“Just take it, will you?” I say, gesturing to the bone scroll case inside the Circle near Twilight’s hooves.
In return, she stares at me with unmasked loathing and edges away from the case. “You’ve got to be kidding me. There’s no way I’m going to do anything you --”
“Look, in about three minutes that last glyph is going to go away,” I say, cutting her off and pointing at the last floating symbol in the Circle’s faded golden field. “When it does, the entire construct is going to collapse, and so are you. And when that happens, I’m going to come over there, grab you by the hoof, and drag your sorry cutie mark over to that goddamned case anyway, because whatever else you think of me I don’t want you dead,” I say, exhaustion, nerves and irritation all creeping into my voice without much subtlety. “So can we just skip the part where you collapse for now? Because I don’t see how that does anyone any good.”
Staring angrily at me, Twilight takes a grudging step towards the case, wrinkles her nose and taps it hesitantly with her hoof. As she does, I sense as much as see the partial transfer of magic from the case to her as she comes in contact with it: a faint golden cord leading from the top of the case to Twilight’s hoof.
I pass a hand over my eyes and take a long breath, and when I open my eyes again her expression is confused and she’s shaking her hoof in front of her face. “It looks okay… it smells okay… it… it’s… okay? It’s okay. But what’s happening?”
“That golden cord is transferring a trickle of magic to you,” I explain. “It’s just like the Circle, only you can carry it with you, and it’s not going to run out of power nearly as fast. It’s not spending any energy on unnecessary tasks like limiting your abilities or keeping you imprisoned physically. All it has to do is feed you power to keep you upright.”
As if to underscore the fact, the final glyph in the Circle winks out, and the yellow field surrounding Twilight disappears into nothingness. We both flinch as it happens, but the alicorn maintains her consciousness, and we both exhale after a very long moment.
“I guess I’m just… I’m confused. You really seemed like you were trying to help,” she said, frowning. “But that… that creature you summoned...”
“Was a necessary evil,” I replied, lowering my eyes. “You were running out of time, and neither of us had any big ideas.”
“You made a bargain with it,” she says, disbelief clear in her voice. “It knows you. Its brothers know you. Just how often do you do this? How often do you summon terrible things into your home and make them do things for you?”
“Look, Purple, you have to understand --”
“I understood just fine, thank you,” she says, looking away from me. “I’ve seen some crazy things in Eques -- where I’m from. I’ve seen Ursa Minors big enough to destroy a town during a temper tantrum, and I’ve faced dragons whose smoke could choke an entire city. I’ve confronted ancient beings escaped from Tartarus, with little more than destruction and revenge on their minds, and I’ve stood against chaos incarnate -- but you?”
She looks at me again, with a dark courage in her expression that for the briefest of moments makes me realize that she’s someone I should respect, and possibly even fear. “You don’t stand against those kinds of things, do you? You stand with them. You make deals with them!”
Twilight’s voice has grown harsher and more resolute as she speaks, and with that last sentence she stares at me, her narrowed eyes boring into my own, and watches me with a mixture of anger and disbelief in her eyes. “You bring them here to this Circle of yours, and then they do things for you. What does that make you?”
“That’s… a good question,” I say uncomfortably, looking away from her. “You have every right to ask. I guess I can see how this must look to you,” I murmur, remembering all too well Magoth’s black, void-filled eyes and her terrible, decayed smile.
“It looks like you have the wrong kinds of friends,” she says, her voice nearly a growl.
“They’re not my friends,” I snarl, turning back to meet her gaze angrily. “They’re hateful and they’re dangerous, and if I had any choice I’d leave them in the pit where they belong. But they have something of mine. Something they stole from me a long time ago. Something I need back.”
“What did they take?” she asks, her revulsion partly tempered by her curiosity. “What could possibly be so important that you’d consort with those horrible things to get it?”
“It’s not your business,” I say, my voice cracking a bit.
“Isn’t it?” she replies, frowning, “If what you’re saying is true and you really want to help me, then I need to know I can trust you. I need to know why you’re doing this, Harken.”
Damn her. I glare at her, but I know she’s right. Normally I wouldn’t care so much about her trust, but as long as she’s here I’m responsible for her, and if she doesn’t trust me she could get herself into all kinds of trouble, even by walking out my door.
As the many and varied ways she could find to get into trouble filter through my brain, I realize I don’t have a choice. I’ve never told anyone any of this, but she doesn’t need to know the why. The facts alone are bad enough.
“They stole my soul,” I finally say, setting my jaw and ignoring her widening eyes. “I was supposed to get it back tonight. Instead, somehow I screwed up and I got you instead. And I almost got you killed while I was at it.”
“Your soul? But how --” she starts, but I put up my hand, stopping her.
“Look, Purple, it’s a long story,” I say, glancing away from her. “Right now we have to focus. That scrollcase is more efficient than the Circle was, but it's not going to last forever. We have to get you home. Until we do that, nothing else matters.”
“I didn’t think souls could be stolen,” she says, hesitantly.
I sigh. “They can’t -- not exactly, anyway. Look, you know how when you’re young and desperate, you do stupid things? Well, once, when I was young, I was really desperate and really, really stupid. I broke some things I never meant to break, and I lost my soul in the process. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fix what I broke, but I can't even try until I get my soul back. And, well…it’s harder than it looked.”
I peer around my attic, littered as it is with occult paraphernalia, and exhale, letting some of my stress out with my breath before I turn back to Twilight. “Is that good enough for now? Because I’m exhausted, and if we’re going to keep fighting about this then I’m gonna need some coffee.”
Twilight blinks at me, then nods once, stifling a yawn. “It has been… a bit exhausting.”
“A bit,” I say, mustering up a weak smile. “Look, I get that you don’t trust me right now, and I don’t really blame you. But if you want to get home alive you’re going to need help, and unless you’ve got another ritual sorcerer hiding under that cutie mark of yours, I’m all you’ve got.”
“You… did try to save me,” she says, tilting her head and squinting at me, as if the angle might give her a better idea as to whether I’m a good guy or not. “I think.”
“Try, nothing, I did save you, sister. You’re here because I screwed up, but you saw how badly Magoth was drooling over your hide. I could have traded you for my soul then and there, but I didn’t, did I? I flat-out told her no, and you saw it. That’s gotta count for something.”
“It does,” she says, slowly nodding her head as much to herself as to me. “I don’t entirely understand it, but if you gave that up for me --”
“Yeah,” I nod, cutting her off. “So let’s go figure this out somewhere more comfortable, huh? Come downstairs with me. I’ll make coffee and waffles, and we can figure out what to do next.”
* * *
I’d been just a little worried about how to get my visitor out of my attic: all I have is a fold-down ladder, and hooves as I know them just aren’t compatible with that mode of travel. Fortunately, Twilight doesn’t have hooves as I know them, so while I don’t really get a good look at how, exactly, she manages to navigate the rungs, navigate them she does -- though she lets me carry her scrollcase before she does it -- and before long we’re hanging out in my kitchen while I get breakfast going.
“Coffee’s done, waffles are on the make,” I say, lowering the waffle press on the first batch. “Bacon?”
“Eh,” she says, moving to my side and craning her neck to sniff at the pancakes on the griddle. “I’ll pass on bacon, but I’d love some extra greens if you have any. I think we could both use our protein this morning.”
I nod in agreement and pop open the fridge, grabbing the bacon for me and pulling out a container of baby spinach leaves for her. “How do you like ‘em?” I ask.
“Oooh, nice,” she says, eyeing the spinach. “Plate’s fine, I’ll just graze a little while you cook if you don’t mind.”
I don’t, so she does, and before long I’m sitting down to a stack of waffles, a bottle of warm syrup, a plate of bacon and a steaming cup of coffee with my unexpected companion. I take a long, deep, satisfying breath, pour some syrup on my waffles, pick up my fork and dig in.
I watch Twilight as I chew, half-expecting her to have some difficulty with the process, but clearly she’s got no problems adapting to utensils. She peers down at her fork, and before I realize what’s going on, her horn begins to glow, the fork begins to glow, and then the fork moves, swiftly and gracefully, between the plate -- where it portions off a nice chunk of waffle -- and her mouth, where it deposits said waffle.
I laugh as I watch her. Magic has always been so serious to me, so overbearing and dark and dangerous -- a sorcerer is constantly drawing ritual protection circles, invoking powerful occult operations, and summoning malevolent entities, so there’s not even a single spell I know of for something like conveniently eating your breakfast if you don’t have any hands. To see her use it for a completely mundane reason just fills me with a weird, innocent glee.
It doesn't last, though. On her third bite I notice the golden cord that’s tying her to the scrollcase that’s keeping her alive, and when I do I nearly choke on my bacon. As she’s casting her fork-eating spell, the cord is beginning to throb, as though some kind of liquid were being forced through it faster than it could safely supply, and my heart drops to my shoes.
“Gack!” I grunt, inadvertently spitting out a piece of bacon that was suddenly trying to choke me. “Stop spell,” I gasp as I reach across to grab her fork in mid-flight. “Stop spell!”
She jerks her head back, blinking as the errant pork product expelled from my mouth barely clears her left ear. “What’s --”
“Do it!”
She frowns but senses the urgency in my voice, and immediately the glows around her horn and the fork fade to nothing.
I exhale, still clenching her fork in a death grip, and I clear my throat as I try to speak. “The cord,” I say, pointing at the thing, which even now is writhing as it tries to resume its prior, calmer operation. “You were bleeding the scrollcase dry to use your magic.”
Twilight’s eyes widen in understanding. “That’s… wow. Okay,” she says, putting a hoof briefly to her mouth. “So I can’t use any magic?”
“You can,” I say hesitantly, “but you’re pulling power from the scroll to do it. I don’t know how long it will last if you do that.”
“Do you know how long it’ll last if I don’t?”
“Uh… no? Not really.”
“So it could last for years...”
“Or less. Or a lot less.”
We look at each other for a long moment as that information sinks in.
“Well then!” she exclaims, ending the silence and grinning just a bit more manically than necessary. “Those waffles still need to be eaten, don’t they? Hoof that fork over and I’ll do this the earth pony way.”
I know she’s forcing her abruptly positive attitude, but that little bit of bravado may be all she’s got right now, so I let it pass and give her back the fork with a smile.
“You got it, boss,” I say, matching her bravado with an equally feigned nonchalance. “Let’s eat up.”
As we eat, and as I observe the golden cord resume a more normal state, I do finally relax a bit and enjoy the rest of our breakfast. I make pretty good waffles, after all. I started a few years back with a classic old-fashioned recipe, and I’ve been refining it ingredient by ingredient ever since. After her first few hesitant bites, Twilight shows her approval by scarfing her waffles down at high speed, though she fumbles her fork and exhales in mild frustration a few times as she gets the hang of using her hooves for fine manipulation. As I polish off my last waffle, I look up to see how she’s doing, and suddenly I realize exactly how silly this whole scene really looks.
I mean, sure, I’d noticed there was a winged purple pony sitting at my kitchen table before now, but then we’d been talking about magic and demons and other worlds and all sorts of supernatural concepts. Now all we’re doing is eating breakfast, and in a mundane setting it’s just plain goofy. Her brows are furrowed in deep concentration as she uses both hooves to awkwardly but successfully manipulate her fork, and as she stabs the last pieces of her waffle with it I start to get the giggles.
Twilight cocks her head at me, raises an eyebrow and asks “What?” in mid-chew.
It’s a completely reasonable question to ask, but the tilt-headed pose she’s in when she asks me makes it even sillier, and I wind up laughing even harder. Eventually I snort, which is inevitable when I really get going, and that gets her going, and before long we’re both laughing uncontrollably together at the breakfast table.
Maybe it’s the sleeplessness, maybe it’s the tension, and maybe it’s just the absurdity of what’s going on, but whatever got us to this point, laughter is exactly what we need now. My stress recedes, her uncertainty abates, and the simple purity of our shared laughter brings us back down to earth after our insane night. Our eyes meet, and her expression is genuine and curious now instead of defensive and wary. She smirks at me, I stick out my tongue at her, and we both laugh a little more.
“That snort,” Twilight says when she can finally get a few words out between the laughter. “Oh, Celestia, that snort!”
“So I guess I just ruined the whole ‘big evil sorcerer’ thing you had going for me, huh?”
“I have to admit, I’ve never met a villain that snorted when they laughed,” she says, venturing a small smile. “But you really have made a lot of bad decisions. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” I reply sadly, rubbing my forehead. “I know that.”
She tilts her head sideways as she looks at me. “I’ve redeemed my share of bad guys lately. I guess I can add you to the list if you can keep the waffles coming.”
“I can live with that,” I say, matching her smile with one of my own. “Now let’s get to work and get you home, fuzzy purple pony lady.”
“Alicorn!” she corrects with mock imperiousness. “And I am not fuzzy.”
“Sure you’re not,” I smirk, pushing back from the table.