The suns had set without incident, Domhan still turned, and the feast had passed uneventfully. She'd been able to return to the tower and spend another few hours in solitude, planning and thinking. So why was she such a wreck still?
Beta couldn't shake the odd impression that she was actually pacing when she left the round room at the top of Caisleanard's observatory tower – that she was really just making long, repetitive laps around the ancient castle while lost in thought, assuring herself that the beacon of permanence that was the castle remained exactly that, and nothing was trying to pull it out from under her like Keen Eye seemed to enjoy doing with everything else. What had she ever done to deserve that mare's ire? She was doing it all for them!
I like her, Caelum help me, but why can't she see things my way? she thought, as she stalked down the steps of the tower's spiral staircase yet again. She's intractable, and a destabilizing influence. Everything I've tried to do during my rule, she's a threat to, and therefore a threat to my subjects. If I liked her less, I'd...
There was a window-slit on the western wall of the hall leading to the tower stairs, some distance from the actual stairs themselves. It let the mingling lights of her suns – no, of her sun and Alpha's sun – spill out across the black-and-white checkered floor of the corridor. She realized she'd been staring out it for some time.
I'd what? she asked herself. Kill her? Have her executed? Arrest her? Jail her? Exile her? Petrify her? I'd what? She sighed and resumed walking. She always thought best when moving anyways. When pacing. Preferably at a measured pace. Can't move too quickly. Act rashly, and all is lost. Act overcautiously, and opportunities are missed. Proxima, why couldn't I stop you?
And there it came, rounding its head on her like an ancient blood-winged dragon asleep in his great hollow mountain. She marveled for a moment at how quickly she'd looped back to that this time, even as a part of her took the impact of the bitter accusation. Her fault, her fault, all her fault. One more refrain to sustain her through the eons. Proxima was gone, Alpha had been gone. All because she'd been too overcautious, and because she'd acted too rashly. Errors in judgment she could never allow herself to forget. Balance was where the wisest way of governance lay.
I'm rambling, she thought. Focus. Think about what to do with Keen Eye, and what to do with Alpha now that she's back.
But she couldn't. The night was young, and it was all she could do to keep herself from being distracted by the friends she'd forsaken in the night sky.
She was out on the battlements, the city spread before her as the suns dipped at last below the horizon. She watched, transfixed, self-control slipping and mind wandering, as a red pinprick now rose from the west – stood stock-still as the star Proxima crested the distant mountains and took up its own vigil in the sky. No moon tonight. There was no constancy with the moon. Tonight, just Proxima's coldly burning fury, to keep the bugganes in their cursed holes. Star light, star bright, red star in the sky tonight – the children's rhyme that had come about under her rule to mean a night of safety; it flitted through her mind as she watched.
I provide for them better than you ever could, Ghealach, she thought, watching her lonely sister rise. Despite your meddling.
She was in the darkened courtyard now, sniffing the air lightly. Was that stardust she smelled? A faint aroma of ozone, a hint of hydrogen, a faint whiff of smoke, a haze of dissociated ions...that was stardust alright. Enough for two. What guests would she have tonight? Wolf 359, with her constant reassurances and offers of companionship, as if she couldn't do it alone? Was Celestia here personally now to try to drag Alpha back to that morass she called a planet? Night sky and all its denizens, would they never let her have peace?
She was at the window slit again, ready to complete her cycle. The faint ruddy light of Proxima, almost identical to the faint ruddy light of Ghealach, gave the world a bloody tint. Blood like the wings of another mistake. Two thousand years between her and then, and five billion stretching from before then to the birth of the stars themselves, and still it was impossible to forget. She turned away from the window and started trotting towards the stairs again, hooves clicking on the tile, ready to absorb herself in clockwork and glass and jealousy of distant former friends again. The observatory was instability – change – she really shouldn't let it stand, it would only encourage further bad behavior – but politics remained constant. She needed Radiant Eye's support. He wanted his observatory. To get what she wanted, she had to let him have what he wanted. Politics.
She paused before the door into the round room at the top of the tower. There was laughter inside, and talking. Familiar voices. Was that...Alpha?
“...but the resonances were all wrong in that model, the math didn't add up - “
“I believe Arcturus already determined that several million years ago. It's good to know things haven't changed much since then.”
“I need to recover more memories! Retreading old experiments won't get me anywhere,” Alpha sighed exasperatedly. “I could swear I read something along the lines of this alternate theory in a book back on Equestria – Cloud Carver's Cosmic Conundrums maybe – no, no, though he did mention the song – Starswirl's Stellar String Sextet?”
“How were they even aware of the song?” Wolfie asked, frowning. She sat with her back to the door, her reddish bulk blocking Beta's view of the interior of the room. “They were mortals, correct?”
“Correct, but mnemonic triggers I experienced while in my stellar body - “ Alpha broke off abruptly. “Beta! There you are. I came up here almost an hour ago to interview you on a matter of scientific interest, and I couldn't find you. Where did you go?”
“Walking,” she answered noncommittally. She glared at Wolf. “When did she get here?”
“I found her up in her star,” Wolf answered with a grin that could best be described as wolfish. “I said hello, and here we are. How have you been, Beta Centauri?”
“Fine enough without your presence,” she answered. She turned to Alpha. “Why is she down here on my planet? Explain.”
“On our planet,” Alpha corrected her, frowning. “If I'm supposed to be a Queen again – not a subordinate one, but a co-Queen, like before I was killed, which is what you seem to want – I think I should have just as much say over who can come down to Domhan as you. And I decided Wolfie should come down. After all, we were friends, and it's been a few millennia. She has just as much right to see me as you do.”
“You've proven yourself to make bad calls on who to let visit in the past,” she grumbled. “Remember Discord?”
“No, I don't, or at least not in the context you're implying.” Alpha's frown deepened. “What happened with Discord?”
“Another memory I'm almost glad you don't have back...”
“Almost?” Wolf snorted. “You'd tell her what happened if it was almost.”
“It's best that she recovers them on her own. It seems to be working well enough.”
“She didn't remember anything about the bugganes, according to what I got out of Rookwind,” Wolf pointed out. “That seems to be a rather large gap in her memory, and an important one, if she's going to be a queen again.”
“I've already asked Rookwind to prepare me a full briefing on all security threats to the Queendom, major and minor, listed in order of decreasing importance, by tomorrow,” Alpha said. “I've also dispatched a few servants to the older portions of the castle, where the library is, to find as much information on Domhan as they can – encyclopedias, travel guides, biological theses, anything that could help me get up to speed. I need to know as much as I can if I'm going to be a Queen again.” She left out the part Beta knew was there anyways – because Beta isn't going to tell me any of it. Because Beta is a petty tyrant who can't stand to share power. Because Beta has worked for two thousand years to rule a nation built for three, by herself, and obviously put herself through all that stress, aggravation, and pain for her own selfish desire for power to be sated.
Don't let Keen Eye get to you, she warned herself. She'll come around eventually.
But kelpie parents often named their children with near prophetic precision. She'd been born Keen Eye, her named hadn't changed with marriage, and she had a keen eye for weaknesses and vulnerabilities born into her to match a wolf. Was Beta terrified of change? No, of course not – she got that wrong. But did she want to share power again?
Of course I do. Even as a Nightmare I was willing to.
But if she hadn't realized what she was doing there, at that ring of standing stones, would she have been content to do that forever? When Proxi inevitably demanded she step down, would she be content to let her power slip away...or would there have been another War of Nightmares to outdo the first?
“There are none,” she said, confusing Alpha visibly.
“What?” her sister asked.
“There are no encyclopedias,” she replied. “No encyclopedias, no travel guides, no biological theses. No spell books. No doctoral papers on physics. The peasants can barely read, much less write. The nobles never saw much need for it either. You might find some atlases, but that's all. Tax records are the only places where you'll find centralized info on imports, exports, local production, and population figures. Centralized compendiums of general knowledge, though, you won't.”
“Why?”
“Someone tried to make books cheaper and more widespread with a machine once, but I quashed that fast,” she explained. “Any stability I might have been able to establish would have been swept away by that invention. It would have led to chaos.” You were terrified that society would start to change with it. “The whole social order would have collapsed like a house of cards without a bottom tier.” You feared the collapse of the nobility under their own weight. “It would have been too much of a change, too fast. You'd be too far in over your head to ever catch up when you returned.” The revolution would follow and knock you back off your throne and into powerless, semi-religious obscurity! “I did it to make things simpler for you!”
“Nobody is accusing you of anything,” Wolf murmured. “Why are you being so defensive?”
“Calm down, Beta,” Alpha admonished her. “You're among friends.”
“I know that,” she retorted irritably. Did they really think she didn't recognize that? “I know that!”
“Then get control of yourself and let's try to stop shouting.” Wolf grimaced. “You're hurting my ears.”
“I didn't invite you down here!” she snapped. “I don't need your meddling.”
“She's an old friend, Beta,” Alpha sighed, rubbing a hoof over her face. “And I invited her down here. We're co-Queens, remember?”
“Not yet!” she blurted out, and almost instantly regretted it. Wolf cocked an eyebrow at her. Alpha appeared to be surprised. “You're not my equal again – I mean, we're not co-Queens again because - “ She shook her head. “I need more time to think. Good night.” She turned to leave.
“Why?” Alpha asked. She had her surprise under control, and her voice sounded concerned, but Beta was probably imagining things.
“You don't have your memories back fully yet!” she rationalized, whirling back around to face Alpha. “You have all the memories and experience of a barely-mature horned kelpie thing from Celestia's world! That's barely enough for you to run a storefront, much less a country! I have over four billion years of memories running around in my head” - and it's still not enough to drown out one mistake - “and two thousand years of experience in running Domhan. I can forgive the lack of experience, but you need those memories back before I can, in good conscience, give you equal authority to me again!”
“If I'm not going to be a Queen again until I get my memories back,” Alpha asked quietly, “what is the point of this tour?” Beta realized with a start that any trace of her sister's latest life had abruptly disappeared from her eyes. They had age behind them now, if not experience.
“I – to familiarize the nobles with - “ She ran out of explanation. “I need more time to think.”
“Wouldn't a tour to help me recover my memories make more sense?” her sister suggested.
“Sure, of course!” Beta exclaimed sweetly. She'd called upon her magic, and reached through that to a much darker place in her soul, before she even realized what she was planning. “Let's start right now!”
With a flash of darkness and a feeling like she'd just been dunked in slime, Beta had teleported herself and Alpha out of the observatory tower. Their surroundings shifted from bronze and brass and clockwork to dark trees, soft grass, and thorny vines. They were in a clearing in a forest, on the top of a hill. Through the curtain of dead vines that hung from the gnarled trees, a sea of treetops was visible, barely, extending to a distant horizon. A cold wind rushed past them and stirred the dead leaves that littered the ground. They were facing each other from opposite sides of an upright stone slab, badly weathered by age; Beta knew what was on the side facing Alpha.
“You always liked spending time up here. She did, too,” she said. She realized after she said it that her voice had had a hard edge to it, much harder than intended. Too late to turn back now. “I made sure to bury her here when the end came. I was alone. I don't think I ever told her family where I buried her. I made sure Proxima wasn't overhead that night; if she could have, I think she might have wanted to be here when she was buried, and to force her to watch from a distance would have been almost as cruel as what you did. Proxi always was fond of her. You made sure she could never be here.”
Alpha was completely, utterly silent. Her eyes were fixed on the slab.
“Maybe it'll trigger some useful memories,” Beta finished, her voice softening. After a few moments of silence, she cleared her throat. “I...I think I should be alone for a while.”
She teleported away again. Alpha remained behind, silently. One of the oldest kelpie burial customs was a silent vigil by loved ones over the grave of the deceased; she remembered that much now, at least. She slowly sat down, still facing the tombstone. After two thousand years of absence, she thought it was about time to finish Watchful Eye's funeral.
-----
That day, it began to rain.
Rainbow Dash found herself bringing up the rear of a column of kelpie fillies and colts as they trudged through the waterlogged forest towards home – she'd never actually gotten the name of the village. If that white wolf pup hadn't been with them, she doubted she would have been able to find the place again. Thankfully, he seemed to know where he was going, only occasionally stopping by a tree or a bush to sniff for a while. Such breaks were always followed by a sharp change in course, but her directional sense told her they weren't going around in circles, so she let him keep point. The other wolf pups had conferred with him for a brief time before spreading out and taking positions along the sides of their column. They marched like that for hours, and the whole time she kept looking over her shoulder, certain they were still being followed, but nothing ever materialized behind them, and nothing ever burrowed beneath them. They were safe, but that safety had come at the price of another living thing.
It's a buggane, she reminded herself. It's a monster! It was going to roast these foals alive and eat them! I had to kill it!
You had to stun it, she would counter. You could've cut that lightning bolt off before it died!
No, I couldn't have! I didn't know how! Hay, I didn't even mean for it to be that powerful in the first place!
Beings die in battle. It would have had no qualms about killing you.
There it was – that voice again. She frowned as they wound their way through the dripping trees. It was starting to distinguish itself in her mind – she knew it was somepony else's voice, but she didn't know whose it was. Which, of course, meant it was probably another past life come back to haunt her. Cloud Ferry had said their were two of them, gathering themselves back together – a zebra and a bat-pony. She wondered which one was coming to the surface now.
Call me crazy, but I don't think it's the zebra, she thought, grimacing. She hopped over a log, glanced back over her shoulder again, and continued along her way. It's not rhyming nearly enough.
The rain shower refused to abate as they entered more familiar parts of the forest. It came down as a light, foggy mist, the drops almost seeming to hang in the air, hesitating on their way to the ground to create a greyish haze that choked the air and soaked her coat. As if as a sort of consolation prize, nothing stuck to her, but it was miserable all the same. Mud clung to her hooves – naturally, not due to any weird property of her coat – whenever she had the misfortune to step in a puddle. Fat drops of water would drip from the tree branches and plink off her snout and mane and ears and annoy her to no end. Add that to the fact that she couldn't see five feet in front of her thanks to the trees, and her natural claustrophobia, and the walk through the forest became a living hell. Worse still, it was a hell she had to endure, because flying up above the canopy and getting some space would mean leaving the children to the mercy of the forest – and as brave as the wolf pups were, she had no doubt that if the bugganes found them again, they'd be squashed like insects.
When they came to the edge of the woods, where trees gave way to a muddy morass of fallow farmland, she let out an audible sigh of relief, eliciting a few giggles from the fillies. Home free! Let the bugganes find them now – they were within screaming distance of the village, and Streamwalker's wolf pack! She rose into a low hover, her wings sounding like rolling thunder at a great distance as she matched pace with the white pup at the column head, whose tail was wagging and altogether looked very pleased with himself.
“Good job getting us back!” she told him, which only made him even more pleased.
“Thank you, great one,” he replied. “My father will be very happy.”
“He better be. We'd still be lost in the woods if it weren't for you, squirt,” she chuckled. “Hey, who is your dad, anyways?”
“A great pack father!” he declared proudly. He hopped over a wide mud puddle, fell short of the far rim, and shook himself to get the mud off – earning a peeved, “hey, watch the feathers!” from Dash – before continuing. “He's killed eight bugganes alone, twenty with the help of my brothers and sisters, and defeated an alpha of a city-pack in a duel when he was only two years mature!”
“Does this 'great pack father' have a name?”
“He always told me that deeds are more important than words,” the pup said, “but he does. His name is Streamwalker.”
“I would have thought it was obvious, considering his coat color,” Cloud Ferry remarked from behind Dash. Irritated, she flipped over so she was flying backwards and faced the phantom unicorn, who – despite her incorporealness – was stepping carefully around mud puddles anyways.
“White could be a common coat color with wolves!” she retorted defensively. “It's like what Twilight says sometimes – something about correlation and causation I think.”
“But a stolen pup, with a white coat, from a town where a wolf with a white coat apparently knows the inhabitants – that didn't send up flags?” Ferry pressed. Dash shook her head; she sighed. “You're hopeless.”
“Because I don't jump to conclusions?”
“Because you fail to pick up on obvious hints!” Distracted, Cloud Ferry stepped in a mud puddle. Dash laughed. Ferry frowned and continued walking, completely unsullied. “How you managed to navigate the world before I came back baffles me.”
“I was doing it better than you, at least, if you look at how many friends I had!”
“This again?” Cloud Ferry groaned. “Neither of us are qualified to judge based on that, because neither of us knows how many friends I had.”
“Too few to remember?”
“Let us see how well you remember your life after a few hundred years of dissolution,” she hissed. And then she vanished and left Dash in welcome silence, at least in her own head.
They entered the village, and the place was silent except for the constant rain. The foals noticed the state their homes were in soon enough; she could see them cringe as the ruined houses of the village center came into view. Tears glistened in the eyes of a few; they mixed with the rainwater and were indistinguishable from that when they escaped their eyes, if they did. She couldn't tell. After being minutes away from being dinner, she couldn't think seeing their homes damaged a bit would be enough to make them cry. But, in a few cases, at least, it came close.
Despite the rain, when she led her bedraggled procession of foals and pups onto the village, Grass Field and Streamwalker were waiting for them. Many of the other kelpies were clustered around a house at the far end of the field, pushing stones back into place and propping the doorframe up – repairing the place. Those among them who were parents came running the instant they saw them return. Grass Field, who had been in deep conversation with Streamwalker, came galloping as well. The white wolf merely sat stoically and watched the reunions happen.
Rainbow Dash beat her wings and rose above the foals, giving the parents space. She glided over to Streamwalker and took a seat herself, ignoring the dampness of the grass.
“Told you I'd get them back before sundown,” she said, giving him a cocky grin. Streamwalker snorted.
“You can barely tell it remains in the sky,” he responded. “I see the pups are unharmed. Good. Their mothers would have had my ribs for - “
The white wolf pup squeezed out of the tangle of tearful parents and foals, shook himself dry futilely, and dashed over to where they sat. Streamwalker laughed as the pup skidded into him, and gave him a nuzzle.
“I made sure the kelpies were safe on our return!” the pup proclaimed proudly. “Shorttail, Dirtfoot, and Liontooth helped, but I led the way and took us around the major dangers you warned me about, father!”
“We'd have been lost if it wasn't for him,” Dash confirmed. “He did a great job finding his way through there. I probably would have just had us wandering around in circles.”
“The great one saved us,” the pup added. “The bugganes were too many for me to save us myself. I think she is crazy, though. She talks to herself.”
Streamwalker chuckled. “Windshear, she may be crazy, but she got you out of the bugganes' cookpot. I would follow her into the seven hells if she asked me to.”
“Mission accomplished,” Cloud Ferry whispered in Dash's ear. “Though I somehow doubt Ghealach will let us rest on our laurels. So many villages, after all...you have to win their loyalty. Perhaps we should begin counting sand grains? I'm sure we'll have that finished by the time we've visited every village on this Celestia-forsaken chunk of rock!”
“We can't leave here yet,” she replied, ignoring Ferry's sarcasm. “Those bugganes are still there. They could try to attack again at any time! And something that buggane in the cave said is still bugging me.”
“Crazy,” Windshear, the white pup, commented with a nod.
“It spoke?” Streamwalker asked. He gave Dash his full attention, a grave look on his face. “Bugganes are fools when it comes to secrets. Did it betray anything of value in eradicating this group?”
“Not directly,” she answered. “But it did mention something about a boss giving it orders.”
“Every primitive tribe has a chieftain,” Cloud Ferry said dismissively. “It's nothing to throw yourself back into mortal danger over.”
“There is something different about this council,” Streamwalker murmured thoughtfully. He turned away from Dash. “There is obviously a greater mind overseeing them. Their caution in their movements is uncharacteristic, and now a reference to a single leader rather than a loose association of individuals with equal power...how many fires lit did you spot in the cave mouths?”
“Uh, forty, maybe?” She shrugged. “I didn't count. There were a lot, though.”
“Forty fires?” He sounded shocked. “More than I would have guessed from a perspective on the forest floor. They are either lighting more fires to disguise their numbers – which has its own worrying implications – or this council is large, far larger than anything I have experience with.” He stood up. “I will go and rally my pack. We shall den here for the time being, to protect the village and provide a secure base from which to strike at these bugganes. Can I count on your help, great one?”
“No,” Cloud Ferry answered.
“I'll do whatever I can,” Dash replied instead. Streamwalker nodded.
“Windshear, stay here with the rest of the pups. I trust you to keep them within the village and not exploring,” he told the pup. To Dash, as he began to lope for the farmlands around the village, and the forest beyond, he said, “My pack has denned an hour or so from here. I will gather them and return by star's height tonight. We shall plan a scouting expedition to investigate these bugganes then.”
“I'll be here,” she said. To make sure those monsters don't try to steal the kids again, she thought.
“I have the impression that stance will be unpopular with Ghealach,” Cloud Ferry remarked. She smirked. “This should be an interesting argument to witness.”
“She can try to make me go find another village all she wants,” Dash said defiantly. “Unless it has Twilight in it, I'm staying here and making sure those bugganes get taken care of before I go.”
“And that, Rainbow Dash, is a stance unpopular with me,” Ferry retorted. “Having two-thirds of your own mind turned against you at once is not a good way to stay mentally stable.”
“I'm already crazy. How much worse can it get?”