//------------------------------//
// Chapter 38 - Friends in Low Places 
// Story: Bad Mondays 
// by Handyman 
//------------------------------//

It took quite some time for her to turn away from her work, so enraptured was she in the expanse of starlight so far above her. It took quite a lot of magic and work, but after numerous designs and revisions, she felt fit to finally cast this year’s night sky and set it to last. It was an old craft, obscure and arcane in its study and nigh impossible in its mastery. She was not the only one to practice the art of starcrafting, or at least she used to have peers, but she truly was the first to ever master it and call it her own. The Mistress of Starlight was an old title, hard-earned and long forgotten by nearly all save perhaps her sister and the dragons, but it was one she bore with pride nonetheless.

Celestia, bless her heart, simply did not have the skill for it, or the eye. She could not see the necessity and intricacy in the placement of the stars and the power of it all, the balance that was required. So many arts, magical or otherwise that relied on the stars and their movements, had fallen by the wayside in her absence over the past millennium. Stagnant, near unchanging and irrational in their placements, put where they were with nary a thought for their meaning. If it were not for the immovable, those stars who not even she could penetrate nor understand in their entirety, who knew what effects her absence could have had on the world?

She needed to revive the art, she decided, for many were the mysteries of the stars that even only she was beginning to comprehend, those fae flickers of lights upon the expanse of the sky so far above them all, their secrets so unutterable in their intricacies and beauty, so inviting in their mystery. It would be a hard sell – mystical arts had been unpopular even back during that great age of fire and sword, when the formalization of magic had been what allowed them to impose order and healing on a world that had been broken and shattered. Even more for the modern mage, the idea of having to abandon the entirely reasonable desire to understand the power they wielded on a near empirical level would be a hard sell.

More than once, she had thought to invite the young bearer of Magic to study under her, to promulgate the art. She was young, receptive, enthusiastic, and open-minded in many encouraging ways, but she was also the primordial emblem of exactly why it was so hard for Luna to encourage its growth. She seemed utterly incapable of accepting that there were arts one could use, could learn, yet never fully comprehend in their use. She was young yet; she would have time, so perhaps one day that might change. It was ever so lonely being the only one who could truly appreciate the sheer miracle that hung over their heads at night.

It was also, unfortunately, why she was the last of the dream walkers.

She smiled at the thoughts of her ponies, who imagined her appearance in their dreams was the result of some kind of hidden fear of her, or that she had the power to literally get into their heads. While the former may be true in some ponies’ cases, the latter most certainly was not. Weaving through the plane of dreams had its own dangers and pitfalls. It was more negotiation and exploration than it was dominance. None could truly master such a realm, caught as it was between that place where the mind waltzed with what lay beyond reality, so alien yet so natural, that bed of wonder upon which the world lay, comforted of its endless troubles.

You couldn’t just barge into ponies’ dreams – you’d wake them up. There were ways of getting in through force, true, but they would need to be very close and very familiar, making such means a terrible form of trespass. No, to enter dreams, you had to mould them, shape them from the outside, get the pony to invite you in, and even then it was hard to control the dream, hard to prevent the pony sensing you and becoming lucid and waking. It was even harder to learn anything about the pony. You couldn’t steal their secrets in dreams, but you could have them reveal them to you, trick them into telling you, showing you without knowing. It was a subtle craft, so very delicate.

It was why she loved foals, loved them so much. So young and innocent, their dreamscapes vibrant, expansive, open, and wonderfully creative. They were inviting and loving, their dreams bastions of innocence not yet hardened by the realities of the world and growing up, so easy for her to enter, and they were so trusting of her. One by one, bit by bit, the younger generations of Equestria would know Luna as they knew Celestia, a wonderful caring mother figure, there to shoo away the darkness of nightmares and to impart wisdom, to heal hurts and to share secrets. Her way was not Celestia’s way, and she had come to accept that. In time, Equestria in its turn would accept her. Celestia was there to guard the day, a shining beacon. Luna was there to own the shadow and the dark, to make them safe and to make them known. Already there were foals exploding with fascination of the night, fruits of her labour. If only she had known, so long ago, that this was all the adoration she really needed.

But the foals she loved so dear were also always the most vulnerable, so it was why she took it upon herself to guard their precious souls and minds from the horrors, real or unreal, which haunted them at night. She would teach them to face their fears and become stronger under her tutelage of the night.

That, of course, meant Nightmare Night was the busiest night of the year for her when it came to things like this. One night rolled by and, for the next few weeks, hundreds of foals suddenly had nightmares she had to contend with. She had to prioritise, sense the ones who had the strength to face their own daemons over time and leave them to their business while attending to those foals who could not. She had come to love the holiday ever since Magic had taught her how to enjoy it but, honestly, it got exhausting.

Particularly this Nightmare Night. She turned away from her windows and levitated the cold glass to her as she stalked from her chambers, exiting her tower by private concourse and allowing herself to drift into the night air down to the cloistered path leading to her study, her dusky wings resplendent in the light of her moon. She alighted softly on the manicured grass of the garden that surrounded her study, secluded as it was from the rest of the palace gardens.

She partook of the iced tea she carried alongside her, a rather recent indulgence of hers as she entered, tsking at the usual mess she was greeted with. She’d be loath to admit it to her face, but Celestia was right. She needed to take better care of her private places, especially since none of the palace staff was permitted to enter.

She sighed as she picked up numerous scrolls with her magic, contemplated sorting them out for all of half a second, before putting them in a pile next to her desk. She’d deal with that later. Right now she had a headache. A week after Nightmare Night and she was still dealing with particularly bad dreams. Granted, they all seemed to concentrate on a hoofful of foals to the east, around the same small town or so she believed, and all of them concerned the human.

It wasn’t the first time she had to deal with foals having bad dreams about him. Parents seemed to jump at the opportunity to use a new bogey pony to scare their fillies and colts into behaving. However, it somehow seemed in bad taste now that he was dead. It must have been somepony’s idea of a joke to scare the dickens out of a few young ones for a Nightmare Night prank, and judging by the results, it must have been an effective one.

She sighed, closing a ledger detailing costs of refurbishment lower Canterlot. That was another headache she didn’t need right now. She snorted in wry amusement at some of the dreams she had witnessed. They were not nearly as wildly exaggerated as some she had dealt with but certainly much more vivid. It was a huge, hulking monstrosity with long, grasping, skeletal claws and a hooded head covering a burning fire that consumed souls. It was strangely consistent along those lines from dream to dream, with only one filly actually seeming to fight it on her own. Chasing it with mirrors, it was adorable.

She smiled to herself as she went over to her star globe. A sphere of clear glass enchanted to act as a means of following her special cases sat as it was in a wooden frame. It was incredibly unintuitive for the uninitiated, and only told one the most rudimentary information about those whom one traced, essentially telling her exactly where they were at a given time but nothing else. Her eyes glazed over as she focused upon it, allowing it to draw her in. One by one, her little blips of light in the inky darkness flashed by her as she summoned a name. There was the troubled stallion who sat in the cell of the prison in a town by the border with the minotaurs. Caught stealing again; such a shame. There was the guardsmare doing her patrol in the northern mountains, a problem case in the local garrisons. And there was Countess Heathfire as she sat at her own study desk in her palatial estate. Luna frowned. Celestia would definitely take issue with putting a tracer on the nobility, but Luna did not trust the Countess. Something seemed off about her. She seemed only too eager to push ponies to war and didn’t seemed that perturbed about the damage to trade that had to be hurting her own treasury more than anypony’s. It didn’t make sense.

She frowned. No, there was something else that was bothering her. She drew away from the blip of light that let her follow the Countess and scanned the inky blackness and the blanket of white stars that was scattered amongst the darkness. What was it? What was putting her off? Did something happen? Did one of her charges die? No, that wasn’t it. She couldn’t put her hoof on it, but it seemed as if something was… added.

No that wasn’t quite right either. It was as if… as if something missing was put back. Alarmed, Luna began scurrying, desperately searching the integrity of her globe. She pulled out of the darkness as her horn grew in intensity, its glow now lighting the room fully as she investigated her scrying device. It didn’t seem tampered with. Yes, she was certain. She had been the only one to have accessed it in any way. Calmed, she gently placed the globe back into its wooden cradle. It had not been tampered with, but if that was the case, then what was that she sensed? She opted to instead stay outside of it, gently moving the crystal around on its axis, analyzing it and the lights it held carefully, slowly taking sips from her tea as she went.

Then she saw it, a light that shouldn’t be there. A light that shouldn’t be there, because barely a month ago, it had been snuffed out of existence. A light tracing a certain individual, who was currently traveling in the east, on board a train heading towards the coast.

She spat the tea out in shock.


--=--


Blink. He awoke in a field at night, a strange creature and a fire near him, saving him from the cold. Blink. A kind old man, a bed for the night, a cave and slavery to dogs. Blink. A cave in, the surety of death and whispers in the darkness, an accord made and a deal struck. Blink. Celebrations and jubilation, reunion and forgiveness and a horrifying realization. Blink. A cart of ill-intent, arrest and flight as he was taken away with the faeries. Blink. Nights of horror, pain, and starvation, a beaten queen and a dragon of undeath. Blink. A desert, friendly folk and a minotaur, his first sight of red. Blink. Trains, the attention of the guards and a prince lost and found. Blink. A night assault, a second sight of red, an army of ghosts and a hunger that damned him. Blink. Human. Blink. Inhuman.

Blink. A dying king, a war of brothers. Shortbeak. Blink. A dagger in the night, patricide and his first kill. Blink. Sorting affairs, a trip to Canterlot, a friendly chat. Blink. His third sight of red, a promise made and bloodshed. Blink. A prince besmirched, a deal struck, and payment rendered. Blink. A duke investigated, a witch found and a ship gained. Blink. A dance attended, secrets learned and secrets kept, a heavy weight not easily forgotten. Blink. A tournament, a festival, thunder, fire, and blood. Blink. Day. Blink. Night.

Blink. Horror personified, a forest of nightmares, and a captive set free for a captive gained. Blink. A deer and his people, the promise of winter, a war of words and a kingdom for a promise. Blink. A vision in white that stared at him with black eyes. Blink.

He started awake, breathing heavily, his movement restricted in the near complete darkness. He took a moment to get his bearings. He had been asleep. He was sure of it, wasn’t he? Yes, that was right; he had gone to sleep and had just now woken up. When he opened the lid of this coffin, it would be daylight. Time would have past, he was sure. Not having dreams, he could live with – he had rarely had them back on Earth, and when he had, he had barely remembered them like most people. Here though? Whatever fuckery was keeping him from dreaming fucked with his perception. His body slept, his brain obviously did its thing to get the rest it needed, but his mind? He closed his eyes, and when next he opened them, it was as if nothing had transpired, as if he merely blinked. But in that blink, entire hours passed by, he experienced day to day life as one unending, conscious stream, and it was really beginning to fuck him off. It fucked with his circadian rhythm too, making it difficult to make sense of night and day and when was the proper time to sleep. Some mornings he found himself waking up and just kicking things out of sheer frustration. When he got any sleep that was – it came harder and harder the longer he went without his little pick-me-up. His hunger wasn’t helping in that regard, and he swore he was sleeping less and less because of it.

He kept breathing until he felt his heart slow down. His arm completely ached and it hurt to move. He must have had another muscle spasm in the night, a bad one. He listened intently as he felt the crate being rocked, the sound of the train moving along the tracks beneath it and the faint sound of the wind outside whistling past. He wiped his face with his good hand. As constrained as it was within the box, he just about managed it. More cold sweat, his skin felt cold, clammy, and his head felt full of sawdust and cotton. He groaned. It wasn’t that cold within the storage car. Did he catch something? That was all he needed right now.

He briefly cracked open the lid of the crate. Sure enough, the car was deserted, filled as it was with God knew how much transported goods. There were crates, barrels, and pallets piled high with innumerable shit, all secured to the walls and each other. His own coffin was secured in between two other crates, meaning he didn’t need to worry about being locked in by a strap. Jacques had managed to talk him and Thorax into taking a train. Okay, Thorax didn’t need much convincing. Handy, however, was not partial to the idea of spending God only knew how long lodged in a crate. Apparently, it was only three and a half days’ journey to Blackport by train, and it came with the bonus of getting out of Equestria as fast as possible. Oh sure, only a few days he said, lodged in a coffin in a cramped and uncomfortable car being jostled about like loose luggage. Handy had put up with some rough living conditions, but this was just undignified.

He had eventually come around to it though. In truth, it was the fastest way to get to Blackport which, apparently, was the fastest way to get to the nearest information source wherein he could track down Thunder. It was shaky logic, but if what Jacques said was true, he had contacts and resources there whereas he and Thorax had nothing going for them down here. If nothing else, they could get a temporary base of operations. Considering the geas he was under didn’t seem to be pulling him away from going along with it, he guessed that meant that on some level that he trusted Jacques at his word. Either that or it was his only real option thus far. Or Chryssi dearest simply didn’t have any belief or information that contradicted that line of thought. He didn’t know – depends on how deeply this geas worked.

Another reason he agreed to the train rather than simply walk it, albeit an unhappy one, was he couldn’t hear anyone’s heartbeats from where he was. It was getting bad, very bad. The hunger was actually biting hard now and hardly an hour went by without thoughts drifting to the thirst. He didn’t want anyone nearby. That would just make it worse, especially not when traveling, when all too often the sheer boredom of the trek would cause one’s mind to wander. He would’ve needed to constantly focus on something to keep his mind off of it, like he had done in Caulkinsborough if they had decided to go trekking instead of taking the risk with the train.

He sighed one more time before opening the coffin lid. It creaked noisily and he flinched before sitting up, rubbing his left arm back into life. Christ that hurt. He was tempted to lift up the tunic sleeve again, undoing the twine, but decided against it. As much as he could use the distraction, he could do without focusing on that particular problem right now. He’d take care of it. All he had to do was get this thing for the changelings, give Thunder a drubbing, and get back home to Gethrenia. There was bound to be more of the salve there.

He put those thoughts at the back of his mind as he navigated his way out of the coffin and over the crates that hemmed it in on the top of this particular pile, dropping to the floor. Thankfully, the guys had been circumspect enough to make their way to the storage car soon after the train set off to help rearrange the luggage so that Handy wasn’t trapped for the entire journey. And thankfully, apart from one train attendant making his way through and ticking off something on his checklist, he didn’t have to spend all of that time relegated to his box.

It was dark, but not too dark, thin strips of yellow light slipping between the cracks in the wooden walls. It was daytime, meaning his guess had been accurate. Okay, that helped put one of his worries at ease. He whirled around, hand on the hammer at his side as he heard the door to the car as it began to open. He reached over and closed his coffin, before slipping back in a space between two piles of crates, hoping to God this wasn’t a unicorn who wouldd shine a light to help them see.

Clop, clop, clop, clop the pony walked, slowing as it drew nearer and nearer to where he knew his coffin lay. Handy tensed, hand gripping his hammer and slowly drawing it out of its loop that was beginning to rust, trying to do so without scraping the metal. The hoofsteps stopped and all was quiet.

“Handy?” Thorax whispered in Charity Bell’s voice. Handy relaxed, letting go of his weapon.

He stepped out, letting his boots fall unnecessarily heavily on the ground, causing Thorax to jump. She dropped back to all four hooves, having been reaching up to the coffin previously. “What is it?” Handy asked calmly, looming around the corner in the darkness. Thorax took a breath to calm herself before responding.

“We left station in Ivoryshire this morning. We’ll be arriving at Blackport within an hour or so.”

“The train station is inside the city?”

“No walls.”

“Ah,” Handy acknowledged, his thoughts drifting for a moment before he noticed Thorax looking at him expectantly. “Was there something else?”

“We aren’t likely to get a better time for this. The pendant, Heartless,” she asked, hoof outstretched. Handy looked at her for a moment longer before sighing. He picked the pendant from his pack, secured as it was in the small crate that housed his helmet, and tossed it to the waiting changeling. It was glowing bright blue, flashing rapidly once it was lifted out of the crate. Chrysalis was waiting, it seemed.

Thorax put it on.

“Your Majesty, I—” Thorax stopped, mouth agape and eyes widened as the pendant appeared to have an apoplectic fit and flashing with such rapidity to give a raver’s disco lights envy. “No, Highness, I swear it was—” Her excuses were silenced under further furious tongue lashing from her matriarch. “But if you just give me a chance to ex—” Thorax seemed to bristle and Handy thought he detected a touch of unguarded fear as her wrongful rebuttal was righteously rebuked and regrettable things had been said to her by her furious overlord. After that, she seemed to slump, eyes lazily studying the ground around her as she resigned herself to putting up with the dressing down she was on the receiving end of.

This went on for fifteen minutes.

’Holy fuck,’ Handy thought to himself. ‘I knew she’d be pissed at being kept in the dark all this time, but God damn.’ Eventually, Thorax sighed and the rapid flashing of the pendant calmed down to a dull throb.

“Understood, your Highness. I abase myself in my failure. However, I am obliged to inform you of the exact circumstances of what has transpired.” She looked up at Handy meaningfully, who had taken to leaning against some crates as he watched on in apparent amusement. She frowned. “I have important information regarding the Greenwoods and the status of changelings who enter into it. I shall save this information until I have returned for security purposes.”

Handy cocked an eyebrow at that but said nothing.

“Furthermore, I have come to an arrangement with the Heartless,” she began. “He will retain control over the pendant and pass it to me in order to report to your Highness and receive further instruction, as well as intelligence available on our objective. In return, the Heartless has agreed to fulfil any additional requests in the course of his duty as is possible… and to apologize to your Majesty.”

Handy’s own mouth opened wide as he tried to formulate a rebuke. Seeing the coy smile on Thorax’s face, he closed it. He couldn’t object to what she had said without giving Chrysalis a reason to enquire as to their real deal. Frankly, he wasn’t sure which was worse. He narrowed his eyes dangerously at her before her own smile disappeared.

“Yes, my queen.” She looked up at Handy seriously. “Prepare to receive her Majesty.”

“Wait—” It was too late. Thorax screwed her eyes shut, grunting and shivering, shaking her head once, the pendant glowing resplendently all the while. Exhaling a breath, Thorax, wearing Charity’s form, looked back up at Handy with Chrysalis’ eyes and a cocky smile.

“Heartless.~” Chrysalis practically sighed in that same confident, two-toned voice he was becoming regrettably familiar with. “Come to seek your queen’s forgiveness?”

“Do not play cute with me, Chrysalis,” Handy said warningly.

“Oh, such hostility. I’m more than willing to let bygones be bygones if you are,” she said silkily, getting up off of Thorax’s haunches and taking a few steps closer. Handy pushed off of the crates to look down at her properly. “Well?” she asked expectantly with a sly grin. Handy ground his teeth together, uncomfortable memories springing to mind. He regretted it, of course he did, but not for the reasons either she or Thorax surmised. But it was galling to be tricked into apologizing to this… person.

He looked down at her, debating internally whether it was worth it before opening his mouth.

“Ah-ah!” Chrysalis said, raising a hoof, grinning slightly. “To my face, if you would be so kind.~”

That, of course, would require kneeling. That was not happening. She was not his queen. When he wasn’t going to budge on the matter she rolled her eyes.

“Oh must you be so difficult?” She reared up suddenly and placed her forehooves on Handy’s shoulders. Taken aback, Handy felt himself fall back against the crates in surprise. His hand reached up to grab one leg to throw it off, finding it came away easily. She was not trying to harm him, not yet at least.

“Get. Off,” he warned, his other hand on his weapon.

“Not until you apologize,” she said, looking straight up into his face. He had been right before – the changeling before him was about five feet and change when standing on her hind legs, not that that little fact would’ve comforted him a bit if it had even came to mind. “It’s really two simple words, Heartless.~”

He grabbed her other leg and held it off of him, snarling at her. She didn’t so much as flinch, still looking up at him confidently with that smug grin and those damned eyes. He could give her a nasty shock and pull her in for another bite, and hungry as he was, it took a not-inconsiderable portion of his will to shout down the voices in his head urging him to do just that, the pangs, pinches and lurches he felt deep within him at being denied sustenance, the memory of the sweet liquorice taste of Thorax’s blood as it—

“I’m. Sorry,” he managed through clenched teeth, forcing the words out in order to end her proximity to him before something regrettable happened. She beamed at him with Charity’s pony muzzle.

“That wasn’t so hard now, was it, Heartless?”

“Now get off of me unless you want a repeat of that night in the forest,” he hissed, the words leaving his mouth before he realized he had said them. She rather quickly returned to all fours and took a step back, still retaining her confident expression. Handy felt his own heart slow down as he managed to regain control over himself. Christ, that was bad.

“I suppose that is all I’ll get out of you for now,” she said, looking off to the side. Seemed she had learned her lesson about preening and strutting in front of Handy, not pushing farther than she thought she could get away with. Clearly she didn’t realise just how close she had come to a repeat performance. He scowled at her before drawing his attention to his right hand, studying the intricate designs of the hammer that had imprinted on his skin from having grabbed the hammer head too hard. He looked back up to find Chrysalis looking around curiously.

“Anything else, Highness?” Handy asked icily. She snapped back to him and smiled gently.

“Just a little curious. This train, where is it going?”

“The Black Isles Enclave.”

“My my, don’t we move fast? How did you escape the forest so quickly?” she probed. It was at that that Handy began giving more and more credence to Thorax’s claim that the queen couldn’t read her mind while wearing the pendant.

“You can ask Thorax when she returns to you. I do not care to share it.”

“Hmph, fine. I suppose it’ll please you to know the majority of the changelings on Equestria’s east coast are actually leaving the region.”

“That’s quite unusual I take it?”

“Quite.” Chrysalis inspected a hoof. A brief flash of green fire and it turned into Thorax’s hoof. He heard her mutter something before returning attention to Handy. “Not my changelings of course. My territory does not extend that far east.”

“I don’t imagine your territory extends that far from the city you now own.” She gave him a quick glare before smiling again.

“Careful, Heartless, wouldn’t want to get on my bad side.” He had a sharp retort for that but held his tongue. “But you shouldn’t worry about too much trouble from rival colonies.”

“Why would I?” Handy asked. Chrysalis kept smiling until it clicked. “You… spread word I work for you, haven’t you?”

“To be honest? I did not. That was already assumed after word got around Lepidopolis was mine and how it came into my hooves, what with you having accepted such gracious payment, bearing an artefact of Lepidopolis as your most prized weapon, the armour you flaunt bearing designs of ancient changeling origin,” she said simply, gesturing to the crates that held his armour. “Poor replicas, of course, but the inspiration was plain to tell. Other changelings already assumed as much. Who am I to deny them… especially when it’s currently the truth?”

Handy scowled down at her. “You are not making this easy for me, you know.”

“On the contrary, the fact that I have such a famous agent currently on my payroll, why, the other sovereigns would think twice about directly challenging me. In fact, many of them are coming here to treat with me, being the holder of the Old City. If anything, it has made things easier for you by emptying the coast of many changelings who could potentially get in your way.”

“I do not care for your scheming or your politics. Will this get in the way of the mission or not?”

“No, Heartless, I believe it should make it easier.”

“And do you currently have any information about the whereabouts of the pony, Thunder?”

“Unfortunately not.” Chrysalis scowled, looking down at the floor in distaste. “We picked him up on the Equestrian border, no more than a day after he attacked the tournament in Firthengart. I have no idea how he crossed the distance so fast, but he soon escaped our sight again. We picked him up two more times: once at Galleria, south of the border on Equestria’s side, and again heading east towards the coast at Flankfurt.”

“So we are roughly heading in the right direction?”

“As far as we can tell for now. I have never heard of magic being able to allow a pony to move so fast.”

“Mm.” He made a show of considering his options. He knew without looking that Chrysalis was looking at him expectantly, as if hoping he’d take the obvious bait and inform her what he knew about Old Magic. He didn’t say a word. She let out a disgusted noise.

“Fine, be difficult, Heartless. I am only trying to help.”

“I am sure that you are. Farewell, your Majesty,” Handy said, looking at her sideways. She snorted before closing her eyes. The pendant flashed and went dull, and Thorax fell to the floor, groaning. “You alright?”

“Takes a lot out of you,” she said, breathing heavily and taking the pendant off. Handy held out his hand. She lifted it with her magic and dropped it in his palm. He closed his fist over it and glared at her for a moment before replacing the pendant in the box with his pack. “Sorry, but it had to be done.”

“Humiliate me like that again and you’ll regret it,” Handy said warningly, levelling a finger at the changeling.

“She had to believe it, Heartless. It had to look like it was something you would be loathed to do. I could hardly tell her the truth, now could I? Now… I have fulfilled everything on my end of the bargain, so it’s time for you to fill yours.” Handy narrowed his eyes at her as she struggled to remain standing, shaking her head clear of the disorientation. She stamped a hoof. “What happened to you in that forest? What brought you to your knees and will it threaten the mission?”

“It will not,” Handy said resolutely, meeting her gaze. ‘That’s right, see through my bluster, come on.’

“I am not so sure. I need you to trust me with this. The queen will not know. You have my word on that. Or does my lying to her prove nothing to you?” Handy didn’t answer. “Work with me on this, Heartless. You know I cannot feed on you. What is it you’re afraid of?”

Now that got Handy to react as he looked back her defiantly. He grimaced, looking away, his right hand gripping his hammer head in a nervous reflex she had picked up on. Reading his body language was a challenge but all the more necessary because she could not sense him. He was silent for a few moments longer before speaking.

“Home,” he almost whispered.

“What?”

“I realized just how far I was from home, how unlikely it was I would ever see it again, how close I keep coming to death and… and other things besides. That forest did things to my head. It’s… It’s difficult to explain,” he said, feigning just enough vulnerability and reluctance to be enticing. ‘Take the bait. Come on.’

She didn’t. She simply closed her eyes and took in a breath.

“When you’re ready to take this seriously, I’m still willing to listen and help you sort it out for the sake of the mission.” The look of surprise on Handy’s face was all the confirmation she needed that she had called his bluff. She withheld a smile and instead turned around and walked off. “We’ll be arriving soon. You should prepare. I’ll go back to check on Jacques.”

Handy watched her leave, fuming. He had made a rookie’s mistake, but that was what he got for trying to one-up a changeling at the emotional manipulation game. He grumbled and groused when the door closed and wracked his head on how to get around this one now that his attempt was dashed. He sighed and checked his rags he called clothes. Yeah, no, shit was cold. He was going to need to do something about that, maybe pick up sewing or something and repair clothes as he went. Also, his boots were practically falling apart, and he checked his hammer which, out of all his gear, was standing up the best to the daily abuse he put it all through. The witch was right; he should be taking better care of it.

That said, he opened his coffin and checked its interior, judging it. He supposed if he didn’t put on the pauldrons, he could remove the limit on his arms and lie in it in his armour, even fix his new cloak about him without looking ridiculous, although his breastplate and the remainder of his cuirass could probably stay in their own boxes. When he got out of the coffin, he wanted to be ready for anything. He felt naked without it, less… in control of himself. He shook it off. The last thing he needed was another psychological dependency.


--=--


He was already awake by the time she got back to the cabin, sliding the door shut. He sat on his side, legs hanging over the edge with his forelegs crossed behind his head, the hat covering his face.

“How was our delightfully friendly compatriot this morning?” he asked cheerfully. Thorax simply let out a small disgusted sigh. “Oh, he’s especially friendly today. How unusual.”

“Funny.” She hopped up on to the seat opposite and lay down across it. She hated trains, never could get to sleep on them. “So, Blackport. You say you have informants there?”

“I have friends there,” Jacques corrected, humming away. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“What kind of friends?”

“The best kind.” She could see the hint of the smile under the grey of his beard. “Come, Thorax, did you think I would make things easy for you?”

“Is this because I’m… well you know,” she said, remembering she was on a train.

“It’s because you are curious and it is ever so much fun watching you try to figure something out.” She grumbled at that. It had been bugging her nonstop, ever since she had first felt him hide his emotions in that little ball of iron at his heart. He shouldn’t be able to do that, no pony should. It wasn’t like the Heartless, who was this walking empty nothing. She knew Jacques had feelings. She could see them; she just couldn’t get them. And to make it worse, he knew what that was doing to her, the smug arse.

She turned away and placed her face upon her forehooves, resting. She’d pry it from him one way or another and find out what game he was really playing. Right now she needed to consider her options in this new city. “So this Blackport, are you from here?”

“As much as I am from anywhere, chére,” he said, avoiding the question. “You’ll be quite safe, I assure you.” She opened an eye to look over at him.

“And what makes you so sure we’d be safer here in this city, especially having to lug him around in a box?” He chuckled.

“Because, my dear Thorax, Blackport is my city.”


--=--


There were many ways to bring a crowded tavern to a dead silence. Magically lifting up a coffin and forcing the human inside to spring forth from it was certainly one of them.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves just a touch.

Handy had a lovely experience being carted off of the train in a coffin. Ever took a ride in a box as it was manhandled off of a train car and occasionally dropped? Not fun. And it took all of his will to not let out grunts of pain or discomfort or outright cursing up a storm as a result. By the end of it, everything ached, but it was quickly forgotten when the sheer noise hit him.

Ponies shouting and talking, the impenetrable clatter of thousands of hooves milling upon stone, wood, and gravel. Bells and the subtle sound of large, looming floating leviathans and groaning wood betrayed the proximity of a harbour and the ships therein. Gulls and numerous other birds squawked overhead, the smells of fresh vegetables, stews, the stink of the sewers below rising to the streets and the smell of disembowelled fish and the tell-tale stench of a pony settlement made it obvious he was in Blackport, even if he hadn’t of been informed by Thorax.

That was another thing about becoming hungrier – his smell increased in sensitivity as his body strained for sustenance. Unfortunately, in its zeal, it didn’t come with an auto-filter. Handy smelled everything in greater detail. Everything. It was bad in Caulkinsborough, but this… this was unbearable. If there was some hapless bastard out there with a nick or a cut, he couldn’t tell, his olfactory faculties would go a tad berserk to such a terrible degree that he was severely tempted to punch his own face. It was like having a little tiny spastic kitten made of itchiness freaking out on a bad acid trip and bundled in wall insulation jammed at the back of your nose where you couldn’t scratch it.

It was maddening.

He eventually managed to force some manner of control over himself through thinking very very very deeply on the smell of decaying seaweed and fish while simultaneously thinking about how much his left arm hurt. First thing he was going to do was find the most pungent and fragrant flowers he could and jamming his face in them until he artificially induced hay fever and cause his nose to block.

He wasn’t sure how long he was in the coffin after they had left the train, for just getting through the city on the wagon proved difficult. He could hardly make out what the guys were talking to each other about over the sheer noise, but if the slow progress the wagon was making was any indication, they were probably shouting or negotiating their way through the busy streets. He couldn’t see out – the little hole above his head was blocked by the crate housing an armour piece. His only source of light was the daylight spilling into the coffin from cracks in the wood, occasionally darkening in the shadow of a building they passed. ‘At least it’s not raining,’ he told himself.

Eventually, they came to a stop as he heard the two of them negotiating the way into some kind of store for their wagon as darkness subsumed him.

“Well, let’s get inside.”

“What about him?”

“I am right here, you know,” Handy chipped in, figuring if they two of them could talk openly about him like that, no one else had to be around.

“We’ll take him with us,” Jacques said.

“What, really?”

“Really?” Handy concurred.

“Yeah, help me levitate his box. I’ll get this end.” The next thing Handy felt was the box shift as he was levitated. He could see the magical aura on the outside of the crate through the cracks but nothing on the inside, the shifting colours as Thorax’s green mixed with Jacques’ gold. His armour wasn’t reacting however.

‘Okay, that’s enlightening,’ Handy thought to himself as he logged that nugget of information in his head. He heard the pair grunting with effort under the weight of the box in their magic, the swing of a large door, the sound of a busy street, the clippity-clop of hooves on stone, the swing of a sign upon rusted chains above him and another door. Then it hit him, the murmured voices, the dull roar of revelry and laughter and shouting, the musky smell of dozens of unwashed bodies packed tightly into an area, the smell of soot and smoke of a peat fire and the more fragrant smell of tobacco pipes, and the final betraying scent of spilled beer.

If all that didn’t make it obvious they were in the tavern, the eruption of cheers that greeted them when Jacques hoofed open the door did. Handy knew that sound. A favoured son had come home and he was well remembered. “Friends! It’s good to see you all!”

“Jacques, you son of a whore! Where have you been?”

“Away to hide his shame I bet. Hey, Jacky-boy, get anything good on your latest walkabout?”

“Ah shut up, Hare, you just still sore he beat you in the shooting competition last year.”

“Yeah well, he still never brings anything good home. Where ya been working this time, Jacques?”

“Oh, here and there,” Jacques replied. Handy felt the coffin being placed on a table. “Picked up a few things.”

“I’ll say. And what might your name be, pretty lady?”

“Charity Bell,~” Thorax replied silkily, doubtlessly sizing up a few of them for a quick snack based on her tone if Handy was any judge. Fucking changelings.

“Be nice, mon chére.”

“What’s in the box, Jacky boy?”

“Yeah, what have you brought us this time? Had better be good. It’d be hard to top Sand Stone’s trophy.”

“I’ll say. Remember his story about the pirates that attacked his ship? Helluva good time.”

“I was there, you ass.”

“I know, I was just saying.”

“And youwere one of the pirates!”

“It was still a good story!”

‘What kind of bar is this!?’ Handy thought to himself.

“Gentleponies, please, if you would all be so kind as to give me a chance to speak?” Jacques said, trying to get the chattering down to a dull roar. “Now, I know we’ve had all our disagreements before, like a certain mare I see over there in the corner who still hasn’t forgiven me regarding the incident with burnt eyebrows.” He got a round of laughter out of that. “Hmhm, my apologies once more, chére, you know it was an accident.”

“I had that mark in the bag and you stole him out from under me!” he heard a feminine voice shout.

“Like I said, it was a terrible accident that you happened to be on the same job I was.” More laughter. “But yes, I have been gone quite a while, hired as a bodyguard if you must know, to a deer fellow from the Greenwoods up north.” The crowd hushed. “Ah, got your attention, have I? Good. See, this deer fellow was a rather lively, trusting sort. But he was free-spirited and not one keen to being tied down. Why, not even by a hired sword whose job it was to look out for him. Such a pity. I could only get him to take me along by gaining his trust.”

“Well, as you might imagine, a lonesome stag, still unused to the worldly ways of us wayward ponies beyond his little woodlands, would be a bit hesitant to trust the word of a wholesome wayfarer such as myself. So it was that I had to rescue him from the foul clutches of a femme fatale-- Thank you for the help with that, Jewel.”

“More than welcome,” the smoky voice of a mare responded before Jacques continued.

“-- and her friends who had fooled him out of his worldly possessions...”

“Something tells me, Jacques, that you weren’t the specified sell sword who was supposed to get hired for that job, were you?” a voice enquired.

“Not as such, no, but well, sometimes a letter just floats through your window and you must, how you say, seize the moment? It is not explicitly my fault it did not make its way to the intended recipient, c’est la vie.”

‘Oh you sneaky bastard,’ Handy thought. But that only raised the question of why Jacques went through the trouble of being this particular stag’s bodyguard if he wasn’t intended to be such. He didn’t remember Elder Wildwood being upset at the sight of him, which meant that it could have been just a case of him wanting to hire a mercenary from a particular company rather than an individual. In which case, Jacques had probably scored an easy gig by stealing it from his competition. Sneaky fuck.

“But oh, I could not imagine where such a new found friendship would lead me.” Handy heard the scattering of gold coins hitting wood, tin cups sloshing with beer and hitting ponies as Jacques apparently just made it rain, and the scrabbling of ponies as they tried grabbing the suddenly free money. “As you can see, it has left me with more than enough to share.”

“Where did you get this? I haven’t seen coins like this before.”

‘Coins like what before?’ Handy wondered, before a sneaking suspicion built up in his gut. ‘Wait...’

“Hey… Hey wait, I seen this before, this weird writing on the side…” another voice piped up. Thorax had gone suspiciously quiet.

‘Waaaaaaiiiiit a minute...’

“This is changeling money.”

“What!?” a question that was chorused by many voices.

“Yeah, yeah, there’s some of this floating around. The princesses in Canterlot are trying to gather them up by trading their value in bits to those who hold them. This merchant pony I know, can’t remember his name, showed me one before. Where’d you get these, Jacques?”

“Ahhh… Now there is a story,” Jacques said, audibly settling into his tale, taking a seat by the head of Handy’s coffin. He could see him glance sideways at Handy through the hole. “Why, a very generous stallion I happened to run into paid me them of course. For a little job of his own.”

“Jacques, what the hell are you doing?” Handy hissed. He simply put the edge of his hoof to his pursed lips, shushing him.

“You remember that festival up north-west, in Griffonia? Oh, I was there, I saw it all, and oh, what a story I have to share. What sights I saw!” he said, spreading his forelegs wide. “But to answer your first question about what's in the box.” Handy’s eyes widened in alarm as he heard the catch on the coffin open. “I bring us a new friend I’d like you all to meet.” And with a sudden surge of magic, Jacques hefted the box upwards, causing it to fall to the ground on the far side of the table. The lid opened, and Handy stumbled out.

He managed to catch himself on a table, spilling drinks and startling the ponies seated there and pushed himself upright and, for the first time, took in the crowd that was currently looking at him, slack-jawed. The first thing he noticed, oddly enough, was almost all of them were fully or partially clothed, there a tunic, there a scarf, coats, hats and what have you. They were an eclectic bunch, all of them ponies: pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies. Most of them had some form of small weapon visibly within reach, knives, polearms a couple of ponies with swords, some even with hoof-hilts like Jacques. One of them even had what looked like a modified gryphonic arquebus, its trigger guard and trigger changed to better fit a hoof. Other firearm bearers had variations of the shoot sticks he had seen in Canterlot, though shorter.

The tavern itself was large but crowded nonetheless, with half of the open space above the bottom floor dedicated to an overhang from which more ponies could be seen, hanging over the bannisters to see what was going on. There was an iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling overburdened by long used candles whose wax was melting over the sides like a frozen waterfall. It was held by a chain that led to the tavern counter from which a surly looking pony surveyed the goings-on. There were an awful lot of eyes on him at that moment.

“My friends, I would like to introduce you to Handy the Milesian, the Dragonslayer, Shadow of Gethrenia, Spirit Whisperer Dweller of boxes, and twenty other things I don’t care to list off. Say hi!”

“Jacques!” Handy whirled around on his erstwhile friend, fear and fury mixed in his unkempt face. “What the hell!?”

“What?” Jacques asked innocently. Thorax was behind him, wide-eyed and small-pupilled but otherwise maintaining a remarkably calm expression complete with winning smile that was slowly breaking into sheer nervousness.

“I—! You—! What even is this!?” Handy swept his arm over the gathered crowd.

“This? These are my friends.”

“I can see that, but why in God’s name did you just reveal me!? I can’t be seen by Equestrians!”

“These are not Equestrians.”

"Its just as bad."

"No, no, be fair, Equestrians aren't nearly as ugly."

“Oh that is it!” Handy swore, drawing his hammer and throwing the coffin to the ground, which it hit with a clatter. Thorax jumped around Jacques and pushed against Handy’s chest with her forehooves, laughing nervously as she tried to prevent immediate and terrible violence.

“He has a bit of a temper, just so you know,” Jacques said easily, hopping off of his seat and keeping his distance, swiping a tin tankard from a slack-jawed pony with an eyepatch. “Merci. Now,” he took a drink, “any questions?”

The room practically exploded.


--=--


So as it turned out, Jacques wasn’t as much of an asshole as Handy had thought. Between the tidal wave of questions and laughter and kudos that descended upon Jacques, the generous gifts of beer in exchange for stories, and the surprisingly welcoming attitude of the ponies, it seemed there was a method to Jacques’ particular madness. Handy… Handy wasn’t sure what he was expecting from Enclave ponies, but it certainly wasn’t this. Or maybe it was because every single one of them was a dyed-in-the-wool mercenary bastard, and he just happened to be a friend of a friend. He wasn’t sure.

It seemed, at least according to Jacques, that he simply had to let them know what he was bringing into the city due to how the mercenary guild worked. If he didn’t, they’d find out one way or another once they suspected he was hiding something, which they always did, because mercenaries were always hiding something. He already found a bunch of young foals scurrying over their wagon, investigating it at the behest of the guild master, who was apparently the tavern keeper. He sent them scurrying right quick, nosey little fucks.

The current record keeper for longest avoidance of the guild master’s bloodhounds was some infamous professional smuggler by the name of Jack Knife, who had managed to smuggle in no less than three thousand pounds of processed sugar within the city limits ready to be traded off for a period of forty seven days, six hours, and twenty seven minutes. He had gotten a slap on the hoof, a fine for breaking the guild’s trust, and a free round of beer on the guild keeper’s tab for being such a magnificent bastard.

That explained why Jacques had to reveal him to them all, but that didn’t answer everything.

“Right,” Handy said, rubbing his face as they sat. They were seated at a round wooden table with more than a few nicks and chunks cut out of it from too many years holding the drinks of questionable people with more knives than sense. It was at the corner of the tavern, underneath the overhang currently holding aloft more ponies. The occasional cloud of dust was shaken loose from the rafters as some asshole started playing music on some kind of stringed instrument and a couple of ponies decided to do a little jig. Right above their fucking heads. Still, Handy had insisted on sitting here if they simply had to stay here until nightfall because it gave them a commanding view of the entire bar floor, plus an eye on the corner entrance.

Also, it was relatively far away from the nearest sconce that would house a naked torch when it got dark, so you know, that was a consideration he had to take into account.

“If bringing me here was going to be such a bastard of an issue,” he said, resisting the urge to grind his teeth as he eyed the bar patrons who seemed to be getting steadily drunk since at least midday. God damn. “Then why couldn’t we have stayed outside the city whilst thou went on in? Didst thee ever think of that? Hmm?”

“Handy, mon ami, did you ever think of the practicality of your situation?” Jacques replied, openly polishing his rapier on the table as he flashed the barmaid a smile as she levitated over their drinks and a small plate of some strange dried seaweed and some fruit Handy didn’t recognise. It smelled good. She gave him a knowing look and smile before turning off. He could’ve sworn he saw Thorax shoot her an ugly glance before returning to her neutral expression. Must’ve sensed something. Changelings.

“The practicality of my situation is exactly what I am talking about,” Handy said lowly, leaning closer to Jacques across the table. “Thanks to thine little show, my presence is going to be city wide news come sun down. This is a port city, merchants are going to be carrying word to other cities, and pretty soon word that I’m alive and well is going to spread, and God alone knows what that will do to the situation on the border with Griffonia.”

“Tell me, who will be more concerned about your appearance here in the Enclave, Celestia or Galaxia?”

“I don’t even know who that is and I couldn’t care less. I have a responsibi—”

“And you would have, what? Spent who knows how long hopping around the continent in a coffin the whole way?” Jacques asked with a chuckle. “That was only ever going to be a short term solution. You would have been found out eventually. You have no support, no preparation, and you are actively seeking to find somepony which would inevitably require you to come into some kind of populated area, and likely things would get violent, in which case what you were hoping to avoid would come to pass eventually.” He levitated some food to his mouth and chewing happily. “Only probably much worse because the first sign Equestria has of you appearing is you popping up in the middle of some city square somewhere and murdering some poor bastard. Assuming everything went as planned and you weren’t rumbled beforehand.”

“Okay,” Handy said, marginally keeping his temper under control and letting Jacques reason get to him. It was an undesirable feeling, but he held on to it to keep his mind off of the, frankly, alarming number of warm bodies in close proximity to him and the nearly deafening sound of heartbeats full of— “Assuming Thunder is still even in Equestria anymore, and even if I admitted that thou hath a measure of the matter, how does that stop the Enclavers from freaking out? In the short turn, I’d have just traded alarmed Equestrians for alarmed Enclavers. What makes me safer here than in Equestria?”

“Hmhmhm, as I was telling chére, Blackport is my city. These are my ponies. Nopony will touch you unless you do something stupid.”

“I am sure the Lord Mayor shares thine sentiments, as does the Princess.”

“She might as well be on the far side of the world from us. By the time she finds out, you should be already on your way to other places… hopefully,” Jacques said, rolling his eyes and offering his drink to Thorax, who declined it with a hoof, staring at him levelly.

“While I’m loathed to admit it, Handy does have a point,” Thorax said, eyeing the crowd casually. Jacques seemed to jump with a grunt, a leg hitting the table and shaking it, knocking his hat loose. Thorax looked at him genially, and he smiled nervously. “How are we supposed to trust you when you so readily revealed one of our secrets?”

Handy inconspicuously looked over his shoulder. No one was close enough to make out what Thorax was saying, but more than a few were keeping an eye on their boy Jacques and his new ‘friends’. “Easy, Charity,” Handy whispered, keeping his hand away from his hammer and firmly placed around his cup.

“Come now, mon amour, I have no intention of saying anything,” he said, letting his sword lie on the table and raising his hooves. He gently placed a foreleg around her shoulder. “What makes you think I’d want to share, hm?”

Handy cocked an eyebrow at the behaviour. Jacques pulled away after Thorax, looking slightly flustered gave a brief cough. “Anyway, it is merely the practicality of the matter, Handy. Think about it, did you really want to spend this whole time locked away from society in a box, just over an unconfirmed fear of what might happen?”

“I had been seriously considering it,” Handy muttered under his cup as he drank, his thoughts on darker things. He immediately spat it back out, coughing. It tasted incredibly foul. There was an eruption of laughter behind him, and he turned around to face his jeering audience.

“He drank it! I can’t believe it!”

“You’d think the smell alone would have tipped him off!”

“Pay up, he spat it out,” he saw a local lush demand of the barmaid who had served them. She sighed and levitated a small bag of coins to the grinning stallion.

“Could’ve sworn I had got that batch right,” the maid muttered before going about her business, grumbling to herself. Handy looked down at his drink before looking back to Jacques.

“What. The hell did I just drink?” he asked, keeping his voice level and gesturing accusingly at his cup.

“Silver Platter is a mare of many talents. She is determined to make brewing one of them.” Jacques took a sip of his doubtlessly much more pleasant drink. “So far she has been wildly unsuccessful at making new brews. It’s a running tradition that new faces have to take a swig of her latest mix, no exceptions, to see what sticks.” Thorax suddenly looked to her own tin tankard accusingly. “Yes, chére, that means you too. Drink up.”

“I’d rather not,” she said, looking at Handy who was busy wiping down his tongue and shaking his head from the lingering, burning taste. “Doesn’t look like it’d be a lot of fun.

“Oh don’t be like that. What’s wrong with a little fun?”

“The fact that it apparently tastes like rat urine?”

Handy tuned the pair of them out as he focused on taking some of Jacques’ food to help get rid of the taste. It was oddly sour-tasting, but in a pleasant way, and it certainly helped with the lingering aftertaste of whatever godawful slop had been placed in front of him. He found himself calming slightly. His head rested on a hand and eyes closed as he considered his options and everything Jacques had told him.

He supposed… He supposed if Jacques’ assessment was right, then Handy re-emerging in another country aside from Equestria, at the very least, limited the Equestrians’ ability to act against him if nothing else. At best, this would throw off any suspicion that he was acting against Equestria at all at the behest of the griffons, so it wouldn’t make the situation any worse over there. Or so he hoped.

Hunger grasped him, and he found himself quite eager to get out of this bar and the press of bodies that surrounded him, but he knew going out into the city during the daytime would just exacerbate that problem. However, if he didn’t do something now, it’d only get progressively worse. He was already focusing intently on the music of the minstrel above them, silently willing him or her to play longer and louder just for something to drown out the noise that was already overpowering the sounds of the patrons. He needed somewhere private.

“Jacques,” he said suddenly, finally turning his attention to the two of them and blinking in surprise. Jacques was currently gagging as Thorax was shoving her tankard down his muzzle and the godawful concoction that she was meant to drink herself. He managed to push her off, spluttering and gasping as his comrades around them laughed their asses off.

“Oui, Handy?” he asked, coughing before casting an unamused glare at the smiling Thorax. Handy waved a hand, dismissing the nonsense before continuing.

“First off, where are we staying?” he asked, placing a hand on the helmet that lay on the table beside him. “This guild tavern doesn’t look very roomy.”

“It isn’t, unless you’re piss drunk and have nowhere to stay, then you can sleep in the common room out back. If you can stand the smell that is.”

“I assume we have other options?” Handy asked levelly.

“Of course! I know the perfect place for a man of discretion such as yourself. And you, mon chére,” Jacques replied. Thorax cocked a brow at him. “Although we should probably go now, if we wait until tonight, the rooms will be closed off.”

“Why?” Handy asked.

“Business reasons – don’t worry about it. So, assuming we are all fed and watered, shall we?” Jacques slipped the sword around his hoof and resheathed it, fixing the scabbard by his waist.

“How do you do that?”

“What?”

“I mean, why don’t you just use magic to wield it? It’s just a rapier – it’d be no problem for you to levitate it.” Jacques just smiled knowingly as he affixed his hat.

“Oh I do if it’s life or death, mon frere, but it is rarely needed for such. Better to be sporting, non? Besides...” he said, inclining his head so Handy did not notice the sly look he gave Thorax. “I like the challenge.” Thorax very quickly found another corner of the tavern to affix her attention. Handy snorted.

“Right,” Handy said, placing his hands on the table as he pushed out of his chair, apologizing to the stallion sitting behind him as he tried to make his way through. Advantages of being bipedal: bar room navigation was so much easier for you than it was for everyone else. “Well, if we simply have to go out now, then let’s hop to it.”

“Sure, ties in nicely with contacting a few of my sources.”

“Thine sources reside at our destination?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Jacques said, waving a hoof in a circle.


--=--


Walking through the town of Blackport had been an invigorating experience. Despite the dreary overcast sky and grey-coloured slate tiles of the roofing and the austere, dark wood that made the majority of the buildings, the city was bursting at the seams with a liveliness and vigour that belied the dour colours. The entire city was constructed along a mile and a half of coast, artificially altered and straightened, with the entirety of the city raised just above sea level. The entire eastern face of the city is given over to ports and harbours for merchant vessels and fishing ships. Handy struggled to find an economic reason why herbivorous ponies were fishing in such great quantities, especially since Enclavers seemed to share their Equestrian cousins’ distaste for eating meat, but he held his tongue on the matter.

What really interested him were the five great canals cutting into the city from where the harbour began. Called colloquially ‘hairs’, these tremendous indentations of the sea intruded upon the land, like the spaces between the teeth of a comb, each of them with small harbours and piers of their own to house the military vessels of the Black Fleet to repair, reload, and rearm the vessels. Wooden pulley cranes, ropes, and warehouses dominated the areas around the Hairs, barrels of gunpowder and crates of food rations, thick coils of rope, and the occasional cannon or two could be seen littering the ground or hoisted in the air. Handy had seen a few cannons in Skymount and again in Ifrendare, and they seemed much bigger than these ones. He grimaced at the implications. Very few vessels were actually in the hairs for servicing now, and the ones that were seemed to be little more than small two mast ships. Jacques had explained that the portions of the Black Fleet that patrolled these waters were on its way back to the home ports, and these were stragglers. The frenzy of ships at the exterior harbours was due to the merchant houses doing their damnedest to do last minute trading before docking their fleets for the winter. The eastern seas simply weren’t safe during the winter and spring.

Great bridges descended across the unoccupied hairs, allowing even greater accessibility as they cut through one of Blackport’s many markets. God, what a sight. Ponies of all sorts were present, along with griffons, dogs, minotaurs, a few of those sphinx things he had seen at the tournament, even an odd deer or two, and several creatures Handy didn’t get too close of a look at to identify. The food on display was astounding, with all sorts of preserved fruit and vegetables. A lot of it he recognised, most he simply did not, for some simply appeared too alien for him to readily identify. No potatoes though. Why the hell could he never find any potatoes? Was this entire world populated by potato-less heathens? Savages, the lot of them. He would have easily lost himself investigated the many, many wares on display, particularly one jeweller who boldly displayed mounds of diamonds and other gems on his stands, just begging to be robbed. Oddly enough, one pile of diamonds seemed to be cheaper than dirt at one diamond per Black Isle clam, with another charging a veritable king’s ransom for each one. Handy couldn’t make sense of the difference. A diamond was a diamond, was it not? It was not like this world had a de Beers family to monopolize the rocks.

However, he kept his distance. His reception by the Enclavers was much as it had been pretty much everywhere outside of Skymount, only this time with an extra sense of wonder and fear. Not every day you see a nightmare come back from the dead. He doubted that many here had heard the news of the tournament in Firthengart barely a day or more before Handy the motherfucking Shadow appeared right on their doorstep. Must have been quite a shock. The black and blue clad guards sure as shit were keeping an eye on him as he went about. Best to not raise hackles any more than his presence already did.

Handy found himself oddly reminiscent of days gone by, of a declining port city on the western coast of Equestria and his own initial reception there. The coincidence was eerie, but this time he didn’t have the excuse of being an unknown entity to give the people pause. Eventually, they came to a rather grand-looking building at the end of the fifth hair, where the ports and harbours ended and the more residential side of the city began. Here, the streets were laid with flagstones and black iron streetlamps held aloft lanterns, waiting to be lit during the night. The building itself stood out, made out of fine wood and painted a dark, ruddy red that shone like varnish. Elegantly carved design ran the length of crossbeams on the face of the building, abruptly cutting off where it met its neighbours, accented in silver paint to stand out. All the windows were curtained off in the same blue velvet, and the front of the building had a porch, cordoned off from the street with bannisters with a wooden awning bearing a sign. ‘Madam Marseille’s’

“Really?” Thorax asked flatly, glaring at Jacques. “Really Jacques?”

“Problem, Charity Bell?” Jacques asked with a smile.

“We’re staying here… Really… This is your better option?”

“The beds are soft, the rooms warm, what's not to like, no?”

“I cannot— You can’t—” She looked up at Handy as if expecting some support from that quarter. The confused human simply shrugged, the armour pieces he wasn’t currently wearing clattering, connected as they were by thick strings and carried over his shoulder. She let out a disgusted sound. “Whatever, I’m going to get lost. Don’t wait up; I think I know where to find you,” she said as she trotted off into the city.

“What’s the matter with her?” he asked. Jacques shrugged.

“Mares, you know how they can be. Now come, come,” Jacques said, waving Handy along as he walked on into the building. Handy looked around him one more time. They weren’t that far from the hair. A few hardy-looking sailing ponies, an oxymoron if ever there was one, were eyeing the two of them with confused expressions. Most of the passersby seemed to be waiting for Handy to move on before actually passing by. He grimaced and followed Jacques into the building.

He was surprised to find it relatively darkly lit on the interior. The walls was covered over in richly detailed red wallpaper, the walls hung with lanterns with coloured glass, and the gold-coloured upholstery of the booth seats, further accentuating the sumptuous décor, was the strange odour carried on the air. Heavy and pungent, smelling of wildflowers. Handy recognised perfume when he smelled it. Cheap ones too, judging by the smell, God damn, that blocked out fucking everything.

There was a bar not far from the door, a grand-looking stone fireplace set in one wall, thankfully unlit and very few patrons, and the ones who were there seemed to be occupied in the few booths being attended by one of the mares. Oh right, the mares. There were a lot of them. All of them were dressed in the frilliest clothes Handy had ever seen, saddles made of cloth and silk, socks, tiny bows in their manes and garters. It was bewildering. Sure enough, since he had been brought out of the coffin back in Fishermare’s Hook, he learned Blackporters at least seemed a lot more partial to clothing than most ponies he knew of, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why they were all dressed that way. Must be a uniform policy or something.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my very own lover boy,~” a sultry voice greeted them from the left. Handy turned to see an earth pony mare, blonde-maned with tresses framing her face and a small mole on her left cheek. Her bright blue eyes were accented by the deep pink mascara on her that which complimented her magenta coat.

‘Makeup on fur. Some things I’ll never understand,’ Handy thought to himself.

“Ah Sea Crest, ma mignonne petite chose, a vision as always.”

“And you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Sea Crest replied with a slight chuckle. “So is it business or pleasure.”

“Business my dear,” he replied. She pouted.

“Aww, you’re never here for pleasure.”

“Not true, mon chére,” Jacques said, raising her hoof to kiss it. “It is always a pleasure to speak with a mare as lovely as you.” She swiped at him playfully. She then looked up at Handy and let out a short whistle.

“Oh my, and who do I have the pleasure of meeting here?”

“This is my friend Handy,” Jacques said before Handy could speak. “He’s here for business too.”

“Tsk, you never bring anyone fun,” she chided him. “But I’d rather hear it from him if you wouldn’t mind. So, Handy is it?”

“It is. It is a pleasure to make thine acquaintance, Miss Sea Crest.” She laughed softly at that.

“My, so formal, wherever did he find you? Nonetheless, how may I be of service to you today, fine sir?” she said sweetly, tilting her head to the side and looking up at him with half-lidded eyes. Handy glanced at Jacques before replying.

“I’m… afraid I’m here for business,” he said uncertainly, not entirely sure what was going on here. Was this some complicated initiation or something? Exactly who were these contacts of Jacques and why all this needless foreplay? She pouted and then sighed.

“Oh very well, be boring. The usual room I take it?” she asked.

“Quite, s'il vous plaît.”

“The usual fee then. You know the rules.”

“Ahem, there was one more thing.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll be needing three rooms, if you can spare them.” At that, her eyes lit up, smiling wildly.

“Oh my, bringing more friends are we?”

“Three of your other rooms, if you could. Usual arrangement,” Jacques clarified. Sea Crest visibly deflated.

“Very well, I’ll have it arranged. You can go ahead, but you had better not be a stranger, my little Jacques,” she said, poking him in the chest.

“Ah, but then what will I do without entrancing and alluring mystique?”

“Oh I can think of several things…”

“I’m sure you could. Expect another mare to follow on our hooves, name of Charity Bell,” Jacques said, giving Sea Crest a description before leading Handy off deeper into the building. Handy felt more awkward than usual here, but for the life of him he couldn’t put his finger on what was bothering him as Jacques led him down a hallway to a room underneath a staircase.

It was relatively cramped, a small table, a glass oil lantern that Handy was really uncomfortable with being this close to, and two chairs on either side of it. Handy sat in the one that gave him the most headspace, being under the stairs, but even then he had the hunch over. He was grateful for not wearing his cuirass. This would have been intolerable otherwise. Jacques closed the door.

“So—”

“Shh!” Jacques hushed, knocking on a wooden panel on the wall next to him five times. Several seconds later, Handy saw it open, and Jacques said something incomprehensible to someone on the opposite side of the wall in French. The deep, cracking voice in the darkness beyond asked a flurry of questions, responded at relative length by Jacques, to such a point that Handy very much felt like a third wheel to this conversation. After some time, the panel closed. “And so it begins. I sent the word out, describing the kind of pony we’re looking for and the kind of magic we want to track.” Handy blinked.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Just like that?”

“Oui.”

“Now we just wait?”

“For the time being, yes,” Jacques replied. They sat awkwardly for a full minute before Jacques cleared his throat.

“All of that, for a few minutes conversation with a hole in the wall?”

“A lot of cloak and dagger, I’ll grant but it’s necessary.”

“How on earth could such runabout nonsense be necessary? A secret room, unnecessary banter with the apparent proprietor, secret knocks, and a private language. Are all information brokers this needlessly secretive?”

“I thought you’d be pleased.”

“I am, it’s just, well, very odd way to go about it. Couldn’t thee have merely written this all down and handed the letter across to the fellow on the other side of the wall rather than risk being overheard?”

“Interesting, I’ll have to remember that for next time. But to answer your question, Handy, it is simply how these ponies do their business, and they are very good at it. Besides, nopony ever questions why two stallions enter a place like this, so it is the perfect cover, though I must say that the fact that you are taking this better than Thorax came as a bit of a surprise, given your own prudishness.”

“My what? What does that have to do with anything?” Handy asked. Jacques held up his hooves placatingly.

“I am not complaining. I knew you wouldn’t be interested in their services but still was concerned at how you might have reacted. All the same, it works out, oui?”

“What services are you talking… about… of….” Handy’s brow furrowed. The flirtatious swagger of Sea Crest, her suggestive tones, the fact that all the mares were dressed in impractical, lacy outfits, the entire layout of the building daubed in faux finery and awash with red lighting, the blocked out windows, the eye-catching decor of the building’s front well in view of the sailors coming into port at the end of long journeys bottled up in the hold of a ship, the fact that Jacques told him no one would question what two men would enter this place for. Handy’s eyes widened rapidly and he stood up, hitting his head painfully off of the stairs above him, causing an unwitting pony above to yelp in surprise. “This is a whor—!”

“Respectable and legitimate place of business!” Jacques suddenly audibly said, jumping to lean across the table and block Handy’s mouth with a hoof. “Shhh! Are you trying to get us kicked out!?”

“You brought us to hide in a bordello!?” Handy hissed, rubbing the back of his head as he sat back down, “What’s wrong with you!?”

“You mean you didn— How could you not know!? It’s obvious!”

“I am not exactly familiar with these ‘respectable and legitimate places of business’, and from the spiel thou hast given me back in Whisperwood, I wouldn’t think thee would have been either!”

“Hey, I do not fool around in places like this! Sea Crest is an old friend, and this is the best places for people like us to lay low for a while.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet she’s real friendly.”

“It’s not like that, vous rustre bruyante, if you’d just listen to me!” Jacques replied angrily in their hushed argument. “I specifically requested Sea Crest’s service as landlady. This building continues right across the block to the other side, to a housing building on the opposite street. You can get there through secret passages here. Sea Crest rents the rooms out to those who need to disappear for a bit, or otherwise need to stay somewhere other than where they currently live, do you understand?”

“Yeah, I’m sure she gives a lot of guilty husbands somewhere to crash for a few nights.”

“Oh buck you, Handy, be reasonable! This place provides valuable services, and I am doing you a big favour by bringing you here. The only reason you haven’t been jumped for sitting right where you are in a place you shouldn’t by rights know anything about,” Jacques said, indicating the panel he had spoken into previously, “is because these ponies trust me. The least I can ask of you is for some of your customary decorum and at least a little respect!”

“Fine, fine!” Handy said, waving his hands and sitting back down with a sigh. “I guess I may have… overreacted. Just… really, Jacques?”

“Aheh, really. It’s just more convenient this way. If you want, you can exit the apartments from the other street. You don't have to keep going back and forth through here.”

“Thank God for small miracles,” Handy groused.

“Oh cheer up, Handy. No harm done, oui? Although I thought it would have been obvious to you what this place was for when you saw how all the mares were dressed.

“Yeah, I suppose.” He really didn’t suppose. How the hell was he supposed to know the minutiae of the meaning of the clothes ponies chose to wear? He had seen a few formal-looking mare dresses before. Once, on an emissary to a noble wedding, he had represented the king when he could not attend, another all the way back in Spurbay on a rather wealthy-looking family out to a formal occasion of some sort. Saddles were just a part of their clothing as far as he could tell. How was he supposed to know that the ones those mares wore had erotic implications?

‘Come to think of it, a few of them were even wearing a kind of underwear too,’ Handy considered to himself. ‘That was weird. I have never seen anyone wear any kind of underwear here. Why would they? It’s not as if… as if… as… oh God. I haven’t seen one. On anyone. Not even once. Not even by accident.’

Dear reader, please be considerate and understanding, in order to comprehend what was going through Handy’s head right at this moment in time. Put yourself in the following situation: imagine living your daily life, whatever that might be and whatever that might entail. Imagine talking and interacting with your loved ones, your friends and family, your work partners each going about their days just like you were.

And then someone sneezed and then it struck you. Everyone, except for you, was missing a nose. A simple flat piece of their face where their nose should be, everyone is missing their nose… except for you. And nobody remarked upon this. In fact, everyone acted through life as if their noses were actually there, despite the fact you could not see them. They sneezed; they sniffed; you were pretty sure you see them scratch it. But you could not see it, and for some reason or another, you never noticed until now.

“Handy?” Jacques waved a hoof in front of Handy’s face a few times. He clapped his forehooves together, the iron horseshoes clacking as he did so. Handy’s glazed over eyes stared off into eternity just over Jacques’ head. “You uh… You okay there, mon ami?”

Handy.exe had stopped functioning.


--=--


It really didn’t take her long.

Her queen had been subtle, but she knew what she meant. The only reason the changelings of Autarch Thrinafax would be leaving the east coast in such numbers would be because he, along with many other changelings, would be converging on Lepidopolis to claim it for themselves, right under her Majesty’s muzzle.

And that was her cue to do whatever she could to advance her colony’s interests, even if it was only in one pony city. To that end, she took advantage of her separation from the group to lose herself in the streets of Blackport, going through one alleyway and shifting into an earth pony, and another, and becoming a pegasus to throw off any potential pursuers or ‘friends’ of Jacques that might be keeping an eye on them. She took flight and, to take stock of her surroundings, gave a quick fly over. It really was a large city, with rolling hills and farmlands surrounding it, its harbours pregnant with merchant shipping with more vessels sailing upon the ocean beyond the embrace of the harbour walls. Trains went to and fro from the busy station, heading north and south.

She closed her eyes and reached out, searching. A city this big, there were bound to be a couple of sidhes nearby, maybe even within the city if the rumours of the Autarch’s boldness were accurate. And if there were, and most of the changelings were gone, that meant their sidhes would be guarded by younglings, inexperienced, new.

There. They were easier to spot for an experienced scout, projecting their emotions just a little too much, a little too insincere to be genuine and a little too forced to be a proper mimic of an ordinary pony who seemed to be ‘trying’ to hide their emotions. She spent an hour flyover the city, mentally checking off the locations and local landmarks of potential suspects, remembering their unique flavour yet maintaining her distance so they would not suspect her when she got close enough for a whiff.

Yes, that was a start. She’d find these sidhes and begin work to weed out anything that could be of use to the colony. She smiled. Maybe she could capitalise on that, using Handy as a means to an end in that regard. Yes, the queen could request his help with flushing out a few sidhe, make things difficult for the Autarch while he was away. Delicious.

But all good things must come to an end. She scowled as she thought of Jacques and that… place. She had thought better of him than that, even though she wasn’t sure why she was particularly peeved in this instance… No. It wouldn’t do any good. She would confront him later about all of this. Right now, they had a mission to focus on and Jacques, for all his faults, was meant to help with it. She decided to turn back to check on them and to see about Jacques’ promise of putting them up for the night.

Even if she did have to swallow her pride in order to do it.


--=--


Jacques was smiling nervously at the brawny sailor pony that had more scars than he had face as he passed him by, giving him and the door the swordspony was leaning against an odd look as he continued on.

“HHHHHandy~” Jacques singsonged. “You can calm down any time now. You’re worrying ponies.” He was replied by the sound of unintelligible shouting. The soundproofing on these rooms really was incredible, but Jacques could still hear him through the wall.

“What’s going on?”

“Ahh!” Jacques whirled around to face the bored-looking face of Charity Bell. “W-When did you get back?”

“Just now. Clever set up this… friend of yours has,” she said icily. Jacques rubbed his foreleg in agitation.

“Yeah, yeah. Look, can you help me with this?”

“With what?”

“It’s Handy, he… I dunno. He didn’t know that Sea Crest’s place was… what it was, until he was already inside.”

“Seriously?”

“I know!”

“Barbie Dolls! I am in a world full of living Barbie Dolls!”

“But he calmed down, we talked normally, and then he… he got this look in his eyes, dead to the world. Had to guide him up the stairs and through the passages to the apartments. As soon as the wall closed behind us, he just… blew up!”

“Babies! How do babies!? How do you even babies here!?” They winced at the shouting coming from the solid oak door.

“How long has he been like this?”

“...Half an hour.”

“Pollination! Spores! That’s right, like Orkz! Just as the Old Ones intended!”

“Everything went fine. We got to my broker, did the deal and now we were just waiting for the information to trickle back to us.”

“Wait, you’ve already done the hoofwork?”

“Yeah, the network will take care of itself. Though depending on how hard the information is to acquire, it can get pretty pricey.” Jacques waved Thorax down. “I don’t care, Handy’s paying me, remember? I can charge my own sum.”

“Swell.”

“What is even the point of having separate bathrooms at restaurants!? What is the point of bathrooms!? Is this a joke!? Is someone up there having a laugh!?”

Jacques suddenly felt himself pinned against the wall with Thorax’s angry visage up close to his face. “Seeing as all we have to do now is sit around and wait.” Her eyes narrowed. “You and I are going to be having a little chat.” Jacques smiled nervously, swallowing before gesturing to the door containing Handy’s angry voice.

“W-What about him?” he asked.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”

“He’ll be fine.”