//------------------------------// // Scapegoats // Story: Pathfinder Ponies // by terrycloth //------------------------------// “Okay,” Applejack said, after they took their leave from Skyflash and his troops. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk all casual-like over to the Pathfinder Guild, we’re going to sell what we have and buy what we can, and then we’re going to get the hay out of dodge before somepony puts a shiv in our backs.” “I don’t see how anyone could possibly blame us for this,” Twilight said, following along after the all-too-calm Purrsian. “We failed at one attempt to take out the smoke birds, yes, but it was Skyflash who decided to reduce half the city to rubble.” “That’s why somepony with a fair mind and a generous spirit wouldn’t blame us, dear,” Rarity said. “The Empire and the people of this city are likely to have neither.” “So what – you want us to just run away and live like fugitives for the rest of our lives?” Twilight asked. “Nah,” Applejack said. “We buy some hats of disguise, move to another city, and lay low for a few weeks. That should do it. When they can’t find us they’ll blame somepony else. Now come on – let’s do one last bit ‘o shoppin’ while we can still show our faces.” There was no trouble on the way to the guild hall, or inside the guild. After selling the loot taken from the mephits and nagas at the small portal and buying hats of disguise to go around, and some wands of cure light wounds to replace the ones already drained, and a wand of faerie fire in case they ever ran into more displaced creatures – “I’ll hold on to that,” Applejack said. “But – but – I love using wands of spells I can’t cast!” Pinkie Pie said, pouting. “You can’t cast any spells, technically,” Twilight said. “Exactly!” Applejack rolled her eyes. “I can’t cast any spells either, and I also can’t do squat against critters I can’t see clearly, while you can still hit ‘em with bombs. So I should be the one wastin’ her time flinging a faerie fire.” “Fine!” Pinkie Pie said, folding her forelegs and grumbling, “frizzy fuzzy felines.” After buying supplies out of the raw gold pool, there was only a couple thousand gold left for each pony to spend on personal possessions. Still, it was better than being broke. By then it was getting late, and the curfew would soon fall over the city. The adventurers headed back to the inn near the gate, and paid for rooms for the night. They ate dinner in the common room, and made sure everypony saw them go up to their rooms. Then they snuck out the window at the end of the hall into an alleyway, and burrowed under the wall. “HALT!” said an orcish guard on the battlements, as they retreated from the city. “We’re adventurers on official business,” Twilight said, showing him her identity card. Unfortunately, the wall was high enough that she couldn’t levitate it all the way up to where he could read it clearly, but it was close enough that he could at least recognize what it was. “No one is allowed to move around after curfew,” the guard replied. “My orders did not include any exceptions for adventurers.” “But we’re not even in the city!” Rainbow Dash shouted back up at him. “The borders of the city extend 1200 feet from the walls, to establish a kill zone,” the guard said, drawing a bow. “But we outrank you,” Fluttershy said. “Can’t we just give you new orders? I promise we’re not causing any trouble.” “You’re not in my chain of command,” the guard said. “Plus, I haven’t verified your identity. Wait there, and I’ll send a patrol to arrest you.” “This is pointless,” Rarity said. “Macintosh? If you would, after I cast.” As she tried to cast her spell, the guard fired his arrow, but Twilight leapt into the way, catching it. In her chest. But then the obscuring mist was up, and the party was able to burrow another 1200 feet to be officially outside the city. “That looks like it hurts,” Rainbow Dash said, as Pinkie Pie pulled out the arrow and healed Twilight’s wound. “Have you tried catching them on your shield?” Twilight sighed. “Someday, I’ll figure that part out.” The party spent the night on a mountain slope, half a mile away from the road that led up into the pass, their camp hidden from the road in a slight depression. There was no sign of pursuit or alarm, and no creatures were wandering around that close to the city, so the night passed uneventfully. In the morning – An hour before dawn, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie started whispering to each other, and occasionally looking at Rarity, who was reading through the portal book again, while resting in preparation for preparing the new day’s spells. She kept watch on them out of the corner of her eye, until they broke and Pinkie Pie flew over to talk to her. “Hey, Rarity?” Pinkie Pie said. “I was able to finish another recipe in my potion book. Do you want to look through your notes and see if we have anything to trade? I brought some spell ink!” “Unfortunately, the spells I’ve been working on aren’t shareable,” Rarity replied. “One projects a cone of fear, the other,” she glanced down at Rendrax’s Tome, “Well, it’s dimension door. I was inspired by my recent reading material, although I’m afraid the spell itself is no different from the standard.” “Oh. I already copied down all the spells I really wanted last time we were in town, so all I could come up with is Aura Sight. It’s not really useful, but –“ There was a loud smashing noise from the other side of the camp, followed by the all-too familiar sound of bones clattering to the ground. Rarity stated to rise, but Pinkie Pie put a hoof on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about that. Have you decided what you’re going to memorize tomorrow?” “Pinkie, something is attacking the camp!” “Twilight and Fluttershy can take care of it, don’t worry,” Pinkie Pie said. “But I was thinking, maybe you should memorize a bunch of animate dead spells? Like, say, four of them?” “Pinkie – you know I trust your insight, but why in the world would I memorize four copies of a spell –“ There was another smashing sound, followed by the sound of Twilight laughing, and saying something that Rarity couldn’t quite make out. “Something is going on here.” “It’s a surprise!” Pinkie Pie said, grinning. “It sounds like Twilight is sparring with my dragons, and you’re here keeping me busy.” A third smash. “That means that you’re involved in this.” “Nah, it was all Fluttershy’s idea. She even bought you all these stones!” Pinkie Pie hoofed over a small bag of onyx gems. “So that you can animate things. Well, re-animate.” A fourth smashing sound, and then Futtershy said, “Okay, we’re ready!” “Well, she’s not!” Pinkie Pie called back. “She still has to memorize her spells!” Rarity closed her eyes, and mimed taking a deep breath. “Did you just destroy my skeletal dragons.” “Nope!” Pinkie said. “Twilight did. Fluttershy helped. She had to bless them so they wouldn’t regenerate.” “Why did you just destroy my skeletal dragons?” Rarity asked. “I’m asking you this calmly, but if you don’t have a very good reason, I am going to continue asking it less calmly while feasting on your entrails.” “Because Fluttershy’s nature spirit patron thing decided she’d done enough fighting, and taught her a few new spells,” Pinkie Pie said. A wave of darkness rolled across the land, and Rarity could feel herself becoming slightly stronger, empowered by dark energy. “And she learned desecrate.” “Ah,” Rarity said. “Animate dead has an improved effect when the undead in question are originally animated on desecrated land. You could have just asked.” “Next time you die, we can see if it works on you!” Pinkie Pie said. “Oh! We should have killed you to test it! Now we’ll have to make another patch.” “I’ll forgive you for my minions, this time, because you’re paying for their reanimation, and they should come back stronger,” Rarity said. “However, if you ever do anything similar to this again without my permission, I will feast on somepony’s entrails. Do you understand?” Pinkie Pie giggled. “I guess we’ll have to wait until we can grow entrails back, then.” Sparky II and company were re-animated an hour later, and while they looked exactly the same, lore dictated that they would be slightly tougher than they had been before. Also, there would forevermore be a patch of land a half mile from the road dedicated to the Nightmare. The next group that decided to use the shallow depression to rest would be in for a nasty surprise. They reached the orcish fortress in mid-afternoon. The acting captain of the garrison came out to greet them. “Welcome back. I hear you’ve been busy.” “Do we know you?” Applejack asked. She was disguised as a fiery-coated wolf. Most of the rest of the party hadn’t bothered to change species, but they had changed coat colors and clothing, to humor Applejack’s paranoia. “This is our first time through the pass.” “Uh huh,” the orc said. “I must be mistaking you for some other warband that runs around with four skeletal sky dragons.” He gave a snort. “I suppose that’s for the best. If you were really Twilight’s bunch, I’m supposed to tell you to head back to Rally for questioning.” “Questioning about what?” Twilight asked. “About why one Captain Skyflash’s headless body was found nailed to the door of the guardpost, right next to his suicide note.” “He nailed himself to the door after cutting off his own head?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Wow. He’s good.” “It wasn’t actually suicide, Pinkie.” Rainbow Dash said. “Pinhead. I mean pinhead. You stupid featherbrain.” “Um… maybe we should just… go?” Fluttershy suggested. “After all, if we’re easy to mistake for this other warband, we’ll just cause trouble if we stay here. Right?” The orc nodded. “Right. Good luck in the pass.” After a few minutes of walking, the fort was out of sight. Twilight glanced back at the column of smoke rising from the orcish capitol, which was thicker than ever. “We should go back to Rally.” “No,” Applejack said. “No, we really shouldn’t. That’s just about the last darnfool thing we should do.” “Somepony killed Skyflash –“ “Nuh uh,” Pinkie Pie said. “It was a suicide.” “There’s no way it was a suicide!” Rainbow Dash said. “He didn’t nail himself to the door.” “Well, of course not. He had to have a friend help,” Pinkie Pie said. “But if anypony wants to commit suicide nowadays they’ll need help, silly. Otherwise they just come back as an undead and that doesn’t solve anything.” “If his problem was guilt, coming back as an undead would solve it handily,” Rarity said. “And no true friend would help him commit suicide so quickly. Foul play was undoubtedly involved.” She paused, and added, “That said, we should not return, unless we wish to be used as scapegoats for the thousands of civilian deaths caused by the bombardment.” “That area was completely overrun,” Twilight said. “The residents would have fled long before we were ever on the scene.” “Really?” Rarity said. “I seem to recall that the typical reaction to a smoke-plane incursion was for everyone to huddle inside the buildings, waiting for an all-clear.” Twilight’s step faltered. Rarity smiled. “Not only the residents of the area, but everyone passing by. I wonder how they managed to clean up the bodies before they started rising as undead?” Twilight stopped, and turned around. “We need to go back!” Applejack shook her head. “That’s not an option, sugarcube.” “Yeah, I think maybe that would be a really bad idea,” Rainbow Dash said. “We should use our strength elsewhere,” Fluttershy said. “Surrendering to the Empire would be a terrible waste.” “I don’t know, Twilight seemed to really enjoy being mind controlled,” Pinkie Pie said. Rarity shook her head. “They’d just order us to confess, dear, and cooperate with our execution.” “That’s four to two,” Rainbow Dash said. “We win.” Applejack set a paw on Twilight’s pauldron. “If you really want to go back… well, we can probably find somepony else to hit things with other things when we get to Bright Valley. I’d rather you stayed, though.” Twilight closed her eyes and let out a deep breath, then turned and continued on down the trail. “Fine. We can still investigate the dimensional instability in Bright Valley. That’s where the book was published, right?” “Indeed,” Rarity said. “We might even do more good, cutting this off at the source before it spreads too far.” “Don’t oversell it, lilypad,” Applejack muttered.