The human pulled his cloak tight and shivered. His goose-pimpled skin twitched, still soft and new, slick with blood and sweat. He wasn’t sure if the chill came from the shock of his own body, still harrowed by the change or just the sudden lack of fur.
It was all familiar, and yet so strange. As he’d grown taller, the world grew faint and hard to grasp. The cavern’s dim light was dimmer, the scope of his vision shrunk with his eyes. The human felt near-blind, squinting at pony silhouettes in the feeble light. He knew one from the other by height and hoofbeats. The background noise of breathing and muffled rainfall, of bat squeaks and mouse paws scurrying along the wall; it was all gone. He’d forgotten what silence was like. Not calm before the storm or the world holding its breath, just the consequence of flat, immobile ears.
The chill of the floor soaked into the soles of his soft feet. His toes wiggled in the dirt, getting used to themselves. Four iron horseshoes lay in his lap, still smooth and sturdy, not a week off Topsoil’s worktable. The human’s left hand idly rubbed the little caulkins the mountain range was named for. The right hand rested on Sunshower’s armored back. It hadn’t moved since the change.
The pegasus sat close enough for the human to see the gleam of her eyes when she looked back at him. They were at eye level, she standing at full height and he still curled against the wall. She was so much smaller and the human could not understand it at all. He could not remember a moment when she hadn’t towered over him. Now, taller than Heartstrings but shorter than Star Swirl, Sunshower just barely reached his ribs. It was madness. How did all of that fit into such a little pony?
“…but not by much.”
The human sat up at the sound of the pegasus’ voice. “Sorry, did you say something?”
Sunshower’s frown was practically audible. “You should not allow your attention to wander in that way. It is reckless. I was saying that Star Swirl was incorrect. You are not hairless at all, it is only that your fur is thin.” She nosed the hair dusting along his arm. “From the way you are shaking, I do not think it keeps you very warm.”
“It doesn’t.” The human scratched the back of her ear with one finger, the rest threading through her mane. It felt airy and smooth, the same as her voice.
“If your fur does not warm you then why do you have it at all?”
He shrugged. “One of our many mysteries, I suppose.”
Something warm and soft curled over the human’s feet. Heartstrings, he knew from the stout size and the lack of clothes.
“Is that helpin’ the chill any?”
“Yes,” the man said. “But socks would be better.”
He looked out into the dark, in the direction of crisp hoofsteps clipping from one wall to the other in anxious canter. Star Swirl would wear a groove in the rocks at this rate. He had to be worried, for he hadn’t even bothered to argue when Sunshower called him wrong. There was a break in the canter and the unicorn came pattering up to them.
Star Swirl’s beard tickled as he looked the human over head to toe. “How are you feeling?”
It was not a question, but an appraisal. A question nesting many more: ‘How long until you can walk again?’ ‘Could you run if you had to?’ ‘Are you quite aware the dawn is coming?’ ‘Do you have a plan?’ and ‘Was the change painful as it sounded? Tell me it wasn’t.’
The human rubbed his calves. Propped against the wall and the oilskin draped all about him, he looked like a great green bell. “Better, I think.”
The numbness in his legs in slow decline, the man now felt his knees again, though he wasn’t sure if they could support him. His head swam and his stomach warped as his blood burned, skin stung, and bones ached. He had the copper tang of blood in his mouth and a gentle, pressing suspicion that he ought to run for his life.
“Yeah. All in all, better than my last visit to Sill. Can you give me some space?”
The unicorns pulled away. Sunshower stepped back but kept close.
The human gripped the wall and dug his nails into the pale rock as he pulled himself up. It took a few tries. His knees bent and shook and gave out on him more than once. Slowly, carefully, he took his hand from the wall and stepped back. He stood in an old vulture hunch, but stood nonetheless. And he remained that way. The man sighed and offered a little smile in the ponies’ direction.
“Aye, that’s a lovely sight.” The human felt Heartstrings’ smile as she nosed him. “Good t’have you back.”
“Hm.” Sunshower tilted her head and stepped back for a better look. “I presumed you to be taller.”
Star Swirl sat back and watched for a long time before quietly saying, “You look different…”
“I do?” The human didn’t think he felt all that different. “How?”
“I…” The stargazer fell quiet again. His bells tinkled as he fiddled with them. Unsaid words fattened on his tongue and made it clumsy. When he spoke again, his voice was small. Perhaps a bit sad. It was hard to tell with Star Swirl sometimes. “I’m not…entirely sure. Smaller, somehow. I think. Or lighter.” He sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry, nevermind it. ‘Tisn’t important now.”
“If you say so.” The human looked down at himself, frowning, and clasped his cloak shut. He rubbed a sore spot on his thigh and paused. The skin felt different there; rough and slightly elevated, like a scab or a scar. He felt the shape of it rise and flare out as a starburst would. Or a flower. The human drew his hand back and tried to think of something else.
“Heartstrings, was the dagger the only thing you saved?” He didn’t remember what became of his supplies, just a vague sensation of the load lightening as he ran through the city. “Maybe you found another knife?”
“Afraid not,” Heartstrings sighed. “We never saw anythin’ of your supply. I had the dagger only on account of ye dropping it before runnin’ off. Although…” She flipped her saddlebag open and nosed through it. “Ah do haff thsh,” she muffled, mouth full of something too big to hold.
The human reached to help her pull it out: a tight roll of denim and cotton, lined all over in stiff stitching. He grinned as he unfolded it. The trousers were a humble but sturdy collage of blues and greys, patched and re-patched over the decades, grown soft with time. Putting them on, they fit a bit looser than he remembered.
“Star Swirl went back an’ took it along just before we left the land with the glass tower. I expect ye were too distracted t’bother saving it.” Heartstrings flipped her tail with a sniff. “Frankly, I still cannae fathom why any creature’d bother with clothes. ‘Tis easier to move about without ‘em.”
“Easy to say for someone who grows her own coat.” The man picked a soft bit of fuzz clinging to the back pocket. “Speaking of which, why’s it so furry?”
Star Swirl looked over his shoulder. “Doubtless, the bushwoolies slept on it. They get into everything.”
“Oh. What’s a bushwoolie?”
“Annoying.” The unicorn’s beard crinkled as he sneered.
The human lifted his head. He could see Star Swirl, he realized. He could see all of them in their merry colors, features smudged by shadows. There was a muted light, the amber tips flickering on his shoulders. It was not yet dawn and Heartstrings’ horn was still dark, so the only source…
Slowly, the man turned to stare at the scar of firelight bleeding through the crack in the wall. He brushed his thumb along the sharp edge of the jag and felt warm air on the other side. When he put his eye against it, the lean angle kept him from seeing anything more than the liquid slide of shadows. He heard hushed, rapid whispers of an unseen voice…no, two. Maybe more?
His heart skipped. His weariness entirely forgotten, the human pressed himself against the wall, fumbling for a better angle, for a bigger fracture. Some way he could see. Some way he could know for certain. Eagerly frightened and with thoughtless volume, he said it.
“Hello?!”
The whispers and movement stopped dead.
“Oh...” The human blanched. “Oh, no.”
The light pulled away from him, fading into that vast place he couldn’t follow. His voice pinched into a whisper. “No. No, no, no, don’t. Please don’t.”
The human swept his hand over his face and tried to keep calm. He helplessly looked down at Star Swirl, who looked back with quiet, busy eyes. There had to be something. Something he could do or say to make them wait, to speak to him, to look at him.
The light was almost gone.
Slowly, careful not to cut himself on the obsidian, the human wormed his fingers through the crack in the wall. The other side was soft and warm on his fingertips, with hardness underneath. Moss. He inched in up to his third knuckle and waggled the digits as peacefully as he could.
The human waited. His hand blocked the light (if it was still there at all) and he heard no whispers. His shoulder hurt from pressing at the rock. He closed his eyes and sighed.
Then he felt it. A gentle brush of skin on his fingertip. The human’s arm jerked and almost pulled back in surprise.
A voice on the other side snickered. Another one whispered something harsh.
Gentle and unhurried, the hand touched his again. A little tap on his knuckle, brushing down to the nail. The unseen fingers were slim and smaller than his own, with hangnails that poked against his skin. They wrapped around his knuckles and squeezed tight.
The human squeezed back. “Hello?” He said it gently this time.
“Mi bedaŭras, mi ne komprenas...” The voice was silvery and soft. It reminded him of the blackbirds that caught grasshoppers by the library. “Kiom estos kun vi?”
Another voice—smoky and peacock proud—crowed, “A-ha! Mi diris al vi!”
The human sighed. Of course. This was what he got for giving up on the language books. He knew only two languages and this was not one of them. The man rubbed his chin with his free hand, looking over his shoulder and down the path. “Hm.”
It could be dangerous. There was a strong chance it was what had summoned the Roc to the dead city before. I shouldn’t.
The slim fingers patted his hand reassuringly.
The human shook his head, frowning. I’m doing it anyway. Loud as he dared—which was not loud at all—he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. One long note, two short, and a long one again. The melody was sweet and simple to remember, a signal from the twilight of the Old World to greet and filter newcomers: ‘I mean no harm’.
But there was no way to know if anybody outside his own little part of the world knew it. Maybe it was unique to his mother’s people and never shared for fear of raiders or slavers misusing it. And whoever couched on the other side of that wall did not speak his mother’s language. But humans taught other humans, and if all of them were in there, then maybe. Maybe.
He waited.
Wet and stumbling, the whistle came back to him. Five notes: two long, three short, all absolutely beautiful. A little song of fire, a candle dancing in the dark. The human felt the embers of it even as the hand drew back and the amber light faded.
The human took back his hand and rubbed his palms across his eyes. He took one last look at the wall, then down at the little ponies crowded around him, silhouettes in the dark once more. He couldn’t see the mist, though he felt the damp of it prowl between his fingertips.
The long pale path unrolled before them. Eyes straight ahead, the human adjusted his cloak and walked. Sunshower met his clipped pace foot to hoof, wings arced high and keen.
The unicorns came side by side just behind. Heartstrings watched the crack in the wall dilute to hairline veins branching to follow them. “How many d’you think were in there?” She asked it to herself, not realizing she’d spoken aloud until she saw the human look in the same direction.
“I heard at least two,” the human said. He had an odd expression Heartstrings had never seen before; all flashpoint eyes and soft, stiff lines. “But I couldn’t know for sure. Did any you hear others?”
“There might have been a third. I did hear something else moving about, but it might have been a dog.” Star Swirl flicked his tail thoughtfully. “’Tis interesting they were there at all. I’d have presumed the humans to be sleeping.”
“A night patrol was my presumption,” said Sunshower. She rolled her shoulders under her armor. “I do not know and I do not think it matters. They know you are here now, regardless. Further knowledge can be collected at a later time.”
The pegasus shook water from her ears. Gashes in the ceiling frayed to let the rain in, stuttering between a drizzle and shower. “What I do not understand is why my father finds all of this necessary. If he wished to be near humans, could he not have allied himself with another group of them? The griffons did it, so it cannot be very difficult. Or if he wanted to observe, could he not have observed them in their own territories?”
Sunshower sighed, shaking her head. “All that is accomplished in capture is antagonization and resentment. It discourages observation. It is counter-productive and illogical. I do not understand.” A chill crept up her spine at another possibility: that her father was not operating logically at all.
“Perhaps. But I don’t think any of those things are what your da’s truly after.” Star Swirl came up so they were face to face. “If it was, the bargain would be settled and the Roc long gone. Nay, he wants something else.”
“What?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know.”
“You are a liar.”
Star Swirl looked at the tattered edge of his cape and said nothing.
The rain thickened as the cavern wore down. Light crawled across the rock, sallow and tepid and the color of sour milk. It was not yet dawn.
The human made an unhappy sound deep in his throat. Sunshower looked up at him, but he’d put his hood up against the rain and she could not see his face. His brown spidery hands held his cloak together in a tight clutch.
Sunshower bumped her nose against him. “It is beneficial for living creatures to breathe,” she whispered. There was a long exhale. A hand reached down and rested on her mane. It shook, the rest of him dead still.
It was bright enough for the human to see now. The White Roc was smaller than he remembered.
They had not approached the Roc, nor had the Roc come upon them. In the shift of mist, in the space between raindrops, he was simply there after not being there. For a silly moment, the human wondered if it had been there the entire time, watching Cinquefoil and Sunshower lean on each other in the dark.
Sunshower clapped her wings at the pale miasma. Combers of fog curled away, up and into the dark and naked sky. Rain hissed above but did not touch their heads. The ground beneath them was bone dry, save for the wet spots that dripped off their hair and clothes.
The Roc bent away from them, head tucked against its wing. Against the moonless, sunless sky, he was smaller. Not in size—for the Roc still dwarfed Topsoil’s house, its talons longer than the human was tall—but in perspective. Great in might and awe, still washed in that wretched, acidic aura of futility, but not incomprehensible: a gyrfalcon of incredible size, not white but bereft of color. Nesting miles above the lesser Caulkin mountains, he was a great tear in the sky. A hole in the universe. The man knew where the White Roc ended and began, for the pre-dawn sky told him so. He held that knowledge tight as he could, for he knew he would forget when the sun returned.
Star Swirl crept ahead, hoof smothering the bells as he leaned and stretched to peep around the snowy hill of Roc shoulders. It was barely visible, the bulk of the creature crowded so much of it, but there it was. A wide concave dipping down and down into Sill. The caldera of the Volcano of Gloom, now the White Roc’s nest. It tipped eastward at a slant, as if Sill wore a lopsided cap. A bolt of lightning lit the Caulkins and the unicorn saw the inner walls, hard, slick, and violet.
“Smoozed all within,” he whispered. The stargazer’s glance was brief, for no sooner did he stumble to avoid the wall of feathers rising to block the view.
The Roc clacked its ivory beak, tilting his head to the side to peer at them all. The sharp line of his wing cut the belly of the rainclouds as it stretched. Fog melted into its chest as it breathed. The white pupil flicked across inky sclera, bright as a fireflower’s flash and dark as what came after.
The human grit his teeth against the instinct to bolt and tried to remember to breathe.
Sunshower crouched low and careful, feathers full and bristling. Her ears drooped against her head, eyes flicking from Roc talons to the stiletto in the human’s white-knuckled hand. He held it deftly; indeed, she believed he knew how to use it. But there were weapons and then there were desperations. A toothpick against a manticore would do better.
That dagger was for backstabbings in back alleys and slitting throats in the shadows. Sunshower frowned at the sleek line of feathers shining at the Roc’s neck. A slash across that throat—if it could be done at all—was a bleeding papercut. Presuming it even bled. And Sunshower still could not feel the air in her feathers, keenly bladed and near useless. The pegasus snorted as the Roc blinked at them again and set her hooves firm.
The sound made the human glance down and for a second his gaze met Sunshower’s, then skipped away. He didn’t watch the Roc, nor the ponies, but Sill as it spread out wide and tall beneath his feet. Sweat beaded on his nose and he breathed shakily in the high, thin air. Watching him, Sunshower’s feathers relaxed, though only a little.
The White Roc’s shoulders rolled as he pulled to his feet. He fluffed his feathers and the little noise it made was like splintering glass. If the human didn’t know better, he might have called the Roc amused. The mountain sighed as the talons lashed out and bore down. The human brushed out of reach in a sweep of green.
Sunshower flared her wings and galloped. She flung herself high with a quick twist to her shoulder to angle the blades. She felt them pierce the soft flesh of the Roc’s leg just before she fell away. It was like striking cumulus, spongy and firm. The Roc clapped his wings as the pegasus whirled on hoof and ran for him again.
The rush of air tangled in her wings, brushing Sunshower aside in the billows of dust and grit flaring up from Sill. She sneezed and cursed and flapped to clear her sight. The mist coagulated into a heavy fog that hurt her eyes. Sunshower barely saw the green streak of human pulling away or Roc lifting up and after him in one smooth wing stroke.
Sunshower coughed, squinting against the light of dawn, bright, pink, and cold.
One knife he had. The human found it in the woods one autumn day, about a year before his mother died. He did not know where it had come from or who held it before him. It had no legacy, no history, and was worthless against the Roc. Still, it was his. He gripped the rosewood handle firmly. It would not be dropped again.
The human tore down the toothed face of Sill in long, nimble leaps. His legs burned to burst into a deep-barreled gallop to take him far and away to where the Roc could not reach. But the Mustangian legs were gone and the Roc could not be outrun, out-fought, or outlasted.
Above, the sunlight swelled. The clouds dipped, fat, white, and prosperous. The man braced as the Roc pulled high into the air. His eye flicked between the path ahead and the shift of clouds above. Through the cauliflower plumes, he saw the wings narrow to an arrowhead stoop.
The White Roc plummeted. The human licked his cracked lips and jumped into a sprint. He ducked and rolled under the talons. He popped up on the opposite side, scrambling out from under the Roc’s belly on all fours. Shoulders pressed low, the human grabbed a high jut of rock and swung into a crevice.
It was not so deep to be called a cave, not so shallow for a hollow. A narrow axe wound just wide enough for the man’s shoulders. In a scramble, the human shoved deep as he could until he could fit no more of himself. The sky was a faraway scratch of pink and white in the dark. He felt the Roc’s eyes on him through the stone and took a deep breath.
He waited.
Dust sprinkled on his hood. A chunk of rock the size of his fist fell near his feet. Then another. Sill groaned. The human crouched, cloak drawn close as the walls crumpled around him. The moaning clatter of rock and rubble was better than the scream of iron, he decided.
He kept still and waited. The roof trembled.
The human rubbed the handle of his dagger and ignored the dread that iced through his stomach. He watched and did not move.
Talons punctured the roof. They did not tear through the rock as the human thought they would. The tip pierced gabbro and the roof eroded. A hundred-year process filed down to seconds. It fell away with no protest, save the crunch of gravel. A collapse easy and gentle as one of Pyrite’s bubbles against the human’s fingers.
The human swallowed hard and braced. The sunlight hit his shoulders. He bolted, squirreling over the stacks of grey and violet gravel. His eyes fixed on another bolt hole, tucked in far and away. He picked up the pace. Stones scraped his feet and cut into his palm as he climbed down and down the mountainside. He was well past the rainy curtain now, the rockface slick with wet.
Little waterfalls splashed on his back as he pressed into another crevice. Waited for the Roc to rip in after him. Off again before the gravel hit the ground.
A month up and down and sideways in the Caulkins, the human knew mountains as well as he’d known his city. He scaled Sill’s lumbering sides like fences. The bounce from rock to rock was the bounce from brick to brick; a leap of crags no different than the leap of rooftops; a skid down muddy scree was the loping slide for fire escapes. He slipped into crevices as he’d slipped under fallen pipe and rafter.
The human thought of Sill and cities and kept his eye on rock crumbling under Roc. He did not think of the struggle for breath in the high, thin air. He did not think of how the Roc blurred as his vision swam. And he did not think of the screaming agony in his feet and the wet, red stickiness beneath them. Or at least, he tried.
The human leaned against a wall and rubbed his temples as the world tipped and spun. He stumbled as the Roc tore another bolt hole out of Sill. His arms shook as he climbed up and into another hollow, barely deep enough to fit him. Scrambled away again as that came crashing down. Mud and grit splattered his green coat a sickly shade of brown. Just another bit of debris tumbling down the slope.
A wall of feathers fanned over his head and the human fell back from the next bolt hole as the beak snapped at his hood. His hands just barely caught him as he fell. It took three tries to stand again.
The drizzle swelled into a downpour. The human didn’t know if he heard the hiss of the rain or the hourglass cry of the Roc. The hood slipped back and his hair flopped in his eyes, wet and heavy. He shook his head to clear it as he ran.
A coppery smell mingled with rain and sweat and mud. The ground beneath his tattered feet seized and trembled as if in death throes. Sill groaned under the White Roc’s weight. The human coughed and jumped to a lower crag, landed hard. When the rocks hit his feet, he didn’t bother to bite back his scream.
His steps were uneven, stride sloppy. He felt the chilled steel of the dagger with his thumb and remembered the last time this blade went to work; against a boar of long tusk and short temper. That had been a mistake. Little, thin, and clever, this knife was never meant for hunting, nor for fighting. It was enough.
The human blinked, bleary-eyed at the mount around him. A tiny smile flickered on his face. He swallowed the rising bile in his throat and went on. He did not see the grey figure thundering towards him.
Sunshower braced herself as the mountain jostled beneath her. She balanced on an angled precipice, Star Swirl curled up a little distance away. If the pegasus stretched her neck she could spot Heartstrings on a muddy shelf several feet below them, tight-lipped and fidgeting like a finch. She had complained of the thin air—what that was about, the pegasus had no idea, for the air seemed perfectly normal—and of unstable footing. Originally, Sunshower brushed this off as another unnecessary precaution, for everypony knew Sill was solid as the sky. Now, as chunks of mountain tumbled away in muddy clusters, she was not so sure.
A voice in the corner of her mind warned her to get to safer ground, that her wings might not hold her if the cliff collapsed. Sunshower did not hear it. She was watching the human. Grousing, she beat back a column of fog with a wing. Or she tried to watch the human, anyway. The fog coalesced for every inch the sun climbed, for each shudder of Sill.
If Sunshower squinted and shooed the mist at the right time and the right angle, she could see a shot of green skittering lizard-quick down the rocks. Rarely she saw him, but there was no trouble hearing him. The wheeze of lungs. The wet slap of sole on stone. The crunch of gravel when he pushed off in a leap and the cry of pain when he landed, bitten back as he moved again.
“I cannot see.” The pegasus stamped as she clapped off another sheet of fog, then another. The air around her cleared, but there was nothing to be done for the clouds and fog beneath them and from what she could tell, the human’s path spiraled downwards. The wind swung grit in her eyes and by the time she opened them again she’d no idea where he’d gone. She heard the collapse of rock and someone cried out. “Oh! Tartarus take it, I cannot see!”
She wheeled on Star Swirl with a toss of her head. “And you! What is the matter with you? How can you be at rest in this inclement hour?” Sunshower was certain she looked ridiculous, muddily armored and feathers fluffed out like some capricious cockerel, but she did not care.
Star Swirl lay curled in a little depression, neck bent to his chest like a resting swan. Slowly, he opened an eyelid. “Firstly, he is your bloodfeather, not mine. You’ve more reason for alarm than I.” The eye closed again. “Secondly, this is your first time seeing the Roc at the hunt and my second. I have seen it once before and am in no hurry to see again, presuming I could see it at all in this fog.” His tail flicked under his cape. “And thirdly, I am not calm. I am still. There is a difference.”
“Pedantics.” Sunshower paced the cliff in tight semicircles, waggling her ears for the sounds of pursuit. It was oddly silent out there. “You say you saw this before. Do you believe he has a chance this time?”
“He might.” The eye slid open again. The unicorn waited a moment before saying, “I don’t like to make absolutes with humans. However…” The other eye opened and blinked down into the fog. He twitched his ears. “I think if the White Roc could be beaten by humans at all, I doubt they’d be in Sill in the first place. Or at least, not so many of them for so long.”
Star Swirl’s ears twitched again. He sat up frowning, wet beard plastered to his face. The bells on his cape tinkled as he looked about, back straight and eyes busy. He nickered under his breath.
Sunshower stepped closer. “What?”
The stargazer held up a hoof and crinkled his brow. “’Tis a shift…” His frown deepened as he angled his horn towards the sky. He shook his head as if something were assaulting it. “But I don’t see how…”
The air went warm and dry. The rain waned into a drizzle that dried up before it touched their heads.
Sunshower glanced over her shoulder. The shafts of her quills shivered all at once, spritely and alive. She felt the gentle curve of air waft through them, familiar as breath. Before she could speak of it, she jumped back to shield her eyes from the flash.
When she blinked her vision back—a haze of spots and silhouettes—the blue-white blaze still burned, albeit tamer. It flared in steady pulses like a heartbeat, balanced at the tip of Star Swirl’s horn. The unicorn kicked and wobbled to keep the light steady, as if it could fall off at any moment. He clenched his jaw and the light breathed wide before collapsing on itself, inward and inward until all that was left was a needlepoint of brightness and the telltale hum of magic.
Sunshower’s feathers splayed in astonishment. “How are—”
“Not now, please.” Star Swirl set his hooves hard, ears tight against his skull. His skinny shoulders braced and pushed up and up and up.
There was a soft pop, like air escaping a jar.
Sunshower blinked and the air was clear. The clouds shied away, lifting up and away, tugging sheets of rain with them. Mist and fog flattened as if crushed by a great hoof. A carpet of fuzzy white tendrils at their hooves was all that remained.
Star Swirl collapsed on his haunches with a sigh. “Aye, that ought to be enough to see by.” Sweat glistened on his coat and he gave her the foolish, merry smile of a lush in cider season. “Can’t break the fog, but I can move it at least.” He blinked slowly at the mist and giggled. “It worked so well, even with the Roc about! I wonder why. What’s that look about, Sunshower?”
The pegasus shook the astonishment from her face. “Magic… Y-you performed magic!”
“Aye, so it seems.”
Sunshower met him nose to nose. “But the human said magic wilts in his presence. And the weather never behaves, nor does it yield to weather magic. Explain yourself.”
Heartstrings’ voice drifted up to them, quiet and small. “Star Swirl…”
“That it does,” the stargazer said. “However, as I am sure you have noticed, the human is not in our presence. Still, you’ve a point. ‘Tis an oddity, the spell working so… cleanly. I expected a slow dissipation, not for it all to clap out at once. And with all of them down there, too...” He frowned at the rock beneath his hoof, then up towards the Roc and watched it for a time. “Hm. A puzzlement to be certain, but I prefer not to question fair luck. The important thing is we can see.”
Sunshower wrapped her tail around her hooves. “Yes, we can.”
The fog cleared much of the mount, all but the blankets of cloud and mist dripping down from the White Roc’s feathers. Cirrus curled behind him, pooling out like spilt milk. The ponies waited to see Sill’s familiar toothy pillars and calloused jags. It took a moment for them to realize nothing was there to see.
Muddy rubble splayed out where juts of stone ought to be. The many caves dotting the cliff face had collapsed into shallow craters, or else plunged past themselves and deep into the mount. Sunlight shone into crisp, ragged wounds ripping down the mountainside, Sill’s smoozed inner walls glossy and iridescent. There was a vague scent of moss and the distant crash of waterfalls. Somewhere, a dog barked. Then another. Then so many overlapping it was impossible to know how many or where they came from. It seemed to come from all sides. Mount Sill groaned as landslides fell like tears, trailing scars of open air.
Through it all, Heartstrings was calling, still calling, “Star Swirl, oh, Star Swirl, ye must come down! Ye must come down…”
Sunshower blinked at all of it for a handful of seconds before she shook it off and refocused. A muddy flap of green scrambled over the rubble, ducking the pebbly remains of a boulder falling from the Roc’s claws.
Star Swirl leaned over the pegasus’ shoulder. His eyebrows lifted as he rubbed his beard. He muttered something Sunshower didn’t care to make out.
The Roc’s colorless wings touched the sun. The human blew back tumbling when they came back down. A bright red trail splattered behind him.
The blades hissed as Sunshower’s wings fanned out. If a skinny little unicorn with a stupid haircut could tap into magic, even at Sill’s high elevation, then so could a pegasus. The air against her feathers was weak, as always. Good enough. She climbed the brittle current until Star Swirl grew small.
She prepared to stoop, then paused. Perhaps this was a mistake. It was dishonorable to interrupt a conflict. And Star Swirl was not distressed when he looked out, but curious. Perhaps there was more to what she saw. Perhaps he could handle the Roc after all.
The White Roc swept so low the trees splintered under its belly. The human wobbled, shaking his head. He balanced upon shivering rocks, one hand at the ground, the other upon his knife.
Sunshower’s ears twitched. Under the hourglass hiss of the Roc, over the human’s tattered wheeze and the constant tumble of boulders, she heard something else.
Hoofbeats. Coming fast.
Sunshower trembled in her barding. The hoofbeats grew louder. She could see him now. There was no shame in letting allies fall honorably, but this was not an honorable fight. It could not be allowed.
With a crack of her neck, she gathered the doubt and terror and confusion fluttering in her chest; she gathered it all and molded it, bent it over the anvil of her anger, forged it in ardor’s fire.
Little ponies under Wind Whistler, dear reader, are not lacking in emotion. Indeed, there is so much of it—tumbling and roaring and gnashing and boiling every hour of every day—it becomes hard to stand. They only wait for the proper time and place to use them. That is logic, after all.
Sunshower swept her tongue over her teeth. Quietly, simply, she said, “No.”
Star Swirl jumped back as Sunshower arrowed away, a scatter of dust and feathers behind her. He blinked at them, then out to the pegasus.
Vaguely, Heartstrings’ voice cried out to him again. Quieter this time. “Star Swirl, please!”
The stargazer looked to the pegasus one last time and climbed his way down.
The old mare’s voice was hushed and frantic but when Star Swirl finally came for her, she was unhurt. She was not even afraid. Golden eyes wide and wet, mane tangled as the night he met her, Heartstrings grinned.
Star Swirl tilted his head and frowned. “Sun and stars, mare. What are you on about?”
Heartstrings’ mouth opened and closed with a squeak. She tried to make words but they tangled in her throat and fell out her mouth half-made and stained with giggles. She took his head in her hooves and turned it. “Look.”
He did. “Oh…” was all he said.
The unicorns stood close together and watched.
Slowly, in pairs and trios, alone and in trains of hands holding hands, the humans trickled from Sill.
The human dug his ragged fingernails into the rock and pulled himself up. The world twirled under his feet like a tire swing. Wheezing, he braced himself and locked his eyes on the Roc’s blazing pupil as he plotted the trajectory of his next move. Not that many moves were open to him. The human didn’t know how long he could bear to stand, much less run.
The raptor’s feathers gently fluffed and flattened at his neck. He blinked once, twice. Without breaking the stare, the White Roc tipped into a lazy, circling arc. And there he stayed in stasis, circling, circling, circling without a sound.
The man drew back his hood and watched, frowning. The Roc was still on the move, but he drifted upwards, not down. The human couldn’t feel the slow burn of eyes, nor the press of clouds. His breath came back to him, slow and stable. The rainfall trickled into a languid drip. The fog cleared to reveal the crooked ridge of stone encircling him and the half-mile drop at his back. The human stood upon a plateau, smooth and warm under his bleeding feet.
Hair stood on the back of the human’s neck. He licked his cracked lips and gripped the stiletto. Nothing about this was right. This place was too clear. Too comfortable. The White Roc drove its quarry to exhaustion mentally, physically, and spiritually. A creature merciless and tireless as the ticking of a clock. So why now did—
“Rail!”
The human jerked at the sound of his name. In the corner of his eye, a dart of yellow flit over the rocks. "Sunshower?"
“Rail, your left!”
Too late, he heard the iron clang of shoe on stone. The human spun back as the grey blur crashed into his knees. He caught himself on his hands, kicked as he rolled to slash at the heaving, flailing thing. The dragger whistled as it cut through the air and into flesh. Feathers flew into his face. Whatever was on him drew back as the knife lashed out again. The human kicked the pressure off and hopped to his feet. He spat grit from his mouth and stared.
General Yarak lifted his head and peered back at him. He at full height, and the human crouched, they met nose to muzzle. His old eyes, all alight with spark and fire, held fast to the human’s gaze. He didn’t so much as glance at the blood trickling from his shoulder. Tattered wings fanned like flags at his sides. Ropey muscles lumbered under leathered wrinkles. Calcified by the march of years, every joint coiled tight and ready.
The human had but a moment to gape before the stallion came at him again. He brushed back and stuck out. Dagger clinked against horseshoe as the hooves came at his face. The human jabbed up, felt the blade sink deep and the pony pull back.
The general veered away as the human drew to full height. He kept his eye on the long, spindly legs. Hoofstep matched footstep. The pegasus dodged another dagger strike and launched. Yarak had none of Sunshower’s sprightliness, nor Cinquefoil’s swiftness. He didn’t need it. The general slammed him like a train.
The human went sprawling in clouds of grit. His raw foot scraped the rock and his leg crumpled beneath him. Hooves smashed into his side as he made to rise. The human gritted his teeth and fell back. Wings knocked against his skull. Another hoof stuck his side.
The tip of the knife sliced through sinew, into the crook of Yarak’s wing. Felt him flinch, though he never cried out. The man lifted to his knees, flattened in time to miss another hoof kick. He snatched strings of grey mane and yanked. The general’s head bashed the stone. He stumbled, one eye swollen and bloodshot as the human righted himself.
Yarak lifted his head and twitched his ears as the man drew back. He glanced at the wounds to his wing, his shoulder, the red lines scored along his sides, and scowled. He seemed almost… disappointed. With a toss of his head and greater speed than the human thought possible of the old stallion, Yarak lunged.
Hooves came down. Blade went up. Breath wheezed, coughed, stuttered as horseshoe hit stomach. The shadow of wings fell over his face as the man doubled over. A terrible pressure crushed his chest. He was certain he heard a crack. Somewhere in the flailing commotion of hooves and arms and feathers and blood, the human saw the blaze of yellow against the clouds. Close. Coming closer.
Yarak’s ear perked at the clattered hiss of metal and reared back, balanced two-legged to dodge his daughter’s wingblades. Sunshower skimmed under his hooves, a sharp twist to her back to avoid the human’s touch. The edge of her boot clipped Yarak’s muzzle as she arced up and into the sky.
Sunshower’s mane bannered as she rolled her neck. Her battle whinny, sheer and sharp and brilliant, rang over Sill. She folded her wings and stooped. The blades fanned, angled to strike. She swept Yarak again. He ducked the first blow, but Sunshower swung about and the sharp swat of her wing drove him back.
The human held his ribs and rose to his feet, finally allowed room to stumble back and collect himself. He stretched his neck to see the angry flail of wings and feathers. She moved with a swallow’s deft arc and smooth stroke, her hits elegant and precise to her father’s hammer strikes.
Horseshoe clanged and screeched against barding and blade. Wings clapped the cob’s skull as Sunshower veered low and to right. Just low enough to catch the full impact of Yarak’s headbutt to her soft, unarmored stomach. The mare tottered in the air. The first kick met her helmet with an awful clang. The second caught her chin as she lifted up, too high to hit but low enough for the human to see her spit the mass of red and white.
The general pinned his bleeding, shredded ears. He glanced at the human, then up to his daughter, shaking off the ringing in her ears as she hovered. The cob shook the blood from his coat and stepped back as Sunshower stooped. She missed, skipped up and up to dive at him again.
Yarak stared after her and blinked slow and calm. His brassy eye slid towards the Roc. The clouds pooled together.
Eyes on her father, Sunshower did not see it. She clapped her wings and dove. Colorless feathers brushed beneath her. The mare’s neck jerked in surprise. Her legs pulled in tight as she darted away. She slid and spun from the dishwater talons and climbed higher. The Roc flapped and gave chase.
The human’s throat tightened. Sunshower had nowhere to go but up.
She climbed. The flap of her wings faltered, clumsy and uneven. Struggling. Her legs kicked out, balanced before the Roc’s beak snapped her tail.
She climbed. Too high. She was far too high. Magic thinned with the air as her feathers fought to keep her aloft.
The human’s eye tried to follow her—lost in a gentle storm of clouds, feather, talon, and rain, he knew her only by the wink of the sun on her barding—and cut back down to dodge Yarak’s hooves as the stallion came at him again. His knife sliced through skin and tendon. As he brushed back from the general’s assault, the man thought he saw him smile.
A kick knocked the human back. He looked up just in time to see it.
The shock of yellow. The flap of sea-green against the white and grey sky. Roc talons branching. Clasping. Crushing. The ugly, familiar squeal of metal. Of barding.
The spiral of feathers as she fell.
The human rolled from Yarak’s path and ran. He did not feel the rock scrape his lacerated feet.
But he saw the red stains where she bounced the cliff and tumbled. He felt the tremble of stone when she crashed.
He thought he heard someone scream. He thought it might be him.
The human crouched in the starburst of blood and feathers. He held the scraped, dented armor close. She was frighteningly light, despite the barding. Her snapped wing flopped against his arm. His hand brushed the soft fur at her throat. It moved shallow and quick against his fingertips. Sunshower’s head dipped to her chest. She was unconscious and deeply injured—just how deep, the human didn’t want to wonder—but alive. Nice to know that armor’s good for something.
Gravel crunched underhoof. The human slowly turned towards General Yarak. The old cob crouched low and watched him. One hoof pawed the ground impatiently. The dead, useless wings angled and his eye fixed on the dagger. Wrinkles still and hungry and bowstring taut. His uninjured ear twitched like a trigger finger.
He was the same as he was a moment ago. The human’s fingers twisted through Sunshower’s mane. Nothing in Yarak changed. Nothing at all.
No. No, that wasn’t true. The general watched but he did not attack. He was waiting.
Star Swirl’s words echoed in the human’s ears: He wants something else.
The human blinked, dark eyes hard and flat. Once more, he looked around them. The flat swath of land was one of the few smooth spots on Sill. Perfect for an arena. And so much like a forest clearing. An injured, desperate human crouched beside a fallen comrade.
A human that could still hold his dagger, as another once held her bow. A human with every reason to fight, to despise, to kill. An old general who once lost a golden opportunity for a worthy opponent; a pegasus who’d lived far too long. And there was no honor in a peaceful death.
The man straightened his back. Yarak bunched his shoulders and flicked his good ear.
The human squeezed the handle of his dagger, spun it between his fingers, and sheathed the blade in his cloak pocket. He glanced back once, adjusted Sunshower in his arms, and walked away in a sweep of oilskin.
The gallop behind him was ignored.
Biting his lip against the pain in his feet, the human climbed atop a hill of gravel. It was a towering crag a few hours ago. Here, he wrapped his cloak about himself against the drizzly wind and sat.
The gallop trailed to an uncertain trot.
Gently, the human adjusted Sunshower in his lap, head elevated on his kneecap. He took care not to trouble the broken wing as he took in the scope of her injury. The foreleg under the wing was fractured but from what little he could tell, the rest seemed unbroken. Salvageable, anyway. In her armor it was hard to tell and the human knew little of internal bleeding, aside from the fact it existed. He hoped Topsoil or Star Swirl or somebody knew more than he did.
The human’s clever little fingers unfastened and removed the dented helmet. Sunshower’s bloodstained muzzle was bright against the bruises. Dirt and dried blood made her face a sallow, ugly blend of brown and yellow. Her mane was wet, but just from the rain. The winds had made a tangled mess of it. Worse than Heartstrings’ mane on the night he met her. Sunshower would hate her mane to be so out of order.
His left hand would not stop shaking. He unclenched it and peered at the angry half-moons embedded in his palm. His hands needed something to do. Left to themselves, the human did not know what they would do next. His fingers threaded Sunshower’s mane and began to tease out the knots.
The trot petered into a slow walk. The walk dissolved to stumbles. The familiar scrape of Yarak’s voice shook from effort. “What…what are you playing at?”
“I play at nothing.” The human spared him the slightest of glances. “Sunshower once told me she envied Thistle Whistle’s braids. I thought she might like some of her own. Sadly, I don’t have my brush right now, but I’ll do the best I can.” He sectioned the mane into three panels and began to weave. Her mane was smoother, thinner than the bramble patch Heartstrings’ mane had been.
The general pawed the stone as if to charge.
The human turned away. When he spoke again his voice was cold and neutral as the Roc’s eye. “I won’t fight you. I only have one knife left and I’d rather not waste it.”
“You would idly sit, even as I charge?” The cob spoke soft and ragged. It was the loudest he could manage.
“I would. And you won’t.” The man’s eye flicked to the jags around them. He sighed or chuffed and went back to his braiding. Casually, he asked, “When was the last time you saw your mountain?”
With some effort, General Yarak lifted his head. His rheumy eyes squinted, then widened. His taut, wrinkled face went slack.
Sill, cruel crown of the Caulkin mountain range, lay in ruins. Long talon-torn holes ripped from peak to base. Light rain fell through massive punctures, making the violet inner walls gleam. Confused fruit bats wobbled in the air and crawled over mossy rocks, uncertain where their shelter had gone.
But Yarak only had eyes for the humans. They climbed out of the cracks and perched in sets in sets of seven in the craters. They walked in dream-like trances along Sill’s surface, marveling at the sun. They huddled in the rubble with a vice grip on their children. A girl in blue chased after the fruit bats with a net, matted shags of red hair bouncing on her back. A knot of older humans watched the pair of unicorns, the unicorns watching their own cloaked human in turn.
The shadow of the White Roc fell over them. The human tilted his head to watch it pull in for a gentle landing atop a lonely palisade. It stretched its wings and tilted its head at them, curious and impatient. The miles of milky clouds atop Sill vanished. No mist or fog lingered at the wingtips. A trail of wisp wound about its legs, but that was all. The Roc looked smaller, the human thought. Even smaller than it looked in the moonless night.
“Humans might change everything we touch, but not entirely. Not permanently. We can’t change your nature.” The man looked back to his braiding. “Hoards are for dragons, not ponies.”
Yarak flinched and sat. Dumbly, he put a hoof to his chest stared at the Roc. The White Roc preened its tail.
“It was never about keeping them. It was the hunt. ‘Until I face another. Until I am defeated.’ That was your bargain, yes? But I never understood,” the human said, “Why you ponies are so convinced I’m this magnificent, fierce warrior. Some humans are, but I’m not one of them, as I’m sure you noticed. However...” He glanced at the gathering of humans sitting on the caldera where the Roc once nested. “I don’t need to fight you to beat you.”
The human glanced at Yarak evenly, the way he glanced at rain puddles and jackdaws. "Yesterday, you asked me if I had spite for you. My answer hasn't changed." His arm drew tight around Sunshower. "I have no spite for you. I’ve no umbrage, no anger, no pity, no fear. I don’t think anything of you at all. There is nothing that you inspire.”
The human turned his back to the general. “And nothing worth remembering." He did not look back as Yarak’s voice weakened and rattled. Nor when he heard the body hit the gravel.
The White Roc made a sound like sand falling on sand, and went aloft. En route for the top of the world and refreshed by a freshly digested heart, he was soon a white dot in the sky. The cluster of barefooted children at the caldera shaded their eyes to watch.
A redheaded girl tugging a wriggling net of fruit bats came up to join them. “Yeah, what did I tell you? The bird’s not so scary. I think your granddad was telling tales, Sato. We should’ve done this forever ago.”
Her friend, dusted in dirt and freckles, wrinkled his nose. “He doesn’t exaggerate.”
The girl shrugged. “If you say so.” She leaned over the rocks and squinted at the stranger dressed in green below them. He had a pony in his lap and his head in his hands. “Do you think that’s the one Fava heard? He’s got a yellow pony with him.”
“Might be.” Sato scratched the back of his head. “Who was that pony he was fighting with?”
“No idea.”