! Anything was better than letting Cherry Berry have her fill of me.

Trying not to scream and holding back tears of pain, I again sank teeth into hot, bloody flesh. They tore through the flesh and muscle, leaving a coppery taste in my mouth, not unlike what happens when you gnaw too much on a cold sore. Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to stop, but I wasn’t stopping—if I stopped now, I’d bleed to death. But if I kept up, I might just be able to free myself and stop the bleeding.

Gnaw. Chew. Bite. Rend. Now, spit the blood out.

Chunks of stringy reds bits of me stuck to my teeth as I bit, the phantoms of their nerves screaming that they were still there, still a part of my mortal coil. And there, fleeting strips of off-white, red-soaked bones, covered in tendons and ligaments and cartilage. Digging the teeth of my jaw into it, I scrapped and bit out flesh and innards. Cartilage was oddly chewy, like rubber.

The joint was the only place it was even plausible to bite off. Bones would take too long to chew through, so I had to rip the joint out. As a distant feeling of blackness crept upon me, I momentarily paused to flex the joint. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see your own tendons and ligaments and muscles in action this close, this revealed. There was something hypnotic in the push and pull of how they all worked together to create the perfect structure a pony needed to support himself with, to move himself with.

And with a single, bloody bite, I destroyed that perfect structure that evolution had spent millions of years perfecting. I spat the bit of tendon into my lap, which had already become a gory chunk-of-me stew, the chef’s daily special!

Something hard that I was biting on suddenly jumped forwards and hit my uvula. I gagged, but the hard something hit the back of my throat, and in my panic, I swallowed it. It was too big and too hard to be anything but one of the minor bones near the fetlock-wrist.

With a sound like a very angry kitty, I choked and gargled as the bone stopped in my throat, refusing to move. It was in my throat, my consumed flesh, and I couldn’t breathe! Great! Do you know what it was going to say on my death certificate? “Cause of Death: Captured by rapists, asphyxiation due to autocannibalism.” Wheezing and coughing and choking and gagging, I tried to clutch my throat with my chained arms to no avail.

As I choked, my arm seized up in spasms, like a freshly drowned corpse. Gagging, I watched the flesh twisted and undulated and spasmed until I heard a very deep “Hmm?”

Before my very eye, it slid out of the rend in my flesh. It was a singular, angular eyeball with a deep red iris. The shape and size of it reminded me of the eye-like brand on Duke Elkington’s neck. It stared at me with a look of mild annoyance as I choked. Then, of all possible things, the eye rolled.

I felt something that I’d never felt before: the feeling of a bone in my throat clawing its way up my throat. As I thrashed, it felt as if it’d grown spidery legs, which it used to dig into the lining of my gullet and drag itself up and up and up.

The bone finally came out of my gullet, and I felt it punch my uvula like a boxer as it crawled out of my mouth. I shook and shivered in horror like a filly when a spider lands on her. The only thing that stopped me from screaming was the fact that the scream in my throat was far too high pitched for my vocal chords to manage.

When the spidery bone landed on the ground, I watched it turn to me and let out a high-pitched hiss, as if to say, “Don’t you be doin’ that no more, boy!”

It felt suddenly as if my arm really itched all over. Like, if I didn’t claw at it, the flesh would set afire. That’s when I realized something that I’d known in the back of my mind but refused to really remember until that moment, the fact that had probably given me the courage to try what I’d been doing.

I’ve been chewing on my right arm.

The points that itched condensed and burned white hot under my flesh. I got to see why, though, as the points split upon, and suddenly tens of angular, red eyes opened along my arm, eyes which the biology of my arm had not even hinted of. They all turned and spun to stare me down as blood began dripping in reverse, defying gravity and jumping up to the whole in my arm. Somehow, I couldn’t help but think that Cherry Berry would still find a way to find this sexy.

Flesh dribbled up, even pushing their way out of my mouth from the spaces between my teeth. The bloody tear reassembled itself bit by gory bit as the black-red nebula poured out of the eyeballs. I sat back and sighed. I’m going to get a lecture, aren’t I? The nebula formed in the shape of a monstrous dog’s two-dimensional head, covered in those eyes which had once been in my arm.

Though I expected it to, I never heard a voice, nothing to that sort. So I had to speak to it. “Please,” I said weakly, “don’t heal yet. I need to gnaw you off in order to escape. Please! Please, for the love of the Mare Laurentia, of the Holy Machine Spirit, and of God Himself—don’t heal!”

The nebulous mass just slowly evaporated back into my flesh. When it was over, there was a new brand where I’d been biting. “Seal I,” it read.

Huh. I have the strangest urge now to club baby seals to death.

I sat back and tried to comprehend and come to terms with everything. In my mind’s eye, the vision of a smiling Cherry Berry. The image in my mind’s eye shifted back many years, to the only other mare I could think of to compare her to.

It was just as the Dark Crusade had been won against literally every odd, and half the Reich had been leveled and burnt to ashes. I had no interest in returning to a destroyed, ruined home. So I took a job with an expedition far to the southeast, to the Land of Nod, ponykind’s ancient fatherland, still covered in ice. It was an ambitious thing, as nopony in living memory had even been near Nod, and certainly no Teutscher had ever been that far east.

Of course, the ship had hit an iceberg before we got there. The survivors, somehow including myself, made it to an iceberg. It had been there that I’d gotten to meet that mare.

We were freezing to death in that night, literally dying, all twenty out of an original crew of sixty. I’d lit a fire, because that was something I could actually do. So we huddled by the fire that night for warm, having only it and our cold, dying selves amidst the arctic air.

Jean lu Cont, a rather hardy bastard, died first.

That was when she came out of the water, the old witch with black hair over her eyes and a white dress. Her mouth opened far too wide for a pony, her teeth like an angler fish. We all watched, frozen both literally and metaphorically, as she dragged his body down the snowy isle of ice and into the water.

Then Maria went. I never knew her last name. The old mare came out, sank her teeth into her frozen corpse, and lugged her away. But before she’d left, I knew she’d looked at me and smiled warmly.

By night’s end, I’d watched her drag them all to the icy depths, seen her smile at me eighteen more times, each smile getting hungrier and hungrier. It was funny, really, how I heard that Equestrians feared the night. Childish, even. For in the Reich, we feared the ice, we feared the snow. We feared winter. Because it was the cold of winter that killed; it was merely the moon who watched.

As the solar corona peaked over the curve of the Earth, the mare had stood before me, her long, matted black mane dripping. And she’d said to me in brutally accented Teutsch, her voice like a million needles clawing a chalkboard, “You’re the one I hate—that’s why I can’t let you die, son of Roland. Unlucky you that you didn’t freeze before the Voice in the Dark learnt you were here… and he needs your blood alive.”

And that was who Cherry Berry was. Her mane was like rich champagne, her coat like a peach, but she was still that black-maned witch of the ice.

So I sat back and looked at my arm. It wouldn’t work, but maybe since I’d begged, it would give me just enough time, yeah?

Because when you were in a situation like mine, where everyone and everything conspired to keep you alive when any normal pony should have died, when everything was just stacked against you like that, and when you were hoofcuffed to a radiator about to be raped by a cute-yet-utterly-deranged mare, there was only one word to say as you consumed thine own flesh in order to escape it all.

One word with one syllable that expressed everything I needed to express…

Can you guess what it is?