i
Hours later, and still the night had refused to end. Willow and I watched the moon fall directly ahead of us over the Northwestern horizon. It had not been casting any significant light, anyways, and the night continued on unbroken as Discord refused to raise the sun. Not long after the moon had set, the snow had begun falling once more, dancing wildly about despite the lack of wind disrupting our forwards-flightpath.
I was slumped back with my hoof lazily resting on the steering column, drifting in and out of sleep, trusting Willow enough to wake me should anything severe occur. Despite the snow, we were floating above featureless, barren land, with no crosswinds to interrupt our flight. My churning mind never allowed me much longer than ten minutes of sleep at a time, anyways.
Luna seemed content peering out one of the side-windows at the starlit night-sky.
A rustling of parchment bade me cast a sideways glance at Willow, who was examining my map of Erisia. She had spread the thing across the Sisyphys’ dashboard and was holding it open with a hoof.
“Trance,” she grumbled, catching my glance.
“What?”
“Trance,” she repeated louder. “Name of the next town we’re gonna hit.”
“Hm. Know anything about it?”
“Yeah, we stopped there to refuel not long out of Stormsborough, when we were coming after you. Shitty little shantytown. You'll fit right in. Anyways, it’ll have what you need. Including fuel. How much do you have now, anyways?”
“I dunno,” I shrugged, giving the rusty gauge a tap. “The gauge doesn’t work.”
“Should’ve figured,” Willow said. “Well, you’ve gotta be pretty low by now. And you’re missing a sail on your port side, so if you run out we’re screwed.”
“I've got another tank," I replied, and indeed, I did. I'd been siphoning fuel from the other derelict airships back at Cluster 13, and I had two whole tanks to show for it.
Still, the fuel I had was watery and ancient, and it wouldn't hurt to have a bit more going forwards.
"How far is this Trance place, then?”
“Close. Half-an-hour out.”
“We should be able to see it, then.”
“Through the snow?” Willow rose an eyebrow. “You sure about that, alicorn?”
“Alright, point taken,” I replied shortly. “Hey, Luna, did you hear that? We’re landing soon.”
“That’s good,” she called to us through a yawn. “I’m getting pretty hungry.”
“Well, we can go to some tavern once we land,” I said, with genuine good humour. “Been awhile since we’ve eaten real food, huh?”
Luna nodded her head in affirmation and smiled at the passing flatlands below us.
“Not to sully the moment,” Willow leaned over, keeping her voice low. “But how exactly do you expect to pay for food?”
I was silent for several seconds.
Then, remembering my cloak still lying in the snow in Cluster 13, with my barren coinpurse within, I cursed silently.
Willow continued to stare at me, before grumbling something incoherent and digging into her armour. She withdrew a coinpurse of her own and slid it across the dashboard to me.
“There’s two dozen bits in there. Enough to feed you and your sister.”
I rose an eyebrow questioningly—Willow's generosity seemed rather uncharacteristic.
“Relax, I’m not asking to cling on your back all the way to the North. Trust me, Trance is an ugly place. We should stick close together.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled, wary and unsure. “Don’t go thinking I owe you anything, though.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. By the way, if you can find a bath-house, I'd hit there as well if I were you. Just my humble advice.”
I ignored her.
From the swirling snow the twinkling torchlights of Trance finally came into view. The city was built on an immense elevated plateau, as though the Grey Wastelands had swelled in one isolated place and the town built upon it. A dead marshland lined the outskirts—undoubtedly killed from the pollution hanging heavy in the air, and finally laid to rest by the endless snow now falling.
Even the airship’s propellers had taken on a higher pitch as they struggled to churn through the thicker air.
The fringes of Trance were lined with the occasional rusty looking oil well now left abandoned under several feet of snow. It was a sobering reminder of just how much control Discord had over this little settlement—its one purpose was to provide fuel for airships and it had been rendered obsolete based on a passing whim. Of course, I hardly cared about that, I was more concerned with whether or not they would have enough fuel on reservoir for me.
With the throw of a few switches, the Sisyphys was venting gas and falling gracefully towards the sprawl of light in front of us. I could see other docked at various places of the small settlement.
Suddenly, Willow jerked upwards, as she suddenly realized something severe.
“Shit.”
“Hrm?”
“You’re going to need permission to dock,” Willow breathed, and cursed again.
“What the hell do you mean, permission?” I asked shortly.
“You need to sign in your ship when you land. Give them her name, registry number, and reason for docking. We’re not a transport ship, and this thing looks as good as it flies anyways, so you can throw any concept of subtlety to the wind. So then what exactly are you going to tell them?”
I was stunned.
Then, I was furious.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” I barked, narrowing my eyes.
“I forgot! You seriously didn’t think to come up with a story?”
“Not when I didn’t know I’d have to!” I snarled, although in an instant Sombra’s words came to mind. Be careful, he’d told me. I’d been doing a rather poor job doing so. “What… what about telling them we’re a passenger ship?”
Willow snorted. “Then where’s the passengers?”
“Y… you and my sister.”
“No. Nopony in Erisia has enough bits to charter a whole ship to themselves. And nopony is stupid enough to pay passage to strangers. That’s just asking to get drugged and sold to a slave market.”
I gritted my teeth and fought back a sharp retort. Trance was too close to be dawdling on anything but a solution.
“Willow… what happens if we don’t sign in or whatever?”
“Hell if I know,” Willow rolled her eyes. “They probably arrest you when you try to take off.”
“How long do we have before they check the registry?”
“Do I look like their secretary, alicorn?!”
“You look like the closest thing I’ve got to their Discord-driven hivemind!”
She gave me a filthy glare. “They’ll probably check right away. I doubt a lot of ships are flying in this weather, and they probably wouldn’t mind checking each one individually.”
I grit my teeth and stared at the approaching lights of Trance, on its little pedestal in the middle of the Formerly Grey Wastelands.
Without a cloak to disguise my wings, I would be defenseless if they came to search. Besides, even if they did not search us, I would still have to purchase food with bits I did not possess and receive docking permission with a ship registry number I did not know.
I’d gotten us to the city safely, but now I could not even relish in my own victory. My original plan of being able to spend at least one day to prepare for a long flight North was
With a harsh twist of the steering column, the Sisyphys swept around, violently and abruptly.
“What are you doing?!” Willow shrieked. Loose articles in the Sisyphys slid across the floor, Luna lost her footing and fell, and Willow had to clutch onto the control panel to save herself from falling out of her seat.
“We're not landing there,” I announced. “We'll put her down outside the city.”
“Yeah? And moor her on what, rocks?!”
“More or less what I was thinking,” I replied to her sharp retort with dry earnestness.
“You're gonna freeze up the engines leaving it in the snow.”
I ignored her and kept my focus on the snowy ground growing closer and closer. At fifty feet, I cut the engines, at thirty I realized I should have done so earlier—the ground was a blanket of white snow turned dark grey by the eternal night around us, and it arched upwards gradually as the plateau Trance was built upon steepened.
With a violent lurch, the Sisyphys struck the ground and kept sliding forwards, churning a path through the deep snow. Metal and wood creaked and groaned, Luna screamed as bits of the gondola floor broke and bent and shot upwards, and snow flooded across the front window, obscuring the entire world outside.
Finally the ship came to a lurching stop. For a span of several seconds, we were silent, simply breathing heavily.
“Good flying,” Willow finally muttered.
“Oh, shut up,” I spat. “Luna, are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she said. She looked a little dazed, but had already trotted up to the control panel.
“You're not hurt?”
“Uh... nope.”
“Alright.” I let out a long breath from my nose. The front window of the ship was almost entirely snow, obscuring the city ahead of us, but nonetheless I pointed as though it were there. “We're going to be quick in this city, understood? We're going to get our supplies, our food, then we're heading back here. I don't expect us to be any longer than two hours in there. Do you understand, Luna?”
“Yeah,” she nodded feverishly.
“As for you, Willow,” I turned to the unicorn. “Whether or not you stick with us is your prerogative, but you're not coming back here to the ship. Understood?”
“Of course,” she looked away. “Aren't you forgetting something though, alicorn?”
I gave her a blank stare, prompting her to continue.
“Your wings, genius,” she rolled her eyes again. “You can't honestly be that stupid.”
I whipped around, fully expecting my cloak to be there despite what my rational mind had already reasoned earlier.
“Exactly,” Willow sighed.
Then, she rose a hoof and threw a strap on her armour, followed by two others on each side. The whole affair detached from her and clattered to the ground, and she kicked it across the deck towards me.
“Wear it,” she growled. “Cover your wings.”
I hesitated, staring at the armour laying at my hooves.
Erisian Guard Armour.
Keeping my alicorn-wings hidden.
Smiling from the sheer irony alone, I lifted the armour around my chest and with Willow's snappy instructions managed to get it into a somewhat comfortable position—or, as comfortable as I could manage. The armour was as uncomfortable to the wearer as it looked to an observer, with the straps and metal plating cutting into my sides.
Willow had left her helmet back in the Scoutship, so I had to make do with just the armour.
“Well, you don't exactly look like you belong in it,” Willow said.
“Thanks,” I replied, waving a hoof breezily.
The gangplank opened only by a few feet before hitting snow, and we had to squeeze our way out of the Sisyphys. The inside of the ship hadn’t been heated, but nonetheless the force of the cold wind of the midnight blizzard was enough to catch us all a little off balance. Luna at least had her cloak, but I had lost mine back at Cluster 13 and Willow hadn't bothered to take one herself when she had left the Scoutship. The armour I was wearing did a poor job combating the driving cold.
Through patches in the snow, Trance beckoned us with promise of warm torchlight—even if the torchlight would be lighting another pathetic city of pathetic houses and pathetic ponies.
If anyone had seen the Sisyphys' less than graceful landing, they made no move to investigate—we saw nopony across our entire walk through the swirling blizzard as we trekked the half-kilometer or so between us and the city of Trance. The snow was deep and progress was slow, especially with the gradual incline we had to climb upon. It took us all of half an hour before we were close enough to make out the city in detail.
When we did, my first impression was that we had returned to Cyclosa. Willow hadn’t been lying when she had told me I would fit right into the shantytown, the narrow streets and enormous gate separating the town from the plains was almost identical.
There was a guard at the gate, and he saw us approaching from a great distance. There was perhaps somewhere else to sneak into the city from, but he had already seen us and I knew better than to unnecessarily raise suspicion.
Already, I had forgotten the armour I was wearing, but a reminder was quick to come as the guard shouted towards me.
“Are you from Stormsborough?” he called, looking surprised.
I blinked in bewilderment, for but a second, before nodding.
“Where are you coming from? You didn’t walk.”
“No, of course not.” One glance around and it was obviously an impossibility, at least with the eternal night and blizzard raging on. There were too many miles of frozen tundra between Trance and the nearest settlement to make walking even an option to an insane pony.
I gave Willow a sideways glance, silently begging her to speak. I'd forgotten that I was the one wearing the armour, not her, but thankfully her glare reminded me.
I gulped, trying not to look as nervous as I felt.
“Our ship went down a few miles out,” I motioned out at the snowy plains. “Engines and steering flaps froze. The three of us are the only survivors."
“And who are they?” he pointed a hoof at Willow and Luna.
“Uh…” I looked Willow over, my brain working furiously. “They’re Crystal Ponies.”
“What?!”
“You heard me,” I nodded. “Crystal Ponies. They claim they know where the two alicorns are hiding.”
“You’re lying,” he breathed.
“Yeah? You wanna find out?” I gave him a challenging smile. He’d recognized my armour instantly as coming from Stormsborough, which perhaps meant Willow would have ranked higher than him. Then again, I had my doubts Discord permitted any ranking system through his order of chaos.
Regardless, the armour was a symbol of a place no sane pony ever wished to go, and I saw it clearly in his thinly veiled fearful expression.
“I’m sure Discord will be pleased to hear you interfered with finding those alicorns.” I drawled.
“But… but the blue one is just a filly! How can she—”
“Be a danger? I’ve been wondering the same myself,” I said. Already I was walking forwards. His spear had been extended across the gate to prevent us from crossing. I went to move it with my magic, remembered the inhibitor still clinging to my horn, and calmly moved it aside with a hoof instead.
He didn’t protest any further. I let Willow and Luna travel in front of me—it seemed more consistent with my lie of them being my prisoners—and let them lead the way into the city.
When we were out of sight, Willow whipped around.
“You are the stupidest pony I have ever encountered in my life,” she snarled, right into my face.
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?!”
“Yeah it did, and I still can’t believe it,” she huffed. "How he missed the horn inhibitor on your worthless head, I have no idea."
"Shut up, Willow."
According to an impatient testimony from Willow, Trance had a marketplace—yet another striking similarity to Cyclosa—and it was in this direction that we headed. A few more guards we passed turned to look at me, and unsure of what else to do I simply gave the occasional guard a curt nod until Willow barked at me to stop as soon as we turned into a desolate alleyway.
"I have two dozen bits," Willow reported when we were out of earshot from anypony else. "Thanks to you, I don't have any sort of weapon, so I'm spending most of it on one."
"What happened to getting food?" I growled. "Seems like that's more important."
"Then get the bits yourself," Willow replied shortly. "I sacrificed my old life for you, and I'm not gonna lose this one at the hooves of some bounty hunter."
"You said—"
"I changed my fucking mind!" Willow barked.
"Selfish piece of sh—"
"Look, alicorn, just cause I don't want to give you every single thing I own, doesn't make me selfish. Find some food yourself. Or better yet, trade something for bits. Do something on your own for a change."
I was temped to tell Willow that my whole life had been spent on finding my own solutions to problems I'd never created, but it was too cold to bicker and I was too exhausted to try.
When we reached the marketplace, we subtly parted ways. Against my better judgement I let Luna go with Willow to find a tavern and thus some warmth, while I hunted down some stand that would sell me a cloak so that I could finally ditch the guard armour and be done with the awkward stares.
Of course, with Willow withdrawing her previous kindness, bits were once again an issue, but I was no stranger to pickpocketing. The marketplace was busy and I instantly spotted an easy target—a young mare a few years older than Luna dressed in a heavy coat much too large for her. She had not done the coat up completely, and the wind was catching it and splaying it out behind her. I could see a bag of bits in one of the wide pockets. For a moment I had a distant memory of Luna telling me stories about her trips to the marketplace buying food or firewood. I wondered, for an untraceably brief moment, just what my reaction would have been if I had learned that somepony had pickpocketed from Luna.
I quickly drove the unhelpful thoughts away and cleared my mind.
Willow’s armour rustled nosily as I crept forwards, but the marketplace was busy anyways. The filly with the oversized coat had stopped to look introspectively at the swirling snow.
Ponies assume that the secret to pickpocketing is stealth and dexterity. It really isn’t. Diversion and distraction is much more important—there are few ponies stupid enough not to notice somepony rifling through their pockets unless their attention is elsewhere.
This in my mind, I walked as casually as I could past the filly and let my own small bag of bits fall from its place between my fur and Willow’s armour. The bag hit the cobblestone street and instantly exploded open, spilling bits everywhere.
I cursed bitterly and bent to pick them up. As planned, the little filly with the heavy coat noticed, and wasted no time in bending down also to help. She flashed me a generous smile which I returned.
The whole while, I brought a hoof into the oversized pocket the moment she bent down and quickly plucked her own coinpurse, stuffing it under my own armour. She did not notice with her attention directed elsewhere, and the marketplace was too busy for anypony else to.
“Thanks, kid.” I nodded as she passed my own coinpurse once more filled with bits.
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” she squeaked, a little frightened as she addressed the ever-feared Erisian Guards. She scurried off quickly, disappearing into the crowd.
I did the same, in the opposite direction, navigating towards a tiny little pocket in the marketplace that was free of ponies. I found an empty stand and opened both coinpurses onto it. Combined, I had a little under fifty bits.
After several minutes of hunting, I found a stand that sold clothing. I picked out a fairly typical looking black cloak and left with thirteen less bits. I imagine it must have seemed an odd purchase for a pony clad in Erisian armour, but the salespony was much too frightened by my presence to do much more than take my bits and wish me a good evening through stutters.
I trotted from the marketplace at a brisk pace, navigating my way into a back-alley full of trash and reeking of pony’s waste. At first glance it was deserted, though, and so I ducked behind a heap of trash and shrugged out of the armour.
Although it lasted less than a second, I felt a flurry of terror as the armour came off and my wings were exposed to the empty air. Then, the cloak was over my wings and I was once again safe. I withdrew my meagre jar of mead from the armour as well as Willow’s book of matches, and stuffed both into the cloak’s wide pockets.
As I tightened the twine to keep the cloak on, I heard a rustling sound from the depths of the alleyway. I froze, perking an ear, trying to light my horn only to instantly remember the inhibitor clinging to it.
My perked ear caught more movement, and then a pony’s wavering breath.
My terror was back with a vicious vengeance. I crept forwards through the snow on shaking hooves, holding my breath, scanning the ice and snow for the source of the sound.
I nearly stepped on the pony.
He was a frail, ancient stallion, buried in the snow and frozen over almost completely. At first glance I thought he was dead, but my perked ears told me otherwise as they caught his desperate breathing.
A sick stallion—probably some homeless traveler like myself—caught in the middle of an eternal night and vicious winter storm.
The latter two were my fault. Directly. Had I never been born, had I never sprouted wings, had I only given myself up to Discord’s guards, then the winter never would’ve happened.
I pushed these thoughts back and let my breath calm.
The stallion was breathing like a beached fish, his mouth only able to take urgent little sips of the frigid air. He was covered in grotesque, blackish-red bulges brought about by frostbite, and he couldn’t move a single frozen joint.
This stallion had seen me. He had seen my wings.
Yet he was dying. Without help, it was inevitable—I could not imagine him lasting much longer than an hour or two.
He was a danger. To save him would be to trust him not to give me up. Trust hardly warranted—he was a stallion without a single bit to buy firewood, let alone food to survive. Showing him my wings and trusting him not to rat me out was the same as dangling a couple thousand bits in front of him and then acting surprised when he reached out and grabbed them.
Leaning against the backalley was a small little wooden sleigh that must have belonged to the dying stallion. I saw no reason why he would need it, and so I eased it down onto the snow and shuffled into the leather harness.
“Sorry,” I said simply, starting to walk down the alleyway back towards the marketplace.
The moment I was around the corner, I tore off in search of Luna and Willow at an urgent canter.
ii
“Glad you could fit us into your busy schedule.”
I ignored Willow and shook the snow off my cloak before sitting next to Luna in the tavern booth. She looked up gratefully as I sat next to her, undoubtedly thankful for some interruption from what surely must have been awkward silence between her and Willow.
The older mare eyed my extra bag of bits suspiciously as I brought it down onto the table, wordlessly expressing her disgust at a crime she had no proof I’d committed. I could only imagine what her reaction would have been if she’d known it was a little filly I’d stolen from, but such knowledge was best kept private.
I noted thankfully that Luna had already downed a glass of surprisingly clean looking water and was nibbling away at a piece of bread. On Willow's side of the table, I could see a rustic looking recurve bow leaning against the booth. It looked ancient and unreliable, and judging by the food Willow had apparently purchased for Luna, it seemd she hadn't spent as many bits on it as she had let on she would.
Regardless, we had bits now and I was quick to order us some more food, and perhaps a bottle of liquor.
It felt a little strange to eat something that wasn’t greasy rat meat, and Luna and I had downed our sizable bowls of soup before Willow was even halfway through hers—she’d been plucking at the thick porridge-like-soup with a spoon while Luna and I simply drank it as the semi-liquid sludge it was.
Her spoon twirled idly in the soup and she spoke without looking up. “Listen, Celestia. You're gonna need some fuel if you hope to make it to the Frozen North. We saw some diesel fuel tanks in the airship yards. Forty bits even.”
I grimaced at the price.
Stealing the diesel tanks would be impossible, but we would make no progress without them. And yet the only way I could hope to obtain them was through honest means.
I needed more bits.
Which meant I needed to find work. But work in the Scrapyards had taught me that work, no matter how difficult, hardly rewarded well. To even think of being able to afford the diesel tanks would be to thusly consider working for several months in Trance. By time I had enough for the fuel, the Sisyphys would be beneath thirty feet of snow and the Erisian Guard would have hung our heads on sticks outside the city anyways.
While I did not speak a word, Willow seemed to read my desperate thoughts.
"There's a brothel," Willow suggested.
I blinked.
"You need bits quickly, right?"
"No," I growled. "Go to hell."
"Hey, I'm just making a suggestion." Willow threw up her hooves. "You're young and attractive. Honestly, it's one of the quickest way for a mare like you to make bits. Just keep a cloak on, stick to the stalls... you wouldn't have to go through any sort of guard screening, and all it would cost is your pride for three or four nights—"
"No," I said again. "Stop talking."
"Goddesses above, you're a selfish hypocrite," Willow said. "Acting like you're special for not seeing yourself as important, but then refusing to sacrifice your own dignity to save your little sister's life."
"I don't need the fuel that bad," I said, ignoring her. "I'll use the sails."
“Hm. Well you're still missing one. And good luck sneaking outta the city with all that stuff.” Willow prodded her soup, peering into the sludge for a long while, letting it twist her sharp, confrontational retorts into distant questions. Luna had fallen silent the moment I'd grown visibly upset towards something she surely could not have understood. I would not have answered her if she'd asked, anyways.
Especially since I'd already begun contemplating it as an option even despite the spiteful retorts I'd spat at Willow.
"Looking forward to flying again, Luna?" I asked warmly instead.
"Yeah," she nodded.
"Hopefully we won't have to worry about escaping another ship next time, hrm?"
"Yeah," Luna said again, scratching her mane.
More silence. By that point, I was beginning to lose any hope that conversations with Luna could lead to anything more than awkward silence.
Thankfully, even after being forced into silence thanks to me, Willow once more took a stab at prompting conversation.
“What do you think of the Crystal Ponies, Celestia?”
I rose an eyebrow at her abruptness. “Well… I didn’t know they existed before two days ago, so I’m probably not the best pony to ask.”
Willow brought a hoof to her temples. “Not them, specifically. Their goals.”
“Oh. Taking the throne, defeating Discord.” I looked around the tavern cautiously, but it seemed too busy for anypony to be overhearing us. “I admire their conviction and pity their imminent deaths.”
“Hm,” Willow said again. “I feel more or less the same. They’re throwing pebbles at a mountain and expecting it to topple. And as much as I want it to…” she sipped her soup. “They must idolize you two, though.”
“I… idolize?” Luna squeaked nervously. “Why?”
“Well, Discord claims alicorns are monsters to be killed. So naturally, those opposing him claim the opposite.”
“So then we’re…”
“Saviors, to be praised.” The hostility Willow loved to use when she spoke with me was abandoned when confronted with Luna’s wide eyed questions. “Erisia cheers on your failures, the Crystal Ponies mourn them. They’ll protect you while every other pony wants you dead.”
“Really?” Luna was grinning ear to ear.
“I mean, I don’t know for sure. But if what Celestia said about Sombra is true then… yeah.”
“So the crystals are trying—”
“The Crystal Ponies.” Willow corrected.
“So the Crystal Ponies are trying to beat Discord? And they want us to help them?”
Willow answered with a single nod.
“Celestia!” Luna gave my shoulder an aggressive shove. “Is that why we’re going north?!”
“No,” I growled, narrowing my eyes at Willow. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop telling her that.”
“Why? Afraid of letting her feel important?”
“Yes,” I said through clenched teeth. “Because it isn’t true. Thinking like that is how ponies get themselves killed.”
Luna fell silent. Her gaze fell.
I was just about to bark at her to grab her cloak and follow me out of the tavern, when Willow spoke first.
“Luna… your name is Luna, right?”
She nodded.
Willow smiled kindly. “Well, Luna, you are important.”
Abruptly, I rose from my seat as my temper flared.
But before it could culminate into anything, I realized just where my anger was directed.
At Willow. For telling Luna that she mattered. I was about to violently yell down Willow because she had the audacity to tell my little sister that she was important.
I didn’t sit back down, nor did I let my explosive thoughts go expressed. Instead, I grabbed my coinpurse of the table, picked out a few bits to pay for our food, and then shuffled out of my seat. One glance spoke my instructions to Luna, and she sullenly rose as well.
“You’re right,” I said simply. “Goodbye, Willow.”
I started to leave, but Willow's voice stopped me.
"Before you go..." she sighed. "I think there's a gate in the shipyard. You'd probably have more lucky sneaking through it than through the main entrance..."
I nodded once. Then, I turned and led the way out of the tavern without another word.
"Celestia,” Luna whispered warily, as I led the way through the backalleys of Trance at a half-trot. “What’s going to happen to her?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t turn around to answer.
“Is she going to be alright?”
“Luna, I don’t know! Why do you care?”
"Why don’t you?” Luna mumbled sharply suddenly. I cast a backward glance, and saw that she was standing her ground on the snow-covered street with a pouting expression.
“Luna, move!” I barked. “Don’t be an idiot! Do you think we have time to waste here?”
“What’s your problem?!” she shot back, tears welling in her eyes. Like after the Damask Rose’s fiery demise, once more Willow’s kindness had been a catalyst to finally explode the culmination of all of the doubt she had formed about me and my selfishness.
She held her ground, even sitting her rump firmly on the icy cobblestone. “Why are you like this, Celestia?!”
“Like what?!” I didn’t even bother keeping my voice low now. “Huh? Like what, Luna? What am I like?”
“You’re selfish! And nasty! You don’t care about anypony except yourself!”
“I’m nasty?” I shot, and laughed rudely. “Listen, you stupid little filly. You haven’t seen nasty. And guess what? I have. What you think is nasty is what’s keeping you from getting skinned alive by the ponies you think deserve saving.”
Luna sniffled, but couldn’t find words to reply.
“Stop crying.” I ordered. “Get up. Don’t make me say it again, Luna.”
She obeyed with the second request, and did her best to obey the first, but even as she continued on I could hear her sniffling as she tried to control her emotions.
She whispered a single ‘sorry’ in between her sobs. I didn’t reply.
iii
Still lugging the sleigh behind me, Luna and I made our way into the deserted airship yard of Trance. As inconspicuously as we could manage, we crept into the yard to scout the entire thing out. Looking like nothing more than curious fillies, we strode in, Luna smiling and waving at whatever workers turned to look her way. I, meanwhile, kept my gaze low and only afforded myself the occasional glance around.
The shipyard was a glorified dump. I couldn't see a single airship I would trust with flight. Most had balloons without any hydrogen gas, sagging inwards like soaken rags.
A mooring tower jutted upwards in the middle of the shipyard, but it had started to lean precariously to the side. I could see a glass cylinder which I assumed was a beacon, but it seemed the cold was too intense for such a thing to exist now. The shipyard was surrounded on all sides by thirty-foot tall barbed-wire fence, although I thought I could make out a single gate on the side opposite the one Luna and I had entered from.
Even without brick wall dividing us from the plains of Erisia, the snow made anything beyond the fence completely obscured.
Not that it mattered much, for even from the considerable distance I was peering from I could see that the gate was secured rather firmly with a heavy looking chain and lock. I had little else but my bare hooves, and to try and break the lock would be to sacrifice any of the stealth Luna and I needed desperately in order to steal our fuel.
By the gate I could see a rather muscular looking stallion was siphoning fuel from a tank to a beat-up looking airship—some ritual to combat the freezing cold, I assumed. He caught my sideways glance, and I quickly averted it elsewhere. Something about his expression sent an uncomfortable wave through me, and I could not for the life of me think of why. I someho
Nonetheless, the fuel that Willow had promised was indeed here, stored in decently sized canisters looking like chubby little torpedos. I had little doubt that, with stealth and a deserted shipyard on our side, we could load one onto the sled and disappear back into Trance before anypony noticed they were even missing.
Of course, then I still had to get us through the guarded gate and down to the Sisyphys. I had my doubts that it would remain unguarded for any workable length of time, which meant that escaping Trance whilst remaining hidden was more or less an impossibility. Instead, we would have to settle for a harrowing repeat of our escape from Cyclosa—this time with the sled, the snow, and the sharp incline towards the Sisyphys fortunately working in our favour.
We left the shipyard without staying long, only to double back with greater caution. We hid in the gutted frame of an old airship balloon with bits of fabric still hanging in tatters like curtains.
"You're going to wait right here," I told her, stopping in my tracks. "I'm going to take the sled, get the fuel, and then make my way to the entrance. I'll signal you with a whistle, and you follow as quickly but sneakily as you can manage. Got it?"
"Yeah."
"And if anything goes wrong or happens to me, you book it and hide."
"What if you're in danger?"
"Then you run as fast as you can."
"B-but—!"
"Luna, I can take care of myself. You can't. Understand?"
Luna nodded somberly.
"Good. Now, stay hidden until you hear my signal. Once you do, we need to move fast across town to the entrance we came in through."
It was simply across the town square from the airship yard's yawning gate, but nonetheless crossing it would take several seconds during which a million things could go wrong.
"Will it be like in Cyclosa?" Luna squeaked.
"Yeah," I growled. "It'll be like that. We have an advantage though." I gave the sled behind me a firm tap. "The incline. Once we get through that gate, all we have to do is get to the Sisyphys and get her into the air, and we're clear."
"But... but wouldn't they just send a ship after us?" Luna cocked her head.
"Sure. But they'd have a hell of a time finding us through this snow." I motioned above at the blizzard. "And with the winds this strong, we're not gonna have much trouble with the sails. It's gonna be risky, but we can do this, Luna."
"There's not another way, is there, Celly?"
"I'm open to ideas," I replied. "But at the moment, I can't think of any myself. And if we wait too much longer, the Sisyphys isn't going to be able to take off. We're going to have to be a little stupid if we're going to make it out of this."
Luna nodded somberly. "Alright."
Creeping back out of the derelict balloon, I once more clipped on the sleigh harness and began towards the shipyard.
Trance's shipyard looked like something from a grim fairy tale; eternal winter had seemingly sped the time surrounding the yard, for it looked as though it had been lying in its frigid state for centuries. Besides the airship that I had seen the one muscular stallion caring for—which was still hovering proudly with a warm light burning within—the entire yard was a repeat of what I had seen in Cluster 13. A graveyard of airships that in another age only months ago had served a greater purpose than stealth cover for two alicorn refugees.
Immense propellers jutted from the snow, frozen wires stretching between the four-storey buildings surrounding the yard on nearly all sides save for the great wall circling the city. The yard was so dark that I nearly bumped into bits of wreckage on several occasions, and it took me all of five minutes of cautious creeping before I finally made it to where I had spotted the fuel canisters.
Finally, however, I reached them, and I wasted no time in lifting one of the generously heavy canisters onto the sled. I grimaced as my frozen hooves struck the canister, sending out an unwanted ringing sound, but I did not brace to assess for any potential dangers as I instead loaded the entire canister onto the sled and used a stolen length of rope to haphazardly tie it to the wooden planks that made up my toboggan.
Then, I turned with the intent to sprint, and instead crashed into a heavy wall of pure muscle.
My mind didn't even have time to register what exactly was in front of me before the figure moved towards my confused form.
I remember the handle of a pipe wrench flying towards the bridge of my already broken snout, and then I suppose I must have blacked out for several seconds, because when I next regained hazy consciousness, my broken snout being forced into the snow and a sharp weight on both of my outstretched wings. I realized without looking that the weight belonged to somepony's hooves keeping me pinned down.
Conjuring up morbid images of some ignorant young colt plucking the limbs off of a spasming spider, I struggled immediately, but the stallion above me easily doubled my weight, and I knew despite my efforts that it was in pathetic vain.
Instead, I flared magic into my horn, only to immediately cry out in pain as the inhibitor bit into my flow with no shortage of intensity.
"Let me go!" I screamed.
The stallion keeping my wings pinned gave a gruff laugh. "With the bounty on your pretty head? Yeah, right."
He shuffled a little, somehow applying even more weight onto the weak bones of my wings. I gave a holler of pain as I felt some bone in my left wing snap, the sharp sound echoing across the desolate shipyard.
"You... you bastard," I growled, my heart pounding. There was more to my statement, but it was lost to another scream of pain as the stallion brought a hoof down onto the broken bone.
Even amidst the haze of pain and fear, some fragment of lucidity remained in my swirling mind. The stallion above me was most definitely one of the workers I'd seen during my earlier scouts. A burly stallion I couldn't possibly hope to best in a straight fight. Reasoning with him also seemed off of the table—what could I possibly offer him that would be more valuable than whatever inflated reward was hanging over my own head? With Willow Whisper, I had her own reluctance on my side. With the Roses, I had the luxury of time and planning.
With this stallion, I had little else but my own desperate hope that he wouldn't kill me right then and there.
As if on cue with my thoughts, I heard a sudden clicking sound, and a heavy weight was suddenly placed around my neck. My confusion quickly faded into clarity when I heard the rattling of chains.
The bastard had just put collar around my neck.
Despite the implications, there was something oddly calming about the fact. It meant I wasn't going to die right then and there.
I was roughly yanked to my hooves as the stallion pulled the chain. Jagged spikes bit into my neck, drawing blood, and I snarled in fury like the feral beast I was being treated like.
On my hooves, I had a proper view of my captor. I had been correct in my prediction—he was indeed the burly stallion that I had spotted earlier during my scout. He was peering at me with an odd mixture of intrigue and intimidation.
"Outstretch your wings," he commanded the moment our eyes met.
"Go to hell."
"I want to look at your wings, alicorn," he said bluntly. "Outstretch them now. I'm not going to ask you again."
I was hardly holding any cards to bargain with, so I obeyed. Grimacing with my head low, I stretched both wings simultaneously. They were shaking as pain coursed through my upper back and across the long wings, and the howling wind hardly did wonders to numb any of it.
He stepped forwards cautiously, wrapping his end of the chain around his hoof before doing so. I kept my head down and my back straight, and did my best to keep my shaking wings still even as he reached an icy hoof out to touch them.
"You're quite the pretty mare," he reported, eying down my quivering form. "Shame, really. You'da fetched a nice price at a slave auction, alicorn or not."
I didn't know if it was supposed to be a compliment or not, and I knew better than to stick with my natural reaction of brusque irritation.
The stallion gave my sled a little kick with his back hoof. "You were trying to steal fuel?"
"Y-yeah."
"Why?"
"I have an airship parked outside of Trance. I'm... I was trying to flee Erisia in it."
"A ship? What's her name? Registry number?"
It seemed an odd question, all things considered. Considering the fact that he had just broken my wing and attached a choke collar to me, this stallion was being surprisingly civil.
Nonetheless I obliged. "I don't know her registry number, but she's called the Sisyphys. I stole it from Cluster 13."
"Hm. Haven't heard of her," he said, then shrugged. "Outside the city you said?"
I nodded.
"Lead me to her," he replied. "There's a gate there." He used the pipe wrench to point to a section of the barbed fence. "And you're currently wearing a horn inhibitor, a choke collar, and you're sporting a broken wing. On top of that, you don't seem too stupid, so... can I trust you to behave?"
I blinked. "You're... not bringing me to the guard?"
The stallion laughed. "Of course I am. But not these guards. I know better than to reap half of a reward."
I gazed beyond him at the destination in question. One that marked the end of my life as I knew it.
Twice now, I had made a fatal mistake in vivid opposition to Sombra's warnings.
Part of me thought I was stupid enough that I deserved to die.
Nonetheless, I kept my hooves rooted in the snow as the stallion continued to stare at me expectantly. In his impatience for some sort of action on my part, he must have instinctively pulled on the chain, because I felt the spikes in the collar once more cut into my flesh.
The pain somehow brought about a moment of lucidity in me. A strange moment of firm comprehension, and I dug my hooves more firmly into the snow and ice, much like Luna had when I had confronted her.
I would rather die trying to fight this stallion for freedom than die at the hooves of some guard because I was too frightened to fend for myself.
Just before the stallion translated my growing snarl into action, the squeaky, screaming voice of Luna rung out behind him, surprising us both.
"Celestia!"
It lasted a fraction of a second, but it was a fraction of a second I did not waste. The stallion whipped around to face Luna's scream, and I instantly tore off at a sprint. I hardly made it a half-a-dozen feet before the choke collar ran out of slack and dug firmly into my neck—this time with enough force to actually cause my head to waver a moment, as though temporarily refusing to register the pain.
In synchronization with the collar's rending, the stallion was swept off of his feet by the sudden jerking movement and crashed into the snow.
When he hit the ground, he did so with one hoof already flailing about through the snow searching for the pipe wrench that had fallen from his grip. Snarling, I brought my hoof down onto his arm, and to the symphony of his cry of pain I grabbed the pipe wrench and brought it down onto his other hoof still gripping the chain attached to my collar.
Ahead of me I could see Luna tearing through the snow in my direction, terror plastered on her face at the sight of me standing in a pile of bloody snow.
"Luna, get the sled ready!" I screamed. Then, I rose the pipe wrench again and brought it down firmly towards the dazed stallion's head. He rolled out of the way a split second before it made contact, the movement jerking me downwards by my collar, but I snarled and tried again as he backed away. On the second try, my efforts were rewarded with a horrid and dull thud as it made contact with his skull.
"Tia!" Luna screeched, turning just as I was about to bring the pipe wrench down a second time onto his already bloody skull.
I perhaps would have snapped back with some sharp retort, but a heavy feeling of incoming unconsciousness instead swept over me. My vision swam for a moment, turning an impossible shade of red, and when the world stopped spinning my vision was still largely flooded in red—this time of blood in the snow.
I was losing blood, quickly. Unconsciousness would be a side-effect.
In the midst of my fit of wooziness, the stallion leaped up abruptly, tacking my already wavering form to the ground. Then, he wrapped the rusty chain around my neck. The collar tightened and bits of rust caused my open wounds to sing their pain, and the chain itself was tight enough to cut off my air completely. The assault of the spiked collar on my neck was so intense that I became convinced the thing would decapitate me.
I could not hear the stallion's grunting, nor my own swearing or Luna's shrilled begging. Instead I could only hear the steady thumping of blood in my ears instantly wasted as it poured out into the snow.
Coughing and choking, I mustered all of my strength into a firm kick that landed directly into the stallion's stomach, sending him tumbling backwards. I followed his falling form to prevent the collar from once again tearing into me, and then, grasping the chain in both front hooves, I pulled it towards me without grace. After several wild tugs, it detached from the winded stallion's hoof with a horrid ripping sound, the rusty chains bringing chunks of fur with them.
"I know you said not—" Luna began, but I tore past her, already struggling into the harness of the sled. The stallion was rising, albeit slowly. It seemed that the bloody gap the wrench had made when I had struck him was only now having some delayed effect.
"No time, Luna! Get on the sled!"
"Get...on the sled?!"
"Do it!" I barked. "I'm losing blood fast, so we need to hurry!"
Luna obeyed without question, sitting awkwardly on the wooden toboggan, cradling the tank of fuel in her hooves to keep it from falling. I grunted as I started to pull, my adolescent muscles screaming in protest and the harness digging into my already aching wings and neck.
A thumping sound instantly flooded my ears. As my breathing increased with the effort it took to pull the sled, my own heart began beating my blood into the snow. My world began to spin, but I made it to the shipyard gate nonetheless.
The gate was locked, but I had tucked the pipe wrench into my cloak and I withdrew it, beating the thing down onto the rusty lock. My first two hits earned me with little else but another stab of near-unconsciousness—one intense enough that I actually lost my footing and fell back into the snow.
"Celly!" Luna called. "Are you alright?!"
"I'm fine," I grumbled, although my voice sounded like it was coming through a tunnel. I tried to rise—already grasping the pipe wrench in a hoof to try again—but I hardly made it back to my hooves before falling back down again.
It took all but one backwards glance and a shrilling scream from Luna for my panic to once more return through the trance-like pain. The stallion had caught up to us, and before I could once more return to my hooves he had grabbed a heavy clump of my unkempt mane and jerked my neck back towards the snow.
I was about to slur a panicked insult, but it didn't make it past my throat as he delivered a firm buck directly to my stomach, sending me flying forwards against the gate. I'd hardly had any breath to begin with, and the action left me in a world of blackness and hollow sound as unconsciousness hung overhead.
When my sight returned through the film of nothingness, I could see that the stallion was now in the process of grappling with Luna. She was screeching and trying to draw magic from her stubby horn, but her didn't seem even remotely perturbed by her empty threats. The pipe wrench was back in his grip, and I had my doubts he had qualms about using it on my little sister.
I screamed as it rose, I tried to scramble to my hooves only to be forced back down by another horrid bout of blurriness.
Then, as the pipe wrench reached it's apex, an abrupt whistling sound rung out and was just as swiftly silenced.
For a moment, I simply stared. The stallion's head had inexplicably exploded from one side, and with a look of comical surprise, he tumbled to the ground, hitting the snow at the same time as his pipe wrench.
In a slurred frenzy, I turned back towards where we had fled from.
Willow Whisper was standing in the middle of the shipyard, the urgent winter winds sprawling her scarf all about like some great schooner sail. In her telekinesis hovered her newly purchased bow.
"That's three you two alicorns owe me," she growled. "Now get a fucking move on, already. I think the guard saw me come in here."
I opened my mouth to say something, but another throbbing ocean of pain tore through my head and wrenched the words away. Luna screamed something that sounded like my name, and when I looked up I saw her motioning frantically at the toboggan.
"Get on!" she was screaming. "I'll pull you!"
"No, Luna," I said. "You can't—"
Luna ignored me. "Willow, help me lift her onto the sled!"
I protested and rose to my hooves, but Willow had already trotted over by time I had risen. Just as I felt I could stand on my shaking hooves, she roughly shoved my weary body back onto the sled. I crashed painfully onto the wood, and before I could rise again the thing had started to move.
For a moment I thought Willow was pushing the sled, but a look behind me and I could see her already tearing towards some wrecked airship to hide. Instead, Luna was pushing me towards the gate, and freedom.
The rest of our escape wavered in and out of awareness as I continuously blacked out. I remember snow flooding our view as the toboggan soared down and down some harsh incline, but how it had crossed the distance between the shipyard gate and the incline I did not know.
Then, blackness.
The Sisyphys, and then more blackness.
Luna screaming at me, trying to shove me back onto my hooves. Some horrid screeching in the distance, back up the incline we had come from. Me leaning on my little sister for support as I fought my way up the gangplank of the Sisyphys.
Then, blackness again.