//------------------------------// // "Sir Lance and the Dragon" // Story: The Minoan Crisis // by Cosmic Cowboy //------------------------------// It looked like the books were right. Well, I guess that shouldn’t come as a surprise, since books aren’t often wrong, but it’s not often that one gets the opportunity to put something they read about in a book to the test out in the real world. Wilderland really didn’t have any wind. This close to the ocean and with my helmet missing, part of my mind kept expecting to feel a cool breeze through my mane, but there was nothing. The air was still. Stagnant, really. It felt almost like being in a basement, and the thought made me shiver uncomfortably. Behind me, Lightning Dust and Olive Branch were sitting together and passing the time swapping stories. The plan was to wait until well after dark before moving back into the zmey’s territory, so without our supplies there was nothing else to do but sit around and talk. I sat watching the sun sink behind the mountains, listening attentively to the other two’s conversation without looking at either of the participants or contributing anything myself. Lightning shared stories about winning races, practicing with friends, and pulling pranks in flight school, and the ambassador talked about his apparently stellar career in cross-country flying before he’d followed his Cutie Mark and become a diplomat. I couldn’t think of any good stories, myself. Well, actually, I could, and did, but it was never until the other two had moved on to talk about something else and it would be weird to share the story I was thinking of. This happened to me a lot. I tried my best to give it up and just listen or even ignore them, but part of me kept coming up with stupid memories two stories too late. So what ended up happening was that every five minutes or so, I would catch myself thinking circular thoughts and start paying attention to the conversation again. The hours hadn’t gone by quickly at all. Right now, the ambassador was telling Lightning Dust about his time with the gryphons. “Have you ever met a gryphon?” he asked. There was a pause wherein I assumed Lightning Dust must have shaken her head. “They’re a bit different than what most ponies are used to. Culturally, they still kind of hold on to their old clan-chief mindset that you can’t be great at anything without also being a skilled warrior or hunter. “You can still see it today, how all the best business minds in Gryphendom are also athletes in the amateur leagues, and the pros all have high-profile side jobs. It’s usually a safe bet when meeting a gryphon for the first time, no matter what other business you might have with them, that they won’t really care for you or respect you unless they know you can give them a run for their money at some sport or race.” He paused, giving an amused little snort. “I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason Celestia picked me to lead the embassy in High Eyrie, actually.” I almost spoke up, then. I had never met a gryphon or been to their homelands myself, but I knew a thing or two about them. I wanted to ask the ambassador if he knew about the old traditional blood sports and how Celestia had finally convinced Gryphus the Twelfth to ban them two hundred years ago. Wouldn’t that be a perfect way into the discussion, if neither of them had heard that before? Personal stories might be hard to come up with, but random trivia like that I could spew all day. If only I had gotten into encyclopedia writing or something where a skill like that is useful. In a perfect world, Lightning Dust would want to hear more, too. I know she would be interested in stories of gryphon gladiators. It really was some fascinating history and I just knew deep down she wanted to know, but somehow I also knew she wouldn’t take as well to hearing it from me. “Wait,” came Lightning’s voice. “Was your job seriously just to beat gryphons at sports all the time? I thought being an ambassador was boring and hard!” Dang it, the moment was gone again. Oh, well. Olive Branch laughed heartily. “Well, it’s boring sometimes, and it’s almost always hard. But I did win some races, sometimes, yeah. It’s a good way to make friends if you know what you’re doing, and that’s what my job really was.” There’s no way his job was half as easy as he made it sound. I’d read up on Ambassador Olive Branch. I knew all about the deals he had brokered between our nation and Gryphendom, the disputes he had mediated, and all of his work to help the central government in High Eyrie regain some measure of control over their country. By rights, this stallion belonged in history books. Part of me was still giddy about being this close to him, and being along to watch him work miracles in a new country was probably the greatest opportunity of my life so far. It was almost disappointing, then, that I was getting to know him as a pony over this trip. Putting up with his bad jokes, trying to ignore his worsening body odor, and suffering through his bad decisions all made it so much easier to stop seeing him as the hero of peace and cooperation I had read about and start seeing the flaws and shortcomings of just another pony. Olive Branch, the pony, was too casual for his own good. He tended to pass up what needed to and should be done for whatever he was in the mood for. If somepony needed to be corrected and their mistake explained to them, he would joke about it instead. Lately he had stopped assigning duties at our stops because he was lost in thought, and we were left to figure out who does what on our own. I was starting to wonder if he was really responsible for all the stuff attributed to him, or if it was all the work of the embassy under him and he got all the credit for it. In fact, hearing all these stories about his time before he had started working for the crown, I was starting to recognize more and more of his actions for what they were: Olive Branch the solitary athlete coming back out of retirement. His Cutie Mark was a blue and green globe wreathed by long-cut, leafy twigs. I wondered how he had ended up with that instead of something related to racing. If he was really as good of an athlete as he said he was, his talent for diplomacy must have been incredibly important to him to overshadow it. “Gryphons sound like my kind of people,” said Lightning Dust, a smirk evident in her voice. Lightning Dust was another easy read. Her Cutie Mark fit her perfectly. She really did have a talent for flying, but also for burning herself out and never sticking around one place for long. She had never really fit in with the Royal Guard, or the Wonderbolts before that. She didn’t make friends. She just settled into the woodwork, wherever she felt comfortable, and swept off to something new when things inevitably went wrong. Like dust. The way she dedicated herself to her flying had always impressed me, actually. I don’t think I’ve ever been as passionate about anything as she was about flying. But it came with the downside of making her impulsive and brash. I wasn’t exactly a psychologist, but flying was probably a couple places too high on her priority list to be healthy. It had gotten her into trouble before, and she hadn’t changed a thing since then. And then there was her abrasiveness. Like the gryphons, she didn’t have much patience for ponies who couldn’t keep up with her in the air, or didn’t fit her ideal of ‘coolness’. I really felt sorry for her, whenever I saw ponies avoid her table in the mess hall or hurry away from her after post. I’m not sure whether she noticed how other ponies treated her, or if she even cared. As far as I knew, she didn’t have one close friend back in Canterlot, and if she kept up the same attitude in Minos, she wouldn’t make any there, either. “Maybe you’ll end up working with them someday,” Olive Branch said. “If you like our work in Minos, maybe you should transfer up to the embassy in High Eyrie after you’re done.” “Meh, sounds like too much trouble. I hate moving. And I’m not sure how I’d feel about another flight like this one.” “Well, unless something crazy happens up there like it did here, you should be able to do it the way everyone else does: on a ship.” Something crazy? Interesting. I knew there was some reason the princess was in such a hurry to get us to Minos, but the briefing packet hadn’t given me any details. Maybe the ambassador was willing to share. “But that’s slower, right? That’d be. . . what, three weeks? Four?” Apparently Lightning Dust missed that slip, bless her heart.  “From Minos? Yeah, maybe four weeks, but you’d have to take a train from Baltimare or Manehattan to get to the west coast, and then back on a ship to go the rest of the way.” “Yeah, no. That’s way too long to spend on a boat or a train.” “Well, you could stop for a break in the middle when you go through Equestria. Take a vacation, maybe visit some family. Do you have any family back in Los Pegasus?” Lightning Dust’s voice lost a lot of its energy. “Just my grandma. I don’t know if it’s worth my time to visit her, though.” I perked up my ears; I had never heard Lightning Dust talk about her family before. Olive Branch must have sensed the change in tone, too, because he lowered his voice to match hers. “Do the two of you get along?” “I guess so, yeah. But we’re not. . . the closest of family, you know? Not anymore.” They went quiet long enough to make me uncomfortable, and I almost felt like I could feel two pairs of eyes on the back of my head. Eventually, Olive Branch broke the silence. “Well, I hope the two of you can fix that someday. What about you, Plume?” I jumped. “What?” “Do you have any family back home?” I turned my head to look at the ambassador. He was facing me, but Lightning Dust’s gaze was fixed on the stony hillside to her left, her back to me. “Just. . . . Just my mom, now. My dad was in the Royal Guard, too, but he. . . . He left us a few years ago.” The way that came out, I wasn’t sure if the ambassador would catch my meaning or misunderstand it. “I’m sorry to hear that. Was he the reason you enlisted?” I nodded, letting myself smile a little. I finally had a reason to share one of the stories that had come to mind two hours ago! “Yep. When I was little, I used to play with his helmet after he came home from work. I’d pretend I was a knight like Sir Lance from my books, fighting monsters, saving princesses. . . .” My smile faded, and I lost my focus on my surroundings as I was hit by a wave of nostalgia. I hadn’t thought about that helmet and the games I used to play with it for years before today. Oh wait, there was something I was going to ask him about. Something he’d said. . . . Oh yeah! “Did you say something crazy happened in Minos?” Lightning Dust looked up with one eyebrow raised. Olive Branch looked confused by my sudden change of topic, but he quickly realized what I was talking about. “Oh. Yeah, I guess I did.” He looked to the darkening southern horizon, which was further shadowed by a bank of wild clouds. “Well, I guess you should know what we’re getting into.” Lightning Dust raised both eyebrows at him. “‘Getting into’?” “Sorry, that made it sound scarier than it really is.” I looked at Lightning Dust uneasily, and she returned the look briefly. “I don’t think that’s very reassuring,” I said. “What’s going on in Minos?” The ambassador bit his lip and furrowed his brow, as if to say ‘drat.’ “Well, I could have started that better.” Olive Branch sighed and looked back up at us. “Basically, the last ambassador and one of the local officials disappeared a few days ago in a mysterious ‘accident’. My trip to replace her is being rushed so we can get there before the election to replace the official.” He leaned forward and his expression took a turn for the serious. “Princess Celestia got a tip that someone was behind the accident—someone who has an interest in this election—and that they didn’t want a representative of Celestia’s to be in the picture. So, she thought it prudent to take extreme measures to make sure I was in the picture. My job in Minos is to assess the political situation, do my best to ensure that the results of the election are in Equestria’s favor, and also try to find out who was behind Ambassador Laurel Wreath’s disappearance while avoiding the same fate myself. Any questions?” Lightning and I stared at him for a moment. Lightning was the first to speak. “You’re going to try to fix an election that somepony wanted you away from so badly they killed the last ambassador?” The ambassador looked at her like she had missed the point. “No, I’m not going to fix any election! That’s not how Equestria operates.” He gave a disapproving sniff. “But yes, some-body definitely doesn’t want an Equestrian ambassador anywhere near this election. And that means I will likely be in a lot of personal danger the whole time I’m there.” He suddenly grinned widely. “But that’s why I have such capable guards!” Lightning and I both recoiled from him. He looked back up at the twinkling stars, still smiling. “Speaking of which, I think it’s time!” I think Lightning Dust was just as shell-shocked as I was as we flew low over the desert toward the cliffs. I didn’t really know, since we didn’t dare say anything out loud and it was getting too dark to get a good look at her face. I knew she liked a little excitement (or a lot), but living with a constant threat to your life probably wasn’t an idea even she could warm up to very quickly. I shook my head and focused on the task at hand, which was scary enough already. The plan was to hook Lightning up to the cart as quickly and quietly as we could, since she was a stronger flyer than I was. Getting closer to where we first landed at the top of the cliffs, we didn’t see any sign of the zmey, so we went right in to land by the cart. Or actually, where the cart should have been. It was gone. Lightning Dust was mouthing a question at me, but it was too dark for me to make out what she was saying. I ignored her and crouched down to look at the dirt. There weren’t any marks in the dust apart from the two imprints where the cart had sat, which confirmed what I was most worried about. I raised my head and a hoof to motion Lightning closer, but stopped short because she was already in my face. “Listen to me when I’m talking to you!” she hissed under her breath. “Not now,” I whispered, making her pull back and glare at me. I ignored that as well and pointed to the dust. “The cart was lifted straight off the ground.” She let out a breath and looked around at the ground under her, then looked back up at me, biting her lip. “The dragon?” “Zmey!” I corrected. “Shut up. Where do you think it took it?” I took a deep breath. “Down to its cave,” I answered, pointing a hoof to the cliff. Lightning’s face went through an interesting mix of reactions. It was clear she had a lot of anger, and she didn’t seem decided on who or what to direct it at. Eventually she sat down, put her hooves against her head, and took a deep breath. “Oh, man. We have to go get it, don’t we?” she asked, a bit louder than she probably should have. I rubbed my neck. I didn’t see any other way of living long enough to get to civilization. I nodded. Lightning bit her lip and looked to the cliffs. Standing up, she looked at me and nodded firmly back. Let’s go. We took off together, trying our best not to make any noise. We had to fly slowly, because once we were in the air, the sound of our flapping was the only noise we had to worry about. We glided over the cliff and circled our way down between the tall, broken rocks jutting up out of the crashing waves, and Lightning Dust led the way in landing softly on the ledge where I had first encountered the zmey, where she looked at me expectantly. It was too dark for her to see it, but I expected I would always remember the spot where I had been startled from my business by six glowing, yellow eyes. I took a deep breath, and then another one, as I stepped as quietly as I could past Lightning Dust and toward the shadowy cave entrance. As the light from the crescent moon was blocked out by rock above me, I slowed my movements as much as I possibly could, praying my eyes would adjust and let me see what was ahead of me. I heard Lightning Dust’s soft breathing behind me, and a deeper, longer sound in front of me that made me want to whimper in fright. I stopped to compose myself. I was a grown stallion, and fear alone wasn’t about to make me give up. I tried focusing my eyes in the darkness. Shifting my head back and forth, I realized that made a difference in what little my eyes could tell me. I could see shapes! As soon as I was sure there was nothing immediately in front of me, I continued onward, with Lightning Dust close behind. I imagine my white coat and golden armor right in front of her was the only thing she could see. Gaining confidence, I scanned the darkness around me with the sort of attention to detail I reserved for finding lost puzzle pieces, or preening my big, annoyingly fluffy feathers before an inspection. There were several tall, narrow smudges that I was pretty sure were stalagmites, and smaller ones scattered around the floor that I attributed to rocks. I kept my eyes peeled for cart-sized blobs of shadow, and for giant moving ones. The sound of monstrous breathing was echoing around the whole cave, but turning my head, I was fairly certain where the source was. Unfortunately, I stepped right into a wall, and another one close to my left meant that the direction of the breathing was our only option. I glanced back at Lightning Dust, who was craning her neck to look in all directions. Judging by how visible she was, with her bright colors, I had an idea of what the light-brown cart might look like, and I surveyed the cave again as I went forward. The breathing was getting louder, and I started searching for movement in exclusion of all else. I did not want to stumble into a sleeping zmey while looking for the cart. . . .Which meant I stumbled into the cart while looking for the zmey. I had to fight down several different immediate reactions, the first being pain, so as not to wake the sleeping monster. After calming myself down and rubbing the ache out of my knee, I turned to signal Lightning Dust what I had found. Her eyes—by far the most visible things in the cavern—widened and she hurried forward to help me find the harness. We found it easily enough, but putting it on in the dark without making noise proved to be a different challenge. Our hooves fumbled with the straps, bumping into each other and accomplishing nothing. We tried in futility for what must have been five minutes, our frustration growing, until I decided to try something else. I held Lightning Dust’s hoof until she stilled, then I stood up from where I had been sitting and started rummaging through the supplies in the cart as quietly as I could. Before long, I found what I was looking for: another one of Olive Branch’s fireshard orbs. Moving extremely slowly so as not to drop it, I brought it down to the ground and carefully scraped it against a rock. The miniscule scratch gave off a gentle, pulsing light that was only barely visible, but would make our job infinitely easier. The light illuminated Lightning Dust’s nervous expression as she listened for the continued breathing of the zmey, which went on undisturbed. Smiling and cheering inwardly, I set the orb on top of the cart, angling the luminescent scratch down onto the harness, and we set about strapping Lightning Dust in. Once we had finished, I stood up on my hind legs again to stow the orb away, but froze in place as I saw a gleam in the darkness. I waited, watching for any sign of movement, thinking of large zmey eyes watching us from the shadows. Lightning Dust turned her head to look at me, in concern or impatience I didn’t know, but I warned her as best I could with my expression. Nothing happened, and the sound of breathing continued as steady as ever, so I dared to shine the orb around to see what had startled me. Lifting the orb high and squinting to make out what it was, the adrenaline still pumping through my heart was washed away by relief. Sitting discarded in a corner were our Guard helmets. As I had told my companions earlier that day, zmeys were only distantly related to dragons. They didn’t hoard treasure and they didn’t eat gemstones. They would steal food like what was packed away in our supplies, as well as animals and even ponies whenever they could, but anything they couldn’t eat was either ignored or discarded as trash. As similar as they might be physically (as long as you didn’t count two extra heads as a significant difference), zmeys were considered to be less intelligent than dragons, and they didn’t care for any possessions they couldn’t eat. Smiling from ear to ear, I set the orb down, shining its dim light towards the corner where the helmets sat. With a deep breath, I lifted myself into the air, thanking the Creator for my fluffy, quiet wings. I looked down to Lightning Dust, who was looking at me with a frantic expression, too frightened of making a sound to say anything. I simply pointed to the helmets, trying my best to look reassuring. Not wanting to risk disaster by wasting anymore time, I glided as best I could under the low ceiling and hovered above my prizes. Sweat dropping off my nose almost made me bolt, but I managed to lower myself, gently, until. . . . Something squeaked. I whirled around with ice in my veins, and saw Lightning Dust frozen in mid-step. The wheel! The two of us waited with our hearts thumping, but besides the nearly silent whoosh of my wings keeping me in the air, there was nothing. Wait. . . . There was nothing. . . . My eyes widened again. The breathing! Reluctantly, I turned my head to the back of the cave, where I thought I could see something moving. Not waiting to see any more, I waved frantically for Lightning to take off and scooped up the helmets with a clatter. Then I was gone. I heard a sharp inhalation behind me, then a blinding flash of yellow light showed me I was about to hit a wall. I backpedaled my wings to stop myself, and a blastwave of hot air caught up with me. I thought of Lightning Dust stuck to the cart and turned around to look for her. I flinched as a streak of gold and teal shot past me, pulling a large brown weight. Blinking to get my bearings again, I saw what she was running from. Lying on the floor with its three heads raised in surprise, lit from below in orange by a line of burning stone, was the zmey. Its six yellow eyes converged on me—still hovering in the air by the far wall—and narrowed as the beast roared a minor seventh. My blood chilled and I finally indulged a whimper, but I had the sense to leave. There was now more than enough light to see by, and each roar behind me was punctuated by a new wave of heat pushing me forward. I would say I flew faster than I ever had before, but in reality I probably forgot all technique in my panic and flew on instinct alone. After what felt like five minutes but was in all likelihood five seconds, I left the heat of the cave and was enveloped by the cooler night air over the sea. Lightning Dust and the supply cart were above me, just clearing the edge of the cliff. I looked back down and swerved to avoid hitting a spire of rock. I spiraled around it to gain altitude, struggling against the falling cold air, and a new roar from the cliff made me fumble one of the helmets still clutched in my forehooves. A wave of panic went through my heart as I dove after it, followed by relief as I caught it. Then my tail caught fire, and I suddenly had a wonderful column of rising hot air to help me up and away from the monster about to roast me. I flew up and over the cliff, then as fast as I could manage I flapped toward the mountains. Under the light of the stars and the waxing moon, I could still make out a long line on the ground still glowing a faint orange in the distance. I could see Lightning Dust ahead of me, flying in the same direction. A dot of orange and teal appeared above the brownish splotch that was the cart, as she lifted her head and her hoof to wave to me frantically. The zmey close behind me kept roaring, sounding desperate. I could still feel the fire it was spewing at me, and I started to feel an ache in the joint of my left wing, which had always been my weaker one. The embers on the ground crept closer and closer, and up ahead the figure of Lightning Dust met another shape in the air, a green one, and flew on. Olive Branch waved to me, and I muscled through my growing pain, trying to ignore the roars and the heat and focus on moving my wings. I closed my eyes and hugged the two helmets closer to my barrel. They had been ice cold when I picked them up, but they were starting to warm up where they met my coat. Both of my wings felt like they were eating themselves, and they were starting to chafe against the armor on my back with every stroke. “Come on, Plume! Keep going! Don’t stop!” I pulled my eyes open and saw the blurry figure of Olive Branch flying backwards ahead of me, still waving his hooves. “Nearly there! Nearly there!” I let my eyelids slide back down, and I pushed against the air again and again and again and again, stretching my hooves forward, too terrified of giving up to stop. I heard the heavy flapping of pegasus wings to my right, and felt a strong, steady hoof over my withers, taking some of my weight and momentum. I relaxed at the touch, giving up my welfare to whoever had come to help me. My grip on the helmet under my right foreleg slackened, and it slipped out. I made a halfhearted attempt to catch it, and felt my savior squirm and drop a bit before picking me back up. I heard a different roar than the rest, farther away and a little sad. I sank in relief, hanging from the hooves that held me. “Oh jeez, did you have to carry him all the way here?” I sighed as my unconscious restored control of my body back to my mind. All feelings of relaxation were dismissed as I was unceremoniously dropped onto hard rock. I grunted as I landed on a large metal object I had in a deathgrip, and opened my eyes. The ambassador was trotting past me on my right, snorting and rolling his eyes at me. Lightning Dust, still strapped in to the supply cart we had gone to so much trouble to recover, was looking down at me like I was some nasty dish Olive Branch expected her to eat. “What was that all about, Plume?” she asked. “Couldn’t manage the same flight twice in one day?” I closed my eyes again. I didn’t know what had happened to me. Sure, I was tired after two panic-induced flights from a pony-eating monster, but Lightning Dust had done the same thing with no problem, even pulling a cart the second time. It wasn’t the most strenuous thing I had ever done, not by far. “You weren’t the one with a burning tail, Dust,” Olive Branch joked. “Don’t judge.” Groaning again, I got to my hooves and shook my head, stretching out my sore wings. The jingling of brass strap buckles made me open my eyes again. The ambassador was releasing Lightning Dust from the harness. “What’s the plan now, boss?” Lightning asked, looking in mild confusion at his hooves working under her wing. “Take a look,” Olive Branch answered, nodding to the southern sky and going back to the buckles. Lightning Dust and I looked up. What had been a distant bank of wild clouds earlier was now clearly a supercell: a mountain of dark clouds rolling toward us. Olive Branch finished unstrapping the corporal and set the arms of the cart on the ground for her to step out. “We’ve lost a lot of time today, but we’re not making any of it up through that mess. There’s a cave I found up the slope from us a ways. We can stay there until it blows over.” I looked at our surroundings for the first time since landing. We were back on the foothills of the jagged mountains, though not on the same rock Lightning Dust and I had left from. Down in the plain below us, making me do a double take, was a sprawling, criss-crossing pattern of fire where the single line had once been. Apparently the zmey had taken out its frustration on the countryside. Olive Branch and Lightning Dust had each picked up an arm of the cart in their hooves, and were taking off to fly it up to our shelter. Looking down, I spotted the two helmets I had risked my tail (lost most of it, actually) to get, one by my hooves and the other lying behind me. I picked them up and hurried after my companions. Thunder rolled outside our shallow cave. There wasn’t quite enough room in our “shelter” to avoid getting hit by the spray from the heavy rainfall blowing in, so we were all fairly wet even with our backs against the far wall. The shards of the orb I had scratched earlier were keeping us warm, at least. “You know what I don’t get?” Lightning Dust asked as she rolled out her sleeping bag. Olive Branch had set me to first watch, saying I had gotten a nap already and didn’t need the extra sleep. “Where did a storm like this come from? I understand a stray cloud or two, but a whole thunderhead? Those don’t just happen; they take weeks of effort from dozens of pegasi.” Neither Olive nor I had an answer for her. There were clearly no pegasi moving this storm, but move it did. Olive Branch went right to bed, Lightning Dust following him without another word. I spent my turn watching the storm arrive and put out the zmey’s fires, with a rather impressive hiss and cloud of steam, over the course of a half hour. After staying up so late already, there was only enough time left in the night for two watches, and Lightning Dust was up next after me. I woke her when the little clock in the cart told me to, but I couldn’t fall asleep after that. I tossed and turned for what felt like hours, trying to get comfortable bent up against the wall of the cave and trying to ignore how damp the foot of my sleeping bag was getting. When the clouds outside started to lighten, I gave up. I hung my sleeping bag on the side of the cart to dry as best it could, and I sat down to examine my helmet, Lightning Dust watching me curiously. It had certainly been through a lot. The outside was covered with new scratches and dents, and the poor crest—made with hair cut from my own mane back in basic training—was creased and fraying and falling apart. I pouted at the thing for a moment, then set about restoring it. I had an armor-polishing kit in my supplies, and with the time I had before dawn and enough effort, I was pretty sure I could make some improvement to the helmet’s condition. Lightning Dust watched me for a minute or two, then rolled her eyes and turned her attention back out to the rain. I glanced up at her, then over to her helmet sitting against the wheel of the cart where I had put it earlier. Hers looked to be in even worse shape than mine had been, with some nasty gouges where it had slid across rock. I finished polishing and did what I could for the crest, but I wasn’t going to be able to make it like new. Still, maybe it was good to have some scars on the helmet, to be reminders of all it had gone through. I glanced at Lightning Dust again, trying to work up the nerve to speak. Maybe it was the multiple near-death experiences I had had that day, but after a few minutes of inner struggle, something small and selfish in me gave up and I spoke, not worrying about the consequences. “I could clean yours too, if you want.” Lightning Dust glanced toward me, but her gaze didn’t reach my actual person. She huffed. “If you want, I guess.” I waited for a moment, then shrugged and pulled her helmet over and set to work. Now that we had both spoken, the silence felt more awkward than it had before. The tension built to the point of being uncomfortable, then Lightning Dust spoke up again. “I don’t know why you didn’t leave the stupid things there when you had the chance.” I looked up from my work to see her smirking at the same far-off point she’d been looking at the last time she’d talked to me. I furrowed my eyebrows, not sure what to make of that. Was it a joke? A serious question? I took the easy choice and said nothing. She chuckled. “I was actually kinda excited to have an excuse to get rid of it, myself. I can’t believe we’ve had to wear them this whole trip. Can you?” This time she did look at me, but I didn’t turn my head to her. Instead, I just shifted my eyes toward her, a deep frown on my face. If she was trying to joke around with me, I didn’t feel comfortable joining in. I never did, when guards complained. I hated the feeling of making fun of something you believe in. Every pony in the Guard, at some point, had felt a sense of duty and responsibility in the job. That’s why most of them joined in the first place, and I knew that because I could still remember what they had all been like, back when they were fresh recruits. There had been no complaining then. Well, okay, there had been a little, but you could tell in their eyes that they weren’t really bothered. They joined up for a reason, and that was still important to them, then. But later, with a few years or even just months under their belts, nearly every one of them lost that look. When they complained, no matter how hard they actually worked or how bad the conditions actually were, you could see in their eyes that they really were bothered. When they complained, they meant it. And I hated that. Lightning Dust was rolling her eyes, likely giving up on getting a response from me. The past Corporal Plumage—the one from this afternoon who never said anything because it wasn’t a good time—would have left it at that and gone back to work in silence. But I wasn’t the same pony that I had been. Something small and pitiful had died or been scared off, and I didn’t have anything to hold me back anymore. “I couldn’t leave my helmet behind,” I said, getting her attention again. I snorted, realizing that I had opened my mouth without having a good idea of what to say. “I. . . . I guess it’s just important to me.” I could tell that Lightning Dust was fighting back a patronizing remark, but she kept quiet. “You remember what I said about my dad’s helmet? Pretending to be Sir Lance?” She gave a soft nod. I smiled. “I used to want to be just like my dad, when I was little. When I grew up a bit I wanted to be nothing like him. I thought he still saw me as a little colt playing pretend, and a big part of why I joined the Guard was to prove that I was a. . . . An adult. My own stallion. “I had never done anything like that on my own before, and when they shaved my mane and gave me a helmet of my very own, just like my dad’s, I. . . .” I didn’t have any words to say what that felt like. Lightning Dust did. “You felt a little overwhelmed. Like now that you were there, you were a little punch-drunk and weren’t sure if you were actually ready for what you had gotten yourself into. You still felt like a foal among grown ponies, no matter how you looked to the rest of the world.” I nodded. “I didn’t think all that at the time. I tried not to think about it much then. But I’ve always loved my helmet, and I always felt a little. . . thrill of pride whenever I put it on, or saw it on me in the mirror. “And when I saw it in that cave, that’s when all that hit me. Maybe I was a little overconfident that I wouldn’t wake up the zmey, but right then I was willing to risk my life to get it back.” The rain was getting weaker, and the light from outside was starting to overpower the light from our fireshards. I thought about what Lightning Dust had said. I had never expected to hear anything like that out of her, and I wondered when she had felt like that. I thought about letting the conversation end, but then I remembered that I could speak my mind now. “So. . . . Where did that come from?” I asked with a teasing smile. “Seems a little sappy for Lightning ‘Trouble’ Dust.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes, but thankfully she didn’t laugh it off. “That’s kinda how I felt the first time I put on a Wonderbolts uniform. But you know how that went.” I winced a little. Whatever my personal feelings about the Wonderbolts, I knew how important they had been to Lightning Dust, and I could imagine how that must have felt, what happened to her. I could hardly imagine what it would be like for a dream of mine to go that way. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was such a jerk to you back then, too.” Lightning froze for a moment, and we fell into a more comfortable silence. After a minute or so, she reached over and took her helmet and the polishing cloth out of my hooves. She settled back into her corner, scrubbing away at the scuffs with a little smile on her face. I leaned back as well and watched the storm move off. A haunting cry like a ghostly eagle’s perked our ears up, and we both poked our heads out to look into the sky as the drizzle came to an end. At the crown of the thunderhead, with wings like static thunderbolts and a long tail that trailed off like a strafe of cirrus, a titanic god of a bird was flying away to the north, the storm following it like a massive shadow. “Thunderbird,” I whispered. We watched it go for a few more minutes as the sun peeked over the distant ocean, then Lightning Dust gave me a smile and went back to her polishing. I stood up to start our breakfast, and as I turned to the cart I could have sworn I saw Olive Branch smile as he rolled over in his sleeping bag.