Stick had heard said that, when one gazed into an abyss, it was more than likely that the abyss gazed back. Doctor Pines had been in the habit of sowing remarks like that, especially around the patients. It gave them something to think about in the long, lonesome hours of the midnight drug haze. This one was no exception. Nights and days had passed when Stick had thought of nothing else but the meaning of that enigmatic sentence.
The same thought occupied him right now. Staring into the depths of the staircase in the abandoned warehouse, he could not help but to think what happened to the gaze that blinked first. Or that didn’t. And how could something with no eyes gaze at anything in the first place?
He had spent hours searching for the three missing Element Bearers. First he had checked the pet shop, then the school, then the Guards’ station. Useless, all useless. He was useless. But not too crazy to know what happened to useless ponies. If the abyss could see, it could certainly feed.
The shard of glass in his pocket weighed practically nothing and still burdened his chest like a ton of bricks, begging for a meaning, a purpose. In a sense it was yet another abyss. Stick had become quite good at spotting those. At bottom, an abyss was not a pit but a hole – in reality. A hole come real. And what finally gazed back at you was not any end, but the other side of that end.
Stick did not want to go down there, and not just because of what he thought of abysses. Deep within he knew that, if he’d take the first step, somepony would end up killed. The mere possibility felt wrong. But so did the thought that he could tell right and wrong apart. It wasn’t a feeling he had been used to. And neither was the sensation that he now felt a lot more in touch with his feminine side than had been used to.
He took the second step. The first one would crumble at touch, as would the fourth, the fifth and the eleventh, among many others. She had shown him how to walk the stairs of abyss the first time she had led him down there. Knowledge such as that was difficult to forget. Not that I’ve tried, he added hastily, just in the case she was listening. She had kept quiet for a while now, which only fueled the need for precautions.
He got into the tunnel and started walking. At every step his legs urged him to turn and flee, to gallop until his breath would fail. But there was no running from the abyss, he knew. He might’ve been clinically insane, but he knew that much – it was the very reason he knew that much.
After some time he figured that either the tunnel had grown in length or the candles were out. He opted for the former alternative – the candles never went out, not here. The wax burned until it ran out. Still, he should have seen some glow by now. His uncertain progress turned hesitant, then almost halted. Something was not right with the abyss. This wasn’t completely unusual. But this was the wrong kind of wrongness. His crawling skin was the proof of that.
The walls of the tunnel disappeared out of his reach, and he knew that he had entered the room where all the candles should have been. A burnt smell still hung in the air.
Not unlike the feet of an insect, muttering words crawled into Stick’s ears. He could not make them out, but the voice sounded oddly familiar. In a strange, rhyming sort of way. Holding his breath, he headed towards the sound. It did not take more than a few steps for his feet to hit something that felt like a person. Or what once had been a person.
“Who’s there?” asked Feinsake’s voice.
“Me,” said Stick automatically. “It’s me. Your Stick. Your good Stick.”
A silence.
“Stick,” said Feinsake ponderously. “Yes. Stick. Yes. I remember him. Come closer.”
He hesitated but a heartbeat. “Uh, of course. Could you turn on the lights? I can’t see where you are.”
“No lights! No seeing! Must not watch, must not see. Head for my voice. Come now, hurry. There is still work to do. Gnu, flu, shoe.”
A hoof from the darkness bumped into Stick’s shoulder, holding a knife. Something warm trickled on his fur.
“You must finish here,” continued Feinsake. “There’s this one, and then another over there in the corner, still breathing. Quickly now, take this thing.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think?” snapped Feinsake. “Take this cursed thing before I’ll drive it into your heart! I can’t hold it a second longer…”
Stick accepted the knife reluctantly. Even the handle was covered in running blood, which made his grip slippery. He wiped it on his uniform.
“Who are all these… ponies?” he asked carefully.
“The Element Bearers. They came here on their own. Sow, low, tow.”
The question “How?” ran by his tongue, but Stick bit it in half before it could get farther than that. The “how” might lead to the “why,” the answer to which wasn’t that flattering to him. “So do you have all the cutie marks now?” he asked.
“All save one. That will be your next task. Mask.”
“Uhm… so if you have all the marks… and if you’ve already started removing them… uhm…”
“Speak up!”
“Might it then be possible that you don’t need me anymore?” finished Stick in one breath.
The room was dark enough that, even with her standing right next to him, Stick could not see her expression. Her silence was clear enough though – clear and long. It ended with a sigh.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said distantly. “All too right, in fact.”
“It’s not that I wouldn’t want to stay,” he continued. “It’s just that, you see… I don’t think you could understand… I certainly can’t… but… I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
“All too right,” repeated Feinsake. She took a step closer to him. “Could I get that knife back, then?”
Stick sighed in relief. “Of course. I’m glad you’re so understanding. Honestly, I have no idea where this came from. All this blood… I suppose there’s only so much one can take it in, right?”
“Right,” said Feinsake, picking the blade with his horn. The stale air swished twice, and the steel was clean no more.
“It must be the mental link we’ve shared,” she said while he collapsed on the ground. “Soul is such a delicate thing. All flux and flow, no grip to speak of. Always looking to reach out. Pout, stout, snout.”
At her feet, Stick tried to speak. “My… My eyes… I can’t see… My eyes…”
Feinsake glanced at him, not so much as blinking. “You wanted your freedom, didn’t you? At this point, that was the only way. My gaze holds you captive no more. Congratulations.”
She continued removing Flitter’s cutie mark. Stick writhed on the ground, whining miserably. She paid him no attention whatsoever. When she was done, she wiped the knife on Flitter’s fur and headed to the door to her left.
It did not creak as she opened it. It should have. A door in a cellar on a night like this ought to creak. It was part of the show, creaking.
“No!” cried Lily as she saw her in the torchlight. “No! No! No!”
“At least somepony knows her lines around here,” said Feinsake. The knife floated around her head, tilting from side to side, losing the occasional drop of blood which had missed Stick’s fur.
Heart watched them fall like the grains of his life’s hourglass.
“Still no cutie mark, I see,” said Feinsake, looking at Lily’s flank. “Tut tut. Fate can be so lax at times.” Her mouth twitched into a smile. “Even his dice need the occasional nudge, it seems.”
Lily pressed tightly against Heart, whose pale face gleamed with sweat.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Why?”
“I thought you’d never ask!” exclaimed Feinsake. The knife dropped on the floor with a clang. She cleared her throat, twice, and smoothed her mane with a hoof. “Why, you almost had me thinking you didn’t care. I’ve waited for this too long – my very own monologue where I explain my twisted plans for the eager audience! How quaint!” She snuffed a giggle with her hoof. “I’m such a sucker for traditions.”
The knife rose again, lifted by the pinkish glow.
“Unfortunately…” she continued with a more somber tone. “Unfortunately, time has ran away with that opportunity. But it’s really the thought that matters, I find. Kind, blind, mind.”
Heart opened his mouth again. He stopped when the cold steel pressed against his throat.
“Lily,” said Feinsake. “This is it. I’’m going to start counting from ten. Beyond zero, your father’s life is in higher hooves than my own. We all believe in you. Do not let him down. Ten.”
“There is nopony higher here than you,” said Heart.
“Wrong. Providence nobler than what this land has seen for a century holds my horn. Nine.”
“You’re the Chancellor,” continued Heart while withholding from swallowing. “Authorized by the people of Canterlot. The law knows no higher authority.”
Feinsake rolled her eyes. “You still think any of this has anything to do with laws? Wake up, Heart. Your father at the very least had the sense to face the facts, even if he could not stand their weight. Eight.”
Heart blinked. “My father? What are you talking about?”
“Seven. You know what I’m talking about. Hilt may have been weak, but he was no fool. He knew Equestria’s fate was sealed on the day the Last Alicorn fell. We’re dying, have been for a hundred years. He also knew what it would take to stop that, but he did not have the spirit to make it happen. Thus he killed himself. Six.”
“Dad, stop her!” wailed Lily, digging her face deeper into Heart’s fur. “Stop her from talking! Stop her! Stop!”
“Killed himself?” echoed Heart slowly. “That… Doesn’t make… Any sense…”
“To the contrary. You will see. They will all see. Five. Lily, the world is waiting! Use your horn! Use it! Three!”
“Dad,” gasped Lily, her throat sore from all the crying. “What do I do, dad? I can’t do it, I can’t, I dunno how, I can’t… I’ve tried, I just can’t…”
Wary of sudden moves, Heart lifted her daughter’s chin. She was shaking all over.
“Two,” said Feinsake. The knife stirred enough to split one hair on Heart’s thorat.
“Lily…” he whispered. “Remember what I told you about looking?”
Terror cracked her face. Heart’s hoof, still holding her chin, was all that kept her from collapsing.
“One…”
“Never look,” said Heart. “Never, ever look.”
Lily squeezed her eyes shut. Heart looked at Feinsake.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “So, so sorry.”
Her halo intensified. The knife pulled back an inch, stopped and–
“What’s going on here?”
Heart twitched his neck a moment before the blade would have pierced his artery. Instead, it scraped his skin, leaving a long, red cut in its wake.
Feinsake had already spun around at the speaker’s direction. Her eyes widened at the sight of Ember Trail swaying in the doorway.
“Feinsake, my love,” he started. “What on earth are you–”
She let out a strange scream before plunging the knife at his direction. Sparks flew on the spot in the wall where Trail’s forehead had been a second ago.
“Hey, wait!” he yelped, scrambling away from the knife. “What are you doing? It’s me, Ember Trail!”
“She’s gone insane!” shouted Heart. “Watch out or she’ll kill you!”
Trail threw a confused glance at Heart’s direction, but had to refocus on the knife as it again aimed to drill itself between his eyes. It stopped a few inches from his face, her pink aura now challenged by his grey one. The steel bended as two arcane forces wrested it into opposite directions.
“My love, stop this!” he wailed.
Feinsake growled in response. The glow around her horn brightened, and Trail was forced to step back as the knife inched towards him.
He’s losing, realized Heart. Either Trail’s horn was still spent from the fight or a part of him refused to believe that his beloved seriously intended to end his life. Heart tried to free his own horn or leg, but neither obstacle wouldn’t budge. By his side, Lily trembled like a leaf, holding her hooves against her ears, eyes wide shut. I have to do something, he thought desperately. Something. Anything.
Trail’s hind leg hit the wall behind him. “Why’re you doing this?” he cried. “Why? What for?”
Feinsake remained mute, her expression twisted into a frenzied snarl. She stepped forward, and the knife followed in suit. It was a mere hair’s length away from Trail’s muzzle now. Whimpering, he closed his eyes.
“Lily!” shouted Heart abruptly. “By gods! Your cutie mark! Look at your cutie mark!”
Feinsake’s eyes widened. She swirled around, nailing her gaze at the filly who was still huddling tightly against her father. With a flick of her horn, Feinsake pushed Heart aside to get a good look at her flank. Her bare, naked flank.
“Now, Trail!” barked Heart from the ground.
Trail’s eyes flashed open. The knife floated right in front of him, but now gripped only by his gray aura. At the same moment, he saw Feinsake turn again, her face wracked by terrible fury. In his spine, a fuse lit, old as the instinct to survive.
Feinsake screamed sharply as a foreign magical discharge flooded her horn. Her front legs buckled, and the rising pink glow that had started forming around the knife faded. It dropped on the floor.
“I’m sorry, my love,” muttered Trail, tears pushing past his eyes. “You left me no choice. What in the heaven’s name were you thinking?”
A hiss of pain was all he got for an answer. He looked at Heart, who had got up to hug his daughter again.
“What happened here?” Trail asked.
“I’ll explain the moment you get this thing out of my horn,” said Heart, pointing at the onyx ring.
Trail focused on the black ring, now seeing it for the first time. “Why… Why do you have that? Did she put it on you? Why?”
“Because she’s snapped,” said Heart. He slightly released his embrace on Lily and looked pleadingly at him. “Please. I must get her out of here. Please.”
“Don’t listen to a word he says,” said Feinsake. She stood up, shakily, and gave Trail the most sincere, doe-eyed look that had ever blessed her face. “Trail, my love, don’t you remember what happened? He attacked you, back in the Parliament. I dehorned him to protect you.”
“Then why did you try to impale his forehead a second ago?” snapped Heart. “She’s insane, Trail! She wants to rule the world by starting a war between us and the griffons!”
“Such nonsense. He will say anything to get you free him.” Feinsake stepped closer to Trail and smiled faintly. “Don’t you remember our plan, my love? This is it. This is all part of the plan.”
“But…” began Trail. “You… you were trying to kill me just now?”
Her smile remained impervious. “A regrettable mistake. I did not recognize you, for the darkness. It’s all past now. Please, let me touch you; to know it’s really you.”
“She’s lying!” yelled Heart. His chain creaked and complained as he pulled forward as much as it would allow him to. “You can’t be believing her! She’ll kill you! She’ll kill us all! Trail!”
Trail stood tense as a statue, transfixed by her presence. A smile rose to his lips, to match hers, yet it lacked the same bottomless confidence. “I… I do remember the plan. Our plan. Yes. The plan.” One muscle at a time, his body started relaxing. “I feared you had forgotten.”
“How could I?” she said, her smile glowing. “Forget our plan? You must have hurt your head worse than I thought. To think I would forget the plan, lest try to kill you? Oh, my love… Come here…”
They embraced each other. Heart stared at the sight, a freezing feeling travelling by his neck all the way to the bottom of his stomach. His throat ached to shout at them, to curse them, to laugh at them. Yet he could only stare; stare and wonder if, had it been he in Trail’s place, listening to Lake, would the outcome have been any different?
But he could not wonder that now. Not when his daughter’s life hung in peril on every passing second.
“Ask her where we are,” he said, forcing calmness into his voice. “Ask that, and how we got here. Use your head, Trail. Her story is full of holes.”
He saw how hesitation spread on Trail’s face. He broke the hug and frowned at Heart.
“I hate to admit this, but he may have a point,” he said slowly, looking at Feinsake again. “Where are we? And why is the other room crowded with corpses? I’m not angry, you understand. It’s just that I could use an explanation, which I’m sure you have no troubles providing.”
Crowded with corpses? echoed Heart. What?
“It was a rather disturbing sight to wake up to, I must admit,” said Trail. He regarded Feinsake with a slightly less romantic view now.
She kept on smiling as if that was the single most important thing in the world. “Corpses? What corpses? You must have mistaken. We are in the Parliament’s dungeons, you see. Some of the prisoners were just having a nap, I’m sure.”
“They did appear quite dead to me, love.”
“Well what would I know about it?” she snapped in sudden irritation. “We came here to shelter against the griffon attack, remember? Could be they killed themselves rather than faced the flames of war. What does it matter? We’re finally together – how little does that matter to you anymore?”
“How little?” he repeated hollowly. “How little? I’ve devoted my whole life to you! Every waking second from the day we met! And you just tried to drive a knife through my skull!” In one quick move, he picked the knife from the ground and started brandishing it before her face. “See this?! See it?! You were looking me in the eyes while wielding this! In the eyes!”
Feinsake backed up a step or two. “Trail… My love… Do calm down. You’re scaring me.”
“Good!” he exclaimed. “Lovers should share their experiences, isn’t that what they say?”
“Trail,” said Heart. “I’m glad you’ve come to your sense. Now, help me get this ring out of my horn. I must hurry to the Cliffs at once: there might still be time to prevent the world from ending.”
Trail gave him an icy look. “You’re still on about that? Forget it, Heart – the world is old enough to take care of itself. Also, while I may have some bits missing from the last few hours, I do remember why that is, exactly.” He turned his eyes on Feinsake again, who had pressed against the wall. “Nopony is going anywhere until I’ve had my questions answered.”
“Perhaps I could help with that,” said a weak voice by the door. Every pair of eyes in the room turned towards it.
“I couldn’t help overhearing you,” continued Stick. To Heart he sounded like a person with a throat coated with shards of glass. Every word came with a painful-looking twitch, as if they had to push through his own skin. Judging from his wounds, the truth was not that much different.
“Who in Tartarus are you?” asked Trail.
“I’m one of the corpses you just mentioned,” said Stick. He took another wavering step into the room, almost stumbling on the low threshold. Drops of blood fell past his jaw in a steady rhythm. “Unfortunately, the state wasn’t lasting on my part. I came around a moment ago, heard your conversation and chose to intervene. Do excuse me if I faint again. The pain is quite… a challenge…” He tried to smirk, but could only manage a gory grimace. Heart felt the bottom of his stomach turn, and thanked the stars that Lily had lost consciousness at the sight of Stick.
“What… What happened to you?” said Trail.
Stick looked about ready to collapse, but happened to find support from the wall. “I got free. That’s what happened. She freed me. Freed me good.”
“Who, Feinsake?” said Trailed, looking at Feinsake who was staring at her hooves. “You did this? Why? Why in the heavens? Who are you?”
“Who am I?” she said after a pause. “Who… am I…?”
Trail waited her to continue, in vain. He turned back to Stick. “You said you had some answers to offer?”
“Where would you like me to begin?”
The question seemed to take Trail by surprise. “Uh… I… Well, do you know anything about those bodies back there?”
Stick nodded. “They are, or were, the heirs of the Element Bearers of old. Fluttershy the Kind and Rainbow Dash the Loyal were their grand-grandmothers. They died so she could take their cutie marks.”
“Their… Their cutie marks?”
“Yes. She got me out of a hospital to find and skin them for her. I got almost all of them. The heirs of Pinkie Pie the Funny and Applejack the Honest are there on a shelf. Them I got all by myself.”
A memory flashed before Heart’s eyes. “Wait – did you say Pinkie Pie the Funny’s heir? What was her cutie mark like?”
“Some colourful balloons,” said Stick. “It was my first one.”
“Trail,” said Heart slowly. “You have to let me go. This explains everything. The griffons have killed nopony: it was Feinsake all along.”
If Trail heard him, he showed no sign of it. He continued to stare at Stick like a deer stares the headlights right before the crash. “You’re saying… You’re saying she has skinned all the living heirs of the Element Bearers?”
“Well, not all. There was Rarity the Generous’s heir, but I don’t think she ever got to him. I’m sure I didn’t. She said his cutie mark would be the easiest to acquire, though.”
Trail’s gaze turned to Feinsake like a glacier pushes itself into the sea.
“You never loved me,” he whispered. “All you ever wanted from me… was my… my… cutie mark…”
Feinsake looked up from her hooves. To call her gaze empty would have been a terrible mistake. An abyss is never empty but always filled to the brim – with nothingness.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I wanted your cutie mark. I still do. I would kill you for it as I breathe.”
Trail’s jaw dropped.
“It’s not that I hate you,” she continued. “To be frank, personally I merely find you slightly annoying. Just look at you: a heir of an Element Bearer. What have you done to deserve that honor? Nothing. You were wasting your legacy the day I found you, and without me wasted it would have been.” She gave Heart and Trail a bright smile. “You are both wrong, by the way. The world is not old but newborn, yet nopony alive can save it any more.”
“Like hay they can’t!” shouted Heart. “All this could have been averted if somepony would just have let me to the Cliffs! Even if the fighting has erupted, I can still stop it! Trail, release me! Now!”
“The Cliffs have nothing to do with the danger I speak of,” said Feinsake calmly.
“Then what does, pray tell?”
She tilted her head in apparent curiosity. “It confounds me to believe the son of Captain Hilt could be as thick as you. Like as not, your ignorance is merely another form of denial. Conscious or not, it makes no matter.” She shook her head and sighed. “Did you know that the griffons use a different name for Catastrophe than we do? For them, it’s the Fall. Why is that, do you think?”
“It means the world ended that day,” she continued on the same breath. “I saw the truth of that the first time I heard it. We’re literally living an end that has lasted for a hundred years. Everything the old world held dear has been crumbling steadily, year after year. Crops, laws, spirits – everything. The Parliament itself stands as the stoutest testimony for the decline. Democracy was never meant to house the ponydom – only to finish its burial.”
“And for that reason,” she went on, not utterly entranced by her own voice. “For that reason… I devised the Plan. The Plan to reverse the living end, to turn it right again. A new beginning for the equine race! A future worthy of the name blessed! Blessed with hope so profound nopony, nopony, could resist its lure and call! A hope precious enough to seal a new pact! The divine covenant reborn in flesh! In my womb!”
Gleaming, her eyes shifted from Heart to Trail, both of whom had to blink under her stare.
“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
She drew a breath. The word hung at the tip of her tongue, ready to fall; it visibly burned her to utter it, as if she was in labour already.
Alicorn.
The whisper travelled around the room with fractured wings. Such was the fate of a word nopony had uttered for a hundred years. Not the way she did.
“Impossible,” said Heart. “That’s impossible. You can’t give birth to an alicorn; nopony can. It’s delusional to claim that.”
“Right you are. In truth, an alicorn is never born. An entrance so worldly is hardly adequate for an incarnation of divinity. My body is a mere channel for her, not a true origin. Nonetheless, the salvation lies within me. A new covenant. A new future. All it needs is…” Her voice faded away, along with her focus.
“What?”
“A sacrifice,” said Trail. “That’s what you called our plan once. A sacrifice. For love.” He snorted in disdain. “‘For insanity’ would have made for a more accurate description.”
“I am not insane!” shrieked Feinsake. She marched towards Trail, fuming. “You selfish, arrogant, good-for-nothings idiot have no right to call me insane! You’ve ruined everything! I should have skinned you while I had the ch–”
“Yes,” said Trail blankly. “I think you should have.”
Feinsake, now halted on her tracks, looked down on her chest. The handle of the knife stuck right from the middle of it, vibrating gently back and forth. She blinked, looked up at Trail, and let out the sort of a sigh one hears from very tired, or very relieved, people.
And then she died.
“What happened?” asked Stick. He took an unsteady step into the room.
“About time somepony shut her up, eh?” said Trail. A stupid grin had appeared on his face at some point, glowing at the unmoving body of Feinsake. “She never knew when to shut up. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Well, I shut her up for good. Heh. Heh.”
Stick, stumbling on Feinsake, kneeled down to touch her. “You killed her,” he said after a while.
“I think not, pal. The way I see it, you had already killed her, along with those three back there when I got here. Enraged and repulsed, I ended your miserable life on the spot instead of delivering it to justice. I’m sure the court will show empathy. If any still exist in the morning.” With a flick of his horn, Trail picked the knife from Feinsake’s corpse and bended the blade useless, after which he tossed it into a corner. “The story might benefit from a witness or two, however.”
It took Heart’s galloping mind only a second to catch that cue. “Anything you say, Trail. Just don’t hurt Lily. Anything you say.”
“I do like the sound of that. Anything, you say? Why, a couple of things spring to my mind as we speak…” Trail flinched as unfamiliar hooves touched his flank, but he relaxed again as he saw Stick groping his way. “What, you wish to follow your script already? Can’t you just, you know, bleed to death or something?”
“You shouldn’t have killed her,” said Stick. As his one hoof sought support from Trail, the other reached for the pocket of his uniform. “She deserved something better. You have no idea what she sacrificed for us all. You have no idea.”
Trail let out a manic laugh. “This is too much… She blinded you, kidnapped a foal, killed heaven's know how many ponies and I’m the one getting scorned? Really, this is too–”
His laugh turned into gurgling. His hooves scrambled to stem the bleeding of his throat, but an artery severed is an artery severed. He staggered back and forth for a few seconds, fell over and, after few more twitches, settled down. Only after the last gurgle did Stick spit the bloody shard of glass from his mouth.
Nopony spoke for a while after that.
“I did not like his version of the story,” said Stick finally.
Heart tore his eyes from Trail, opened his mouth, but spoke only after the the second thoughts had made their case. “Listen… I don’t know who you are, or what you’ve done to get yourself mixed into all this. But I do know that, with wounds like that, you’re going to need some serious medical help and soon. I can help you out of here. Just help me out of my chains.”
Stick sat down, looking vaguely at the direction of Heart’s voice. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m confident I could find my own way out, if I so pleased. The thing is, I have no reason to leave. I like it here. I don’t expect you to understand why.”
Heart stared at the strange, blood-soaked pony before him. Despite his terrible condition, he did not seem stressed, not even a little. To the contrary, he seemed like to be the calmest pony Heart had met for a long while. That might have been a relief, were it not for the fact that he had just witnessed him take another pony’s life. There must be a way to make him help me. There must be.
“You said it was Feinsake who… maimed you. Yet you killed Trail for killing her.”
“Do I hear a question there?”
Heart nodded, then added, with some shame, “Yes.”
“Again, I do not expect you to understand. It suffices to say that she gave me something; something for which I will be infinitely indebted for her. Freedom is a gift that just keeps on giving itself, you see.”
“Freedom?”
“There’s no better word for it,” continued Stick. “Before, the darkness had me. Long, cold darkness. The type you only find in cellars. Then she came for me, to give me a purpose. In the process, I received something more – a piece of her self. I can see it now. Sight is a cheap price for seeing.”
“Ah-ha.”
“Your name is Deck Heart, correct?”
“How did you know–”
“It doesn’t matter,” interrupted Stick. “I saw it on some list. And your daughter, Lily? Is she there?”
“Yes.”
“And her cutie mark?”
Heart froze. There was something in the way he asked that that chilled his spine. The seeming tranquility of his being cracked on that question.
“What does it matter? There is no sacrifice, spell or ritual which could incarnate an alicorn.”
“She believed there was. She believed strongly enough to kill for it. To torture for it. It went against everything in her nature, in her soul, yet she did it nonetheless. Because she believed.”
“And she died for it. Whatever secrets she held are now gone.”
Stick smiled like a ghost. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. She made notes, I know. Beyond this room, there is another filled with books once thought to have disappeared forever. What lies within, I do not know. Could be anything, really.” He bit his lip, apparently engaged in some inner conflict. “I was wondering… In the case it was possible… and the life of your own daughter did not weigh the other scale… would you do it? If it would save the world?”
“Do what?”
An alicorn.
Heart remained silent until it started to hurt. And then he answered:
“If what she did was the only way to make an alicorn… and the alicorn was the only way to save the world… then it was not worth saving in the first place.”
Stick stared at him. The smile twitched, and then he nodded. “The keyset is in the other room. Your shackles should open with them. It might take awhile for me to find it, but don’t wander anywhere in the meanwhile. There’s no telling what dangers an abandoned mine such as this might hold.”
***
Sweat gleamed on Acting-Captain Cowl’s forehead as he carefully pondered his situation. It was a high likelihood that it was the trickiest he had known in his life. Hundreds, if not thousands, of ponies depended on him to make the right decisions. The future of all equinity lay on the edge of a knife. One wrong move and it would all be over. Had Heart been here, the matter would have been settled in short order. But the whole reason they were in this predicament was that Heart was not here.
High above, the full moon gave the soon-to-be battlefield all the light it ever needed. The griffons held the cliffside, and hundreds of eyes shined in the shadows of the rocks cave mouths, following every move on the lower ground. Cowl had spent hours coming up with the optimal attack formation without the slightest idea if any of them had been even remotely correct. He simply did not have enough time nor experience for a task this demanding.
He drew a deep breath. He had waited for long enough. The time to act had come. Whether it would save the world or bring it flaming down was beyond his control now.
“Men!” he shouted at the troops behind him. “This is it! On my mark: Three, two, one, g–”
“Wait!”
Cowl swallowed the command to charge along with his tongue. He looked behind and saw the lines of soldiers all gazing upwards. He followed in suit, just in time to see a pegasus glide through the air and crash at his feet. The soldier was up in no time, even though he was visibly completely exhausted from the flight.
“Message, sir!” he said, and fell backwards. A piece of paper fell from his hoof, and Cowl snapped if for himself. He fought to combat the shaking as he read the few hastily scribbled words.
“They found him!” he eventually cried. “They found Heart! He is coming here! Heart is coming!”
The soldiers erupted into wild applause. On the other side of the rocky, relatively level cliffside, the amassed griffons, as ready for battle as their enemies, exchanged confused looks. Within minutes, the boding, ordered air above the coming battleground melted into disarray. After hastily delegating command of the situation to some Lieutenant, Cowl pushed through the crowd, shouting Heart’s name as he went. They met so suddenly that the first reaction for both was to push the other from the way.
“Cowl!” shouted Heart over the cheering. “Order everypony to stand down! Cancel all charges! There has been a terrible mistake! We need to get every soldier out of here before–”
“Heart!” shouted Cowl, simultaneously with him. “Help me! We’re already two matches down and I ran out of ideas on the first loss! Nopony told me these feather brains are devils with a ball! You’ve got to step in and–”
“What?!” they both shouted at each other’s faces.
“I said, we can’t manage without your experience!” said Cowl. “You’re the Guard’s head coach! I’m only for reserve, and frankly you did such a killer job that the post was just a fancy title for me! I’m sorry! I’ve let the whole Equestria down!”
“Cowl,” started Heart, groping for reason like a drowning pony gropes for the lifejacket. “What are you on about? Two matches down? What does that mean?”
Desperation filled Cowl’s eyes. “It means I will be remembered as the Captain who lost Equestria’s honor in football for griffons! I’ll never life through the shame!”
Heart’s face fell along with his sense of reality. “Foot… ball? You’re playing football with the griffons?”
“If you can call it playing! They’re butchering us, plain and simple! I should’ve known there was dog buried in it somewhere when they suggested a game. A griffon never plays without expecting to win.”
No poet, no artist could have described Heart’s expression at that moment. “How did this happen?”
“I told you already: I suck at tactics! But mark my words: some of those griffons use their wings pretty darn suspiciously while ‘running’. The rules forbid flying, damn it!”
“Forget the bloody football! How come you haven’t all killed each other yet?”
Some idea that his friend was not actually interested in football manage to pierce Cowl’s mind wrapped around a rulebook. “Krhm, right, that. Well, your note played a big part there. The one you gave to Helm Cleaver and Mill Stone, I mean. At first I thought it was a fake; some plot or something. It sure didn’t make much sense to me. Still, it seemed like your hoofwriting, so I couldn’t just ignore it, even if we couldn’t find you anywhere to prove it. So I sent some squads to the Cliffs to do a thorough inspection, just to make sure.”
“And? How did the griffons react?”
“Well, I got to admit, things were turning pretty heated around here at some point. I suppose I’d be on edge, too, should the griffon army march on my doorstep. First they didn’t wanna let anypony in, but we negotiated some and like as not they finally let one squad in. There was this one griffon chick who played a big part there. Said she had met you even. Anyway, the squad had some pretty interesting stuff to tell once they got back.”
Heart’s mental relief finally caught up with his body, which almost collapsed on the spot. “They found a bunch of hungry, depressed griffons, didn’t they?”
“Just about so, yeah,” said Cowl. “Like your paper said. Of course I presumed they were faking, to make us believe they’re weak when the real army hides deeper in the caves. So I went there to see myself. I swear, if those griffons were faking starvation, they were doing so good a job they wouldn’t have been any good even if they weren't feigning!”
“And then you started playing football,” said Heart, half-drowsing. With relief came exhaustion, which blurred the lines of his vision, the cheering of the hundreds of ponies around him, the droning voice of Cowl.
“More or less, yeah. I mean, I’m not one for hobnobbing with bloody griffons, but a game of football, well, who could decline from that? It’s better than killing each other, right? Anyway, it was supposed to be a piece of cake: what could a few feathery buggers do against the number one team of Canterlot? Then it turns out griffons were the ones who invented the bloody sport.”
Heart barely heard his friend’s last words. Sleep, now secured by the knowledge that Lily was as safe as she’d ever be, pressed his eyes along with the aching of his muscles and bruises. Problems, both actual and hypothetical, still fought to keep him conscious: How had Feinsake managed to get Lily in the first place? How long could they hold on to the fragile peace which, by the virtue of football, had now been prolonged? Had Hilt, judging there was no hope for Equestria, really killed himself? Was there something more to Feinsake’s grand plan than blind belief? And what to do with the strange, blind pony who had stayed in the mine? Faced with all these questions, Heart had only a single sensible response to offer.
A smile.