//------------------------------//
// The Third Night - Part 3 
// Story: Pirene's Well: Three Nights in Manehattan 
// by Ether Echoes 
//------------------------------//


The Wistful Heart


For a minute or two after the explosion, I can’t see a damned thing. I squeeze my eyes shut against and gaze at fulminating darkness until the spots start to fade, and then open my eyes to gaze out onto a blurry night filled with golden dust that slowly billows away. There’s no sign of Marcus, who until a minute ago had been a dark shape against the impossible brightness of the Guardian.

As my hearing returns, I can hear the distant thunder of the battle above the city, but even if I weren’t flat on my side I couldn’t do much to help them. My job here is done.

No, I remind myself, forcing my legs to work, pushing myself to roll to my belly. You’re not done until you see to those kids.

And so, favoring a hind leg, I carefully pick myself down the hill until I reach the spur where Rarity had fallen. Even as I do, Luster slides down and presses into his mother’s side, crying in mingled terror and relief.

“Shh… I’m okay, honey,” Rarity whispers soothingly, and begins to stroke her son’s side as he buries his face into her mane. “Look at you… a regular hero, just like your mom.”

“I was so scared. I’m not a hero, I’m not…”

“Yes you are, sweetheart.” She pulls him up and kisses his poll, then tucks him against her again. “You saved Wave Form. Speaking of… how did you do that? With the fire.”

“I-I don’t know,” he looks up, sparing a glance for me as I watch quietly. “Wave Form was in danger, and I just got so mad at being pushed around by that thing and the bad guy…”

“I think,” Talon says, gliding back and scooping his family up into his wings, “that I owe you an explanation.”

“You certainly do, Mister,” Rarity grumbles into his barrel. “Is your grandfather a dragon and you never told me?”

“Teensy bit.” He laughs. “My family’s lived on the coast of the dragon lands for ages. We picked up a few tricks, may have indulged in a little dragon blood now and again through the centuries.”

Luster’s yellow eyes glitter. “You mean, I really am a hero with a mysterious heritage, Dad?”

“Please, son, as if being the child of a princess isn’t enough.” He grins and ruffles Luster’s mane. “Let’s see the Senate deny our application now.”

“C’mere you,” Rarity grins and kisses him passionately, while trails of smoke rise into the sky from the many fires.

I clear my throat, and they don’t separate, but it’s Luster’s attention I wanted anyway. “Hey kid. Good job, but where’s Wave Form now?” I ask.

He blinks up at me uncomprehendingly, then looks around. “She was right here with me a moment ago!”

“She didn’t come down with you, I saw.” I glance up the way he came, seeing nothing but the scars on the limestone edifice.

“We have to find her!” he says, snapping his wings open and flying off.

Talon moves to follow, but Rarity traps him with her legs and shakes her head. “Let him have this one. He’s never been this brave before.”

He smiles and nestles right back down with her.

I set off on my own, returning to the top of the tower and looking for scratches or spots of blood. Just how far can a three-legged filly get on her own?

After ten minutes of following her trail, the answer is apparently “pretty damned far.” There’s no blood, but she leaves a scrape that suggests she’s dragging a bit, and wherever she stops there’s bits of glittering dust that puts me in mind of pyrite. By the time I find her, dragging a bag behind her by her teeth, she’s already at street level. I catch up to her while fire engines rush by overhead. “Hey. Wave,” I say and sweep her up in my magic. “Let’s get you to an ambulance. You shouldn’t be walking around with your injury.”

She yelps, flailing her legs and stump in the grip of my magic. “No, no, it’s okay! I’ve got it handled.”

I quirk a brow and push the bag open with a hoof, revealing a whole mess of glowing parts. Pieces of the Guardian that had fallen. Slowly, I set her down. “Where’d you get the bag?”

She blows hair out of her face, heavy with sweat and limestone dust. “I patched it together from my saddlebags.”

“Uh huh.” I pull out my radio. “Emergency services, I have an injured filly here with me. Her leg’s been amputated; I’ve staunched the bleeding, but she needs help right now.”

“No, no, it’s okay!” she says, waving her stump at me automatically. Right foreleg, of course.

Luster flashes down as a dispatcher responds in the positive, plowing into Wave Form. “I was so worried!” he cries, wrapping his wings around her. “Ah! Your leg! I’m so sorry!”

“Ugh! Would someone just… actually, Luster! It’s good that you’re here.” She squirms free and limps over to the bag, grabbing the bottom in her teeth to shake out the pieces. “I need your flame.”

“Wh-what?” he asks, eyes wide.

“Start melting!” she insists, then adds in a warmer tone, “Oh and thank you for saving me, you’re a real hero.”

She pecks him on the cheek and he reddens right down his neck. Then he reddens further as he draws fire up from himself. Fire gathers in his mouth and he spews a steady stream onto the gears, plates, wires, and little struts that had once made up the Guardian. One of the crystals bursts with a shower of multicolored sparks and I leap back with a startled “Holy Hel!” yanked from my lips. When it softens and begins to drip, Wave Form lights her horn and draws it out, shaping it before my eyes with a humming sound like a tuning fork. The young alicorn works on dozens of pieces independently, slotting in crystals.

Then she sits down, puts her left hoof to her wound, and rips the bandages off.

Really, I could intervene at any point, but I’ve learned a thing or two hanging around these people.

She screams, gasping and sucking in breath, before biting her lip and watching carefully as she lifts her bleeding stump. Slowly, carefully, the metal pieces begin to assemble, forming wires on one end before she slots it onto her arm and caps it, then building down from there, constructing a frame, then arraying it with actuators and a layer of thin plates that cover it without quite hiding the structure underneath. Finally, she tops it with a hoof, and ever so carefully leans forward, putting her weight on it. The gears within shift and turn slightly to adjust, and then she stands on all fours, beaming with immense pride.

“Just as I thought! It’s a living metal.” She lifts it up, sliding plates back and extending diamond-tipped tools from her calf. Against a streetlight, I can just make out a minuscule vascular system. “See? It has pseudo-organic properties. It might even grow with me!”

“You… you didn’t know for sure that would work?” Luster asks, turning pale, which with his coloring makes him look rather like a yellow-eyed ghost.

A little pale herself from blood loss, but certainly pleased with herself, Wave Form grins. “Well, yeah, a little! But I’d worked with it while I was reconstructing her, so I had a fair idea of what it could do.”

“Wouldn’t you have to eat that metal to get it to grow with you?” I ask skeptically.

“Nah, just its constituent elements. I think my body can do the rest.”

“Yeah, okay, sure, we’re going to get a second opinion on that.” My mane and tail stir as a white hospital VTOL lowers nearby. “For now, though… I’m impressed, squirt. You’re going to be something, I can tell. I don’t know if that’s going to be ‘mad scientist’ or ‘genius inventor’ just yet. Maybe a mix of both.”

She giggles and charges forward suddenly, thudding into my side and wrapping her limbs about me. I yelp, and Luster’s charge knocks me over. “Sto-o-op!” I protest as they nuzzle me aggressively, then sigh dramatically and wrap my own legs around the foals. I nuzzle at each of them and smile. “Okay… I give up. You two are awesome. Now… go get patched up, okay? You’ve lost a lot of blood if nothing else.”

They hug me one last time and submit to the attention of the paramedics as they arrive. One lays a blanket across my and I toss it back into his face. “I’m not in shock. I’m fine.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he says through the blanket, “but you’re cut up and your leg needs looking at.”

“I’ll turn myself in soon,” I say, limping off. “I need to find something first.”

Walking through the street, I have to dredge at my memory considerably to remember where they’d blown. My coat I find flapping in the breeze on a community post board by a park, and the hat takes me back to a busted up house. The lady of the house is out sweeping up broken glass, and she smiles at me with a strained little look. “Are you here for your friend?” she asks.

“Which friend?” I ask.

“Marcus. He’s on the roof, I think.”

I glance up. “Yes, yes I am.”

“There’s a ladder propped up against the back. My husband gave up trying to board up the holes.” She tilts her ears forward. “Do you need help?”

“Nope. Thank you, citizen.” I make my way over and laboriously pull my way up the ladder, wincing whenever I have to lean on my strained thigh. Finally, I haul myself up to the top and find Marcus sleeping peacefully, while Priyana prays quietly over her Cup. Her eyes snap open at my approach and she flares her wings warningly, though once she sees it’s me she relaxes a bit.

“How’s he doing?” I ask, scanning the rooftop. Spying a dark shape in a tree, I reach out with my magic and yank my hat free from the branches, floating it over.

“Crazy. He ate the spirit of the angel.”

I fix it back on my head where it belongs, at least for now. “Why would he do that?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

I find myself smiling as I look down at him, for the first time in a while. “Well, on a night like this, we’re all a little crazy.”

“Indeed.” Her head tilts up. “The sky.”

“What about it?” I look up.

Above the city, a great hole opens in the swirling clouds to reveal a radiant mare of darkness. “Hark, people of Manehattan! Your Princess has arrived, and with her your salvation!”

Then the stars begin to fall. Revealed from behind the clouds, they twinkle brighter and brighter until streaks of scarlet, azure, gold, and silver fire descends like so much rain. It washes harmlessly against the shells of the airships and high rises, but where it touches chaos it tears through their bodies, enveloping them in pyrophoric destruction. Shrieking, burning, those who aren’t slain on the spot limp back to the sea, and only a few slip away or vanish into the clouds before Luna’s stern judgement finds and finishes them.

Even from here I can see the city’s defenders dancing in the streets. I wonder if Frank Napolitano is out there with his wife Fairweather, their unborn child kicking as it feels its mother’s excitement. I wonder if Violet Rose is throwing a party in her hospital bed, while Gerry mutters a grumpy hurrah. Someone went and turned the lights on at Coneigh Island; for a night like this, everyone will probably get to ride free.

Here and there, someone will be crying. There will be loss. There will be sorrow.

But the city lives, the peculiar creature that is our home keeps on another day.

I nestle down near Marcus’ unconscious form, the lights reflecting in my eyes. “Look what we did. Isn’t it beautiful?”

And maybe it’s a trick of light and shadow, but as I glance down at him again, I swear I see his lips quirk into a smile.


* * *


“Trace?” Violet Rose calls. “Could you fetch me… some more wine?”

I twitch an ear and leave the window behind. The streets far below are still packed and it isn’t even daybreak yet. The city that never sleeps isn’t ready to stop celebrating. I can’t help but marvel again at the size of Violet’s suite, passing by her living room furniture and going to the kitchen. There isn’t a chance in Helheim that she’s affording it on her salary alone. “Are you sure you should be having alcohol?”

“I’m sure I’ll do worse without it,” she calls, and beams as I return with a glass of red. Even with the enchanted harness helping her breathe, she seems perfectly comfortable. Painkillers are a hell of a thing. “There we go. Grab one for yourself… Luna knows I have plenty.”

“She well might, since she’s in town.” The door buzzes and I make my way over, pressing the handle. The door flies open and Lab Work pounces at me, her curls bouncing.

“Trace! You were wonderful out there!” she says, her tail wagging fiercely.

“See you got a badge of honor yourself,” I say, tapping the wrapping around her head.

She winces, rubbing it. “Yeah. Loose stone. I couldn’t walk for like an hour, but I got patched up all right. Speaking of, Gerry sends his love.”

“Does he really?” I raise an eyebrow.

“Yes, actually! Well, not love so much as grudging respect, but he says he’s still having you suspended.”

“That’s fine,” I say, leading her back to join Violet Rose. “I was thinking of leaving the force anyway.”

She gasps, but Violet smiles. “Guess who got offers from the Hippocrene?”

“And guess who just spoiled my surprise?” I shoot back tartly.

“Wait, what?” Lab Work looks at me incredulously. “Are you really?”

“Maybe.” I quirk a small smile. “That’s why I said I was thinking about it.”

We’re interrupted by another ring at the doorbell, and soon the guests begin to pile in. Friends of Violet’s, friends from the force. My own mother and father, who I can’t help but charge into and embrace. Rarity is radiant as she steps into the apartment with a gorgeous dress that catches the lights in its gemstones, her beauty marred not at all by a wing in a splint, and Talon is handsomely cut wearing nothing at all. Luster enters with Wave Form, and literally glows as the assembled adults marvel at her prosthetic.

Violet Rose smiles as I finally accept a glass of wine from her and brush my hoof through my hair, feeling painfully exposed in public without my hat and coat. Still, I’d resolved not to hide behind my shell, not after what I’ve been through.

“I’ll miss you, you know,” she says, sliding her hock around mine.

I glance down and smile wanly. “I haven’t made up my mind, yet.”

“Mm…” She searches my eyes. “No, not yet. You’re almost there, though. You know, ever since you entered Homicide, I’d been wondering when I’d see the real you again.”

“Oh? How is she?”

“Teetering.” She giggles and pulls me in for a nuzzle. “You were a good partner.”

“No I wasn’t,” I laugh, sipping my wine as I watch the others have their fun. “How many times did I ditch you or ignore you?”

“Sometimes you made the right decision in ignoring me, but, yes, you actually were pretty terrible as a partner.”

“What about you, then?” I lean against the side of the chair.

“I’ve still got good years left in me, but I think I’ll go back to teaching eventually.” She nestles deeper into her pillows. “We’ll see. And don’t worry, he’ll show up.”

I glower down at her. “Don’t you get any ideas.”

“Who, me? Perish the thought.”

Still, I can’t help but remain unsettled as I sit and watch the celebration. It’s not that I’m tired, either. This is how I always feel, a little alone, a little lost. My parents never understood it, Violet only glimpsed it, but…

“Excuse me,” a new voice says from the balcony. She towers over the gathered ponies, and smiles shyly as they all start to bow, all but for Rarity and little Wave Form. “Is this the apartment of Violet Rose? I received an invitation.”

“Come right in, Princess,” Violet calls, doing a good job of keeping her raw reverence out of her voice. “Help yourself to some wine. Food’s along the back table.”

“Oh, I don’t drink. I couldn’t possibly…” Princess Luna murmurs as she steps in. She looks around at the smiling party-goers and her own widens a little bit more. “Maybe just a little.”

She makes her way over to Wave Form first, though, offering a hoof. The filly extends her mechanical leg out and takes it in quiet wonder.

“So this is the little one about whom so much sound and thunder has been made of. I welcome you to your destiny, my young friend.”

Wave Form’s face splits in a grin. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Princess.”

Her parents cry silent tears of pride, then blanch in horror as she boldly pushes forward and nuzzles up at Luna affectionately. The Princess laughs and sweeps her midnight wings about her, holding her close.

And if Marcus thought he could sneak in with goblin magic while everyone was paying attention to the Princess without anyone noticing, he’s clearly forgotten what an excellent detective I am; when you’re always paying attention, it’s easy to spot someone pushing through a solid wall. I pad up to him while he helps himself to the salmon salad.

“Still playing it cool, cowboy?”

He jumps in a wholly satisfactory way, and cranes his neck to grin at me. “I didn’t want to make a big scene. There’s a lot of people who deserve a spotlight here besides me.”

“So share it.” I shrug. “Or don’t. I don’t really care. All I know is that you have a lot of friends over there, many of whom would like to thank you personally.”

He looks up. A different Marcus from a world away – otherwise known as a day ago – would have hesitated, maybe felt a tremor in his limbs, but this Marcus, the one who saved the day, offers an embarrassed grin and passes me his plate. “Hold onto this.”

I do, watching him go as he intermingles. He cracks jokes, embraces his friends, carries Wave Form and Luster.

He’s happy, without reservation.

Like me, though, he eventually filters off, not quite saying goodbye, but definitely parting from the herd. He makes his way back over to my side and I return his plate as we head out to the balcony.

This high up, it’s bitingly cold, but neither of us particularly mind. I lean up against the rail and watch the city. Neither of us speak for a while, either; we just enjoy the view and the food and the wine.

“So,” I say at last, “I heard you ate the Guardian.”

“Yeah.”

“Seems a little weird.”

He grins sheepishly and rubs one foreleg against the other. “I had the strangest feeling that I should do it.”

“Is that it? A feeling?” I glance at him.

“I felt like she deserved a chance to live a life of her own,” he says in a quiet voice, looking over the left rail at the pillar she’d made on the other side of the river, then forward to look at the ocean to the east. “One where people loved her instead of feared her.”

“Is Leit Motif going to be okay with that?”

“I think so.” He smiles. “It may take us a while to be ready for it, but yeah, I think so.”

I can’t help it. I slide off the rail and press into his side. Wordlessly, he wraps his wing around me.

“Thank you,” I murmur. “For everything.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” He noses at his mane. “Thank me when you’re free.”

“Free?”

“Yeah. Free.” He smiles. “Go on, Trace. You have a whole world out there waiting for you. You’ve outgrown this place – and your apartment. You know what you want, so go get it.”

I take a deep breath and slide back. I toss my mane and look out at the horizon. “I’m still not sure I can do it like you said. Keep things pure in my heart, even when I see the real thing. People or places, whatever.”

“You saw into my heart. The hearts of a lot of people. Do you feel any lesser for it?”

I smile wanly. “Just… one question, then.”

“Shoot.”

I look up at him. “Did you make it? Are you an alicorn?”

“Heh,” he turns back to the city, looking up at the clear sky, where the green star shines down watchfully. “You know the term magnum opus?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“It’s not just a literary thing; it’s the story of your life. It’s your own legend, the thing that makes you, just you, unique among all the others in the world, and for some people it’s a harder thing to follow than it is for others. For some, the whole universe throws itself against you, and after you take enough good, hard hits to the face with a brick wall, you find yourself wanting to back down, to take it easy for a few years and tell yourself that you’ll climb that mountain one day. For some people, grasping divinity is the hardest thing in the world, and it isn’t always a rewarding journey.

“But I’m walking it. No… I’m flying it.”

He spreads his wings and steps out onto the rail, perched there over the dizzying drop to the concrete canyon blow. His mane and tail whip in the wind, and I swear for an instant I see his eyes gleam in return.

“I don’t know what I am yet, but I’m not giving up. Not anymore. I’m going to see my legend through no matter what it takes.”

I hold my hoof up to keep my hair back as I gaze at him quietly. “Me too,” I whisper. My heart swells, beating furiously.

He smiles, brushes his lips against mine once, and leaps off into the sky.

“Goodbye,” I say, the wind carrying my words. Then I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, turn, and walk back inside.

I head right for the couch where the Knights gather. The Adherent is in awful shape, with patched burn marks and a broken leg, and Saria is missing a chip in one of her ears, while Marble Stone and Priyana are remarkably unscathed. It’s weird seeing the Cup Knight out of armor. She looks entirely uncomfortable with it, but is doing her best to relax in a cotton shirt with holes cut for her wings. She looks up at my intent stare and nods.

“I see your heart, Trace Prints. Are you ready?”

I nod. “Now or never.”

She rises while the other three quiet, and moves to kneel before me. I lower myself as well, in honor of the gift she’s offering.

“Drink deep,” she says, “and embrace your desires.”

I stare into the glowing water for a while. Instead of my reflection, I see everything holding me back, chaining my heart to this place. I see my own fears. But if I look deeper, far, far below the surface, I see a city gleaming up at me.

Reaching forward, I tilt the Cup forward and place my lips to the lid. I sip, then tilt it further and drink full-throatedly, more and more.

Behind Priyana, peeking over the horizon on a beautiful green ocean, the sun dawns on a new day.


* * * * * * *