//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4: The Best Defense 
// Story: Pride Goeth 
// by Zurock 
//------------------------------//

Only the boldest townsponies did more than peek from the safety of their cover.
"It's alright!" Crumble Pie shouted, blasting her well-recognized voice down the street.  "He's gone!"
Several times she repeated herself before finally the rest of the ponies began to emerge.  She recruited the first few who appeared to knock on doors and call into windows, spreading the message.
Before long everypony in town was gathered in the middle of the street, clustered not all that far from the crashed water tower.  In many ways it resembled a normal Stony Nook town meeting except that their hooves were sinking into thin mud.  But there were no civic issues to be discussed.  Chatter in the crowd was widespread, but restrained and nervous; a visitor to town might have thought they had stumbled upon a village of paranoid thieves plotting their next big heist.
"I say again: anypony hurt?" asked Crumble Pie, continuing to peak her voice to make sure it reached absolutely everypony.
"Yes, speak up!  Come forward!" added the somehow-still-grouchy Dr. Home Remedy.
The troubled crowd continued to simmer in low conversation, and nopony stepped forward.
Crumble Pie, thorough as ever, scanned across them one pony at a time as quickly as she could, and thankfully nopony seemed hurt.  The townsponies were all rattled, to be sure, but the rampaging fire dog hadn't destroyed anything that couldn't have been replaced.
The gray mare next checked on Scrolldozer.
He was recovering his daughter from the stone cage he had trapped her in.  Frantically he pried apart the stones, working in obsessive terror as if the monster were still after him.  His heart was only settled once his magic lifted Bookworm out and spun her about this way, and that way, and upside down, and right-side up, inspecting her snout to tail, and he confirmed that there wasn't a single misplaced hair on her body.  He crushed her in a relieved hug.
For once, Bookworm wasn't terribly upset by her father's obsessing.  The instant the stones had come apart she had emerged already rambling excitedly about the whole encounter.  Through the midair spinning and flipping, she had bombarded her father with breathless enthusiasm.  And even when he pulled her in for his hug, she still brightly unloaded muffled words into his chest.
Monsters and fighting and heroes and action!  What an amazing story!  And it was real!  It had happened right before her very eyes!
Real adventure had finally come to boring Stony Nook!


"You!"


The sudden shout snagged Crumble Pie's attention and she turned away from the father and the filly.
It was Home Remedy's voice.  The doctor had also been searching through the townsponies for injuries, and apparently she had come upon a pony who maybe needed medical attention.
Far, far to the side, well and away from the rest of the town meeting, stood the cloaked stranger.  He was almost tucked away in one of the alleys, and he might have gone entirely unseen if Hailstone hadn't been standing nearby glowering at him, much as she had been doing from the very moment she had set him back down on the ground; his hostility towards her rescue hadn't endeared him to her.
"Yes, you!" Home Remedy shouted again, marching right up to the stiff and silent stranger.  "I thought I saw that monster strike your face with a fireball.  Lower your hood; let me see!"
But rather than obey, the stranger tucked his face further into concealment.
"I'm unharmed," he very lowly but rigidly insisted.
"I'll be the judge of that.  Come on, drop it now!"
The doctor pushed in, as usual dispensing with the sacred tenets of personal space.
"I'm unharmed!" the cloaked pony's voice hardened with militant objection.  He wound his neck aside to further hide his face from the attack, and he took a fast step backwards, but a lingering weakness from the recent battle caused him to lightly shudder and stumble through his step.
The obvious fumble only triggered more benevolent aggression from Home Remedy.
"Sir, I'm a doctor.  You're clearly unwell: instability, perhaps even dizziness, slight tremoring; these are troubling symptoms!  Let me have a look at you!"
Again she pushed in, and again the stranger resisted by weaving his head.  But through their odd dance, Home Remedy for just a moment caught a glimpse of light which pierced the darkness underneath the stranger's hood.  Her sharp eyes made out something wrong with the right side of his face.  A dark contortion was there which plainly didn't match his visible snout at all.
"Were you burned?" she gasped, for once revealing some bald compassion.  "Take this off immediately!" she ordered, though of course she didn't wait for him to do it himself.  She reached for the hood of his cloak.
"Stay your hooves, physician!  I have no want of help!"
The stranger slapped the doctor's hoof away with unnecessary force, growling just as fiercely as the monster which had so recently invaded Stony Nook.
Hailstone was at the cloaked pony instantly.  She inserted herself between him and the doctor, puffing out her wings as she pressed herself into the stranger.
"Hey pal," she warned harshly, "you better watch who you touch!  What's your problem with ponies trying to help you?"
Unmoved, he snorted back in derision and mocking sarcasm, "So it is now that you find your bravado, after the monstrous threat has retreated?"
"What?!  I saved your butt!"

"Alright, enough!"

Crumble Pie wedged herself into the quarrel.  Unlike Hailstone, she didn't have to physically separate anypony.  Her authoritative presence and heavy voice together brought everything to a standstill.
The stranger might not have listened, even to her, but when he turned to glance at the gray mare he saw behind her the full crowd of townsponies watching him.  The loud tussle with the doctor and Hailstone had one by one drawn all their eyes his way.

Old fool...
Wiser it would have been to have fled the instant his hooves had touched the earth again.
Wiser it would have been to have skirted Stony Nook altogether!

...

But then...
... would they have been safe?

He froze.  Strangled by the unwanted stares of the crowd, lined up as they were like a vast firing squad, he lowered his head and shrunk until he was hidden completely beneath his cloak and hood, leaving nothing of himself for their gawking eyes.
Crumble Pie said to Home Remedy, "Doc, just forget it.  He doesn't want any help."
"I'm not going to leave an injured pony-," the doctor dispassionately argued.
"I know you wouldn't, Doc.  Trust me, I know.  But he's not having it right now.  And he seems alright enough."  She deftly sought to distract the doctor, asking, "Could you maybe make some rounds and check on everypony for me?  I know they're not hurt, but plenty of'em are spooked out of their wits.  Maybe our stranger here will be more agreeable afterwards."
Home Remedy understood exactly what Crumble Pie was up to, and she used her most displeased grunt to accept the gray mare's compromise.  After one last suspicious glance at the stranger she turned and walked back into the crowd, shouting directions and medically mangling everypony she came across.
"Next," Crumble Pie turned to her pegasus coworker, "can you please ease up, Hailstone?"
"Really?" the other pony moaned.
"Yes, really," the gray mare didn't give an inch.  "You know, he did jump in and help even though he didn't have to."
Hailstone grumbled, but she didn't misinterpret her boss's request as some kind of betrayal.  Far from it; Crumble Pie the peacemaker was entirely expected.  The pegasus was simply sore over all the ingratitude she was receiving.
"Ugh.  Fine.  Whatever," she surrendered.  Away she floated, letting her dissension be known with a surly sigh.
Now left with only the stranger, Crumble Pie said to him, "I'm sorry about that."
He didn't respond.
The gray mare held her tongue for several long curious moments, certain he had heard her but somewhat bewildered by his motionless silence.
"Listen," she eventually said, "thanks for the help back there.  That thing might've knocked the rock right off my shoulders if you hadn't showed."
This time there was the mildest nod from the stranger.
Very faintly he uttered, "... Not for thanks did I act."
"Ah, well," Crumble Pie was pleased that he had said anything at all, and she smiled welcomingly, "thank you anyway."
She gave a gracious nod of approval and then returned to the crowd.  After all, it seemed very obvious to her that he preferred to be left alone, and she was happy to repay his help with some seclusion.

She joined Dr. Remedy in spreading calm and comfort throughout the townsponies, though many simply refused to be settled, and not merely because of the doctor's bullish behavior.  A low, fearful furor lived inside the crowd, and any time it was chased away from one corner it only spread back as soon as the gray mare and the doctor had gone.  Wild speculation traveled fast through everypony, and it fed on itself more and more until every townspony was muttering terrifying tales about what had just happened.
In due time Mayor Desk Job's voice rose above the crowd's dread-filled murmuring.
"Crumble Pie!  Crumble Pie!"
"Right here!" the gray mare pushed through the crowd and met the panicky mayor in the center.  "Glad to see you're alright, Mayor."
But ‘alright’ was relative.  Her inkwell was nowhere in sight, but there was plenty of spilled ink staining her saddlebag and flank.  More the half of the papers she had been carrying were now missing, and she was uncharacteristically unconcerned about it.  Her body was intact, but she was beyond frazzled.
"What in the name of Nightmare Moon's chaotic ledgers was that thing?!" she sought any desperate answer from her crutch-pony.
"I don't know," Crumble Pie responded.  "I've never seen anything like him before."
"You haven't?" Desk Job slumped down in despair.  If such a frontierspony as Crumble Pie knew nothing, then what hope was there that anypony knew?  She turned to the crowd, which had quelled some of their gossip to listen in.
"Did anypony recognize that beast?" the mayor helplessly asked.

"That was a heckhound!"

The rest of the chattering townsponies fell silent as great gasps moved through the crowd, erupting like rolls of thunder bouncing between stormclouds.  Quickly it faded into echoes.  Then, the grunts and murmurs of plain confusion.
What was a heckhound, anyway?
Nopony knew.  They just didn't like the sound of it!
Everypony's attention turned to little Bookworm, who was the one who had shouted the answer.  She was bouncing up and down in an ecstatic frenzy.

All the storybooks!  All the incredible tales!  All the nights her father had tucked her in with bedtime stories which in her sleepy little head had turned into vivid dreams of adventure!
Finally, finally, they were coming true!

She babbled loudly as she bounced, positively electrified, "He was totally a heckhound!  I'm sure!  One hundred percent!  Did you see him spit fire?!  That's something heckhounds can do!  It's cause they're from Tartarus!  They're one of the three kinds of pups of Cerberus!  Oh, and they're the worst ones, too!  They're born with a dark fire inside that makes'em mean and nasty all the time!  That's why they're kept down in the underworld and not allowed out!  They're not nice to anypony, not even each other!"
Her enthusiasm didn't spread into the crowd.  Quite the opposite: each new awful fact caused more ponies to clutch each other and whine in fright.  Even the bravest amongst them only mumbled their skepticism in the same way that a faithless pony whispers a prayer when at the darkest bottoms of their doubt.
Finally the prattling filly was locked down.  Magically shimmering shapes like bear traps snatched her hooves and held them firm to the street.
"Bookworm!" Scrolldozer chastised his daughter in a shaky tone.  He was as disturbed as the rest of the unnerved crowd.  "This is serious!  Now is not the time to be spreading your silly stories!"
"But Dad, he really was a heckhound!" the filly immediately turned frustrated and combative.  She tried angrily to tear her hooves out of her father's magic, though she couldn't, and she fumed, "He looked just like the heckhounds that Star Swirl the Bearded had to face when he descended into Tartarus to collect a fragment of King Sisyphlank's eternal boulder for his perpetual motion spell!"
"Bookworm, please calm down!"
"Star Swirl described'em just like that!  He drew pictures and everything!"
"Bookworm, this isn't helping!" her father reproved weakly.
"But Daaad!"
Scrolldozer inhaled a big nervous breath and screwed in all the parental authority he could find within himself (which was disappointingly little).
"Baby, that b-b-beast couldn't have been one of your storybook m-m-monsters!  The gates of Tartarus are nowhere near here, a-and everypony knows that Cerberus himself guards them!  H-How would one of these ‘heckhounds’ have gotten by Cerberus, hm?"
"I don't know how he got out," Bookworm admitted, "but I'm sure that he was a heckhound!  Cross my heart, he was!"
"Oh, honey, no more!" begged the father, and just like the night before with Mrs. Totaler's terrible tale, it became too much for him to bear.  His magic tightened around his daughter's entire body, freezing her like a statue.  "J-Just... stop it right now!"
Crumble Pie seized the stage again, speaking to the whole town as soothingly as she could, "It doesn't matter what that thing was.  What matters is that he's gone and everypony is safe."
"Oh, but gone for how long?!" Desk Job worried in an unhelpfully loud voice.  "That beast was audacious enough to walk right into Stony Nook and attack us!  How do we know that he won't be back?!"
Crumble Pie cringed as many townsponies quickly picked up the mayor's remarks and murmured their dark agreement.
"Well, we frightened him off pretty badly," she tried to project shining optimism.  "Maybe he learned his lesson?"
The glum whispers of the crowd failed to subside.  If anything, they grew worse.
Scrolldozer likewise wasn't convinced.  His mind had so many dreadful images seared into it: a muzzle dripping with bubbling slobber; furious claws ripping and tearing wildly; burning, heartless eyes.  Most especially haunting, however, was that nightmarish sound: the growls that had come from underneath the stone-blade, like the crackling of a hungry inferno surrounding home, chewing on the walls to try and get inside and mercilessly consume everything within.
He looked with a trepid eye at his magically paralyzed daughter.
"Crumble Pie, that monster was vicious!" he said.  "Surely he'll come back, and nopony is safe with something like that out there!"
They weren't the words the crowd had needed.  They only fed the fire.
The gray mare shoved her hoof into her own face, grinding it against her nose.  Yet again she understood her dear friend's desire to safeguard his daughter, but lamented that it made him work against the greater good of Stony Nook.
To overcome the rising voices in the crowd, she shouted, "I'm not saying we should just forget about him and carry on like nothing happened!"
It was Mayor Desk Job of all ponies – the pony whose official job it was to lead the town through all of its most important decisions – who first threw themselves down at Crumble Pie's hooves and pleaded, "Oh, what do we do, what do we do?  How can we protect ourselves from that monster's return?"
A silence invaded the town.
Everypony stared at the gray mare, looking to her for a magical solution.
"Well, Mayor, I-," Crumble Pie carefully tried to conjure a rational, calm, well-thought-out answer.
"Mayor!"
Scrolldozer was far too frightened for slow solutions and complicated plans.  He recklessly beseeched Desk Job, "Can't you send an emergency dispatch to Canterlot?  We need Princess Celestia's help!  She'll save us!"
At that suggestion, a wave of relief washed over the crowd.  They all knew of the bright glories of their legendary sun princess.  Every mare, stallion, filly, and colt knew by heart the tales of her wisdom and power, and how for centuries she had kept safe the lands of Equestria, even as far back as her defeat of Nightmare Moon!  Instantly Scrolldozer's plan felt to be the right one, and it put them all at ease.
Yes, of course!  Sunlight to banish the darkness!


But no sooner had the townsponies given a collective sigh did their newfound peace get blasted away by a divergent, angry voice which bellowed at them.
"And what it is you hope she might do?"


Ponies parted, beginning from the outside of the crowd and heading inwards.  They trembled from the intensity of his shouting voice as they moved aside and nervously watched him storm past.
Into the center of the crowd stomped the stranger, and seething fury flowed from his cloak, and his every motion was flavored by rage.
"What help do you dream she would save you with?"
Everypony, from youngest foal to oldest nag, was aghast.
The very unprepared Mayor Desk Job tried to respond, "S-Sir!  I don't know what you're trying to suggest!  She is-... she is the Princess of Equestria!  Of course she will protect us!"
"Yet lo, have you not already been attacked?  And when came that despicable sun to shield you, hm?" the stranger demanded to know.  He roared the question not only at the flustered mayor but at the entire town.
"That's-... that's not fair!" Desk Job stuttered.  "She couldn't have known!"
"And think you this to be her first such failure?" the stranger continued to huff and howl at everypony.  "No!  Had she known, no preventions would she have readied!  Had she known, still would she have failed you!"
Hailstone soared down from above, striking a hard landing before the ranting pony.
"Wow, what is wrong with you?" she rebuked him.  "It's like you want to make trouble!"
The stranger stood his ground, but even under the concealing folds of his cloak it was clear that he was about to boil over.
Crumble Pie delicately moved in and tried to broker peace, "Could everypony please just step back and take a breath?"
But even the greatly regarded gray mare couldn't hold back the building resentment of the crowd.  Several townsponies began to grouse audibly about the stranger (too cowardly to even show his face!) and his outrageous proclamations.  A few loud voices in particular cried above the rest of the choir.

Hailstone yelled, "This guy threw himself at that monster like some kind of suicidal idiot!  Why should we listen to him?"

Home Remedy complained frankly, "We were fortunate nopony was hurt, but we might not be so lucky if that beast comes around again.  It's nonsense to leave this situation untreated."

Mayor Desk Job shouted, "This is a meager frontier town!  Stony Nook doesn't have any guards on payroll!  Or even a militia to marshal!  Who but the Princess could protect us?"

Even the kindly Mrs. Totaler joined in, saying, "Princess Celestia defeated Nightmare Moon and saved ponykind!  She is the Keeper of Harmony!  For over six hundred years she has alone kept Equestria safe from evil!  How could anypony doubt her goodness?"

Scrolldozer spoke aloud, but specifically to the stranger, and he was courteous only because he was so scarcely capable of disdain.
"I don't know where you come from, friend," he said, "but these are our homes, and our families, and our foals!  How can you just rudely come up here and scream at us that they won't be safe?"

All of the townsponies contempt couldn't smother the cloaked pony's anger, but he also wasn't a blind fool.  He tamped down on his outward fire, not biting back against the shouts that were coming at him.  Instead he started to push away from the middle of the crowd, towards one side; the ponies there were wary enough to him to move back so as to give him space.
Again he lifted his voice, this time adding a conciliatory note to his heated proclamations as he urged the townsponies, "Embrace your own strength, for have you not already proven its worth in your protection?  Behold your water tower!  Felled by hoof, but for a foe now vanquished!  Saved were you not by magic or Sun but by your very selves!  Why now abandon that independence for a prayer of salvation to an absent, faithless Sun?"
Crumble Pie couldn't shake the sense that, from underneath the shadow of his hood, he was staring at her specifically.  Pleading at her, even.
But more than anything she needed to restore order.
"Sir," she approached him another time and said, "I really do thank you again for your help, but if you could please just-"
"No!" he overpowered her simple request.  "Let them not abide fearful languor, waiting powerlessly for others to save them!"
Yet by the sudden, forlorn way he implored her, it made her all but certain now that he was appealing to her personally.  His discontented fury, for as loud as it was, sounded so superficial; was concealing, but no more so than his cloak was.  Perhaps she was the only one he had any faith in to see things his way?
"Sir," she tried again to be reasonable, "if you please-"
"More strikes there have been on the road, yes?" the stranger recalled Bookworm's remarks from the evening prior.  "Ergo the monster must have a local source!  Find it, and this threat you can end!  No patient cowardice!  No weak Sun!  Simply your proven strength!"
"Sir-"
"Please!"

"This is ridiculous!" Hailstone scoffed.
None of the crowd was quite so enamored with the stranger's absurd suggestion either.
"We need the Princess's help," Scrolldozer agreed.
He turned to Desk Job.
"Mayor?  A dispatch?"
"R-Right, yes, of course...," the mayor nodded, overwhelmed by the whole situation still.  "I'll-... I'll prepare a message right now."
Left to right, from the very front to the furthest back, the relieved townsponies had mixed reactions to the decision finally being settled.  Many sighed, fearful still but at last able to take their first hopeful breaths.  Others were more joyous, smiling in the certainty that were now saved.  But regardless of their differences, they were all uniformly set against the unwanted outsider and his insane proposition.  About the crowd there were small showings of contempt towards the cloaked pony, and a few hardly even bothered to mask their derision at all, sneering at him openly.

They were all silenced when the stranger's hoof unexpectedly and furiously clapped the mud, hammering down like all the crush of a waterfall smashing the pool below at once.

"So be it!" he announced, snarling and unrestrained.  "Where you will not, I will hunt this beast!"

He turned a cold flank to the crowd, marching westwards after the monster.  Those ponies nearest to him stampeded away, scurrying to either side and clearing his path.
Nopony there truly knew how to take his unforeseen, incomprehensible proclamation.  They all stayed silent as they watched his cloaked backside stomp away from them.  And even for how much antagonism he had earned, it still felt disturbing and wrong to merely allow somepony to walk themselves into mortal danger so foolishly.
But they were not quite so concerned that they spoke up.  The dark threat which continued to hover over them, coupled with the mystery of the stranger's unreasonable anger, locked them up too tightly.
Only Crumble Pie was courageous enough to speak her distress.  She galloped up alongside the departing pony.
"That's awfully noble of you sir, but please don't do something so rash.  I understand there's a danger here that's a little more immediate than these ponyfolk would like to believe, and I agree something has to be done.  But even so, the Princess really should be informed about-"
"There's no strength in her hypocrisy!" the stranger retorted.  Again he was violent with his voice, bringing enough harsh volume to assault the ears of everypony there, but again he also had a desperate plea for the gray mare buried beneath all of his hot rhetoric.  "No hope in her vanity!  No defense in effete magic, whether hers or yours!  If your strength you do not know, then I will show you it by way of virtuous example, if I must!"
He marched harder, moving ahead of her.

"Wait not to be saved, lest you die of hope!"

He started to stride past the remains of the broken water tower.  Its wreckage clogged so much of the street that he had to move far to the side.
Crumble Pie used the opportunity to try one last time to intercept the cloaked pony.  She slipped through the cracked, split, jutting beams of the water tower in order to cut in front of him.
"Please, sir.  Can't you wait just a minute?"
"In his flight the beast has left a trail!" he pointed out, highlighting the soft mud that had served as fertile ground for pawprints.  A clearly distinguishable trail of wet marks ran down the road, even past the soaked earth, right out of town.  "Soon he must be followed, or not at all!  Pay witness to your imagined frailty: I will track him to his source, discover what lay there, and return with news good or ill!"

From the watching crowd Bookworm suddenly broke free, chasing him and crying out eagerly, "I'll help!  I know everything about heckhounds and-"
Once more her father's magic froze her.  The rigid glow hoisted the filly's stiff form and dragged her back to him, close enough so that he could throw one of his legs over her as a shackle.

The stranger paid no heed to the outburst, and he blew past Crumble Pie.  His rapid swing around her briefly lifted up the ends of his cloak and flashed his dirtied, bruised, white legs.
"Sir-" the gray mare said.
"They must learn!"
That very last call to her finally had no disguise of blazing anger.  All that was there was a streak of pure sorrow.
Crumble Pie didn't pursue him again.  She sighed as he powered away and left behind his own trail of muddy tracks.  Eventually he curved behind the ruins of the water tower and disappeared, leaving behind only his wet clops fading with distance.

"Good riddance!" Hailstone said over the returning murmurs of the crowd.  She snapped her wings once in scorn.
Scrolldozer shook his head.
"Mayor?" he once again exhorted Desk Job.
"Ah, y-yes," she replied, "I'll return to my office right now and-"

"Well just hold on a second..."

A falling boulder crashing to a stop at the bottom of a ditch had less impact than Crumble Pie's startling words.  Everypony looked back at her with mouths agape as she returned to the council at the crowd's center.
"Crumble Pie," gasped Scrolldozer slowly, "you can't be serious.  You aren't actually thinking of listening to that pony, are you?"
"I didn't say I was," the even-tempered mare answered.  "I just said, 'Hold on a second.'"
"'Hold on' why?" Mayor Desk Job trembled with worry.  To be countermanded about this matter by Stony Nook's most valued citizen was both disheartening and mindboggling.  "Crumble Pie... this beast, and all the danger...!  We need the Princess!"
"Nopony is saying we shouldn't tell her what happened here," the gray mare assured the perplexed townsponies.  Yet she spared no stern leadership in dictating to them, "But before we just stamp a letter and forget about what's going on, listen for second: let's think this through all the way."
Nervous stares abounded between the gathered townsponies, but not one of them raised a voice in protest.  Deliriously scared as they were, they were all a community of few mortared together as one sturdy wall, and they trusted their cornerstone.
Crumble Pie, after giving them all several moments to collect themselves, started to pace.  While she roamed about the center circle she explained herself directly to each of them.

"So... we write a dispatch and send a pegasus to race it down to Mule's Head.  From there, Pony Express speeds it all the way to Canterlot.  Just that much is going to take over a day.  Any response from the Princess – guards, or wizards, or even just a letter of advice – is going to take at least the same time to get back.  That's three days before anypony shows up to help.  And that's all assuming that the Princess gets the message in front of her and does something about it right away once it reaches Canterlot."

"Wait," Desk Job interrupted, anxious and confused.  "Why wouldn't she read the dispatch right away?"
"I don't know!" Crumble Pie pointedly admitted.  "I've never met the Princess!  Seen her a time or two, but never met her.  I have no idea how she goes about any of her business.  Now, I've run a quarry before, so I know how I go about handling emergencies.  But how does she?"
The question hung for a moment in the silent air.
To prove it wasn't rhetorical the gray mare asked the mayor directly, "Do you know?"
"I... um...," Desk Job faltered under the unexpected pressure.  But eventually she shrunk and replied softly, "No."
"Does anypony know?" Crumble Pie made her point by asking the entire crowd.
As expected, there were no answers and only uncertain, uncomfortable glances back at her.

But then there was a rustling.  A few ponies at the edge of the circle shifted aside, allowing Mrs. Totaler to enter the center.
She was very uneasy.  Whatever it was she wanted to share she held close enough to her chest that she came forward practically in a crawl.  If her remarks were even worth adding, she doubted their real value, or at least that the ponies of Stony Nook would find her opinion very pleasant.
However, Crumble Pie warmly beckoned for the bartender to stand and speak her thoughts.  There was a familiar love and respect which the gray mare treasured and trusted.
The older mare, accepting the encouragement, reached back through her years and shared warily with the crowd, "Only time the Princess was ever actually here was twenty-five years ago; gave Stony Nook her blessing at our founding celebration; that was it.  I was there for it; been here from the start, and haven't gone anywhere.  She hasn't come back since."
Unwanted doubt took the stage with the bartender.
"... I'd sure like to imagine she remembers us... but... hm...."

The fears which went unwhispered troubled the townsponies, and Scrolldozer especially.  His leg clamped tighter onto his daughter.
"But she has to help," he limply argued at Crumble Pie.  "She's the princess.  She couldn't just ignore us..."
And even tighter went his leg.
"... could she?"

"I don't know," the gray mare said again.  It hadn't been her intention to have driven her friends and fellows into abject despair.  She tried to inject some fresh reality into everypony, purposefully conjecturing, "It doesn't have to be that much.  Maybe she has some official system she uses to process these kinds of emergencies, and it takes a little time to get the boulder rolling?  Maybe she's not in Canterlot right now and out on some fancy diplomatic trip so she wouldn't get the message right away?  Heck, maybe a stray wind snags the dispatch and it gets lost in transit?"
She came out again with her entrusted authority, "All I mean to say is that once we send that letter... we don't know what happens after that.  I'd like to imagine the best, just like the rest of you, but we don't know.  What we do know is that it'll be at least three days before we get any possible response, and that's three days that we'll be on our own, without help, regardless of anything we do."

Without a storm, or a chilling breeze, or a single flake of snow, winter ice froze over the town.

"There's plenty to disagree with about what that stranger was saying," Crumble Pie addressed the icicle ponies, "but he was right about one thing: we can't afford to just send a letter and then sit quietly hoping to be spared more trouble."
She stamped a determined hoof.
"We have to do something!"

Hardly a stir came from the frigid townsponies, all of them too lost in their wishes for the Sun to magically appear and melt away the cold fear that the gray mare had put over them.
It was finally Mayor Desk Job who thawed just enough to ruefully ask, "... So what should we do, Crumble Pie?"





Not far out from Stony Nook, the stranger slowed.  His stormy march fell back into a walk that believed itself a trot, and not long after that it ebbed again into a tired amble.  It carried him only a shallow distance further before it gave out as well, and his hooves refused to pick themselves up anymore.
Teeth-gnashing fury was only a short-lived thing, and the power it had given him to have ignored the poor shape of his battered body hadn't lasted long.  Now again he felt the score of minor injuries which left him as no sturdier than standing rubble, and most especially he suffered the full howling of his great hunger.  His fragmentary, torturous sleep had done very little to heal him, nor had his startled awakening straight into a battle helped him in that regard, and while a fast departure with righteous anger might have felt good, it had robbed him of all opportunities to have solved some of those problems.
Here he was now, again traveling somewhere aimlessly without any food to soothe the torquing in his stomach, and in desperate need of rest.

Behind him Stony Nook had only begun to shrink, veiled by the slight contours of the land.  In the middle of the road he quietly stood, a pony out in the open sun yet shrouded entirely under a darkening cloak, showing only a snout leaking dribbles of sticky fluid, the dirtied ends of thin tail-hairs, and aching hooves with deep scratches.  Morning winds strolled over the land softly, making themselves known everywhere through the synchronized waves of dry grass and the tiny tornadoes of dust dancing down the road, but only a ripple or two touched the still stranger's cloak.
He wasn't so little in strength yet that he physically couldn't have carried on; he was one whose bodily will had enough stubbornness to persist until the very moment of dropping dead by exhaustion.  What stalled him was the torment of his spirit, still ongoing after his encounter in Stony Nook; after his flight from Dryearth Forest; after his years in self-exile; after his life bearing a dragon-wound which always and forever throbbed and burned painfully.
He still didn't know why he was there on the Equestrian side of the Pearl Peaks; which of his one thousand pointless, impossible hopes he had obeyed to have come there.  He couldn't contend with the fears lodged in the cracks of his heart; why, after his decision to have left Dryearth Forest, he had dared to again have brought himself anywhere close to other ponies.  And, more simply, he also grumbled with plain frustration over the ill turns in his fight with the beast: the imperfect balance of his aging body; his close brush with fire because of his careless guard; even his inability to break free of the craven pegasus' grip.
But above all those other things, his dragon-wound felt on fire once more as he seethed over the town's cowardly rejection of their best selves.

A victory over evil!  Yet they, unhappy ponies, would erase it into a defeat!

He burned, hot with anguish.
How inspiring had it been to have seen the noble gray mare fight back in the heat of great crisis?  She had even outwitted and outperformed the stallion who had faltered relying on contemptible magic!  For all of her town she had won the day!
But once the immediate threat had vanished even she, the best of those ponies, hadn't been able to lift her fellows up in strength.  She had acceded to their worst weaknesses, letting their strength and independence wilt in the face of fear.

A golden platter they would lay themselves down upon!  Set themselves out as a feast for hungry enemies while waiting and praying for providence to pour salvation over them!

How does one put more faith in the invisible than in themselves?  And when love was on the line?  When those they adored were at risk, and when they had even seen bravery demonstrated firsthand, how was merely the presumption of further threat enough to surrender everything to absent forces of fate?
How does anypony who has love not also have heroism?

Murderous abandonment of love!  Suicidal faith in untested dreams!  Self-castration of sacred duties!

The fire blazing across the wound on his face roared a whisper of the new lesson it had long ago seared into him: life and destiny were best entrusted to oneself.  Why was that lesson so hard for others to take up?  So difficult even for ponies with proven strength?

But the wind – breezes roaming down from the Pearl Peaks in the northwest – spoke to him in soft whistles of what they remembered having seen on the other side of the mountains.  They reminded him about the rampaging freedom he had fled from.  About the berserk strength unleashed upon defenseless innocents by his shadow-self.
About life and destiny entrusted to every oneself.

... Old fool...

Under the stranger's cloak sweat had been building, now a sea because of his hard battle, and sweltering anger, and fast march.  Thick droplets crawled down his face leaving slimy trails of salt.  He almost started to choke on the oppressive heat which was trapped under his hood.
First imbuing himself with a military calm, he stood his legs straight and the slowly peeled back the hood, letting it gently float down onto his back.
Prideheart caught the fresh breeze as it came down to greet his revealed face, and with a cooling touch it stroked away some of his toil.  He released all of his tension and guard, and with ease he took new air into his lungs.
From within his cloak he withdrew the canteen he had refilled the night prior.  It had lost its refreshing coldness since then, but the bland water was still soothing as it went down his scratchy throat, and it replenished what he had lost in sweat.  He drank only to satisfy his immediate thirst though, and far less than he knew he could hold.

After all, there was a journey ahead of him on which he might need to ration his supply.

He had, after all, sworn a promise to the ponies of Stony Nook.  True that he had done it only because of his blinding outrage.  But vows made in moments of foolhardy anger were vows all the same.  He would not and could not abandon his promise to them.
Yet even if he hadn't have been bound to them by his own words, he could not have turned aside.  They were innocents imperiled, and they needed protection.  Badly he wished they would have recognized their own strength and shouldered the burden themselves, but never so long as he had a beating heart would he have punished their lack of resolve by himself choosing vindictive inaction against evil.

Inside, a strange sensation.  A memory of an old lesson, from long ago; from before fire: those who can, must, for the sake of those who cannot.

He shuddered, feeling beset by an unclear, unresolved conflict.
But his course was set, and Prideheart readied himself.  He shook his aching muscles loose, and he tapped his hooves on the dirt to get them ready for walking again.  The way forward: follow the trail, find the den of the beast, and thereafter do whatever had to be done.
Better that he at least try to resolve this matter himself than allow the ponies of Stony Nook to be at any risk because of their blind faith in a faraway, undependable princess.  Maybe his example would be enough for them.  Maybe enough for the gray mare's eyes to be opened; enough for her to discover a way to inspire their inner strength.
Enough for her to find a means to do right what he had done wrong in Dryearth Forest.

On the road before him, the wet pawprints still ran straight ahead.  Already, even so short out of town, their color was beginning to change.  They were fading.  The wicked morning sun was growing stronger, and it was making a fast effort to burn them away.
Prideheart needed to carry on while the clarity of the trail was still strong enough to be followed.  Leaving his hood down so long as he was now alone, he began after his quarry once more.  Hooves, bones, muscles, and gnarled stomach all made their many loud complaints known to him right away, but enough heartfelt purpose quickly settled into him that he was able to drive his enfeebled body forward in a slow, consistent trot.