“I have previously discussed the nature of the archaeological evidence that exists to question my esteemed colleague's assertions that, contrary to the established timeline of the emergence of life in the many domains of this world, hydrae once possessed a level of technological sophistication and intellectual development far in advance of our own. I would ask my esteemed colleague this: where are their wonders? Their palaces, their great magics, their edifices carved into the faces of mountains? He has failed to answer this question to even the satisfaction of himself. Is it not true that all the hydra in existence today possess no more intelligence than an ape? Is it not also true that we have found not one shred of physical proof to suggest that they ever had otherwise? Now, the discovery of the Kynder object is certainly one of great importance. But can we infer so much from some faint lines in eroded rock? I would direct my learned colleagues to the last page of the document, where I outline my own views on the origin of the object...” - Professor G.D Jyup, Symposium Simplex keynote speech, AN 992.
By the time that Hywell realized he needed to get out of the palace, it was well past midnight. As per usual these days, the wicked crown on his head was not allowing him much sleep. It had been like this for the entire week since the unfortunate incident in the forest. Deploying its powers, even accidentally, seemed to carry a real physiological cost. Even if he dared to take it off, which had its own risks of rapid regicide from some aspiring duke, the effect remained with him, and he would begin to feel a crushing malaise, as if he had come down with the worst flu of his life. It was as though the crown was punishing him for his outburst.
Hywell padded silently down the baroquely ornamented corridors that were woven into a maze around his private chambers, marrying them neatly into a comprehensive array of attendant rooms, annexes and spaces. His usually poor hearing, a consequence of his race, was compensated somewhat by the deafening stillness of everything. He could even pick out the low, rhythmic sounds of servants and maids dozing somewhere nearby, though always on the cusp of sleep, ready to respond should he call or ring a bell. After a moment, Hywell came out into the grand, carpet-drowned foyer that marked the boundary between his suites of private chambers and the Harem of the High Place. To his left and right were little understated arches that hid the long staircases down to the Court, Throne Room and the palace proper, but the Harem had a truly ostentatious door.
It often reminded Hywell of something from a fabulous novel or ancient epic poem. The exposed guts of a prized zebric puzzle lock played out across its surface, simultaneously describing curling trellises of roses and sturdy oak trees in thick silver lines. The aesthetic and the functional blended seamlessly together, and the wholeness of it gave the impression that some mad artist had done it all at once, in a single stroke of dizzying genius. Dragons and many-headed hydra guarded the boughs of the trees and the ranks of chromed flowers, breathing fire into the sky or frozen in mid-roar, gigantic teeth on clear display. The message here was obvious; beyond this door, no mortal cock may enter.
“Not thinking of dipping your talons in, are you, sire?”
Despite the voice's immediate familiarity, its suddenness still shocked him. His instincts had him wheeling around, ready to strike out, before he really knew what was going on. Foel's stout face was regarding him with curious amusement from within the lap of a nest of chairs, secreted away in one of the foyer's nooks. The gryphon must have been there the whole time, and Hywell simply hadn't noticed him.
“Gadarn's beak!” Hywell swore. “What have I said about sneaking up on me?”
“That I wasn't to do it, sire.”
“That you weren't to do it, exactly,” Hywell said, compulsively rearranging the feathers around his neck.
“So, were you intending to visit the Harem?”
“No, Foel.” Hywell glanced away, peering at the arched exit down to the lower levels of the palace. “As the facts would have it, I'm going abroad for an evening constitutional.”
“Sire, it's the middle of the night,” Foel said, the smile on his beak expanding to something that might have been the beginnings of a smirk. “It's quite alright, you know. You have the right and, some would say, the obligation, to--”
“I'm not going into the Harem!” Hywell insisted.
“Sire, forgive me, but I know that you are not as well versed in the ways of the world as perhaps is desirable. If you were to have any questions on the matter, know that this old cock,” he said, tapping his chest with a talon. “has been around the block, and knows a thing or two.”
“Foel, if I want your advice, I will ask for it.” Hywell frowned and clicked his beak desultorily. “Besides which, I am barely of age. I doubt there would be much reason.”
“Not even curious yet, sire?”
“I'm just going out for a walk,” Hywell said, shrugging his broad shoulders. “You may accompany me if you wish.”
“I believe I shall then.” Foel grinned and nodded his head in a supplicant gesture. “Lead the way, sire.”
*
Port Pronto vanished into the late afternoon sun like a scolded dog, slinking away behind the horizon. The ocean had taken on a slightly oily complexion, thick with mats of algae and shifting miniature islands of purple bladderwrack and the tanned hides of dead kelp fronds. The Barely Eagle cut a swath through them at a goodly rate of knots, leaving behind a roiling, frothy wake. A different collection of birds kept them company, dipping into the water around them and coming back with strange, wriggling prey items that looked a bit like squid. These flyers were dart shaped and black, apparently from a different clade of water birds entirely.
For all the apprehension and the vague sense of unease that the approach to the Port had made Emboss feel, things hadn't really been so bad. Something had certainly gone on for, when the gryphons and Astrapios returned some hours after they'd left, it looked as though they'd been in a pretty unpleasant fight of some kind. One of the sisters had a gash along her belly, which completed a litany of smaller abrasions and missing patches of fur and feathers. The other was holding her left wing at a strange angle, and winced every time it was jostled or she accidentally flexed it. The hippogryph himself had seemed uninjured at first, but then it became clear that he too had taken a beating. Fresh bruises, big and vaguely hoof shaped, could be seen developing wherever the trim of his fur allowed.
Emboss and Truth had silently decided to not question any of this. The diminutive captain had done them the courtesy of not asking why they were travelling with such haste, or what their mission was, and would doubtlessly appreciate the same respect in return. They had even helped the crew and the local stevedores load the new cargo aboard. The flashes of telekinetic magic had been met with discontent and bitter gazes, but nobody had complained openly. Twenty-four well-sealed ponyoak crates, heavy with whatever their contents were, and bearing no distinguishing marks except for a little twin-peaked seal neither of them recognized, now sat stowed in one of the Eagle's holds.
Now, they were once more making excellent time. The two sisters had returned to their usual positions of skulking about or napping in high places. Often, Emboss saw a long, black-furred paw dangling idly from a spot up in the rigging mechanisms. Just after they'd left, the zebra had come up on the foredeck and silently gone about the machinations of some ritual or other, involving many highly polished ochre stones and a large cloth, hoof-stitched with criss-crossing lines and geometric shapes picked out in fine red thread. He would mutter something under his breath in a language Emboss presumed to be zebric, raise a hoof or hold a stress position for a few moments, then whisper again, move a stone to some other location on the cloth, and repeat the process.
Truth was parked firmly on the prow of the ship, just above the figurehead. The wind spell was now far less taxing for her to cast. Emboss had never been fantastically magical, no more so than the next unicorn stallion approaching his middle-age, but he knew that experience with any magics made later castings easier. Something to do with the pruning of inefficiencies, and the mental handing off of complex tasks to subconscious areas of the brain. Even so, she sat on her haunches as rigid as a statue, the muscles in her neck tense and quivering. Sweat glistened there, and on her barrel, frothing up and dripping off onto the deck. Emboss had taken to mopping it up from time to time, as well as bringing her pouches of water and bundles of hay from below.
After an hour or two of sailing, Astrapios, always somewhat unreliable, informed them that, contrary to his earlier statements, they would be within sight of the gryphic mainland within the next day. With that news in his head, the feelings of apprehension, dread and unease, only so recently put to bed, came back with a vengeance.
*
Bittersweet Threnody for Last Winter’s Cubs hung above Hywell and Foel as an unlit, looming shape in the darkness. Its true size was masked by the lack of illumination, but Hywell knew its exaggerated ovoid shape well. The airship was a relic, dating back a few centuries to when gryphic endeavours had demanded its construction. Originally intended as a sort of aerial command hub for the then prolonged wars against Equestrians, it had never made it into that kind of service. The thing was an atrocious extravagance. Even four or five centennial refits had not quite managed to remove all the whalebone interiors, exotic lacquers and dense shag carpeting of the highest thread count.
These days, it was almost permanently moored in the grounds of the High Palace, nested in a protective well of wind baffles to protect it from the oftentimes sudden gusts found on the Upmount and its many attendant slopes. Piloting it out and down into the valleys was a herculean task, usually involving many weeks of waiting for exactly the right weather conditions, as well as the dispatching of legions of scouts and observers to mark the way. Organization on those sorts of scales was troublesome for gryphons. Supplication to the Eyrie classes and to the Divinity of the Crown came more as a grudging, bitter acceptance of a more powerful foe. The one exception to this was wars, though there had been few of those in recent years.
“Sire--”
“Yes, Foel?” Hywell said, trying to laden his voice with a certain irritation.
“I have known you for a long time, have I not?”
“You have.”
“Might I be forgiven, then, for assuming that I know a thing or two about you?”
“I have no doubt of that, Foel.”
“Then, as the Equestrians say, a bit for your thoughts?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
The two of them rounded the hidden shape of one of Threnody's gargantuan stone mooring posts, a square, boxy thing that was twice as tall as Hywell was. Gas lights, hidden inside amethyst safety cases, cast silently shimmering purple pools onto the slate grey stone cobbles of the path that would, eventually, lead into the Wystpark. It was a pitiful glow, but neither of the two required much in the way of light to find their way around.
“What I mean, sire, is that it would appear to me that you have something on your mind.”
“Oh, rut the martyrs,” Hywell sighed, pausing in the middle of the path and glancing at Foel. “It's all this, you know?” He gestured back in the vague direction of the palace. “It's suffocating me. I can feel it, clawing its way down my gullet. The ceremony, the rote of it, every day without fail.” Hywell made a soft clicking noise and closed his eyes, and there was a pause before he spoke again, this time in sotto voce. “And this thing on my head. It'll be the death of me. I know it.”
“Heavy sits the crest that bears the Crown, sire,” Foel said, with a tone of voice as if he were applying some soothing balm to a grazed rump. “You still need time to become accustomed to these things.”
Hywell said nothing, but gave a lethargic shrug that turned into a continuing trot down the path. Foel dutifully followed, his eyes and beak far more attentive to the hidden line of trees that marked the outskirts of the Wystpark. The faint shapes of the mammoth welderboughs, jagged branches languidly swaying in the breeze, poked up out of the sucking blackness. The two of them soon passed through an archway that provided passage through the wall that acted as gust protection for the Threnody. Though the arch had huge, cast iron gates, this far inside the palace grounds they were rarely kept locked.
Neat lawns, aggressively manicured to perfection, buffered the park from the walls. Now they were outside them, the breeze became apparent as a constant, urging pressure out of the night. It brought with it fragrant, subtle smells, of the last traces of the evening's flowers, of the snackrabbits that bred so prodigiously in the park's warrens, and of the welderbough's symbiotic vines, which blossomed at this time of year with gay abandon.
“I'm getting out of here,” Hywell said, as they reached the first, towering welderbough tree. “Tonight, Foel.”
“Out, sire?”
“Out of the palace, out of the eye of the court, away, away,” Hywell said, stamping his front left talon as hard as he could against the stone.
“Where, sire?” Foel said, maintaining a constant calm demeanor.
“The coast.”
*
So out it was. Hywell had refused to listen to any of Foel’s attempts to dissuade him from his plans, even as they became more insistent. In fact, it only made him more eager to leave as soon as it was physically possible. Taking the shortest route through the Wystpark to the complex of low, understated stone buildings that squatted unobtrusively in the space between the park and the courts, nests and other functionary aspects of the Crown. Despite the late hour, staff wrapped in thick woollen jackets and wearing scarves wound many times around their necks milled around on urgent duties.
If he had not had the thing on his head, few would have readily recognized him. As he did, however, they scattered as soon as they saw him coming near, pulling off well-practised escapes that simultaneously appeared respectful. Those few that were caught with nowhere sensible to flee to kowtowed dramatically, beaks almost against the flat stone floors or hovering just above the dirt, back legs splayed out and wings unfurled and held low, if they had them.
A larger percentage of them than might have been encountered during his father’s reign did not. Hywell had taken up the cause of alce everywhere, and made sure to employ more of them whenever the chance presented itself. The strength and power of his race made them excellent as laborers and gardeners, as well as some areas of soldiering. What they lost through the lack of flight capabilities, they more than made up for in speed on the ground and stamina. The level of disquiet grumbling this had caused among the gryphons and even hippogryphs, had been hard to deal with, but it was worth it.
Foel had quit his efforts to change the course of things by the time he and Hywell reached the South Kitchen. The vaulted, underground space was filled with bright copper-coloured ranges and huge, industrial-strength ovens that devoured coal as eagerly as the many hungry beaks they were built to serve. Cauldrons and vats, their bases glowing cherry red in the heat of the range and the general conditions of low lighting, bubbled with all tomorrow’s stews. Endless ranks of curing game and fowl -- eviscerated dun and ochre deer that hung open with their guts removed in obscene display, plucked and unplucked pheasants in their rich emerald and red plumage, decapitated pasty white chickens and geese -- stretched off through an arch at one end.
Another arch held a similar pageantry of cheeses, dusty jars of preserves such as apricots and peaches, geological strata of jams and chutneys, glass tombs of pickled onions and eggs that sat motionless in their vinegar like so many gouged, pupiless eyes, and the dangling, intestinal, links of salami and other kinds of sausage. Silently, Foel helped Hywell load up several satchels with fare for the road, but not before emptying their original contents onto the scuffed marble. Papers, notes and training schedules, as well as menu plans and other paper ephemera, went everywhere.
By this point, Hywell was starting to feel like a giddy schoolcub raiding the tuck shop. As annoying as the emotion was, it did about as much as Foel’s pleading had done to calm his passionate mood for escape. After they had packed what they could into the satchels, they slipped through the higgledy piggledy mess of ancillary larders and cook’s offices, scuttled through the coal annex that loomed large with black shapes of stored fuel, then came out into the big, square yard that was formed by the coming together of thirty or so enclosed stalls.
The comforting and familiar scent of reindeer was thick in the air. The gentle huffing and lowing added an aural quality to the scene that Hywell had always found pleasant. Reindeer and deer shared a distant ancestry, he knew, but it was in the same way that he and a ferret were cousins. They had both descended from an ancient ancestor, but ended up quite different. Unlike the deer, who were undeniably of the same mental character as a gryphon or a pony, they were mere animals. That was not to say they were not smart, but merely that they were not gryphon smart.
This all contributed to make them excellent, and ethically comfortable, mounts and beasts of burden. They rounded off their portfolio of value by producing an agreeable milk, which could be made into an even more agreeable kind of cheese. Hywell rather wished that there was time to wake up the stable master and have him harness the state coach to a herd of them, but that was simply not on the agenda. Foel, understanding his charge’s intent at this point, dutifully prepared the reindeer for a trek. They seemed ornery and of an ill mood when the big gryphon carefully brought them out into the yard. Even Hywell’s own, a creature he had not had much time to get to know, but which he understood had a sweet and mellow temperament, grunted disapprovingly at the unexpected turning out from the warmth of her stabling.
A few minutes later, they exited the yard at a fair pace, Hywell leading, down a long, cobbled road large enough to carry twenty rows of fully armoured gryphons marching side-by-side. It would shortly lead to the large garrison town that served to protect the palace, as well as provide for the many workers and tradescocks that lived beyond the walls. As he crouched low in the lounge-saddle, laying out down the length of the reindeer, excitement and joy appeared in him for the first time in months.
*
Parlous. That was the word that, against rationality, came into Emboss' head when first he sighted the gryphic coastline. He could have used a whole raft of possible terms in his broad vocabulary, but it was that one in particular that drifted up through the swirling gas-like eddies of his tense and anxious mind. Parlous peril. Is that a tautology? I think it is. Doom, doom and thrice bloody doom. Why does it have to all look so threatening? Too much to ask for something a little more inviting? Bastard gryphons.
It was like someone had drawn a knife across the horizon, neatly slicing open the very fabric of the universe itself, exposing the sinister black nothingness of the realm beyond. Dotted along the top of this was the occasional hint of slate cloud and little crenellations of what he presumed were fortresses or lighthouses. It wasn't possible to tell at this distance. As if to underline the quickening gloom and environmental glowering, a silent lash of lightning struck out from a fat thunderhead.
Presently, a persistent, lukewarm drizzle began to fall upon the Barely Eagle. The wind spell served to collect and accelerate it. It was as though they were being constantly sneezed on by a sickly dragon. It stung flanks and blurred vision, and generally made the deck an uncomfortable place to be in. Emboss stoically bore it, throwing up a thin telekinetic barrier to shelter his wife. She nodded her head gently by way of thanks, and Emboss shuffled up next to her, touching flank to flank and wither to wither. Her body was damp and her fur matted, her usually pristine mane a mess of sweat and seawater. She still smelled like wet dog. Emboss minded not one bit.
*
Foel had been quietly betting on Hywell's ambitions of flight evaporating like dew drops in the face of the morning sun as soon as they'd gotten a few hours from the palace. They would dive together into some awful tavern or cathouse, drink enough vydlych to euthanize a dragon, start a pointless fight of bravado with local toughs and be back at court the next day. He had seen this sort of reckless wanderlust in young gryphons before. It was as much a rite of passage for a cock as the removal of the dewclaws, if far less formal. As civilized as the average gryphon thought himself to be, the need for violence and rough mating was simply a part of their souls.
But that scenario was growing more and more unlikely, now that they'd passed through Buttez, the town that serviced the palace, and were eating up the flint-strewn paths winding down through the Supplicant Altress range like creatures possessed. The chill breezes of the night were turning into the insistent gusts of the early morning, and pale, milky talons of light were creeping up over the horizon as dawn began to occur.
The Altress range was a brooding figure of snaking, sheer cliff faces and equally formed valleys. Though gryphons kept to the heights of them as much as possible, the glacially fed rivers that plunged down from the greater mountain that the range was supplicant to only ran along the bottom. Fed thereof, emerald sprays dotted with the darker greens and jet blacks of vegetation followed the watercourse. Foel peered down into one such valley, his view gently bobbing as the reindeer trotted neatly along behind Hywell's as they navigated the four-gryphons-wide path cut into the cliff.
Of course, they couldn't keep up this kind of pace forever. His own animal, which was a male called Satin, already panted and strained, his breath coming with an ever-increasing degree of unease. They had been going for perhaps six hours, if the dawn was anything to go by. Another two or three, five at the outside, and the reindeer's endurance would be spent. As Foel was quickly beginning to realize, this was just enough time to bring them to the pawhill two-town of Bregth, a busy and bustling river port. From there, they were only a half a week by paddler to the coast.
*
Emboss had thought, for a few terrified minutes, that Astrapios was intent on sailing them right into the imposing jet cliffs. The tops of them were not at all uniform, as first they'd appeared. Prominences and low shallows, like the break patterns in randomly fractured obsidian, loomed large. But then, when the little fellow had appeared in his sudden and alarming way, tugging on cords and throwing switches, they'd begun to pull around. Shortly thereafter, he'd come fore and broken the thaumic, adrenergic reverie Truth and Emboss were sharing, asking them to power off the arcana.
“We can do fine under our own power from here,” he'd said, grinning merrily. “The rocks are a nightmare, and we'll need to go slow anyway.”
So now, Emboss was busy toweling his wife down with one of the enveloping linen towels from the ship's state bathroom. He'd helped her into their tiny quarters, and she had collapsed on the bed, barely cogent. It seemed as though even the effort of falling asleep was too much to cope with. The only part of her that was dry was her horn, which was still hot enough that it raised the temperature of the room as if it were a fireplace. She had not so much lain down as collapsed.
After half an hour, and much in the way of drying off, she finally managed to summon sufficient willpower to say: “Where are we?”
“Gryphic lands,” Emboss said, tugging a quilt embroidered with bright orange fractal octopi over her withers. “Didn't you see the cliffs?”
“Got a bit weird at the end there, memories and whatnot, you know...” she rambled, voice a thin croak. “My dam warned me about keeping the magic on too long.”
“Did she? What did she say would happen?” Emboss said, nestling up behind her so that he was between her and the porthole, allowing her to lay out flat as best as could be managed in the tight confines.
“If you keep pulling that face, the wind will change and it'll stay like that,” she burbled, only marginally coherent, and passed out in what would become a deep sleep.
Emboss sighed and put his head down, rearranging the covers so that they shared the warmth, and that their bodies touched in as many places as possible. Even with her horn spilling so much waste into the air, the unforgiving and unrelenting chill of the ocean was a constant presence. Later, he experimented by balling up little droplets of water and telekinetically massaging them into the tip and stump of his wife's horn. They continued to hiss, bubble and flash into vapour for much of the afternoon.
*
“It must be noted, if purely for reasons of completeness, that hippogryphs exist. However, they are not the progeny of a coming together between ponies and gryphons, regardless of what conventional rumor may hold to be true. Regular readers of this magazine will be fully aware of this fancier's investigations in that area! The precise origins of the hippogryph are not understood by academics. It would defy conventional evolutionary logic for them to have been the products of nature. But again, for reasons of completeness, the so-called 'nottlygna', the much-feted Night Guard, are also a species which exists. We take it as read that they are not the results of a mare and a bat! However, we understand where nottlygna origins lie, in the mind of Princess Luna. So, it is no illogic to come to the conclusion that hippogryphs and nottlygna are both apples of the same type of tree. This raises further questions, of an evolutionary and theological nature, but they are outside my remit. Suffice it to say, there can be no 'fruit' in any fancier's endeavors.
Those of you out there, and I know there are many, who are upset that they may not at some point be the proud dam or sire of their very own hippogryph, can take solace in the fact that, should this sort of union even be possible, it would be very likely that the creature therein made would eat you from the inside out before gravidity was done. Equally, those of you who were concerned that some gryphon parent might appear before you and demand you make an honest hen of his daughter, need no longer worry.” - 'Meadow Spring', Pigeon Fancier's Association of Ponyville Magazine, 1003 AN.
The Osscept, as she had begun to refer to it, taking from certain items in gryphon almanacs that talked of a deep and vaulted crypt for bones, was an immense place. Even on first sight it had seemed large, but after twenty minutes flying at her optimal cruise velocity, this domain was now redefining her ideas about largeness. The long, reasonably narrow areas that looked like grain silos had given way to a complex of arenas like bowls, stepped and tiered. She'd been coughed out into them through an eye-shaped orifice in one wall of a gigantic underground cavity. She looked down onto a plain of those depressions, stretching away into the darkness wherever she cast a glance and a flicker of light. Between the dish shapes were open stretches of fractured marble, slabs of black and white that appeared to have been trampled repeatedly by herds of elephants. She cast optical flares behind and ahead of her, and they traced away on perfect ballistic arcs.
In the place of seats or couches for spectators were skewed piles of femurs and tibias, arranged as though observing the things in the middle. Those were far more disconcerting. Twilight had been to a lot of museums in her time, and seen the fossilized remains of the ancient soft-shelled crustaceans that had once called the Equestrian continent home. All that was left of them had been the interior structures of bone-like chitin, subsequently preserved and inferring the rest of their organs. The things sitting motionless in the centres of the arenas reminded her of those, though far more massive. Each tableaux was slightly different, as though every one of the arenas was a snapshot of the same display or performance.
The ceiling above the plain had curved away into shadow some time earlier, and Twilight had been reluctant to follow it for the time being. If this place remained on the same rough topological grid as the rest of Tartarus, then she might well ascend out of it without Whom. After forty-five minutes or so, with great stress on the or so, as time was nearly impossible to track in these climes, Twilight pulled a left turn at three hundred kilometres an hour and curved downwards. G-force tugged at her as she dove sharply, but it was with the gentleness of a foal entreating something from its dam.
Lower now, she began to adjust the angle of her beating wings, bleeding off some of her momentum, simultaneously searching for somewhere to put down. The landscape between each of the arenas was more broken and irregular than she'd first thought from altitude. The larger marble slabs, looking as though it had been beaten on with hammers for a great span of time, were complemented with whorls and swirls of black volcanic glass, sometimes cresting like frozen waves into wickedly sharp protrusions.
Finally, though, she reached a butte that jutted above the fragmentary environs and alighted there, the sound of her hooves making a terrific clatter. The surface was some sort of mineral, which had the light, copper-green hue of aventurine, and offered a cloying, grabbing purchase. It was still deathly quiet, and all the little burbling sounds of Twilight's body, faithfully recreated by the alicorn form, became the loudest noises once again.
Frustrated, Twilight looked up and about, trying to get a sense of scale or perspective. All around, from horizon to horizon, the vista of equally-spaced arenas extended off into infinity. The flares she had been casting behind her were gradually meeting the ground, to join a line of them back in the direction she had come from. That was her thread, her trail of breadcrumbs. If all else failed, she could at least find her way back to where she started and try another route.
Come on, think. That thing could run fast, but not as fast as I can fly. It couldn't have moved me this far, could it? Not in the time I was out. But then, how long was I really down for? It could have kept a fang in my brainpan for as long as it wanted. Twilight shuddered involuntarily at the idea of those wickedly sharp incisors inside her, crushing and penetrating. Mustn't dwell on that. If it's been so long, then Whom is dead already. I won't believe it until I see it. Rutting moon mare. She bit her lip and closed her eyes.
Come at the problem from a different angle. What if I can't travel back there in a straight line? An idea, so obvious now that it had arrived, began to unfold. Of course. Why didn't I think of it before? Star's pity! Slow, getting too rutting slow. Tartarus is a demesne, or so like one that it doesn't matter. Layered on top of each other, each slice having arbitrary dimensions in relation to itself but fixed, local dimensions in relation to other aspects of the same whole. I could fly on like this for cosmological distances, but Whom might only be a millimetre away...
Twilight sat down on the butte. Coldness spread up her haunches, baffled only a little by her fur. She ignored it and lit up her horn. It whined and vibrated with unspent power, glowing in the infrared. I couldn't find my way out of the Lunar Principality this way, but then again, those boundary conditions were set by a madmare. She gathered more thaumic potential, cramming it into the tip. She knew the energy density would be growing, and clamped down around it with telekinesis. As she did this, the infrared became a harsh optical glare, like a camera flash that refused to subside. Just a little more. She grabbed at the same reserves of local power that she'd used to synthesize food.
Something gave way. The energy density plunged, a great exhalation of thauma. The chill coming from the butte vanished, replaced by the tugging pull of gravity, of falling. She gasped and opened her eyes, wings flicking out instinctively. Another, completely different, ground came up at her. She braced for a collision, but nothing happened. As though she were stepping daintily out of a carriage, she came to rest on a deep green field. The lushest, thickest grass she had ever seen cushioned her hooves.
In a way, it was a little like the landscape around Ponyville, though apparently untouched by any of the trappings of civilization or the workings of industry. She was in a paddock, bounded, not by fences, but by bands of thick, withers-tall flowers of every shade and hue. Species from a dozen biomes shared space, attended to by flights of orange and purple bees. It was still quiet, but not vacuously so; it was the stillness of a distant glade, punctured only by the humming of insects and the occasional trill and cheep of birds. In one direction, a neat line of trees that marked the beginning of a forest replaced the band of flowers. The boughs were like none she had ever seen in any of her botanical texts, mottled black and silver with long, slender leaves of alternating cerulean and viridian. They wafted back and forth in a breeze that was theirs alone, almost as if motile.
Well, that worked, then. A different part of Tartarus? Or somewhere else entirely? She trotted hesitantly across the grass, taking a bearing. Interesting. I wonder how many subset layers the demesne has? Think. Limits on layering? Arbitrary, I'd guess. Three that I've seen so far. Demesne responds to brute force approach, what does that say? Didn't seem like that creature was very smart, so perhaps simple locks for simple minds. Can it be tuned? Further experimentation is required. Isn't that always the case? Don't lose focus. Whom. Nectars.
Twilight realigned the spell. As before, she piled energy into the tip of her horn, compressing space around it with a torsion of telekinetic fields. She smelled burning almost immediately. Slate grey curls wafted up around her as the waste heat began to set the grass on fire. Oops. Reality gave way again. She kept her eyes open this time. The switch, the passage between layers, happened too quickly to perceive. Blackness. Falling. A familiar chill and pressure returned.
She was standing in a boulder-strewn wasteland. The undulating ripples of Tartarus' main floor rolled away in all directions. Hah! Yes! She jumped up and took to the wing, scattering dust and little pebbles. Flares sprayed out of her horn as quickly as she could cast them. She scanned, searching for some familiar landmark or sign. Half a minute passed, and she went higher and higher. Then, she saw it. A familiar twinkle on the horizon. The strange river from before, a part of it at least, reflecting back the light from her flares. Twilight swore she saw a pinkness there. As if to underline this point, she scented Whom; a light, peppery trace that, after the trip through space in confined quarters, she could not mistake.
Twilight dove and put on speed, accelerating to her cruise velocity as quickly as she could, heading toward the silvery thread of the mysterious river.
*
“Noble Nibble here, with another exciting update on nomenclature! Regular readers will be sad to hear that my faithful assistant, Champion Chomp, passed away this last month, owing to a bad case of the consumption. Take heart, though you may be sad, as the quest lives on in me, and in you. What more noble an ambition (pun very much intended!) than to chart this branch of linguistics? Now, to business. This edition, I'd like to redress some confusion that was reported to me this past tenday, specifically by Fast Bridle of West Wingshade, and by Merry Champs of Canterlot. Many thanks to them for their kind letters.
Having done the research, and spoken to some sources on the ground, I can say with authority that the following is the case. Whilst it may seem logical for a male or female junior gryphon to be called a chick, considering that their adults are called cocks and hens, this is not so! Imagine the looks I got when I entreated this suggestion to one beaky fellow who wishes to remain anonymous. 'Chick' does not translate so well from Equuish to Gryphic! They thought I was attempting to purchase their offspring! Later, I was informed of the homophonic similarity between the Gryphic word for 'saleable', with the upward lilting tone, and of the Equuish for 'chick'. The appropriate term, for both genders, is 'cub', and absolutely no derivation of 'chick', including 'chickadee', 'chicken' or 'little clucker'. Thanks again to Mr Bridle for those suggestions.
I hope this draws the matter to an end. Anyone wishing to send flowers for the late Mr Chomp should know that he is survived by his faithful wife, and her favorites are petunias. Noble Nibble, signing off.” - Noble Nibble's Nifty Notes on Native Nomenclature, 866AN
*
Fluttershy was just about to finish up her ad hoc roc watch when she felt the unusual twitch at the back of her neck that could mean only one thing. She wasn't sure if it was an actual muscular contraction, or just a magical tampering with her peripheral nervous system, but it never happened under any other circumstance. It was Discord.
The slithery chimera stepped out from behind a low outcropping of razor-sharp rock, some distance from her. This wasn't in character for him. You could even imagine that he had walked or flown here like a normal person. He took great delight and amusement in becoming objects in use by those he wished to speak to, manifesting aberrant googly yellow eyes or misplaced fangs and waiting for them to be noticed. She thought for a moment that this might be a sign of respect, given recent friendship events, but when he began to stride across the fractured ground, stepping neatly and quickly over the larger boulders, the worried look on his faintly goatish, not-quite-dragon features dispelled that notion.
“Fluttershy!” he called out, in a silken baritone, which attracted the first concerned glances from the large gathering of roc parents and hatchlings. “Thank all the stars in turn that I found you.”
“Be quiet!” she said, nodding her head at the immense avians.
“Huh?” He glanced toward the nest complex, then stopped and feigned surprise, almost as if he was genuinely seeing them for the first time. “Oh, what pretty birds you have.”
“Did Princess Luna send you?” Fluttershy said.
“No, though there is a Princess involved here. Listen, there's no time to explain a lot of this, but Twilight really needs your help.”
“I sort of understood that from the last time we met!”
“Fluttershy, she's trapped in Tartarus.”
“What?” She felt her muzzle develop a fearful aspect, ears folding back against her skull. “Oh no! How?”
“As I said, there's no time. I need you to talk to an old friend of yours.”
“What? I don't understand...”
“Cerberus, Fluttershy. He's old magic, Divine stuff, hard to unpick by force without consequence.” Discord paced back and forth in the dust and dirt, kicking up a cloud. “Not that I couldn't, or anything. But if you could have a word with him...”
“Absolutely!” she said, nodding quickly. “Lead the way, just tele--”
“Wonderful, brilliant! See you at the Gate! Oh yeah, and bring a roc.”
Discord imploded out of existence with a flash like sheet lightning before she could say anything else.
“Bring a roc?” Fluttershy squeaked, half in terror and half in frustration. She looked over at them with wide eyes. “Bring a roc?! How am I going to do that?” She began turning in a little worried circle. “Discord! Come back! Come back right now!”
But a pair of them had already begun to slowly sway toward her. Had anyone been paying them close mind, they would have seen the larger of the two gently shaking its head, whilst the smaller one rolled its eyes.
*
The Barely Eagle spent another half a day sauntering up the gryphic coastline at what seemed to be a painfully slow speed. Astrapios was at the prow the whole time, scanning the waves and consulting a series of charts and maps, many of which appeared to be written on vellum. They made Emboss' skin crawl, which felt like an apt response, but they certainly saved the hull from being dashed open. Several times during this period, Astrapios would start swearing violently in a surprisingly fluid mashup of equuish and gryphic, scrambling back and tugging on control ropes and jerking rudder lines, steering them safely out of the way of danger. Emboss even caught a glimpse of those black fangs of rock, barely visible in the rucked up ocean but lurking nonetheless.
The looming cliffs they kept on their right eventually turned into flats and marshlands, which immediately reminded Emboss of the Equestria around Port Dauphine. Little deltas flowed from gaps in the occasional dunes, issuing dirty silt blooms into the sea. When Emboss stuck his nose over the side and sniffed the air, it smelled of salt and decay, with wood fires in the distance. The dart birds fought for space in the air around the deltas as a wide assortment of small brown avians plied their trade in worms and mud. Much ado of squeaking and squawking came back to him and, on several scary occasions, snakes half the size of the Barely Eagle sprung suddenly from the water and grabbed a dart bird before splashing back down. He silently swore off ever going swimming again.
By the time a far-off conurbation, a black and grey smudge on the horizon that was first presaged by slate smoke drifting into the sky from numerous points, came into view, the sun was quickly receding into the east. The amber glow was dazzling, and plunged the deck into deep shadows. Astrapios had calmed down considerably, the threat from the submarine outcroppings apparently passed. For all the excitement and pressure of the voyage so far, it felt quite anticlimactic. Emboss sat below the billowing mainsail, attached to its unusual penile mast, a spare wheel in the general operation of the ship.
Certain hard realities were arriving in his skull again. They nagged and worried at him. We're going to be on our own in this damn country. Plenty of cash, but not much else. Alright, no need to panic. Break it down into discrete steps. Can't fret on things in the future; concentrate on immediacies. Where are we going to sleep tonight? How are we going to move about, eat, stay warm? Foal's above, I really hope they take Equestrian coin. If they don't, we'll really be up a certain creek without a certain implement.
Emboss caught sight of another watercourse dribbling out of the marshes, wondering idly for a moment if it might be that certain creek.
Language, that's another point. What do they speak here? Gryphic's the state tongue, but it's such a mess of weird dialects. We should do fine on Equuish. That's what the guide said. Wait a minute, bugger, that was only 'in metropolitan areas'. Why didn't I take that gryphic course like I was going to? We could really use an insider, a local fixer...
Astrapios trotted past him, and spared him a gryphony unreadable look for a moment before padding off.
Plenty of cash... and not much else...
Emboss turned and went after the hippogryph, hope building in his chest.
*
“I am not a bloody tour guide, you mad horse!” Astrapios snapped, his voice sinking into the spongy, felt-lined walls of his office slash dining room. “I'm running a business here, and I can't take time out of it to show you around.”
“It wouldn't be like that at all,” Emboss said, sat down on his haunches, trying to minimize his profile in comparison to the tiny hippogryph. “All we need is someone to show us the lay of the land, get us sorted out, a fixer, that's all. We're going into the mountains.”
“You're going to end up in a sausage, old chap,” he said, slinking around behind his desk. “Possibly some kind of ham? They do like to keep the prime cuts in storage.”
“That's exactly what I want to avoid.”
“Look, I can't help you,” he said, shaking his head. “I've got business obligations.”
“Those crates we picked up at Port Pronto?”
“Quite, pal.”
“Is there no way I can change your mind?”
“These obligations are strictly time limited, Emboss.”
“Could we do both? Perhaps there's some way we can satisfy our mutual needs.”
“I really don't think--”
“That fee we paid for passage?” Emboss stamped his hoof. “Double that for the services I outlined. Plus a ten percent per day retainer fee.”
“My reputation cannot be bought, if I fail to deliver on this deal--”
“Triple!”
Astrapios closed his eyes and sighed deeply, rubbing the side of his beaky head with a hoof.
“I see you aren't easily dissuaded,” he said, rummaging around for his bottle of mysterious purple booze. “Though, considering your exploits over these last days, I shouldn't be surprised at that.” He found the drink and unstopped it, pouring out a measure and swallowing it eagerly. “I'll help you, Emboss.”
“Thank you!” Emboss' relief was palpable, and he made a noise as if a great weight had been lifted from his withers. “You're a good person, Astrapios.”
The hippogryph shrugged noncommittally as if he only partially agreed with this sentiment, then knocked back another drink. Suddenly, Emboss became aware of the rapid fall of paws and talons on wood paneling, then on soft carpet. He turned to see one of the pure gryphon twins hurry in, head held high. He couldn't tell which one it was.
“Astrapios,” she said. “Trouble.”
“Trouble?” The hippogryph jumped over his desk and landed somewhat awkwardly.
“Customs,” the gryphon hen replied.
*
Whom struggled to her hooves in painful stages, wincing and clenching her teeth at the grating, stabbing pain in her barrel. By the time she'd gotten all the way there, she was shivering and breathing heavily through her nose. Each inhalation brought more agony.
“I take it from your less-than-impressed reaction that you've never heard of me,” the great shaggy pile of horse and beard on the sinister motile chaise lounge said. “Usually people do something.”
“I-I think I've hurt myself quite badly,” Whom choked, wincing at the sharp stabs she felt as she did so.
“Broken ribs, I'd say. Easily fixed with magic, let me just--”
“Don't!” she shouted, almost collapsing. “No healing magic!”
“It won't hurt, my little dove,” Starswirl admonished, like she was a naughty foal resisting a much-needed bath.
“No healing magic,” she repeated, closing her eyes and weighing up options for escape.
“Can I at least x-ray your side, see where it is you're hurt?”
“No! No eggs-rays!” Whom whinnied, then her body finally did what it had been threatening to do and she collapsed, landing hard on her gut, back legs skewing out in different directions. The sensation was like someone was rubbing ground glass. She heaved, trying to suck down a restoring breath. “No gamma rays either! They bite and... s-sting...”
“Gamma rays? What would they be for?” The furry mound on his face shifted slightly, as though he were raising an eyebrow in askance. “Don't worry, no radiation. Please let me help,” he cooed, light blue auras of magic catching her muzzle and chin with the most delicate of touches so it wouldn't be dashed on the floor. “Could I do something for the pain, then?”
Whom could muster nothing more in defense. It was too overwhelming to resist. She nodded assent, then Starswirl rested her head carefully on the floor. She watched him carefully, looking up at the moving hillock of hair and pony. There was a clinking out of sight, and a gentle, humming business. She saw a vial removed from a smaller case, which had been produced from some deeper fold. It was made of glass or crystal, and contained a clear liquid like water, stoppered with a thin layer of neatly cut cork. Then, there was a whine of magic, and a surge of fear in Whom. Warmth washed over a spot on her flanks, along with an ultraviolet glow.
“Don't worry, dear,” Starswirl said, with that chiding tone again. “I'm just sterilizing this needle, and you.”
The tip of the hypodermic went into the vial, through the cork, and then telekinesis worked its plunger back and drew up a measure.
“Sharp scratch, coming up...” Starswirl said, then chuckled. “You may feel a small prick!”
The next thing Whom knew, the needle was in. She could feel it as it tugged at her skin around the injection site and wormed its way in. The paradoxical feeling of chilled warmth spread like paint in water through the big muscle covering her left flank. Half a minute later, and the grating, grinding, gnawing pain was starting to diminish to a barely tolerable ache. Whom simply lay there, unwilling to move, feeling utterly miserable.
“Thank you,” she whispered, coughing. “I'm sorry I shouted.”
“Darling, no need to apologize, I know what it's like to be in pain.”
“I'm just afraid...” she mumbled, dreamily. “Brings back bad memories.”
“It's okay, really. I take it, then, that the thaumic drain I sensed didn't come from you.”
“No, that was Twilight.” Whom experimented with standing again, finding it much easier this time round, if still quite painful, especially when any pressure was put on her ribcage.
“Well, two Princesses in one day. When I was but a young colt, you didn't get two Princesses at the same time without asking very nicely.” He chuckled with the sound someone might make falling into a septic tank.
“What do you mean, 'two'?” Whom said, peering down at her side and immediately wishing she hadn't.
“Well, darling, the wings, the horn, both on the same chassis, has to be a Princess, right?”
“I'm not a Princess. Twilight is, but not me.”
“You look like one.”
“You look like a pile of hair,” Whom said. “Does that make you a rug?”
“Ah, the cat has claws,” Starswirl laughed. “Sorry I asked!”
There was an awkward silence. Whom shivered, even as a delectable inner warmth was taking hold in greater fashion and form.
“Anyway...” he continued. “I haven't felt a drain on spacetime that fierce for years. Damnable luck I didn't get here in time to meet the individual responsible. I was already coming in this direction; felt you wormhole your way in here and thought you might be worth chatting to, but teleportation is a trick done with rabbits and top hats compared to... what was that, anyway?”
“She'll be back. She's immortal, just like Nightmare Moon. It'll take more than a big fangy thing to kill her. I don't think she thinks I know she can't die, but I do.” Whom sighed and shook her head, fighting off the urge to sleep. “Direct thaumomaterial synthesis, Twilight's good with magic.”
“She might be able to find her way back, then.”
“Back? From where?” Whom looked over at the river, now some distance away. “Isn't she in the river?”
“The ekatopletons are a sort of filing system. They file away things that turn up here, and stop the nastier residents from getting out. Once they realize they can't eat her, they'll dump her in the Vault of Many Bones. Pretty small minded folk, really.”
“Oh.”
“Really, don't worry about it. If she's anything like the kind of mage I'm suspecting she is, she'll figure out the layer cake arrangement of this awful realm,” Starswirl said, as his chaise lounge shifted and carried him away a few paces. “What were you doing down here, anyway?” There was a protracted shuffling and scraping noise, and the columnar trunk of hair and fur that was Starswirl's neck moved his head to look at her more closely. “You mentioned a certain Nightmare; you're not here on a certain periodical errand, are you?”
“Nightmare Moon had her memories dug out by the Elements like they were a melonballer; she's just called Luna again now,” Whom said.
“Has it really been a thousand years on the surface? Starry foals, I have been here awhile.”
“Me and Twilight came here by accident, I think,” Whom said, eyes still fixed on the slithy mercury surface of the river. “We're getting the ingredients together for the Nectars though.”
“Ah hah! I knew it! Well, then it's no accident that you ended up here, that's for sure.”
“Twilight was trying to take me into Equestria, not down here.”
“She would have had to come at some point, even if she did not know it yet.” His columnar neck relaxed back into its former position, and he sighed. “You can't very well make any of the Nectars without a bit of the river. Everyone knows that.”
*
Twilight gathered her magic and dumped it into the act of flying. This was raw stuff, undirected and primal. Wings alone failed to function above a certain velocity. She'd been doing something like this to attain the speeds she'd put on to clear through the other levels of Tartarus, but now it was happening at an order of magnitude more intense. She spread telekinesis ahead of her, tense thaumic surfaces deflecting the airflow. The fields extended first as a skirt, then a tear-shaped bubble with its interior surface as close to her as she possibly dared whilst still maintaining that perfect aerodynamic model. Glad that she didn't really require oxygen, as providing a gas exchange mechanism would make the magic more complicated, she shouldered through the sound barrier.
Wings were an irrelevance now, almost distracting. She was a pure missile of force. Thauma gladly provided everything she asked for, and then some. Suddenly, heat washed across her flanks, like an oven door had swung open. Daring to glance over her shoulder, she saw, for the briefest of moments before the blink reflex kicked in, a sun-bright speck of brilliant illumination stabbing out, leaving a long trail of lambent gas filled with the flickering dazzle of ionization effects. What? I didn't set that up...
The speck immediately evaporated, as if her observation alone had spoiled some wondrous cosmic moment. Passing in a blur of fast moving hard shadows and smudges of shapes, the river shot past somewhere below her. Her control of the bubble slipped and the energy sheath collapsed, dropped, and the naked airflow smashed into her like a cliff. She was barely cogent of it before the black unawareness she'd come to associate with temporary physical destruction descended.
All of a sudden, she was staring down at the river again. She was upside down and coming in fast, ballistically. The little physicist in her head blithely commented that her present vector seemed unlikely, but Twilight ignored it, fighting her way through the disconnection and confusion that always came when she was smashed about in such a manner. Obviously traveling far more slowly now, she beat her wings to shed speed, then pulled a hard right turn almost directly over the sinewy watercourse, searching around for Whom.
Sweet starry foals, what in Tartarus is that?
It seemed as though some further monster of the Pit had taken this opportunity to slither out from underneath whichever bleak rock it called home. This one was particularly foul; a great mound of fibres like hair, mounted on a grotesque motile bed of some kind. Whom, immediately noticeable through her pinkness that assaulted the darkness even now, was standing beside it. Frozen with fear, no doubt. Thank gracious I got here in time. Putting on speed, Twilight summoned up the nastiest, most aggressive killing spell she could think of. This time, the creature would not have a chance to throw her into the river. Even if it did, she knew that she could get back with only a moment's thought, now she had divined the secrets of this place.
This spell was a real classic. She had peeled it from a wicked tome dragged out of Canterlot's Low Archive, a special lead-lined crypt cut into Avalon's own bedrock. The original writer of the book had not invented the spell, merely copied it from another, darker source, but the meaning was there. She pulled together the magic for it and felt local space diminish and cool. Next, she dropped into a ground approach and scanned around for a suitable rock.
The hard deck rushed up at her, and she almost missed her chance to grab the right stone. Just a pebble, Whom's right there, can't be too fierce. The little scrap of flint that she placed a telekinetic hold on arced out ahead, just as the final parts of Starswirl the Unshorn's Strong Force Bomb unfolded and exerted their dire effects on a tiny grid of space. The flint intersected it. She imagined the fundamental force beginning to come apart, unleashing energy. Instinctively, she closed her eyes and waited for the flash.
Nothing happened. Aching seconds passed. The window for firing came and went, and Twilight shot over the top of the hideous furry mound. Vaguely, she became aware of Whom shouting and dancing about, flapping her wings as she gesticulated wildly. Before she could find some solution to this predicament, a vice-like grip clamped down around her ribs, slowing her like she had thrown down an anchor.
“Really, darling, I invented that spell! Did you honestly think it would work? Apologies for the faux pas, interfering with another's magic, but I think we can all agree that gamma ray fluxes are unhealthy.”
The voice was just shy of being described as falsetto, and the tone it bore reminded Twilight of an arrogant peacock. It assaulted the silence as if it were an invading barbarian horde. She immediately found it aggravating, without even processing the content of those words.
“Plus points on effort, though. The mare in the arena and all that! Strive, strive, strive.”
Twilight was rotated around toward the source of the voice just as its owner started chuckling at something. The mobile hillock of fur and hair was laughing. The softly keening sounds of magic being employed drifted with the laughter, along with faint, egg-shell blue flickers that concentrated in the air around the highest point of the mound. 'I invented that spell'? What?
“Hey! Twilight!” Whom shouted, in her usual merry way, though it seemed to have been dulled a little, almost pained. “We were just talking about you.”
“Are you okay, Whom?” Twilight said.
“Mostly,” she said, and did a little slow motion dance that involved raising each hoof in turn. “I fell and hurt my ribs.”
Twilight nodded and frowned, then turned her attentions to the mound, fixing it with the most evil and disapproving stare she could muster.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn't turn you into glass,” she said, pouring magic into the second most aggressive killing spell she knew, which was a thermal inductor usually utilized in the creation of artificial rubies.
“Your little pal here tells me you're making Old Moon Rump's super secret special sauce,” he said, voice carrying all the evil of a naughty sprite detailing plans to inconvenience mortals. “You'll need me for that.”
The mound's magic then settled her upside down on the smooth rock floor of Tartarus, whereupon Twilight quickly righted herself, standing up and turning to face it. All the while, the immense chaise lounge on which it was emplaced shuffled and writhed, its hideously motile, enchanted and mismatched feet working overtime. A beady pair of vibrant sapphire eyes regarded her from inside a cavernous nest of silver hair and fur, above which a bone-white horn jutted, fizzling and shimmering with power.
That scared her more than anything. The magical organ keened and hummed on frequencies she was usually barely aware of, simultaneously feeding her own horn with thaumokinetic feedback the likes of which she had never seen before. The magic of alicorns was immense, that was in no doubt, but it was always restrained, available only in the background, visible only to those who knew precisely where to look, or else when the Divine in question wished it so. This was unicorn magic, a far more obvious subspecies, but it sung in this creature. She knew it now to be a unicorn, knew that it could be nothing but. It was beautiful and frightening in vast and equal measure, like a matriarch gryphon, talons outstretched, poised to strike.
“Yes, I have that effect on most mares,” the unicorn-mound said, when he noticed how Twilight's previous angry staring had segued into reverent study.
“What are you?” she managed, after a long pause.
“He's called Starswirl the Unshorn!” Whom said, nodding forthrightly.
“That's not possible,” Twilight said, automatically, even as the sound of her voice suggested that she was growing radically unsure of this theory. “Starswirl the Unshorn was eaten by a tatzlwurm almost a thousand years ago.”
“Did I really? Is that what she said happened?” Starswirl said, laughing incredulously. “How funny! No, I was not eaten by a tatzlwurm.” There was a beat. “I did once write a treatise on interspecies coupling, though. That was fun, you see; it's how they reproduce. The field research alone--”
“That's how you unpicked my spell,” Twilight interjected. “Because you wrote it.”
“Because I wrote it, exactly,” Starswirl nodded. “I intended it to be an amusing little party trick, but apparently it had military applications, who knew? Personally, I thought the one with the pink bison was more amusing, but hey ho, they can't all be winners.”
“What are you doing down here, then?”
“Oh, well, I tried my hoof at some statutory, there was a lot of copper involved, I seem to recall, or was it brass? Perhaps it was gold.” Starswirl's scraggly folds shifted like sand dunes in fast motion. “Anyway, I made a little satire, and this was just one offence too far, and Celestia threw me down here.”
“Celestia put you down here?” Twilight took an involuntary step backwards.
“Yes, all rather unpleasant, and just because of a statue some folks found displeasing!”
“There are dozens of unpleasant statues in Canterlot; stomachs torn open, dams foaling, gryphons frozen in the act of dying,” Twilight said. “What could be worse than that?”
“I called it Celestia Penetro Omnes, I believe.”
“Celestia Penetro Omnes?” Twilight echoed. “Which one is.... Oh!” The realization clicked into place and she gestured with her front right hoof in a generally downwards direction. “The one with the... additional parts?”
“Yes, that's the one, usually a bit of a faux pas with statues of those we ostensibly think of as mares, but it was satire for goodness' sake!” Starswirl had gotten pretty animated by this point, which occasioned unsettlingly tumultuous ripples in his massive flowing locks and weaves. “I mean it's not like she couldn't grow one! She can make herself look like whatever she pleases, including inanimate objects and bloody metaphysical concepts!” He huffed and snorted, and tufts, bangs and sprouts of beard hair flopped once. “A big dangly willy would be the least of her abilities.”
“So she put you down here.”
“Only after I presented the statue to her on the occasion of her birthday.”
Whom began giggling wildly whilst trying to look like she wasn't, which made her wince and tense up in obvious pain.
“You're not what I expected,” Twilight said, after a moment, feeling rather disarmed. “You know, I've read all of your books. I'm actually a big fan...”
“I doubt you've really read any of my texts, at least not in the fashion I intended them to be read.”
“What do you mean?”
“Knowing Celestia, she almost certainly rewrote them to conform better to the approved version of history.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“How many books do you think I've written?” Starswirl said, head coming up, those fierce eyes fixed on her with an even greater intensity.
“Your main body of work comprises nineteen complete treatises,” Twilight said, sitting up straight and reciting as if giving an answer in front of a packed lecture hall to an expectant professor. “Eleven cover the major schools of thaumic thought, with the remaining eight comprising commentary and analysis of those schools. However, modern science agrees that your diaries are far more--”
“I never wrote any diaries,” Starswirl said. “Too much of a security risk. It's all up here.” He wobbled his head back and forth in lieu of tapping it. “And, as a matter of fact, I wrote ninety-nine treatises, of which eighty-seven were complete at the time of my incarceration.”
“Oh, my...” Twilight said, visions of previously unknown Starswirl the Unshorn manuscripts writhing about in her mind, lighting up the parts of her brain usually only invoked during certain periods in the spring when the light was right.
“Starswirl says he can help us with the Nectars,” Whom said, having found a comfortable position that didn't compress or interfere with her ribs too much. “You know, there are nine ingredients, and we've only got...” The moon mare peered up and to the right, thinking deeply. “Three. Three ingredients.”
Twilight's reverie of dancing formulae and arcane secrets was broken only when she heard the familiar sound of her panniers being unlatched and rooted through. She glanced back in time to see the pinion-feather sized scroll zipping out, wrapped in Starswirl's magic. She almost instinctively grabbed at it with her own telekinesis, pulling back just in time, aware that a tug of war between two powerful magic users would involve a breakage at the weakest point – that all too mundane scrap on which the ingredients list was written.
“Hey! Give that back!”
Starswirl ignored her and unrolled it, closing one eye to peer at the writing, drawing it closer and moving it further away, in what was almost a parody of someone actually reading something. Twilight moved closer, then Starswirl huffed and looked away in pique, as if the scroll had suddenly grown a disgusting smell and become repulsive.
“Yuck, what amateurish hooves wrote this?” he said, shaking his furred head. “What a bunch of little foals! Playing with magic you're not supposed to wot of, and all that. Do you have an uncontrollable army of brooms fetching water for you, too? Tsk, tsk, tsk. I'm very disappointed. Lucky you have good old Uncle Starswirl here to sort it all out.”
He continued speaking before Twilight could reply.
“I can imagine what you've been through to get even three parts of nine. Without a proper recipe, too. I'm surprised, maybe even a little impressed. How about I give you a hoof and fill out the rest of this, though? Locations of said parts, what you need, how you're supposed to make it, where you're supposed to make it. Sound good?”
Twilight could only nod mutely.
“But there's something I want from you.”
“What's that? What could I possibly do?”
Even as Twilight's febrile imagination began to suggest exactly what a twenty-something year old good looking mare and her equally comely pink friend could do for an elderly stallion who'd spent a long time alone, Starswirl leaned down and forward. His chaise lounge shuffled a little bit, lending to the conspiratorial air.
“Jailbreak,” he whispered.