She had just laid there for a while, not quite believing he would let her live. Sure, he did just trot off and leave her on her own in the bottom of a dank cave underneath incredibly ancient ruins and at the mercy of whatever floating crystalline abomination next floated in from the room above them. But that was still better than what she had expected. He was out of sight now – she couldn’t hear the clop of his hooves on the broken floor tiles nor could she see the light of his horn. Even with her superior dark vision, he was now too far away for that to matter. He had been so… well, no. Angry wasn’t the proper word for it. He had been such a confusing whirl of emotions: shock, horror, anger, outrage, betrayal, and a thousand and one other distinct feelings and variations all coalescing in a little storm around him. Then it became something else, something she wasn’t sure she had a name for. It was unfamiliar but… cold all the same. He crushed all other feelings in preference for it and she had been sure it would have resulted in her death. It didn’t.
She tested her wings and winced. Between all the other pain racking her body, that little detail had escaped her notice, but one wing was definitely sprained. It looked like she couldn’t just fly her way out of here either. Great. She turned slowly, carefully, until she was lying flat on her belly and then began crawling away from the pillar she had been propped up against. Trying her damnedest to make sure she didn’t injure herself any further, she gingerly dragged her battered and bruised hind legs onwards. It was an agonizingly slow pace as she tried to at least get herself out of the damp and onto a dryer portion of the floor. Then her vision flashed white for a moment and her mouth opened in a silent scream as unbelievable pain shot through her. It hadn’t been much but she had moved her broken leg just so as she tried dragging it across some broken stones and wooden fragments.
The pain was incredible, and she had to clench her jaw shut in order not to let out any noise. She failed, letting out a pitiful whimper that was far louder than she cared to admit. She waited patiently for the pain to subside, her eyes clenched shut. When it did, she pulled herself further onto the dryer ground and curled up onto her side, resting on her much less injured hind leg. Moving had been an incredibly stupid idea and all she could focus on now was the pain, her wings shifting irritably in impotent frustration at her own lack of ability to do anything about her situation. She muttered to herself, senses dead to the world as she silently cursed herself, keeping her eyes shut as she waited until the pain in her broken leg lessened to a dull throb.
She was so distracted that she didn’t notice the rough scrape of wood upon stone and the rhythmic cadence of hooves on the ground until Jacques was practically beside her. The surprise made her start and she yelped in pain once more as the sudden movement hurt her leg further.
“Easy,” Jacques said evenly. His face was an impassive mask and his emotions were still bound up in that cold steely ball that she could not put her hoof on in order to identify. “Don’t move.”
His horn lit up to an even brighter golden hue. The light spell that he was casting, which she really should have noticed long before she heard him coming, shone even brighter as she saw his magical aura grasp something from within a large broken crate he seemed to be dragging. Thorax thrashed.
“Stay away!” she hissed dangerously, baring her fangs at him as he watched on, pausing in his actions. She took the opportunity his pause gave her and tried valiantly to shuffle away. Of course, there was only so far one could shuffle away from danger with one broken leg and a banjaxed wing. Not to mention the broken masonry, shattered storage containers, mounds of dust, wood particles, broken crystal, and the detritus of uncounted centuries going on millennia conspiring to slow her advance. But now was not the time for such practical concerns – there was shuffling ahoof! Jacques merely let out a short breath that may have been a sigh had she felt any emotion to indicate it as such. She was going nowhere and looked back to gaze upon the horrible apparatus he was going to use to murder he— Was that a roll of cloth? “Wh-What are you doing with that?”
“If you would hold still, ‘Crimson’, you’d find out,” he said calmly, the ghost of a smile on his muzzle. It was so like his usual, confident, cock-sure smile that it only unnerved her that he wore it while still possessing the steely sphere in his heart.
“Get away from me, pony!” she spat. All the while, he calmly levitated the rather ancient, yet surprisingly clean-looking cloth along with several lengths of wood down towards her. “I said get away!”
“Oh hush, mon cher,” he admonished, raising a hoof to stop her struggling and gesturing his head to his sheathed sword. “If I was going to harm you, I would hardly attack you with a bolt of cloth, no?” Thorax eyed the covered blade for a moment, uncertain. When he moved again, she instinctively activated her horn to do… something, anything to prevent the pony from coming near her in her undisguised state. All she got was a splitting pain at the base of her horn and a shudder running through her body as her magical fatigue momentarily robbed her of vitality. She closed her eyes as he came closer, bracing herself for the inevitable.
…Only to feel the surprisingly gentle tingle of magic grasping her broken leg and lifting it slowly, gingerly. She let out a gasp at the motion, feeling even the slightest movement or jolt would break the bone further. She cracked open an eye as she felt the rough texture of the wooden boards placed along the length of her hind leg and saw the bolt of cloth circle around her leg, the woven material held in place by magic as it wrapped her leg to hold the splints in place.
“You know, dame mystère, I did always wonder how changeling bones work,” Jacques said. She looked up at him in confusion but couldn’t see anything more than that same light smile on his muzzle framed by a short grey beard. The rest of his face was hidden beneath the peak of his cap as he looked down to keep an eye on his work. “What with all those holes you have. Although, I suppose it’d be rude to ask now, eh?”
She didn’t answer him, just looked down at her raised leg as he finished the splint. He put the bolt of cloth to the side and levitated a small bundle out of a pouch attached to his sword belt. It looked like some kind of crumbling shortbread wrapped in a dried green leaf.
“Here, this’ll ease the pain,” he said, levitating the small thing over to her. She eyed it suspiciously before looking back at him. He was still smiling, his hat tilted to cover his eyes, and his emotions still wrapped up in that cold iron ball at his core. After hesitating for a moment and sitting up against a crate as the magic let go of her leg, she took the shortbread in her hooves and took a tentative bite. It was crunchy and went down easily. Her stomach growled at her and she quickly devoured the painkilling treat. Something about it was delicious beyond whatever medicinal effect it had as she felt some small amount of relief wash over her. “Better?”
She nodded and the two just stayed where they were for a while. Neither spoke for a full minute before Thorax broke the silence. “Why?”
“Hm?”
“Why?” she asked with much more emphasis. He casually stroked his beard for a moment before answering.
“Well, you were hurt. Had to go find something to help with it. Common sense, oui?”
“You know what I mean, pony.”
“Oh, do I? What exactly do I know, bonne dame?” he asked, looking up with amusement in his eyes. Thorax hissed.
“I was going to feed on you!”
“Were you?” Jacques paused. “I’m flattered. Frankly, mon chere, you should probably have tried it much sooner, then maybe we wouldn’t have been so rudely interrupted.”
Thorax spluttered at that. “Do you think this is a joke?”
“I take it with as much seriousness as the matter deserves,” he said happily.
“Do not mock me!” Thorax let out a yelp, having been so agitated that she tried sitting up to try to threaten the stallion more directly, only to have the pain in her leg force her back down onto the ground again. Jacques eyed her leg with a slight look of concern, but his feelings made a lie of such sympathy.
“You should rest – that’s not going to get better by moving around. Now, let me have a look at that wing,” Jacques said. Thorax felt her dermis crawl at the idea of letting someling else who wasn’t even a changeling have a look at her wings. Her good wing fluttered in agitation at the thought and she saw the pony chuckle. “Suit yourself. Now, you aren’t going to be walking anyway so… get on.”
Jacques turned around and hefted a plank of wood with his magic over his head. It was tied to two lengths of ancient, frayed rope that looked like they would snap under any amount of strain. He lifted it up and over himself so that the ropes rested on his withers and the plank across his chest. Thorax just looked at him oddly, the expression of confusion obvious even with her eyes covered as they were. It took Jacques a minute to realise he looked a tad ridiculous. He chuckled lightly. “Unless you plan on lying there in a pile for the rest of your life, you aren’t going to be able to get anywhere like this. So get on, and I’ll pull you the rest of the way.”
Thorax, of course, didn’t move. Hell, would you? See that guy you tried making a meal out of? He wants to help you! She considered his proposal with all the credulity it deserved, and then suddenly she was floating in the air.
“H-Hey! What’s— let me down!”
“Comme vous voulez,” Jacques replied, gently depositing the bundle of powerless changeling into the makeshift sled. She was surprised at the presence of soft fabrics haphazardly torn from wherever the pony had found them and placed at the bottom of the broken box. It wasn’t comfortable per se, but it was better than sitting on hard wood with a broken leg. The box was big enough to allow her to lie down, but not so big she could give her legs the room they needed. It was awkward. “Now just sit there and don’t move around too much. Wouldn’t want to hurt yourself further, oui?”
Her attempts at struggling reminded her of her less than stellar skeletal integrity, and she found herself fuming in quiet impotence as she continued running the gamut between confusion, alarm, anger, and indignity at her circumstances. Jacques, for his part, allowed his surly passenger to sink below the edge of the pony sized crate before slowly drawing his blade. The rasp of metal on leather caused her to jerk up and Jacques to chuckle. He didn’t bother explaining as he held the sword before him in his magic and slowly walked forward, dragging Thorax behind him. The sudden motion threw the changeling to the floor of the crate with a nervous squeak as the conveyance jerked forward, scraping against the floor as it was dragged behind the pony. The occasional metal clack of the blade tip tapping stone echoed throughout the dark, cavernous halls as they travelled, the only sound beyond the scrape of the box that broke the tense silence that otherwise existed between the stallion and the injured changeling.
--=--
“Why?”
“You say something, chere?” Jacques said amicably. She didn’t bother responding as he fell into humming another jaunty tune. He was not answering her questions. He always deflected them and refused to say why he was helping her now, leaving her frustrated in her impotence. Slowly, she went through the likely reasons. Kill her? No, he would have done that then and there. With her hind legs out of commission, her magic drained, and her wing sprained, she wouldn’t have been able to stop him. Torture? She looked at him over the edge of the crate, the stallion humming away as he continued down the seemingly endless corridors. No, he didn’t strike her as the sort, but she could not be sure. His emotions were still in that steely ball she couldn’t penetrate. Capture then? Possible, but he needed to get out of this ruin and then out of this forest, and for that he needed Handy and Whirlwind. She hoped the human would not allow her to be captured by him, if only to help ensure his own ends. Then she remembered the human warning her against the explicit course of action that had resulted in her current predicament. That wasn’t her fault, however. She was careful and could not have foreseen floating hostile geological formations taking exception to her presence! Not as if the human had any experience with fighting giant rocks so he could just go get bucked.
There was the occasional lapse in the humming, the scraping and the tapping of metal on stone. During these moments, the crate stopped moving and there was an occasional pronounced mechanical clicking followed by the noise of moving stone. The pitter-patter of tiny metallic objects striking stone at speed often accompanied such moments as well as the noise of steel on stone and the laugh of delighted surprise by Jacques. She rolled her eyes. He had been using his sword to activate traps in advance with his magic. The sword pressed down upon suspicious-looking blocks that activated the contraptions before they walked blithely across them. More than once, this resulted in them having to change their course. She had long since stopped bothering to look over the edge of the crate to follow what transpired during these moments, choosing instead to focus on remaining in as still a position as possible to rest her legs.
“Where are we going?” she asked idly, sliding her eye covers back into her head, playing with a loose bolt of cloth to distract herself from the pain and the hunger, both the one in her stomach and in what she had in place of a heart.
“No idea,” Jacques said happily. She cocked an eyebrow at him from within the wooden crate.
“Then how do you know where we are going? We’ve been at this for two hours now.”
“Well, my dear, I figured we fell down quite some ways, no? Would it not strike you as logical that heading upwards would be the most likely way of finding our way out?” She could almost feel the cocky grin he directed behind himself. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her grimace. She laid her head down on her fore hooves again and kept quiet for a while. “So Handy knows you are a changeling, hm?”
Now that gave her pause. She hesitated just a moment too long before replying. “No. He doesn’t know I replaced his servant.”
“Hmhmhm, I’m sure he doesn’t. Why, I am sure when he warned me off of you, it had nothing to do with you feeding off of me, oui?” he asked. She gritted her teeth. “I cannot blame you though. I am rather delicious, but I find myself wondering why you took so much risk. Why, would it not make much more sense for you to wait until after we were outside the forest to do it?”
Silence.
“Or perhaps the Whisperwood city. There were a lot of deer there. Why, I am sure you could have isolated some young buck who had a little too much to drink… unless there was a problem with that?” She didn’t answer, and he had to look back to ensure she was still within the crate. Part of the reason why he had drawn his sword was to ensure she didn’t grab it from behind with her magic while he was distracted. He was confident that she wouldn’t be able to, but it did not pay to be stupid. “Hm, then there is Handy himself. Why not use him? No? That was problematic as well?”
“Be quiet…” she muttered.
“You couldn’t do either for some reason, yet you needed to feed. You must have been starving, so that left me. The only safe, reliable option left to you. Isn’t that right, ‘Crimson’?” The crate rocked as the changeling ignored the pain in her legs, leapt up, and placed her forehooves on the edge of the crate, snarling at the stallion who turned around, his smile fading.
“Do not pretend to know me, pony. You were being so evasive before. Why are you so chatty now!?” she demanded. He looked at her, chewing the inside of his mouth for a moment before sitting down to consider her.
“Because I have been thinking.” When she didn’t interrupt him, he smiled and continued, “You see, it’s not every day you owe your life to a changeling, so I find myself in a rather odd situation. How does a pony deal with owing their life to somepony who only minutes before attempted to use them for food? Then I think, no, she couldn’t possibly be trying to kill me. She needs me to help her get out and to meet the others, but that doesn’t really make it better, does it?”
She glared at him before turning her head to look away, her teeth bared as she rotated her lower jaw.
“And then, injured and starving, this little changeling decides to save my life and then, in her silliness, she wonders why I am trying to help her.” He laughed and she looked at him in shock. She was trying to formulate a response, most likely in the form of a question, when both of them heard the altogether too familiar laugh of a stag and signature, lilting accent of the human echoing from farther down the hall. The stallion’s smile broke out into a wide grin. “See? Did I not say heading up would be the best way out?”
“Let me out, I need to—” She flinched as she felt his hoof press against her chest and push her gently back into the crate.
“Shhh, you’re hurt, remember? Just rest there; I still need to find out how to repay you.”
“What?” He just smiled at her question and looked off to the side before back at her.
“You do not suppose Whirlwind might have a lot of questions about what a changeling is doing traveling with his newfound human friend? A lot of awkwardness and hurt could be avoided if you could just readopt your disguise, no?”
“But I can’t… You yourself managed to figure out why…”
“Mmm, yes. You need to feed, not just to survive but for your power,” he said, “and I know exactly how I am going to repay you for your little favour.”
She raised both her brows in surprise as he came closer, placing his own hooves on the edge of the crate as he brought his face level with her own. Her eyes scanned him in confusion as she felt that cold iron ball at his core slowly warm and unravel, like the petals of a rose opening up to embrace the sunlight. And just like the scent of that beautiful flower, his emotions slowly began flowing out towards her, alarming her. She jolted back, her eyes jumping from one part of his face to the other. Excitement, pity, sadness, joy, sincerity… it was too much to process all at once. She froze as he came closer, her hoof raised to her chest as he brushed the side of her cheek gently with his own hoof. She shivered under the touch, unsure of what was actually happening.
“W-Wait, you can’t seriously… I’ll, I’ll be draining you.”
“I like the little danger in that. Makes you so much more exciting.”
“But… I’m a changeling.”
“Oh I know, mon chere,” he said, leaning in closer, her breath mixing with his. She lost herself in his eyes, not quite believing somepony would willingly, joyfully give her affection the likes of which she had never experienced outside of a disguise. The sharp, burning taste washed over her like a furious wave breaking upon a rock. For all its small size, it felt more real, much more vital than any other feeding, and she knew then she would never forget the feeling as it froze her in place in utter shock. “And I don’t really care.”
His horn ceased glowing and the sword fell to the ground with a clatter in the darkness.
--=--
“Sooooo, ya done?”
“No, Whirlwind, I am not done. This is the fifth cache we’ve come across. I need to—” Handy sneezed explosively and shuddered miserably “...make sure if it has the crystal I want or not.”
The pair of them had wandered into what appeared to be store rooms of some sort, causing Handy to wonder aloud as to the exact nature of the ruins they had found themselves in. Were they in a city? A fortress? A castle? Something in between? Was it something else entirely? The blizzard-covered ghost town they had passed through was the only real evidence of large scale habitation they had seen, but the layout made no sense. Why build at the bottom of a canyon whose only entrance or exit was through tunnels high up the cliff face?
After they had taken shelter from the blizzard, they had passed through what appeared to be a large dining hall, a barracks, and an armory or a blacksmith. Or so he thought, judging by the long cooled furnace and ancient, black iron anvil that looked like it was shorn in half. Handy made a mental note to never find out what horrendous force had done that to a solid block of metal. Continuing on, the witch torch led them in the direction of what appeared to be the storehouses of the ruins they were now rummaging through. They ranged from small cupboards, to glorified closets, to storerooms, to one store room that looked like a proper warehouse, in sheer size if nothing else. It was dimly lit by crystalline growths in the ceiling. Most of whatever these rooms had held had decayed to dust, and what had not been destroyed by time was of little interest, except for the occasional cache of crystals.
“Anyway,” he began quickly, focusing his thoughts on anything else at all. “It’s not as if they’re going anywhere.”
“You sure about that?” Whirlwind responded after a moment’s silence. The human meanwhile continued rummaging through crate after crate of inert, completely ordinary, and utterly transparent glass-like crystals, none of which held anything inside of them, golden or otherwise.
“Yes I am sure. Why do you ask?” Handy had given up on treating Whirlwind with the usual airs. He was cold, miserable, and sneezing. Politesse could go get fucked.
“Because the torch is sort of moving on its own.” Handy cursed as his head shot up and hit the underside of a shelf. The ancient wood, weakened with age, practically shattered under the force of the contact, showering his head with splinters.
“What?” he asked, seeing the Torch’s flame was indeed moving. The flame was bent over, as if blown by a gust of wind pointing in a direction to the left of the doorway they had used to enter this particular store. It moved, pointing at the wall and moving closer and closer to the doorway. They eventually heard the scraping of wood on stone and the bright golden glow of magic as something approached. The brown unicorn, complete with grey goatee, bright blue eyes, and black hunting cap turned the corner, and he, the human, and the deer blinked at each other in surprise.
“Jacques!” Whirlwind cried happily, bounding across the storeroom and barrelling into his friend. “You’re alive and not frozen to death! This is great news!”
“Q-Que!?”
“Nevermind, not important! How are you? Where’ve you been? Was the weather nice? It’s been dreadful here. Did you get your mane cut? Did you get a souvenir? You look tired. Are those new horseshoes?”
“…Que?” Handy ignored the pair as the deer harangued his newly recovered friend. He was far more interested in the crate the stallion had been dragging along, particularly the red-coated, brown-maned unicorn mare who lay within it. He looked in and she looked back out at him, clearly bored. He looked down at her bandaged leg, the crate, the ropes that until recently had tied it to Jacques, and drew the obvious conclusion.
“So what happened?” he asked with a sigh of resignation.
“Just some trouble, nothing we could not manage.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“…A monster made out of crystal came alive and attacked us.”
“…So, nothing out of the ordinary then,” Handy said with a wry smile as he looked off into space. She cocked an eyebrow at him but didn’t question him further.
“Okay, right, happy to see you too, mes amis, but I must ask, do you two know the way out?” Handy and Whirlwind just looked at each other.
“Outside isn’t… really an option right now,” Handy said.
“Aha, yyyyeeeaaaaahhh. She might know we’re coming,” Whirlwind said, rubbing a foreleg.
“She?” Jacques asked.
“The spirit? You know, the one I’m on my way to so she can crown me Lord of Winter and we can get this merry little solstice on the road?” Whirlwind explained, gesturing with a hoof. Handy flinched as he finished the sentence, though no one seemed to notice. “Outside is now a raging blizzard that’ll freeze you to death!”
Jacques did not return the stag’s beaming smile. His tired expression slowly turned to an apologetic grin as he turned to Thorax. “Mes excuses, cher cœur. It seems I may not be getting you out of here that soon after all.”
Thorax gave him a level look but did not reply. Jacques only smiled wider in return, then yawned deeply.
“Tired?” Handy asked, prompting a slow nod from the brown unicorn. “Well, too bad. We still need to get a move on. I don’t want to spend a second longer down here than we have to.”
With that, he turned on the spot, going over to the witch torch and lifting it deftly from the ground. Thorax narrowed her eyes at the action.
“Charming mood he seems to be in,” Jacques commented, drawing her attention away.
“It’s… been something of a long trip for us, aheh. So!” Whirlwind clapped his forehooves together happily. “We’re all together then! The rest of the way should be a piece of cake.”
“Except for all the traps,” Thorax chimed in, resting her cheek on a forehoof.
“Traps?”
“Oh yeah, we hit at least twenty on our way here. How many did you two run across?” Jacques replied, tapping the ground lightly with his rapier for emphasis.
“Wwwwweeellll…”
“None,” Handy finished, helmet now correctly equipped. “Now come on, let’s get a move on.”
“What’s that?”
“Our compass. Now, less questions and more mush,” Handy ordered, grabbing the makeshift harness in order to pull Thorax along before turning and walking down a corridor, the sputtering torch directing him to his prize. Then a spectacular sneeze caused him to immediately stop again. He froze in place for a second before he started shuddering.
“Uh, Handy? You okay?” Whirlwind asked
“… Just… fine. I’m fine.”
“You cold? You’re shaking awfully bad there.”
“Nice and warm, I assure you,” Handy said, still shaking rather violently. Hs voice seemed strained and controlled. “Just… A bit uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable?” Jacques asked, a smile creeping across his face as he slowly realized what had just happened. “Perhaps you’d like a tissue for that cold?”
Handy just slowly turned to glare at the pony from behind his helmet before slowly turning right back and walking stiffly off into the darkness. “I am quite alright. Thank you for your offer nonetheless.”
Jacques chuckled brightly before putting on the harness and trotting off after him.
“So, what was that about?” Whirlwind asked. Jacques looked at him, mirth in his eyes.
“Tell me, Whirl. If you had a cold, would you be particularly happy if you sneezed all over the inside of your helmet?”
--=--
Handy was not a happy human.
This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but it bore repeating. With everything that had transpired; every nonsensical strip of bullshit he had to put up with; every cut, bruise, broken bone, sore and spilt ounce of blood, one would rightly ask where he drew the line. Handy learned the hard way long ago to stop drawing the line, for that way led disappointment and madness. That way led disbelieving pretty pony princesses could move the bodies cosmic every night and day and then seeing for yourself that they, in fact, did. That way led believing the stars did not change for uncounted billions of years, accounting for the fact they were lights of oftentimes long dead stars an unfathomable distance away… and then seeing the star constellations change from week to week. Magic, faeries, ghosts, haunted forests, dragons… curses… all of this just reaffirmed the human of that humble truth: that all that he truly knew was that he knew nothing.
Perhaps it all made sense, perhaps there was a deeper internal consistency to it all that he was unable to fathom. Everything, despite what one would think, appeared to still have limits of some sort. Somehow he was still inside a rational universe, even if it was a rational universe that had gone completely bonkers. The point was that Handy now drew the line much, much farther away than an average human would. After all, nothing could possibly cross the line if you placed it far enough away from you that you could see the problem coming from miles off and adjust accordingly.
That was what Handy thought right before they found the ballroom.
“I’m sorry, I mustn’t have heard you right. Could you repeat that?” Handy said, scratching his bare left wrist irritably while looking around the room. They were at the top of a set of steps looking down at a vast expansive rectangular hall. Once upon a time, it might have been grand. Vast, colourful mosaics adorned the floor, perhaps once depicting detailed vistas as classical columns soared from their places along the walls at regular intervals, interspersed with immense mirrors that reflected the ballroom into endless copies of itself. The flight of stairs flowed down to the ground, shaped in such a way as to make it appear to be a flowing waterfall, flanked by two immense statues depicting… something.
The forms were too decayed and warped by age. The stone that made the colossal statues had eroded and wore down much more than anything else around them, almost as if something took special care to ruin them more than anything else. The colours of the mosaics were faded to a stark white, or they would have been if there was not an eerie blue-white glow emanating from each and every one of them, casting the entire ballroom into stark relief. Each and every crack and faultline in the ancient masonry and stonework of the walls was cast into deep shadow, contrasting sharply with the pale light reflecting off the undamaged portions of their surfaces. The shattered shards of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors were made conspicuous by their absence, the holes they left behind in the mirror frames marring otherwise near perfect reflections of the ballroom.The shattered chandeliers and the old decrepit finery of woven silk cloth upon the floating tables were all brought into cruel focus, dark shadows outlining their ruined glory.
Oh yes, you read that right. Floating tables, complete with floating chairs that looked as if they would be particularly uncomfortable for even Handy to sit in, all decked out in the finest silk table cloths. Candlesticks, thankfully unlit, floated just off the top of their surfaces alongside shattered remnants of plates and rusted cutlery. All of this surrounded the oddest sight of all, but one that was altogether too familiar to Whirlwind and the human. More ghostly forms flitted to and fro, in circular movements, at once there and not in a clockwork dance set to the rhythm of an orchestral band long since silenced to the deaf ear of time. Yet still they danced.
They were different from the black shapes in the ruined city. For one thing, they were white, and it did not hurt to look at them directly, yet even with that their forms were still impossible to define. Their silent waltz only added to the great unease Handy felt, but it was one he was familiar with. Jacques and Thorax were having a harder time dealing with it judging by their haunted expressions. Whirlwind just took it straight on the chin, or he was just using that surprisingly solid poker face of his again. “Well, you see, we need to get across this ballroom in order to get to the lake, aaaand in order to do that, we need to perform a ritual.”
“Yes, I got that much,” Handy resisted the urge to rub his forehead. “But… singing?”
“No no no, of course not just singing,” Whirlwind said with a beaming smile. “But children’s songs!”
“I’m out,” Handy said flatly, turning and walking off.
“Hey! Handy, hold on!”
“I draw the line at, at… singing nursery rhymes in order to, to get past a couple of waltzing ghosts! That’s just, it’s just—! That’s as ridiculous as defeating a monster with the power of friendship or, or, or repelling changelings with the power of love!” Thorax coughed awkwardly while Jacques seemed to smile.
“I know, it’s great right? Anyway, nah, we don’t need to sing to get past the ghosts,” Whirl reassured.
“Then why do we need to sing children’s songs!?”
“Oh, right, it’s so that those things don’t come down and eat us!” he said happily, gesturing upwards with a hoof. Handy looked up. He immediately wished he hadn’t. The ceiling was utter blackness, such that even the plentiful light coming from the floor was swallowed up as that roiling, solid mass refused to be illuminated. He felt lightheaded looking up at it. Nausea churned within him and bile threatened to rise up his gullet at the sight. He forced himself to look away, breathing heavily.
“Wh-What, the fuck is that!?” he called out as Jacques and Thorax had similar reactions. Whirlwind tapped his hoof a few times.
“Okay, Handy, I know I have not been entirely up front on a lot of things, and I do not even have all the answer you need for the rest, but I want you to seriously consider what you are asking me here. Do you really want to know what that is up there?” Whirlwind asked simply.
Handy decided discretion was the better part of valour and shut his mouth. If anything, he really would rather be off elsewhere after a little revelation like that. That was of course if his torch had not led him here. The others thought he was using it to lead them to the lake and this spirit that would be condemning the otherwise perpetually happy deer to a lifetime of freezing cold isolation one season and oblivion for the remaining three. In reality, he was willing the torch to lead him to the nearest vortex crystal that just so happened to be in the same direction because of course it was.
Handy groaned in resignation. “Okay fine, and you know about this ritual how?”
“Oh, that’s why I was brought to the temple back at Whisperwood, given the rites and knowledge of how to pass each test and trial to get to the lake. Fortunately, I didn’t really have to use any of them!”
“Why?”
“Because your torch leading us to you guys brought us down a much safer path!” Whirlwind said, gesturing to the other pair.
“…Whirlwind, we almost froze to death.”
“Yeah, I still want to know who caused the sudden shift in the weather,” Jacques interjected.
“I know! We didn’t even have to go through the inside-out room!” Whirlwind powered on.
“What’s the inside out room?”
“Don’t worry about it now!” Whirlwind zoomed to the top of the steps. “Here’s what we have to do. You can’t touch the floor without starting a song. When you sing, it needs to come from the heart, and that is very important. It’s silly, I know, but in order to cross the ball room you need to add to the dance, and that means either dancing all the way across…”
He looked pointedly at ‘Crimson’s’ leg. Now with proper support for her other, considerably less broken hind leg, she could walk in that awkward three-legged fashion Handy had seen people use from time to time. “…Or adding to the songs that keep the dance going and, er, the spectators placated.”
“Wait… Are you saying these ghosts have to dance forever to keep these… these things from eating them?” Handy asked. Whirlwind just smiled sadly in response.
“Probably, we just know what happens when somedeer else tries crossing without adding to the dance. But it needs to be a song from your childhood, something innocent and good. Anything else and you risk agitating them.” He only got awkward looks at those words from all three of them. “And we need to do it one at a time.”
“One at a time!?” Thorax asked incredulously. “What happens if I fall down while crossing without anypony to help me?”
“Well, I hope you keep singing then!” Whirlwind said with a chuckle, but his heart was not in it. The four of them just studied the room for a while before he decided to go first. “Alright, wish me luck!”
“Wait, hold on!” Jacques tried to stop him, but it was too late. He had bounded off the top of the steps in the leaping fashion of deers and landed deftly upon the mosaics, the tiny fragments glowing all the brighter from the contact. The very moment his hoof touched the floor, he began singing in the same language he used when he was talking to the door that let them into this ruined hole in the ground in the first place. The sweet sounding, quick paced tongue of the deer suited the happy rhythmic song he had chosen, the words darting from one to the other much like a chase between two sibling pups trying to catch one another.
Frankly, what happened as a result of his singing was more amazing than the fact he was making it across unscathed. The dancers… changed. The slow, mechanical waltz became a much more lively dance as individual spectres switched partners, their movements more fluid but no less synchronized. Only this time it was not to the cadence of some long dead choir but instead to the jaunty rhymes of the stag proudly prancing past them. Handy could not understand the words, but they appeared to rhyme. A nursery rhyme perhaps? It was ludicrous but sure enough the stag had made it across and up the stairs at the far end of the ballroom completely unharmed. He made it to the top of the steps and promptly leapt in the air in triumph.
“Woo! Okay, your turn!” he said, pointing in the general direction of the three of them over the heads of the dancers of the incredibly haunted ballroom.
“Well…” Jacques began while rubbing his neck as if trying to get a crick out of it. “Si ce est ce la manière dont elle va être.”
He strode more languidly down the steps and slowly trotted across the floor. His song was a much more jaunty tune, more consonant heavy and structured than whatever flighty nursery rhyme Whirl had sung. It was also terribly, horrendously French. Oddly enough, Handy noticed Thorax was watching the unfolding scene pensively. He couldn’t blame her. He didn’t much like the thought of doing this with one banjaxed leg if he were in her place.
“This is ridiculous,” Handy muttered, taking off his helmet and turning from the scene. Thorax glanced at him before quickly turning her attention back around at the sound of a glass shattering. Jacques apparently had bumped into a table on his way across, momentarily lapsing in the song. The roiling blackness above gurgled dangerously. No one looked up. Jacques immediately picked his song back up and continued across with a slightly more hurried pace. While everyone was distracted, Handy cleaned the inside of his helmet as well as his face. That had not been pleasant to tolerate. When he turned back, helmet reaffixed, Jacques had made it soundly across, the dancers now doing a very odd dance indeed. It was hard to tell what the circular movements were supposed to be given their smoky, not-quite-there appearance, but it certainly looked like they were having fun.
Thorax let out a sigh. “Well, I guess I’ll go across next.”
“You?” Handy said incredulously.
She gave him a level look. “Yes, me. If I fall down out there, I want somepony behind me capable of running down and helping me up.”
‘Assuming I’d actually do that for you,’ Handy thought to himself before looking at her bad leg. Well, okay, her bad leg that she was actually capable of standing on. It was a ridiculously ghetto job forming splints on the leg to the point where there was more wood surrounding it to take the pressure off of it, but it meant she could at least walk. Her other leg was now tied up in a proper brace that wrapped around her haunches, to keep the broken leg still. Even so, Handy did not envy her prospective journey across the floor but found it quite hard to feel sympathetic to her right then.
“Suit yourself. I admit I am curious as to what song you’re going to sing…”
She looked apprehensive at that. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know, changelings…” he said, knowing the other two were too far away to overhear them. “And taking something and sharing it from deep within their holey hearts.”
She scowled at the human but made no reply, instead facing forward and slowly, carefully descending the steps and hesitating just before the final one, looking across at her end goal, looking up before immediately looking down with a shudder and stomping her fore hoof with determination. She took a step forward and…
Handy was actually stunned. Like the others, Thorax decided to sing in her own native tongue. He had expected some kind of odd language he didn’t understand, a kind of changeling dialect or yet another Earth language that had no business being in this world. Instead, however, she sang in perfect, if a little accented, Equestrian.
“Somewhere, over the mountains blue,
Far, far away~”
The dance slowed to a crawl as the changeling in pony’s clothing limped her way across the floor, the dance becoming slow, considerate, with the dancers separating and swaying slowly in time with her singing.
“Beneath the clouds so high and forest deep,
Lies a place for me and you,
And there, waiting in silence, waiting true,
Stands a home of homes for you to keep.”
Her singing was slow and deliberate, possibly because she was trying to get the song to last as long as she could to cover her painfully slow advance across the ballroom floor. It worked. The… things above certainly weren’t reacting negatively in any case. It sounded almost like a lullaby.
“Nestled within, mountain’s embrace,
Lost amidst time and place its name floats on the wind,
fluttering through the rain, floating on, floating on
Lost amidst time and place~”
Well, she made it, managing to make the note last long enough to get her bad leg over the first step and off the floor, the mosaics beneath her ceased glowing bright white and returned to their eldritch blue glow. Handy’s thoughts had drifted. The ludicrousness of the situation had somewhat dulled and lessened, and he found himself reflecting upon the circumstances leading him here. Specifically the circumstances that had lead him here to these ruins in the middle of God only knew where, dealing with ghosts and dances and rituals and horrible abominations looming above him. Sure, he was doing it all to get the crystal and find a way out, but he swore to God that if he couldn’t twist the arm of those deer to give him some kind of recompense for all of this, he would—
“Come on!” He was snapped back to the present. The three of them had already crossed the ruined ballroom, haunted as it was by eldritch light from the shattered floor tiles. The ancient tables and chairs and all of the decrepit finery and glass works floating upon the air added to the unease he felt. The spinning and cavorting of ghostly shapes of things long passed and beyond recognition flittering in and out of existence only reinforced the sense of foreboding. The spinning forms of the.... things danced in time to the lullabies and childhood songs his peers sang so as to safely cross so that they themselves would not rouse the ire of the shapeless things that lurked in the shadows above them all.
He wracked his brain as he let out a breath, misting the air in front of his face. He had to sing a song from his youth, a truly happy one so as to not attract the attention of the dark creatures above. It was some strange, mystical rule that controlled this place that demanded it to be so. The dance had to continue, and to continue, it had to have more songs, fresh and meaningful, to keep the dark at bay.
Handy really wished that this was a problem he could just solve with his hammer.
“Alright… Alright, give me a moment to think!” he shouted across.
‘Fuck me, a song. A song… What the hell did we used to sing on the playground? London’s bridge? No, too short. Headless Jack? Nah, no thanks, I’d rather not see what happens when you sing a halloween song in this place. Jack may have made a deal with the devil; that doesn’t mean I…’ Handy had to mentally facepalm as he made the comparison between himself and a figure of folklore and the rather unflattering similarities that were to be made.
He walked carefully down the steps, grimacing. He managed to remember a song from his childhood and picked it as he placed a foot upon the floor tiles which lit up upon his step. The iron of his armoured boot burst into a brilliant display of light as it reacted to the metal. “O-ro the rattlin’ bog, the bog down in the valley-o, o-ro th—”
There was a horrible screech, the sound of crumpling paper, and the wet tear of ripping meat. Handy felt cold fear grip the back of his neck like a vice and had a sudden feeling of knowing those things up above were coming down for him. He let out a yelp and fell back on the steps, clambering to his feet to get off of the floor.
The feeling on the back of his neck eased and the horrifying sounds above him slowly quieted as he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “No no no! Meaningful! Mean-ing-ful!” he heard Whirlwind shout from afar. “From the heart!”
“Fuck you, I almost got eaten by God-damn overgrown mildew!”
“That just means you have to reach even deeper!” Whirlwind chimed helpfully. Jacques said something he couldn’t hear and he could see the pair of them laughing, with even Thorax flashing a smile.
Handy swore as he got back to his feet again. He risked looking up again, this time straining himself to consider the black… things up above before being forced to look away coughing, trying to suppress his rising bile and dizziness. A song, a song, he had to think of a song. One that was close to him when he was a child, but what? He didn’t remember any lullabies that were sung to him, and the lullabies he did generally know of had no particular meaning to him, probably because he didn’t remember being sang to... No, that was not quite right either, surely he was sung to as a child, but for the life of him he couldn't remember. Christmas songs? Those were always cool, but those were more associated with the holiday than himself. Any song he felt particularly attached to other than those were less childhood and heart-warming and more mature, both in tone, meaning and content. Well… there was one song he remembered from his days on the playground, but it wasn’t one he wanted to be known for singing, even if the others here lacked any context for it.
“You guys go on!” he shouted, drawing his hammer and laying it across his knees as he sat on the steps, clearly thinking. “I’ll catch up. This… might take me a while.”
They didn’t move, not at first anyway. Mostly, they spent the next ten minutes shouting at him trying to encourage him to try it again, and each time he’d just shout back for them to carry on. It wasn’t as if he didn’t plan on finding a way past. He had already exhausted other avenues when he tried the witch torch in finding any other crystals nearby. Nope, none, the only one lay on the far side of the ballroom. Right across the creepy ass ghosts dancing an eternal waltz to placate unspeakable horrors he couldn’t even look at without feeling the need to throw up.
Life was funny like that.
‘I swear, if I get out of here, no more fucking ruins. No more caves, no more underground cities. Fuck it, if I so much as have to step into a particularly large hole in the ground, it’ll be too fucking soon.’ He watched as the others, eventually, turned away and walked off. Thorax paused to give him a look as she followed after them. He couldn’t quite make out the expression, but he imagined it was somewhere along the lines of ‘Don’t fuck up, human.’ Real charmer, that changeling, truly. Then he was alone, nothing but him, the haunted ballroom, and his thoughts. He waited a good twenty minutes until he was sure the rest of the party had moved far enough along. ‘Well, it’s now or never. I hope none of them actually hears this.’
He took another step down and looked straight ahead, taking another breath before descending to the floor. The mosaic came to life with his step and burst with magical light as the metal repulsed the mystical emanations, reflecting and magnifying its light in an incandescent display as if a new star was birthed with every footfall, The horrors above shuffled, disturbed at the burst of bright light, but did not descend. Well, that was one comfort at least. Even if this forest was full of magic that could bypass his only protection against the arcane, at least some of it adhered to the same rules as most magic did. He felt an odd sensation grip his chest, warm and encouraging. Thoughts came back to him about what Whirlwind had said about the ritual and he wondered what effects it was going to have on him. He heard the sound of shuffling paper again and decided that right now was not so much a time for thought as much as it was for action, and then he sang.
“Ohhhhhhhhhh…” he intoned. The spectres stayed their swaying from the melody of Thorax’s lullaby, floating in place, waiting for the new song to set them adrift once more. There was the sound of shuffling paper from somewhere above as the sudden lingering stillness brought the ire of those things above, and Handy realized he was now committed. Nothing for it then. Now, dear readers, you were probably anticipating something particularly deep as to the nature of the song Handy chose in order to cross the room. After all, it was meant to be something deep and meaningful to his childhood. It has to be, right? You would be mistaken. For in the depths of one's most cherished memories, the most memorable thing one can recall of childhood is a nameless happiness. An indescribable joy found in drawing images of people and animals playing under a rainbow strewn sky upon the walls of the guest room and promptly being chided for it. Exhilaration found in wearing a cardboard box on your head and pretending you were a spaceman, or playing with legos and making an incomprehensible block of mismatched parts and insisting that it was clearly a police car, making car noises as you have one legoman chase another because he was a bad guy. Sometimes the most meaningful memories of childhood are those with little to no reason at all behind their cause beyond the simple, almost private joy for joy's sake. So to was it with songs one learned on the playground.
“I’ll tell me ma when I go home, the boys won’t leave the girls alone.” The dancers spun, jumping from one dance partner to another, weaving under spectral limbs as the human felt some odd warmth grow from within him, urging the song forth. “They pull my hair, they stole my comb, but that’s alright till I go home!”
“She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the belle of Belfast city, she is a-courting one-two-three, pray won’t ye tell me who is she?” To Handy’s surprise, he found himself actually enjoying the song as he slowly made his way across the ballroom floor. He hadn’t noticed it until now, but none of the others had actually ran across the floor as quick as they could when they had every motivation to cross with every ounce of speed they could muster. To his not inconsiderable alarm, he found himself not particularly wanting to run across himself either. Despite having every impetus to do otherwise, he took his time. The same feeling that urged him to continue the song was also urging him to slow his pace, and all the while he felt the warm glow, the creeping enjoyment of the song and every sensible voice in his head telling him to break out into a sprint. The ritual, however, wouldn't let him.
“Albert Mooney says he loves her, all the boys are fighting for her.” The spectres increased their pace, the dance becoming… Well, not erratic but certainly much more lively. He heard the sound of tearing paper coming from above and a creeping apprehension along the back of his neck. The song was working, it had to be. The horrors above weren't currently speeding down to enact whatever horrendous fate would befall him if they were roused, after all. So then why were they becoming so agitated? “They knock at the door, and they ring the bell saying, ‘Oh my true love are you well?’”
“Out she comes as white as snow, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. Ol’ Jenny Murray says she’ll die, if she doesn’t catch the fella with the roving eye!” That seemed to tear it. The spectres’ dance only seemed to increase in vigor and power as the song rolled on. Handy found himself compelled to sing louder and louder, the things above him growing more restless while the dance became faster and faster. Each footstep he made was punctuated not only by bursts of magical light but also the shuffling sound of paper rolling along paper, like a flurry of manuscripts caught in a strong draft. But as the song increased in volume and the dance became more energetic, it became evident that far from being placated, the things above were becoming aggravated. The pale blue light interrupted by starbursts of incandescent white, like magnesium flares in a dimly lit room spoiled their rest, the dancing of their entertainment too energetic, too… happy, and the singing was too loud, it simply would not do. With another sound of tearing meat, a screech and the feeling of a clammy claw seizing the back of his neck, Handy knew he was doomed.
But he couldn’t stop singing.
“I’ll tell me ma when I go home, the boys won’t leave the girls alone.” The blackness moved. A single cloudy tendril of the unmentionable mass above him scurried and flowed across the wall and down a column, reaching the floor and blackening out the light of the mosaics on the ground as it sped towards the human’s legs. He could hear the screeching only increase in pitch and severity as soon as the mass touched the floor. Handy didn’t increase his pace. He couldn’t. Whatever mystical effect the ritual enforced upon him wouldn’t allow it. He could only walk and sing and watch helplessly as the black mass advanced. “They pull my hair, they stole my comb, but that’s alright till I go home.”
The black mass was almost upon him, and Handy knew his hammer would do no good against it, the same way he knew that when it touched him he was gone. It was a clasping feeling, one that gripped him and physically imprinted upon him the fear of prey which looked upon a predator as it fell upon them. Time seemed to slow in his mind as he turned to regard the mass of blackness approaching him, a knot forming in his throat as he fought the urge to retch. His very being was offended by its presence. Its proximity and the very sight of it almost forced him from his feet. He gripped his hammer and raised it. He knew it was futile, but it was all he could do. He couldn’t run, neither back the way he came nor forwards towards his goal. It was all he could do as he simply watched the thing advance upon him.
He wanted to scream, to shout some profanity at the disgusting wretched thing that sought his doom, but all he could do was sing as he died and throw his toy away like an impudent child. He swung his arm down, throwing the hammer to the ground in sheer frustration.
And then the ground exploded.
Handy was dazed by the explosion of light, temporarily blinding him as he stumbled despite his trance-like state, temporarily stopping his song and the dance. The things screeched as one like a wounded animal and split into tiny independent tendrils of dark sludge that flew through the air and landed around the ballroom. They writhed and shriveled as they became separated from the mass that birthed them and they began to waste away, unable to survive on their own amidst even the weak light of the mosaic floor. The greater mass of the black tendril was what kept the light of the floor from damaging them due to its sheer size, but individually the many tiny creatures that made up the horrifying, physically contiguous mass could not survive on their own and died where they landed.
The hammer lay on the floor near a cluster of shattered mosaic tiles. Lifeless, pale white and inert, the impact had broken them and released the magic within with explosive force that obliterated the tendril, the remnants of which retreated back up the wall as the remainder of the mass echoed with sounds of wet meat, tearing paper and inhuman screeching. The light had hurt it. That was why it stayed on the ceiling; the magic of the floor was keeping it trapped here. The ghosts' dancing was to keep them placated, the ritual was to ensure safe passage without disturbing them from their magical prison. If the light hurt them, then it was no wonder Handy's footsteps aggravated them. The light that came from where he placed his feet must be intolerable to them. The room began shaking as the revolting mass above him shivered in fury. He heard the sound of crumbling rock and a sharp crack as another faultline appeared across one of the mighty columns holding up the ceiling.
‘You’re kidding me. You have got to be kidding me,’ Handy thought disbelievingly as the realization hit him. Of course it couldn't be as simple as the others. Of course something would go wrong. With another horrible cacophony of noise from above, Handy moved as quickly as he could.
Or rather he moved as quickly as he could into a steady stroll as the ritual still had him in his grasp.
“Oh, come on!” The ghosts took it as another part of the song and resumed their lively dance, as Handy, oh so casually despite himself, walked over to his hammer as the room continued to shake. Somewhere, one of the giant mirrors collapsed to the ground in a shower of shattered glass and the things above soon began descending to the floor along the walls, like jets of ink shooting through water. Handy wanted to curse, but unfortunately the song came out instead.
“She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the belle of Belfast city!” The ghosts danced, the black horrors covered the walls and blocked out the light of the floor as they advanced and surrounded the slowly moving human.
“She is a-courting, one-two-three-” the light of the floor was reduced to nothing more than a small circle around him as the ballroom was reduced to near total darkness as the mass fell upon him. The mirrors along the walls reflected the lone human as the darkness enclosed him in multifaceted clarity. He closed his eyes, swung up and then brought the hammer’s head down onto the floor with every ounce of force he could muster. “Please won’t ye tell me who is she!?”
An explosion of magic and light drowned out the sound of metal smashing tiles. An unutterably alien screech of pain and horror as the creatures recoiled and shattered into several massive masses of blackness reeling up like waves crashing against a physical force. The tiny shards that had been blown clear shriveling and dying separated from their host mass, the magical blast having stunned and hurt the creatures who acted as one massive beast. Their convulsions shook the room violently. The mirrors, the only surfaces of the walls they did not cover, cracked and shattered further. At least one of the columns of the walls broke in two and fell to the floor, the impact shattering the mosaic on the ground and causing more explosions of magic. The creatures screeched with horrific noise as more of them died, the rest panicking as the beast broke into several masses, each vying and scrambling and fighting each-other to return to the ceiling where it was safe and the room shook all the more for their volatile movements. Handy opened his eyes once he was sure he was not going to be blinded and continued walking, eyeing the horrors around him. His head span and his stomach revolted, but the sight was now unavoidable. He wasted no time and continued swinging for the floor as he advanced.
“Let the wind and the rain and the breeze blow high, and the snow come falling from the sky!” Another swing with eyes closed shut; an explosion of magic; more screeching; more dancing; more shaking; more things falling as the room continued to come apart; all the while he sang and strolled his way to salvation. “She’s as sweet as apple pie an’ she’ll get her own lad by and by! And when she gets a lad of her own, she won’t tell her ma when she gets home!”
The paradoxical feelings of wild fear and revulsion mixed oddly with the profound sense of joy he was feeling, enjoying himself despite being keenly aware he should be scared out of his mind. It was… strangely liberating. The sight of these horrific things he couldn’t even begin to comprehend being destroyed and beaten back by something as simple as vandalizing their home was strangely vindicating and he felt a profound sense of utter satisfaction in their ruination.
The warm feeling inside of him increased as if the world itself approved of what he was doing. The spirits, trapped in their eternal waltz of the dead and the damned, danced with more erratic liveliness. Their forms becoming more tangible and solid yet still incomprehensibly vague to look upon. Their movements became more independent, even as more and more of them seemed to disappear altogether in little flashes of light. The fear subsided, the revulsion remained and the joy increased as, hammer blow after hammer blow, the things were repulsed, scattered and killed by bursts of magical starlight, their furious convulsions causing more columns to fall and causing more explosions and more deaths as the room began to lose all structural integrity. Handy found himself genuinely smiling in spite of it all. “Let them all say as they will, for it's Albert Mooney she loves still!”
“I’ll tell me ma when I go home, the boys won’t leave the girls alone, they pull my hair, they stole my comb, but that’s alright till I go home!
She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the belle of Belfast city, she is a-courting one-two-three, pray won’t ye tell me, who is she?”
And with the last of the song, he made it to the other stairway. The last of the dancers winked out of existence as finally, through uncounted ages of neglect and deterioration, a wall collapsed onto the floor bringing the roof down with a resounding crash. The last of the horrors screeched in terror as their existence was sundered, being caught between falling rock, masonry stone and the magical explosion as the power of that floor was released all at once. Handy wasted precisely no time once the ritual’s grip was released and hurried up the steps, through the doorway and a dozen or so paces down the hallway until he was sure the collapsing room wasn’t going to spread its destruction further than the ballroom.
He coughed as the dust covered him entirely and looked back where he came. It was completely dark and his witch-torch was doused. He fiddled with the pack at his side and drew the expensive brick from one of the pockets within and shone its light, waiting for the dust to settle. Sure enough, the way back was utterly blocked by tonnes of broken stonework and rock. He let himself fall back against a wall of the corridor and slide down to the ground, breathing heavily.
"Well, that happened. Fuck me." He sat there for a few minutes just catching his breath, reflecting upon how he almost died there for something as silly as a song and a dance. "Heh... hehehe."
His laugh trailed off but the smile stayed. He wasn't sure why but that left him quite happy with himself. It was strange, especially when he considered the ghosts. So far, he only met the ones he found in that library he and Whirlwind passed through. Invisible and melancholic, their whispers had almost unmanned him so thoroughly that he had almost fled from the room. Had the White Stag not appeared and the voices not ceased... No, this wasn't the time to be thinking about that thing. Even if it led him from the frozen city where those black shapes, shadows of memories of an age and a people long since past, wandered forever in their last moments. And now these ghosts, white as clean smoke trapped in an endless dance to ensure unspeakable horrors remained imprisoned. What were those things, really, and who were those ghosts once upon a time to sing and dance to stave off the darkness? Where did they go when they disappeared one by one, as more of the magic of the room was disrupted and more of the things they held in place died and winked out of existence? He had seen them disappear; he had seen them move freely of the endless cycle they had been ensnared to.
It was an unpleasant thought and one that almost spoiled the strange warm feeling he felt. He struggled before choosing to cling to the nice feeling for now. It was pleasant, calming, and one that helped him forget about his worries for the time being. The pangs of sanguine hunger that was now rearing its ugly head was lessened and once again it was put in its proper place at the back of his mind along with all its attendant horrors he had all too readily realized. There would be a reckoning with that side of himself in the future now that he was forced to acknowledge it, but right now it could wait. Handy was too busy enjoying an all too human feeling he couldn't quite name to have it spoiled.
Except all good things come to an end, and his reverie was indeed spoiled. Thankfully, however, it was spoiled by a much more mundane if somewhat pertinent concern: how in the hell were they supposed to get out? Handy looked back sharply at the ruined ballroom entrance. There was no way they could dig their way through that. Like the protesting engine of an old truck revving up, a mighty groan escaped him as he buried his head in his hands. Handy was now somewhere below ground, in a situation where he was neither in control of nor even knew all the details of, and he just had his only known method of exit collapse behind him. Again.
This was exactly the sort of thing he was hoping to avoid this time around, yet life felt it would be good to force upon him a repeat of previous mistakes whether he liked it or not, and he had the creeping feeling that as much as he would like otherwise, this was probably not going to be the last time it would happen either. With a sigh of resignation, he got back to his feet and brushed himself down as best he could. Shining the brick, he found, to his relief, the corridor only extended directly forward with no visible splits in the path. Finding the others should not prove all that difficult thankfully. He thought about how he was going to explain the fact that he had, completely inadvertently of course, collapsed their only known way back.
He figured what they didn't know couldn't hurt them until they came to that particularly burned and broken bridge.