//------------------------------//
// Bridge Chapter 7: Phantom 1 
// Story: When the Everfree Burns 
// by SpiritDutch 
//------------------------------//

Three Weeks Before the Summer Sun

“Well…  Here’s the thing…” Gilda trailed off.

Magistrate Mare waited patiently.
There was a light breeze blowing across the lagoon, tugging the edges of the furled mainsail. The crew on watch sat here and there in silence, waiting for their orders.

Gilda was unnerved. Just coming from the supernaturalities of Xaron and Zero (one of which had followed her aboard), she was very on edge. She had planned to engage Mare privately, not in front of a hawkish crowd.

“Ahem. Well, as you can see, there was some, uh, drama, getting to the maharaja’s palace.” She coughed.
Beside her was the visage of Bowline Tight, Zero in disguise, rigidly at attention. Gilda had given him the rundown of the situation on the Flyer Kyte, but he seemed to have misinterpreted, as he was affording Mare military discipline. “Coltcutta went a bit crazy.”

Mare looked past the duo, to fire and conflict burning in Coltcutta. Whole districts were ablaze, painting red the low-hanging clouds that divided the sky between ensanguined substratum and the purple twilight overhead. Violent yells and screams of a city in turmoil echoed across the lagoon to where the Flyer Kyte was anchored. “I can see that.”

“And I could see, what with the timing of it all, you thinking that Dash and I had something to do with it. Well...” Gilda laughed dismissively. “That’s just crazy. Two gals can’t overthrow a nation.”

“Seems like crazy is applicable to a great deal of this situation.” Mare said.


“Yeah, it’s cra-   Um, it’s complicated.” Gilda pretended to cough, giving herself a little time to calm down. There was something unsettling about the ship that had she hadn’t felt before, like a churning and grinding that radiated out of the depths. More than the rock of the deck on the waves, we could almost swear everything was vibrating.
“S- Sorry. I’m a bit shaken up still. We barely escaped. But hey!” She elbowed Bowline Tight. “We found this guy.”

“And thank yo ufor that.” Bowline Tight nodded. “Begging your supreme pardon Magistrate, about the state of intoxication that kept me shoreside until the ladies saved me. The mobs had me trapped and-”

“Hey, you shut it. You were basically dead when we found you, face down in dust.” GIlda scoffed. The disguised Zero winced at the deceitful morbidity of the joke. “Anyway, ma’am, the political situation made Dash and I unable to-”

“Am I to understand that you couldn’t make it to the palace?” Mare interrupted.

“Er, no, I mean yes. We couldn’t.” Gilda coughed.

“Where’s the ‘tribute’? I presume you picked it up from the treasury, but you don’t have it with you.” Mare’s expression was unreadable impassive.

“Well, you see…” Gilda smoothed back her crest. “It was chaos, okay? Thugs, revolutionaries, soldiers battling it out in the teeming streets! Blood ran as rivers! We did what we had to.”

“Uh huh.” Mare leaned in, and after throwing Bowline Tight a suspicious glance whispered “Dash is tucking it away in one of your cabins, right?”

“Er, yes. For safekeeping. Couldn’t have the rapscallion crew seeing it.” Gilda smiled unconvincingly.



“Be tight-lipped about it, Mis GIlda. We’ll talk later. There’s work to be done.” Mare eyed Bowline Tight again, who stiffened. “Except for you, if you don’t sober up. Drunkenness while on shift is strictly prohibited. You’ll be post-mortem liable for any accidents you cause.”

“Of course, ma’am. I accept any punishment you conceive.” Bowline Tight bowed his head.

“Sure?” Mare scowled in fleeting confusion. She wasn’t used to any of the crew speaking so wordilly. “Dismissed.”  She turned her back to them to address the languishing crew. “Raise the anchor! Unfurl the sails! Helmspony, take us out of the lagoon!”

A chorus of ayes came back. Mare trotted to the aft castle and began discussing navigation with the helmspony.

Gilda’s composure cracked, and she groaned in nauseous pain. “I don’t feel so good.”  

“I think that went well, all things considered.” Zero shrugged. “Mis Mare suspects something, but has no dirt to scratch in.”

“Not that. My guts hurts. Like, physically hurts. Almost like I’m exploding.” GIlda held her woozy head. “I can hardly think.”

“There’s a faint something, down below us. Everything trembles in unease. The Bard sarcophagus....  Could it truly be?” Zero frowned. “Lady Gilda, your stress is making you more sensitive. Go lay down and rest yourself.” Stepped towards the hatch. “I will go acquaint myself with Bowline Tight’s schedule. We reconvene tomorrow.”

Gilda let him slip away belowdecks. In a haze, she stumbled into the cabins and into her own room.  She could barely unclasp her arquebus harness before she collapsed on the bed.



~~~~


Gilda slowly advanced across the uneven, indeed perilously jagged, volcanic shore. The screaming north wind was slamming waves into the black rocks, throwing up icy seawater that moistened her carefully groomed crest and stung in her eyes. Were she not bitterly angry enough for nature's hatred to be repelled, she would have been miserably cold.

“Bucking wind.” Young Gilda was rather new to profanity; It was still an unexplored and exciting thing for her, and she took to it with unspoilt vigor. “Can’t fly for shit in this weather.”

Earthbound as she was, she had to carefully chose her footing as she circled the basalt mountain, towards to her destination: A flattened chung of the shore raw before the storm, where the students of the School of the Black Bell took their meditation test.
The rock had an unspoken gravity among the students. It was singularly undiscussed by the older apprentices, and tensely anticipated by the younger. When one went out to the rock for the test, sometimes for days or even sometimes weeks, they came back changed. Some returned mad, babbling insanity in unknown languages. Some had their personalities completely altered, becoming melow where once bombastic or visa versa. Some crawled back to Black Bell with tears in their eyes, begging for reprieve from unspeakable pain that biology could not explain.  The luckiest came back completely silent, in solemn awareness of the revelations they had heard.
It was spoken officially as a test of wit and will, and as a right of passage. Everyone knew that Black Bell was using her students as bait, to lure down the most heinous deava and the most powerful patterns to study with her cabal.  It didn’t matter if the student came back lucid enough to describe the whispers either. There were ways.



Gilda went out with very much the same attitude as she’d had frequently over the last few months: Irreverent, cynical, and contentious. She wanted to get the test over with so she could get back to her prefered history studies.
Not that she didn’t like the arcane branch of her studies; She loved the idea of magic, abysmal though she was when trying to make patterns and control magic. The whispers had granted her fellow students a measure of control over the flow of magic in the world, but Gilda was not so blessed. Somehow, the damnable gods had screwed her out what she deserved. Through no fault of her own, Gilda had been stunted: Magic would not spring alive at her clawtips, as it did for everyone around her.
Depressed and resentful, Gilda tried shutting out the whispers. The test on the rock was a last slap in the face, after which she would never have to go out to face the north wind. The sooner it was over, the sooner she could forget everything and move on to the next disappointment in life.

“Bucking Black Bell. What’s she get off with shoving me out here? Bucking freezing.” Gilda ranted to nobody. Gottrakt wasn’t a very large island, but on the northern slope of the basalt mount, opposite the port and city, it really seemed like she was a million miles from the nearest friend. She was in a wasteland of cold salt and coarse rock.


After another fifteen minutes of cambering Gilda arrived at her destination.
The rock was unmistakable, in a rather mundane and unassuming way. It was like any other boulder, black basalt crusted with dried salt. It had been carved  partially flat, and the center was curiously smooth, but most of it’s surface area was covered in scratches, unpatterned yet suggesting some purpose behind them. More than one student had tried to cope with the test by sketching out the maddening visions in a vain effort to get them out of their head.

“Big whoop.” Gilda grumbled, her words mostly lost to the shrieking wind. She hopped onto the rock and slowly walked to the center.
She sat, covering the smoothed out spot with her own body. She hated the north wind more than others, for while the south wind was warm(er) and humble, and the east and west winds had a dancing adventurousness to them, the north wind was spiteful. The Deava spirit was alive within it, spurring on its frosty gallop to bring misery to mortals. The wind oppressed, deceived, derided, hated.
Already, Gilda was beginning to hear the quivering suggestion of the demonic voices, not quite audible, not quite there, yet tantalizingly close. Every time she blinked or covered her eyes to block the wind she saw indescribable shapes in the darkness, demanding to be seen.
She loathed them, and how they mocked her. They arbitrarily denied her what could make her belong in Gottrakt.   Magicless they had left her, no better than the slaves that were driven from the ship into the depths of the heartless mountain, good only for debased experimentation and slaughter.
Gilda spit. “Big bucking whoop.”

The students of Gottrakt went out to the rock as a winter storm was coming, and stayed until they knew they had to return. Gilda knew there was only one way she going back. If the wind denied her still, she would be saving everyone the trouble by slipping off the rock into the tumultuous waters. It wouldn’t be pretty, but getting ground against the sharp rocks would still be better than a life without magic on Gottrakt.

Black clouds were massing on the horizon, organizing themselves for a push south. The faster the wind, the more treacherous the air and skies, the louder the whispers would be. Truly, for how violent the winter storm appeared even at great distance, one could expect them to be intense.
Intensity is what GIlda demanded. As much as she hated the wind, she begged it for the secret it held back. Among the muddled incomprehensible words had to be the one that unlocked magic. And if it gave her that, Gilda could be truly through with the wind.

“Get on with it! My dead grandmother can scream louder than you.” Gilda mocked the storm. She closed her eyes, and...


~~~~



Three Weeks Before the Summer Sun


The tropical seas on the corner of Chitin and Zebrastan were known to the Equestrians and Griffins as the Elephant Isles, and true to its name it was filled with thousands of islands and archipelagos and as many regal jungle elephants.

The Flyer Kyte hugged the mainland as closely as possible, avoiding entirely the great islands that could be see on the southeastern horizon. The Elephant Isles may have had a bountiful mineral and botanical wealth but it was not the treasure Do’s expedition was after.
So they followed the Zebrastani coast as it curved northward, and rose into rugged forested hills, then into mighty mountains sliced by fertile river valleys opening to the sea. The vibrant land of Zebrastan had given way to the ancient and evolving continent of Chitin, home of the Changelings. The Kyte was still at the southern edge of the enormous stretch concave coast, and had a few day’s worth of latitude until it arrived at it’s destination, the Equestrian treaty port of Hornzhou.



Gilda found Zero where she herself was often to be found: Staring into the horizon on the forecastle.  The disguised changeling had some time to himself between shifts in the rigging tying knots, but he had not been able to keep to the schedule of raucous merriment under decks of the real Bowline Tight. Instead of drinking, he read borrowed books. Instead of gambling and dancing to merry tunes, he shared witty poems that went unappreciated. 
The kind of pony who would commit his or her self to the risks and rewards of a life at sea did not often have a personality given to introspection. Zero wasn’t that good at being a sailor, Gilda decided. He couldn’t be bothered to live up to the archetype.


Gilda leaned on the railing beside the changeling, acting nonchalant. “Hey.”

“Pleasant day to you, my lady.” Zero grunted. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure all the sailors on deck were too busy with their duties to eavesdrop. “You look better. Feeling well?”

“The last two days have been hell, but I’m much clearer now.  My head doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode. Guess I slept it off.” Gilda said. “I was a bit of an ass when you tried to check in, and I’m sorry about that. I already apologized to Dash. I told her I had flue. I’m not sure I can explain it well to her.”

“I understand. These dreams had to play themselves out, or they would have given you no rest. I am not the most knowledgeable about magic in griffins, or Black Bells’s blasphemous interpretation of it, but you were undoubtedly hypersensitive to psychic emanations. Xaron forcing his will over your body made you more tender still.” Zero comforted, but he turned more grim. “But about your secrecy with Mis Dash, I don’t understand. Isn’t she your best friend?”


“If I tell her everything about the sarcophagus, and why I’m suddenly reacting this way to it, I’ll have to tell her everything about the Tower of the Bard, and what Black Bell did to me.” Gilda sighed. “I’m not sure I could sit down and explain it all. To Dash, the gruesome horror of Godswing would come off as barbaric and gratuitous. And she would be right.”

“You think she will see you different after you tell her about your studies.” Zero surmised.

“I’m very much a product of that place. Evil like that… I don’t know how to describe it. It rapes your soul. I’m going to have that weight forever.” Her eyes unfocused. “And not just memories, that push back even after I force myself to forget. The idiom of Godswing, the crushing brutality, haunts me. I fear my memories will carry me there every night, immersing me in everything foul and corrupt that. Just last night, I dreamed of the rock, on the north side of the island...” She shook herself out of the revery that wa threatening to overtake her. “Buck. There I went. It’s bad.”


“Is Black Bell causing it?”

“No. She’s not a dreamcrafter. She invades dreams, ravages, and destroys them. She has been mercifully absent since Coltcutta. No…  My dreams are mine alone, and that is the worst part.” Gilda shuddered. “The things I see make me never want to sleep again, so abhorrently twisted are they. And they’re mine. I own them, and they own me.”

“Again, I’m not an expert, but I think it is the most merciful way your soul can immerse you in the most traumatic memories. You have to build resistance to it, and you have, to an extent. Aren't feeling better? Those dreams made you more resilient against the vile aura of the sarcophagus.”  Zero.tapped a hindhoof on the deck. “Do not let your thoughts be dominated by anxiety about what you may or may not dream. Accept it peacefully.”

“I’m afraid that if I try, Black Bell will be there, like the nightmares are the only thing keeping her out. But at the same time, I almost want to see her again. When I saw her chimerical in Coltcutta she invited me back, and mentioned my father. I know I played it up, but Godswing was still my home. Every new memory reminds me of why I left, but it also makes me homesick.” Gilda had only known her step-mother for a blink of an eye compared to Zero. It would be fascinating to hear everything he had to say about her.  “When I left, my father was in a weird place. He threw himself into mysticism and magic, and there wasn’t a night I wouldn't come home to seeing him mutilating himself for a peek into ‘phantom planes’, or other such insanity. It was the only way he knew to get Black Bell’s attention. I’m overjoyed he is still alive, but at the same time I dread what horrible sorcery let him survive. I don’t know what he’s become, and I’m afraid to know.”

“Terrible. I remember my parents, though the situation was slightly different. They aged and died, and turned to bones, then to dust, and I remained exactly the same. They never told me what they thought of the family line becoming petrified, terminated yet perpetual, with me as their only immortal descendant. What could have been, yes? But of course were I not immortal, my parents would not be even the faintest of memories, as all my hypothetical progeny live ignorant of their ancestor of a millennia past. The Stars are bearers of the last possible memory of thousands of people we meet. I some ways, I think it is our only use: To save from a final death the most deserving heroes and humble friends.” Zero reminisced morbidly. “Be very careful Lady Gilda, as you remember what you’ve forgotten. If you tread this path to its logical conclusion, and you earn the power as a Star, the pleasure of a normal life will be lost to you,”

“You think I have a choice? I have been enslaved to evil hungers for most of my life: One was physical mostly, but the other that has come back with memory is mental.” Gilda shook her head. “Becoming a Star is going to liberate me, from this urge to consume.”


“Surely, you are kidding.” Zero half scoffed, half chided.

“No.”

“Allow me to tell you that less will change than you think.” Zero shook his head sadly. “There’s an old changeling saying about how thirsty yaks know not to drown themselves. There are other ways to self improvement than transforming yourself into a sin against nature.” He was silent for a few minutes.  “Did Black Bell have a throne?”

“No.” GIlda said, a bit snippy. 

“Ah, if you had said yes, I would have asked you if you’d ever sat on it. I would ask if you knew what it felt like.” Zero sighed. “I’d ask if you took that high seat for granted, or did it impress upon you a certain heaviness. When you looked upon it, did you realize how it was the ultimate aspiration of millions upon millions of creatures to have a throne with a power and authority such as it had?”

“But there was no throne. So there.” Gilda said, getting defensive.

“Maybe I meant to say your mother’s lap.”

“Piss off. She’s my step-mother.” Gilda rolled her eyes. “Cheeky bug.”

“You are not afraid of being like Black Bell?”

“I had this discussion with Xaron. I’ve heard the whispers and they do not scare me anymore.” Gilda said firmly. “I’m not a child. I am not afraid.”

Zero tisked. “Nopony is asking you to be afraid. They are asking you to be terrified. Be terrified of boundless power you court as a Star. If you think your dreams now frighten you…” He sighed. “Lady Gilda, you have a complex relationship with your power, clearly. It scares you like it would a child; You know only that it is there, that it is overwhelming, but not what it is. But at the same time, you have a sense of pride in it. You hold it as what sets you above the rest.” He looked her in the eye. “Gilda, you tried for years to have pride in yourself as an individual, independent of that power and that past. You failed. It is not purely chance or fate that drew you back to the past. You sought it. On some level, you yearned for the fear and the pride that life wasn’t giving you.”
He paused to find the right words. “What I’m trying to say is this: You need to find a more mature approach to your magic, than just childish fear and childish covetousness.”


Gilda didn’t want to hear it. Zero’s criticisms were painfully accurate, and it made her silently angry. If he understood her so well, why didn’t he agree with her?
“Whatever you say.” She huffed, but as she said it she realized that she didn’t want to hurt Zero’s feeling, and more jokingly added. “Old man.”

Zero wasn’t convinced that the joking came from a place of levity. “Come to your own conclusions at your own pace. Just don’t take too long.”

Gilda averted her eyes. “I should go.”
She was about to return to her cabin when Zero put a hoof on her wing. “Listen, I don’t want to talk ab-” She cut herself off when she noticed his expression.

Zero was staring into the horizon ahead of them, fixated on something that took his full attention. For a time, the crash of the waves and the groan of the ship were the only sounds. Even the noisy crew behind them, completely unaware of the aura around them, were inspired to silence.

“We are not the only ship with a psychic emissary aboard.” Zero muttered.

Gilda could feel the magical pressure in the air twist. The new aura was different and abhorrently complementary to the one under them in the cargo deck.
“There’s another one out there. Another what though?” She breathed. “Zero?”


“Sometime between her unearthing and now, the thing in the cargo hold began to stir. What were feeling before was just it’s jitters. In my hammock down in the orlopp, the squirming sense of wrongness pervades.” Zero nodded back to the cargo hatch. “Velvetine, as Xaron called her, is slowly starting to mewl more loudly.”

“The other Bard sarcophagus is out there. Vlelveran calls back.” Gilda had been feeling good about her ability to quell the unease that had overcome her the nights before, but her confidence was waning.  “Two Bard sarcophagi. Xaron was telling the truth.”

“About some things.”

“How is it possible? The sarcophagus can’t be close! How?” Gilda’s face scrunched as she calculated. “Has to be Xaron. He must have moved it by cargo ship.”

“It is right along our path. It must be on a ship, but…” Zero closed his eyes. “Xaron and his hippogryph is slaughtering the crew.”

GIlda was so amazed at the range of his perception that the gross morbidity of his proclamation were lost on her. “Xaron is with the sarcophagus?”


“Just beyond the horizon I feel him. There’s screaming and laughing, and the flow of magic from that direction carried the ripples of violent deaths. Yes, I’m quite certain Xaron has killed the crew of that ship.”  Zero shivered. “Best not to dwell on it. We will get the cargo intact.”

Gilda heard nor saw anything from horizon to horizon, but it was there. “He’s dropping it off for us.”

“Somehow, he tricked a vessel into transporting it for him, and is now disposing of them for us.”

“But why…” Gilda pondered. “Why kill them?”

“Ava are inscrutable, their actions seemingly arbitrary. Clearly though, this speaks to haste or impatience. He has laid it dead ahead, where we cannot miss it. The Flyer Kyte arrive at the hulk before sundown, provided the wind holds.” Zero waved towards the prow.

“Dead ahead. Nice one.”

“Lady Gilda, ponies are already dying and the battle hasn’t even yet begun. This is clear message from Xaron that he is willing to sacrifice anything to achieve his unclear goals.” Zero pushed himself away from the railing. “Not that we won’t play along. We must intercept the ship and take the sarcophagus, like he intends. We’re not even to Chitin and he’s putting blood on our hooves.”

“He already did that with the Coltcutta palace massacre. He’s not sending a message. There’s something he’s trying to accomplish.”

“But why would he want to deliver it so early? It would obviously make the Magistrate and Mis Do suspicious. Bah, alicorns.” Zero glanced toward the cabin.  “We need to discuss our plan, immediately.”

“The long-postponed meeting.” Gilda nodded. “But one more thing-”

“Is this the best time?” Zero sighed. “Is it about ‘Bowline Tight?”

“Yeah. He was convenient for sure, but you could use a more fitting disguise for your personality.” GIlda nodded. “Start thinking about which of the crew you could replace.”

“I don’t like that implication one bit.” Zero winced. “It may not be necessary-”

“You’ve been getting weird looks the moment you came back with us in Coltcutta. They know something’s up between us, and the less they know the more they’ll speculate.” Gilda said. “So choose somepony: That recluse in the galley, or that mare who does the depth soundings, or whoever you could do convincingly. Because this-” She poked him with her left claw. “Is not convincing.”

“I’m not murdering anypony for a disguise’s sake. ” Zero faced out to sea. “They’re dying. I can only imagine what tortuous death that brutish hippogryph is reaping. Enough blood has been senselessly spilt today. I will come up with something different.” He promised. “Now, go make sure the cabins are clear. I will fetch Mis Dash and we can make plans.” 

“If you think you can manage that.” Gilda laughed. She didn’t quite notice the sour look that passed over Zero’s features. “We reconvene in ten.”

“If you think you can handle it.” Zero said with fulsome mock concern. He leaned back onto the railing, and returned to staring into the horizon, at a grievous massacre yet beyond their sight. 



Gilda left him to his deliberations, feeling jollier than when she’d arrived. As she passed the crew they gave each other amused looks, but she didn’t care. Her high spirits carried her nearly to her cabin when the dreaded call came from to rooms over.

“Mis Gilda, could you step into my office for a moment?”


Gilda let the smiled melt from her face. She leaned into Magistrate Mare’s room. “Yeah?”

Mare was reading letters. Not her own, both those she’d heaved from the Coltcutta courier office, stacked on the corners of her desk. “Come in. Sit down.”

“Sho thang, mastah.” GIlda sneered, but did as ordered. She jumped up and sat herself on the windowsill. “Not going to ask me if I’m feeling better?”

“Clearly you are.” Mare said. “Whatever pale ailment you caught in Coltcutta is no match for griffin constitution.”

“What does that even mean?” Gilda scowled.

Mare squinted, like she was trying to remember what she’d just said. “Oh. Nothing. I’m just babbling.” 

“Are you joking? Is something funny?” Gilda pried.

“Not especially no. It’s nerves more than anything.” Mare said. “Though with you back in action I have one less thing to worry about.”

“Why are you worrying? Is any of that mess in Coltcutta reaching us?”

“Thankfully not. The young new maharaja is putting a lot of pressure on the EOC to support him against his enemies, and several ships have had their cargo seized as leverage. It’s a whole debacle.” Mare put her letter-reading on hold. “We left at just the right time. We avoid conflict with the raj and dodge getting swept up in the EOC’s reaction. Still, there’s the question of what to do with the bag full of bribe money…”

“Buy a crown with it, next place we stop. We go down to a jeweler's workshop or artist’s studio, find the most beautiful and expensive work of art, an plop our bits on the table.” Gilda advised wryly. “Capture that feeling of frivolous wealth we’ve been chasing.”

“You never cease to amuse. Truly.” Mare laughed a bit, but like Gilda her joviality slid into rigid sternness. “Do you like crowns, Mis Gilda?”

“Eh, Dash has been looking for a souvenir. I think I prefer thrones. Or my mother’s lap, some say. Actually she’s my step mother.”

“What are you even talking about?” Mare asked, baffled.

“Nothing.” Gilda shrugged. “I’m just babbling.”

“Sure…” Mare hummed.  “I was going to ask you something about what lengths ponies go to for crowns, but I’ve forgotten.”

“Not as far as griffins go to, I can promise you that.” Gilda recalled her father’s little circlet. It was a humble thing, passed down the generations. Yet it represented something more than itself: A divine right to rule and command, to possess sovereignty over the lives of others. It was something the Stars took without crowns.

“You’re chattier than usual. Do you know something I don’t? Have a secret aching to burst out?” Mare asked.

“No, it was a joke. But while we’re on the subject of secrets, you’ve been keeping Dash and me in the dark, and we want to know what’s in those letter you took!” Gilda pointed to the bind of letters on the desk.

“Don’t get snippy with me, mis. You’re answerable to me, not the other way around.” Mare growled.

Gilda did not feel like backing down. “No, not anymore. We’re conspirators, equals, comrades. Dash and I stuck our necks waaay you in Coltcutta and we deserve to know the whole picture.”


“So then when are you going to tell the truth about what happened there. I’d sure like to know how two gals overthrew a monarchy and touched off a civil revolt.” Mare narrowed her eyes. “I’ll find out about that colt later. Right now, you’ve got your own answers to give.”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “You can’t take the moral high ground here.”

“Why not.”

“Because it wasn’t us. We were bystanders.” Gilda insisted. “Perhaps not, bystander, but not the cause definitively. Our role was very minimal.”

“That was the fasted walk-back I’ve ever seen. Wow.” Mare tapped the desk in polite applause. “Am I ever going to find out who the ‘real’ perpetrator is or do I have to kiss you for that confidence.”

“Easy there, Mare. You won't like my taste.” Gilda said. “Here’s my take. Why does it matter? We got away! We got the bits! The truth doesn’t matter.”


Mare huffed. “Because I hate secrets.”

“You don’t mind keeping them.”

Mare took a deep breath and hissed it out slowly. “Gilda, would like to hear an anecdote?”

“Sure. You have the best anecdotes.” Gilda smirked. She pantomimed fluffing up a pillow and lay back against the hard wood of the sill.

“Ah, if you ever opened up I think I would be greatly humbled by the color and excitement you could share.” Mare cleared her throat.  “When I was still in university in Filly Delphia, the city and campus were unexpected hosts to a visit by Empress Celestia. It was her last, or maybe second to last tour of Equestria, before she started shutting herself up in Canterlot and leaving everything to advisors. The empress decided to wander without her retinue, popping into lectures and peeking into the library annexes. It was surreal, having our god-sovereign pass us by or stare at us as we studied.”

“Did you talk to her?” Gilda asked. She had seen Celestia once. It had been just after Dash had convinced her to aid her flight from her family in Cloudsdale, in a brief stop in Canterlot. They had been perched on a crumbling townhouse in the inner city, overlooking a dirty plaza with a muck-filled statue, like plazas and fountains in the inner city were want to do. Suddenly a group of Imperial Household Guards in shimmering armor emerged from an alley and began shoving ponies to the walls. A slender carriage pulled by more IHG darted through the gap in the indolent crowd, and disappeared into another narrow alley just as quickly. For a brief second, Gilda could have sworn she’d seen the magenta eyes of Celestia watching her from between the laced curtains of that gilded  carriage.
Lost in her vivid memory, she almost forgot that she had asked a question and was startled to hear Mare start talking again.


“If you’d believe it, I did. On that partly-cloudy thursday, I was engaged attending an academic court for a friend of mine who had been accused of cheating. I was there to comfort the poor boy, and also make sure the charges stuck since I was the one who’d ratted on him. Oh, don’t give me that look! It was a cutthroat environment, highly competitive. He’d have done the same if he caught me. Anyway, this court was, as I’m sure you would expect, painfully drab, until Empress Celestia of all ponies  poked her head in. Some daft administrator stuttered out an explanation, and her majesty said something completely banal, but something I will never forget.
She said, ‘Everyone essentially tries to do the right thing. By various levels of delusion, we become separated ourselves from the truth of our actions.’ Compelling, insightful, completely ignored.”

“I kinda like it. Delusion is basically the only way I get up every day.” Gilda shrugged. “If I stopped denying my mistakes and pretending I’m perfect, the collective guild and embarrassment would kill me.”

Mare’s frown tightened.

“I know, right? Let’s get off this topic.” Gilda felt a cringe coming on. “Before we hurt ourselves.”

Mare cleared her throat. “I didn’t share that story to fuel your self pity. I’m trying to do the right thing, and on some level, you are too. Now shut up and let me talk, and if I don’t give you every iota of information that comes across my desk here, it’s because I’m too busy thinking about ways to save this expedition from disaster. On that subject...” She reached under her desk and pulled up the bottle of glowing green liquid she’d retrieved in Coltcutta, which was churning restlessly within its glass confinement. “Do you know what this it?”

Gilda tapped the side with a talon and watched the liquid swirl angrily. “Dragonfire. It’s very concentrated based on how brightly it’s glowing.”

“Correct. I see you have a commanding knowledge of arcane hydraulics.”

“Don’t patronize me.” Gilda snorted.


“Ooh, you really want to make this painful for me, don’t you.” Mare frowned. “I will be straightforward with you Gilda, we are in for a very bad time in Chitin.”

“No shit.” 

“Here’s what I know: A rival expedition, in actuality a mercenary army from Horsestralia on Butcher Rose’s payroll, is going to be shadowing us on our way inland. When we arrive at the dig site, we will be attacked by a rogue faction of local changelings, who will in turn be slaughtered by the mercenaries.” Mare explained. “Chairpony Rose has, in her great hubris, done all through her communication through official EOC channels. There’s a detailed copy of this conspiracy in every courier roost from here to Filly Delphia.”

“So it won’t be hard to nudge other officials towards the eviance. Hmm, I’m guessing blatant murder is against EOC policy.” Gilda said sarcastically.

“Yes, yet we cannot know if she’s done this with the Chairpony Council's complacence. This could go all the way to the top.” Mare went on. “There’s plenty of resentful patricians who’d like to see me gone for the embarrassment I’ve caused them.”

“How paranoid do you have to be to think the entire company hierarchy has it out for you?” 

“Well…” Mare scratched her head awkwardly. “My stunt with the blackmail was not the only black eye I’ve given the chairponies. From time to time I steal and leak confidential reports or audits, just to remind them what kind of damage I could do if I actually wanted to.”

“Mare, you really are something, but at least you’re not some deluded idiot thinking she’s doing the right thing. You and I are sinners, and we know we are. We solve problems. Thing is, solutions appear to be less permanent than mine.” Gilda chuckled, earning her an angry glare. “So where do I and a liter of highly condensed dragonfire get us?”

“I hear that the highest echelons of the imperial government of Equestria use dragonfire to send messages, but I’ve heard of a different use. If it can be done safely, we could use the dragonfire to escape any dire predicament we walk ourselves towards.”

“Teleport ponies with dragonfire? Tell me you’re kidding.”

“You have a familiarity with the stuff. Could you do it?”

“Not even if I’d finished my studies.” Gilda laughed at the outrageousness of it. “Have you any idea how volatile this stuff is? The amount of energy it releases can vary immensely. It can tickle your eyelash or melt icebergs with equal application. If that bottle still had a label it’d say ‘Extreme Danger: Keep away from non-magic plebs’.”

“In other words we would need a practiced magic user to utilize it.” Mare sighed.

“A practiced magic user might be able to keep it from exploding and burning his ass off. You’d need a master with decades of study to do what you’re thinking. It takes a certain temperament and understanding.” Gilda rubbed her temple and smoothed her crest feathers. She was getting worked up in her ranting. “Believe you me. I’ve seen people I respected be obliterated in moments by that stuff.”

“No wonder you recognized it then. I suppose it will have to be used in a different way.” Mare sniffed. “Do you think it would be a capable enough backup weapon to burn mercenaries with?”


“Are you talking murder?” Gilda was shocked.

“Blatant murder.” Mare confirmed. “As you said it Gilda, we need permanent solutions.”

Gilda was impressed. Mare could be a petty and unscrupulous mare by her own admittance, but it took something else to make the jump to murder. Especially a gruesome murder by way of scorching dragonfire.
If Mare was willing to do what was necessary, she had the possibility of being an ally when it came time to fight Xaron. Even if she was ignorant of the great secrets of the world, she was a clever and devious mare who could take up the game quickly.

But Gilda wasn’t going to make any such proposition yet. “I agree. We have the right to self-preserve.”

“You took a long time to answer, but you weren’t hesitating. No, you were calculating.” Mare smiled thinly. “If this expedition had stayed boring and mundane, and you remained a simple bodyguard, I should expect it would have ended with you murdering somepony anyway. It’s the nature of monsters to do monstrous things.”

Gilda chose not to be offended. Mare would understand eventually. “Everypony flourishes by horrendous strife, but in different ways.”

“That’s more philosophical than I expected from you, Gilda.”

“I have my moments.” Gilda shrugged. “But I have a question for you. Why not skip out on this expedition. You have the choice not to risk your life. You can choose not to take the path that will force you to kill. That’s cold blooded, on a level I didn’t expect of you.”

“Come now. I grew up in the country. Ponies died all the time. And at university in Filly Delphia, there were students who literally worked themselves to death. And don’t forget that scene in the alleyway in Clawstantinople. I think I know the value of a life. It amounts to an incredible amount, all that someone was, until suddenly it isn’t.” Mare put the bottle of dragonfire back under the desk. “I think I like you, Gilda, because you can put words to my deeper and darker thoughts, the thoughts propper ponies should let slip.  I want to test myself against Butcher Rose in every way. I want to know if I have the constitution to do what is necessary. Can I flourish or will I wither?”


“Just now you mentioned those griffins in Clawstantinople. Honestly I didn’t remember them well, but you have clearly.” Gilda said. “Did it shake you? Do you have nightmares about them taking you away to cut you up into meat?”


Mare stared down at the desk for a while. “Is it wrong to want to be the butcher?”

“Better than the meat atop his table, ma’am.” Gilda slipped off the sil and made to leave. “Keep an eye on Do. She’s a less honest liar than us. No telling with her.”



She cantered out of the office and closed the door behind her. She waited a few seconds before cantering over to her own room and going in.
Dash was waiting on her, sitting on the bed leafing through one of Gilda’s books. “Zero informed me of a meeting, so I came posthaste, as soon as I could tear myself away from Mis Do.”

“Dash doesn’t talk anything like that.” Gilda shut the door behind her. “Be a parrot or something.”

“Don’t be insulting.” In a flash of green light, Dash changed into the form of a huge monitor lizard. “Parrots are not my definition of magestic.”

“Implying Dash is majestic? Gee.” Gilda had gotten somewhat used to the changeling’s transformation antics, but it was still disconcerting seeing mundane animals move their mouths in unnatural ways to form words. “How about…  a pigmy griffin-hawk. I had a pet one named dame Gibby for a few years.”

“That I can do.” Zero sissed, once again changing. He came out of the green fire as a rabbit-sized hawk, black in collaboration with wide red eyes. He flapped back to the book he’d been reading. “I heard you talking with Mis Mare in the other room.”

“I’m having a hard time deciding what to do with her. She’s not a bad mare, really, and that’s a problem. I don’t know if she would be on our side if we get into a three way fight with Xaron and the changelings. Actually a four-way fight, since Mare was telling me that there’s a mercenary army that’s gunna merc us once we uncover the treasure.”

“Hmmm, that could be good, or it could be bad. This ‘army’ could be a few hundred, or it could be ten thousand. The larger it is, the more easily it would be to find a weak link and exploit it.” Zero chirped. “Irregular soldiers are already given to unruliness and infighting. We could potentially even buy them off ourselves.”

“Mare didn’t even consider that. She was willing to commit to fighting them straight up.”

“That’s what she told you, at least.”

“She doesn’t know who she can trust, for good reason.” Gilda agreed. “We might want to bring Mare in on our plans, just so her independant machinations don’t screw us over and get everypony killed prematurely.”

“Let’s consider it. It would be a terrible waste to die pre-maturity.” Zero nodded. He swived his red gaze to the door. “Here’s Dash.”


On cue, Rainbow Dash opened the door. She stared at the fluffy bird perched on Gilda’s bed for a few seconds. “Nice disguise.” She pulled a chair away from the wall and sat on it backwards, forehooves crossed over the back. “Whats up?”

“Hey Dash. We’ve got problems. There’s a menace on the wind.” Gilda explained.

“Let’s not beat around the bush.” Zero interrupted. “Mis Dash, within the next seven hours, the Flyer Kyte will come upon a derelict merchant vessel, showing signs of having been attacked by pirates. The pirate in question being Xaron, and instead of taking the cargo, he’s leaving it for us to find.”

“The second sarcophagus that Sharamin and Xaron took, right?” Dash cocked her head. “We’re barely two days out from Coltcutta. How did he get it here from Maredia so quickly?

“Yes, It is curious how fast he’s arranged this. He may have sympathisers in the Sarbaz Yazatan, willing to help his secret cause.” Zero said. “My best guess is that he chartered the ship to carry his sarcophagus out of Stirrup, It may have been in Coltcutta with us and we never noticed. Now Xaron ties up that loose end. Let it not be said that ancient alicorns are careless creatures.”

Gilda shook her head. “No, Xaron implied he took the sarcophagus to Maredia, which fits in with what I heard from the sniper in Stirrup. I think Xaron brought it with him to Coltcutta, and chartered a ship there. That could explain why the one below us started waking up: For a short while her companion was right across the bay.”


“What I was concerned about was this being a setup. As in, what if the Maredians are lying in wait, looking for a chance to ambush the Kyte and take our sarcophagus.” Dash clarified. “They couldn’t pin down our location before, but if we stop to investigate the derelict, they’ll have us.”

“Xaron is heartfelt about his rebellion. GIlda can attest to that. If the Maredians are chasing us he won’t be to blame.” Zero shook his little head. “Fortunately, the hippogryphs have little to no influence in Chitin. If they do come after us, they’ll be relying on small units without any local help. We may not have much warning, but between the two of you even the most dangerous gryph will pose no problem.”

“That is, if they don’t use another ancient alicorn against us. There’s got to be at least one loyal ava, and who knows how dangerous they are.” Gilda pointed out. “But enough digression. Zero, tell us about the derelict.”



“Ahem. From what I felt, it is a medium sized merchant vessel, crew contingent of about eighty. When we arrive, all the crew will be dead, in the best case. If Xaron left any alive, it will be our responsibility to keep them from talking.”

“What? Xaron actually killed the sailors?” Dash balked.

“Yes.” Zero confirmed. “Quite horribly, from what aural emanations their deaths made. I can no longer detect the disturbance so Xaron must have finished the deed and left. I don’t imagine him sticking around to watch us gawk at the bodies. Then again...” He coughed. “Incase his stunt in Coltcutta did not make it obvious, alicorns have little regard for mortal lives.”

“And we’re going to murder too?” Dash gasped.  She liked to think that all the ponies that had died on the adventure so far had at least slightly deserved it.

Gilda was annoyed at Dash’s self-delusion. “I’ll do it. We can’t let survivors telling Daring and Mare about Xaron or Sharamin. We need to be the ones controlling the narrative. Mare’s going to draw connections and start figuring things out herself.  Daring Do might bug out and take the location of the treasure with her. She’ll already be on edge seeing a ghost ship.”

Zero chirped in agreement. “Indeed. We must take charge wherever we can, steer ponies’ action, make this ship ours. You two will go aboard the derelict therefor, and make certain that the second Bard sarcophagus is secure. Once that is done, inform Mare and Do, then proceed immediately to the Kyte’s cargo hold, and inspect the first sarcophagus while everypony distracted. I will be disguised as one of you to make your absence less conspicuous.”

“Great idea actually. It’ll be the best opportunity to see inside both sarcophagi.” Dash said.

“Not that it matters too much. I know what’s in there. I have suffered it.” Gilda mumbled. “I’m not sure I want to get too close. Not to either sarcophagus.”

“You would fare better than me. Your little illness has desensitized you to a degree.” Zero offered. “Or, Dash could go by herself.”

Gilda sighed. “No, I don’t want to wimp out it’s just…” She closed her eyes and listened for the lolling perturbations that rumbled down in the cargo hold. “As they get closer, they might calm down. Or, get louder.”

“We will see.”

“Yes we will.” Gilda nodded. “Beside that, I see no flaws. It’s a good plan, Gibby. Good plan.”

“Gibby? Wasn’t that the name of your-  Oh.” Dash laughed, realizing what Zero’s avient disguise evoked.  “Ha ha! That’s pretty funny.”

“Not especially.” Zero ruffled his feathers. “My name is sufficient short, I don’t think I’m in any kind of need of a nickname.

‘It’s a code name.” Gilda smirked. “Zero isn’t a common name, you know. If the wrong creature hears that a Star is near it might cause trouble for us.”

“Then you shall be ‘Princess’, and Mis Dash can be ‘Tortuga’. ” Zero shot back.

Gilda squirmed. Being call princess brought on uncomfortable reminders of Godswing. “Hey now-”

“Codenames are a mark of a professional. You wouldn’t want to be unprofessional, would you?” Zero cooed. One would almost think he were teasing, if he his relationship with humor was anything other than tepid.

“For buck’s sake, it was a joke.” Gilda groaned. “Fine, whatever. Only on ‘missions’ though. Dash?”

“I don’t know what tortuga means but I’ll take it.” Dash shrugged.. “But uh, back to the plan here...   I had one sticking point. Daring Do will be very, very suspicious.”

“It will be up to you to convince her to think nothing of the incalculable coincidence. Or at least, convince her not to abandon the expedition.” Zero said. “Gilda and I were considering bringing Magistrate Mare into our little cabal here. She could help you corral Mis Do, among other things.”

“Erm, no. Bringing on Mare should be a last resort. She’s not gunna like what we’re doing one bit.” Dash resisted. “She’s about profits, not revelation and cosmic theology.”

“And that’s good! We don’t need somepony blinded by ideology, we need an amoral opportunist. Another amoral opportunist, that is.” Gilda argued. “No matter how this adventure ends or what we decide to move on to, having Mare on our side makes sense. I don’t see a downside.”

“If you can’t find the bad, you aren’t looking hard enough. Nevertheless, the pros outweigh the cons.” Zero chimed in. “When it’s convenient, we bring Mare on.”

“I don’t like it.” Dash grumbled. “You guys can have that job. G, I think it’ll be mostly you.”

“I’ll help, if I can. She may be persuaded to agreeableness if I reveal my true nature.”  Zero agreed. “Any questions or additions?”


“We’re all squared away.” Gilda pushed everything aside and lay on the bed. “Now we wait.”


~~~~


The storm was terrible indeed. It was a tour de force of nature, plunging Gottrakt in complete darkness, interrupted only by sky-splitting streaks of lightning.
The situation on the surface was not half as bad as in the air column, where a malignant sentence was waiting. Dark magic sparked and crackled, manifesting the entity out of power coursing down the cumulus from the edge of space, where the highest reaches of the storm scraped the nearer deava. The entity focused its attention on the black basalt island below, 


Gilda was not unaware of the looming presence. To her, eyes closed against the shards of ice blown forth by the tempestuous winds, the entity radiated a foul aura, like the stench off a rotting knot of seaweed. It’s psychic power filtered through the darkness like dusty sunbeams, but infinitely more rank. It was numbingly overawing, to witness at last the species of being whose friction against the atmosphere had sent endless whispers to her and her fellow student.  Everything the school had ever aspired to, the infinite divine, was just out of her grasp. More or less.

For an instant, the two creatures saw the other’s observance, but while Gilda could do nothing but watch, the entity had free reign to punish snooping mortals.

A massive form, shrouded in obscuring cloud and shadow, emerged from the dark skies. It was neither hoof nor talon, but a squirming gasping thing, like the uncurling frond of a fern. Along its length were diagonal sequences of glowing grey-red eyes, whose radiant darkness pierced sheets of rain, refracting the unholy light into a sickening rainbow. 

Gilda was helpless:  Hunched over, hind legs folded, talons clasped together desperately, wings held tight against her side, whole body tensed to keep herself upright in the face of the hurricane.
She could hardly hope to survive the storm, even less the terrible thing her communion had pulled out of it.

“I don’t think this is normal. The test shouldn’t be like this.” She squawked in nervous terror. She wasn’t ready to die, to have the deava tear her soul out and retreat back to the heavens; The other students would find the charred husk of her body the next day, and stare in horrified wonderments at what cosmic power had touched poor Gilda to obliterate her so thoroughly.

The cloud-shrouded shape crashed into the sea, a mere dozen meters off into the water from the rock upon which she sat. It continued to course downward, forming an unbroken connection between the black depths and the black sky, both unseen through the deluge and spray.
But it did not communicate.  Even the whispers, although the north wind continued whistling past her ears, were nearly silent, only chanting and lolling in reverence of the entity’s arrival. 

But without the agitation of the deava’s whispers, Gilda’s mind was free, and she shook off fear. Fueled by adrenaline, she raced through the possible ways to placate the entity. First and foremost, discover why it had come down from the cosmic curia of the deava alicorns, to interrupt something so infinitely miniscule as a mortal’s meditation.
She cracked her right eye open, and tried to establish contact with one of they that rotated down the pillar of un-flesh.  “Who are you?”

The entity rotation slowed, until it became stationary; Pillar-like it loomed, absolutely unmoving in the gale. It’s thousands of red-grey eyes, or at least the ones facing her, swiveled to Gilda, bathing her in their murky light.
The voice it projected in her mind was sublimely awful, like a slathering of pithy rancor that only begrudgingly had woken up. Gilda could only conceptualize it as a blistered thumb, pressed down on the earth, and retched as it assaulted her mentally.
“The deava born a thousand years ago, the deava created for sacrifice, I arise from sleep at my Dark Lady’s command. You are a supplicant of the godhead, but I am all that can answer. Godhand, name me, for that is what I will become, after sacrifice. I do so for you, Gilda von Gottrakt, the recipient of Anima Astral Nacre’s dark attentions, and worse intentions. Rejoice or lament.”


~~~~


“Hey.”

“Uwww…”

“Gilda, wake up.”

“Awwawa.” GIlda sat up and stretched. “Uhh… Did I fall asleep?”” She yawned.

Zero, still in the tiny hawk form, was on the bed beside her. “Yes you did, four hours ago. Dash went back to her cabin.”

“Oh.” Gilda tried to formulate complete thoughts but, a haze of nebulous fear kept pulling away her attention. She had had another dream, and as she tried to grasp its content her brain was jolted with another dose of immaterial terror. Wary, Gilda took a deep breath and focused on the now. “Something up?”

“The lieutenant on watch reported to Mare a few hours ago, presumably about the derelict being spotted. We should be close enough to tell that it is motionless. It’s time you double checked and told Mare.” Zero chirped.


“Alright. Gimme a sec.” Gilda spent a few more minutes stretching, before pulling her arquebus and its harness out from under the mattress. “Since this is a merchant ship, the ‘lieutenant’ is the chief mate. Mare swaps the mates constantly to keep them from ‘accumulating power’.”  She began strapping on the harness. “When does Bowline Tight begin his shift?”

“He have the eight to twelve and it’s about five now, so Bowline Tight’s last watch is over.  See, I was thinking about a new disguise. You’re right, ponies are beginning to get suspicious.”

“Because you’re not even halfway playing the part.” Gilda scoffed. “So, what’s you idea?”

“I’ll change on the derelict. I shall be Gibby, a mentally scarred survivor of the pirate attack. I haven’t decided on form yet.” Zero contemplated.

“Not your natural form, to be sure.” Gilda shook her head. “How about a hippogryph. If Daring Do suspects the Sarbaz Yazatan are coming after the sarcophagus, she might be comforted by one telling them otherwise.”

“She will certainly think I am a spy. I like hippogryphs, but it’s off the table.” Zero said.  He hopped into the center of the room and transformed into a silver unicorn stallion with a moss mane and an eye for a mark. “I’ll be a unicorn. That way I can use magic freely.”

“The eye is a little too on the nose.” GIlda pointed out.

“Oops. That’s my default.” The eye mark shifted into a pigmy griffin-hawk icon. “Better?”

“Goodun, Gibby. I hope I can keep myself from bursting out laughing every time I see it.” GIlda lay back down on her bed. “So, Bowline Tight will mysteriously disappear. Someponies will blame me, since they’ve seen us together. Mare and Do might call me out.”

“They wouldn’t be wrong.” Zero transformed into Bowline Tight’s visage and trotted to the door. “If it comes to that, I’ll provide you an alibi.”

Gilda scoffed. “You want to be everywhere at once?”

“Don’t forget to tell Mare.” Zero said, before exiting into the hallway.


Gilda watched him leave.

Would he wave to die? 
Gilda had been thinking. Everypony had something they hoped to gain from the expedition, except for Zero. He expressed no aspiration or ambition, save for being helpful, which either meant his desires were unrealistically pure, or too terrible to dare mention. The mystery and the resulting lack of predictability put Zero in an odd place were Gilda was unsure of his commitment to anything. He could turn on her and Dash in a moment, for any number of reasons.
But, Gilda liked him, earnestly. She had never had any male friends that she did not later end up eating, but Zero had hit her from the off as a wise sage-like figure, genuinely interested in everything, more than willing to hold her company. In a way he was strangely fatherly, and Gilda was very tempted agree to the thereto unspoken offer, and join Zero to finish the studies she had abandoned in Godswing.

But was he actually a friend?
There was subtle inconsistencies between him and his surroundings. His disguised body trembled and fought against itself, struggling to keep it’s form. Gilda was not expert, but she had thought that a changeling could only change into something of equal size. Zero’s changes had flaunted that law.
The way he acted, moved, and spoke were haunting familiar to her, bearing the imperceptible tells of a Star. His red-grey eyes betrayed a lurking savagery and hunger that his stoic voice and cultivated lexicon hid: He was a predator, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Whatever he may say or do, a Star was a selfish creature of the highest order.

“Hey Z.” Gilda called out.

“Yes?” Zero leaned back into the room, speaking in the voice of Bowline Tight.

“Why did you come with us? Wouldn’t you have rather gone with Xaron?”

“Xaron is an old acquaintance of mine, but I was never able to stand him for more than a few minutes. Besides, where would it leave you young ladies? Without a modicum of mentorship, you especially could run dangerously wild.” He said, with a hint of regret. “It’s in everyone’s best interest. Let’s leave it like that.” He shut the door behind him.



Gilda waited for his creaking hoofsteps to fade down into the lower decks. She exited the cabins onto the deck, and flew up through the rigging to the crow’s nest.
The earth pony spotter on watch was lounging under a fabric sunshade. “Hello Mis.”

“Hello yourself.” Gilda grunted. “Where’s the derelict?”


“Derelict? I don’t know about that.” The spotter sat up. “There’s that frigate on our eleven. Come to say, it ain’t moved very much since I last looked.”

“When was that?” Gilda shaded her eyes to see the ship he was speaking of.

“Hour ago, ‘bout.”

Gilda did not have to look for long to see the derelict. It was not a frigate, but about the same size: Three-masted, expanded cargohold. Quintessential equestrian cargo ship.
“Hoof over the spyglass.”

“Sure.” The spotter complied.

A sinking dread came over Gilda as she peered through the spyglass. She knew well the mermare carved onto the prow of the ship, and the pattern of green and white stripes that adorned its shredded sails.

It was impossible. How could a slower ship have come out ahead of the Flyer Kyte? Questions raced through Gilda’s head, and the raring eagerness that she had felt began to fade into emptiness. 
She her claw droop and the spyglass slip out. “That’s a dead ship.”

“Hey! Be careful!” The spotter snatched the spyglass off the floor and inspected it for cracks. “And what’dya mean, dead ship?”

“Everypony onboard is or will be dead.” Gilda promised.
It could not be a coincidence. Xaron was sending a message by using the Seapony’s Pride as his postage casket, which could be best understood like Gilda chose to in that moment: Destroy the past


~~~~~~

“Come again?”

“Anima Astral Nacre, her great majesty the Dark Lady, incomparable master of the lights that watch the heavens, has uplifted me. From the blackest abyss, the storm attracts the currents, and the mire upwells. I reach for the impossible sky, for the Dark Lady who grants me succor. Denied the caress I yearn for, I nonetheless serve her. Cursed with earthly shackles like all the earthborn deava, I can do no more than manifest her will, as the servitor of her desire. In pale homage to those far greater than I, I deem myself gohand. The Dark Lady has come to announce that she has seen you and taken interest. Rejoice or lament.” 

“Do I have to choose now?” Gilda asked.

One of the teachers at Black Bell’s school had once told her that the defining characteristic of religion was submission. Not faith, or mysticism, or spirituality or understanding; There could be no worship, and thus religion, without submission to the divine.
Griffins did not worship deava, not even the School of the Black Bell. But the indomitable black pillar of dark magic, running from the impossible depths to the unreachable outer limits of mortal reach, provoked in her young heart a sensory and sensual overload. She imagined for a moment the great significance of what she was experiencing. It was a modern revelation, completely unprecedented since the classical age.  That very moment, with a lone griffin standing (though she was still sitting) against the storm, with the ‘godhand’ providing otherworldly knowledge and power, would be remembered forever.
“Of the two, rejoice-ment and lament-ment, which would you recommend?”

The way the storm was blowing, Gilda was in the godhand’s windshadow, and the streaming rain and ice swirled at it’s fluctuating edge. Now that the pillar was stationary, the thousands of luminous eyes started moving independently, gliding side to side, but ever watching. 
“That, Gila von Gottrakt, would depend on if you embrace change. You have wished idly for a clear path to self-fulfillment, and a way to progress meaningfully.  The Dark Lady will give you a path, through sacrafice. Accept it with joy, or accept it resentfully. Either is your prerogative. I am only here to ensure you accept.”

“Accept a sacrifice? T- That sounds...” Gilda’s snide facade was breaking apart. The godhand’s prolix and protracted address was, despite her best efforts, worming its way into her chest; Anxiety was beginning to clench her breast.  Through her closed eyes the Dark light burned, and tingles of fear ran up and down her spine.

“You must accept the sacrifice. Or, more aptly, allow it to occur. Acceptance can come later.” The godhand’s mind-pealing voice did not convey detached certitude well. The veiled threat rang dissonantly over the rainsoaked coast, a promise of damnation. “Acceptance will come later. It is in your nature, as the Dark Lady knows. For what other reason does she bestow consideration. You will accept.”


“I- I- I don’t-”  Gilda squawked. She whole situation had suddenly become much more stark. So much talk of sacrifice. It evoked the memory of the kinds of experiments Black Bell conducted in the heart of Gottrakt, rending ponies apart, making patterns out of their blood and organs, burning hallucinogenic drugs and flesh together in obscene rituals: The less ‘scientific’ and rational side of the island, the true School of the Black Bell. Sacrifice meant death in the most terrible fashion conceivable. “I don’t have a choice?!”

“Did Black Bell give you a choice to study her dark magic? Did your father give you a choice to move to this barren isle? Did your mother give you a choice to be born? No.” The godhand pronounced.  Lighting flashed in the sky, momentarily burning away the shroud of dark mist. Gilda could have sworn she saw a thousand murmuring mouths, counterpart to the eyes, aimlessly migrating around the pillar.  And the teeth, sparkling reflection, like millions of stars in  the void, licked by grey an petulant tongues. “Yet you’ve made a choice here. You chose to commune with the north wind! Noone else but you decided to hold out your soul for the deava’s scrutiny. You bowed your head to the godhand without direction, and without any consequence. You submitted. The Dark Lady sees fit now to arrange your fate.”

“Am I going to die?” Gilda choked.

“There will be death.” The godhand agreed. Perhaps Gilda only imagined it, but the deava’s air of monolithic certainty faltered for a fraction of a second.

“N- Not my death? Then I don’t understand!” She tried to deciphered the obtuse riddles. “Please, I only wanted magic, like everyone else!”

“Then you should take your issue to Destiny or the godhead. I can do nothing.”

“But I-”

“What a child you are. You make communion, bowed down, begging for the privileges you could not earn for yourself. It plays upon the deava contradiction; Revulsion of weakness, but love for domination. Where does submission lie? Lacking. Oh, but the Dark Lady appreciates how ignobly you’ve suffered.” The godhand laughed, but not just psychically, but physically, as the thousands of mouths Gilda had glimpsed launched into a shrieking din to match the storm. “Little mortal, little girl, how stupid are you, to prostrate before the Dark Lady? You make a little child wish as though she were a fairie! How foolish? I was awoken for the sole purpose of telling you! Telling you of your feebleness, your helplessness, your blind mortal stupidity. Now…”
The thousand lolling tongues spoke in unison. “The sacrifice.”

“Wait! No, please wait!”  Gilda felt a cold settle on her mind, and suddenly her movements were not her own.  At first it was a loss of sensation, but when she noticed her muscles moving on their own she realized in helpless terror that the godhand had taken over her body. She could not even scream.

The thousands of eyes gradually winked themselves off, until one was left. “It will not be the first time, nor the last, that a pitiful mortal stares into the eye of their god and sees the destruction they were to unwittingly cause. Ava, Deava, Star, and Celestiaan, they all know that brushing against the divine brings only suffering. Suffering for you, and so it also seems, for me.” The thousands mouths’ shrill laughter started up again, threatening Gilda with insanity like the whispers never had. The pillar began to spin again, returning it’s shroud of cloud to cyclonic turmoil. “The Dark Lady has seen fit to sacrifice us both, one more completely than the other.”

Gilda’s right foreleg was lifted into her view.  It dissolved into dust.

“You yearn to see magic dance between your fingers, like they do for those other, lesser, students. You will. Whose magic will it be?” The godhand jeered, and the mouths joined in a final pronouncement. The dusty red-grey light congealed and lept up, rebuilding the bone, vessels, nerves, muscles, and finally skin of Gilda’s destroyed leg. Across the coursing bond of bloody light the godhand’s essence passed, and with every millimeter of flesh rebuilt the pillar of cloud and darkness loss more cohesion.
The swirling clouds dispersed themselves into nothing, leaving rain and spray in their wake. The absence of the godhand’s physical presence left behind it’s own terror, as Gilda’s reconstituted leg jerked back reflexively when she regained control over herself.

She opened her eyes, daring to look at what had been done to her. It lifted up to reach for the black sky, as she willed it to, but unbidden it mocked in deava’s timbre. “Let not my death go to waste! Let us go kill a Star!”



~~~~~



“Gilda! GIlda! Wake up!” 

“That looks like a head injury.” Mare peeked over Dash’s shoulder. It was very obviously a head injury, one that was bleeding badly. “We need to get her inside, right away.” She straightened up. “You two, help Mis Dash! The rest of you, back to work!”

The crew reluctantly stopped gawking and returned to their tasks. The two sailors Mare had singled out, Bowline Tight and the spotter (who’d jumped out of the crow’s nest in a failed attempt to catch Gilda),  helped carry her into the cabins.

Mare stayed on deck a few seconds, contemplating. “Something’s not right here.” She looked up to the crow’s nest. Bouncing off the rigging a few times had saved Gilda’s life, but why had she fallen?  “Healthy people don’t pass out for no reason.”

When she followed the others into the cabin, they were talking in hushed tones. “Look at her eyes, how they’re fluttering. She’s dreaming.”

“No way. GIlda told me it takes hours of sleep before you start dreaming.” Dash nibbled her lip. They had pulled GIlda onto her bed, where she had the comatose griffin’s head cradled in her lap. “How’d it happen?!”

“One second she was talking, some weird stuff about a dead ship, and the next’un she was lights out!” The spotter was nervous too, afraid it was her fault. She looked up to see Mare, standing by the door. “Oh! Mis Magistrate! I- I- I’ll get back to the deck now.” She galloped out.


Mare and Bowline Tight locked eyes. “Don’t you have knots to tie?”

The stallion scowled. “No ma’am, I’m on the eight to twelve.”

“Then why were you on deck?” Mare demanded, but it didn’t sound like she actually wanted an answer.

Dash attempted to answer for him. “He was-”

“I was going to see if the rumors were true.” Bowline Tight replied for himself. “About the derelict ship.”

“Derelict ship? Dead ship?” Mare arched a brow. “Mis Dash, do you have better, more sane answers than the rest of this lot?”

Dash averted her eyes. Bowline Tight sighed. “We seem to be in last resort territory. Gilda can’t do it.

“Gilda said she'd have by back, and I have hers.” Dash softly agreed. “Magistrate, any sane answer I could give you would be lies.”

Mare’s frown deepened. “I see. There is insanity at work.”

“You have us in an unfortunate position. Don’t be hasty, however. it bears remembering that there are two of us in here, and one of you. ” Bowline Tight said stiffly. “Fortunately for you, Gilda expressed a desire to inform you of the goings on. Otherwise I doubt we would be talking. Indeed, I think one of us would be disappearing, and the other experiencing an odd habit change. ”

“I understand my position here.” Mare scratched her chin. “I’m listening, if you have something to share.”

Dash elected to go first. “It started in Sahella, we think, when the sar-”



“Golly! It’s true!” Daring Do trotted into the room. “How’d it happen.”

Dash looked alarmed, Mare noted, like she had been caught saying something wrong. “W- We don’t know.”

Daring checked Gilda’s pulse and eye dilation. “I heard her head was bleeding. Shouldn’t she be getting medical attention?”

Come to mention it, the gash on GIlda’s temple had disappeared. Mare shivered.

“We got her taken care of.” Bowline Tight replied to Do, with a glance at Mare. “She’ll wake up after a few minutes.”


Mare cut in. “As you can see, everything is taken care of, Mis Do. Now, was there something you needed?”

Do’s brow knitted in angrily. “No, I don’t need anything. I’m just checking in on a friend. Is that prohibit on your ship?”

“No, but you are crowding the room. Respectfully, find something else to do while I sort this out.”

“Sort it out, huh? More like sweep under the rug! If Gilda is hurt I’ll do something I might regret! Now if you’ll excuse me…” Do stormed out, making sure everypony knew she was irritated, in a ‘I still care for my injured friend’ kind of way.


There was a few seconds of silence.
“Did she look relieved or concerned that Gilda was okay?” Bowline Tight posed.

“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dash snapped.

“We can’t discount the possibility that she-”

“I said shut up!”

“Both of you are just babbling!” Mare shouted, startling them both. “Now in one word, ONE WORD, tell me what’s going on!”

“Alicorns.” Bowline Tight reported.

“Alicorns.” Rainbow Dash corroborated.

“Bullshit.” Mare spat.

“Could you close the door, please?” Bowline Tight asked.

Mare backed up the door, not taking her eyes off them for a moment, and kicked it shut with a hindleg. “Now, you will reveal who you really are. A changeling, I can only assume? Not many other species of shapeshifters. And don’t say alicorn, or I’ll be pissed!”

“Not going to ask about the original? Just as well.” Bowline Tight slid off the bed and walked to the center of the small room. His body was spontaneously consumed by green fire, and the form underneath bulged to twice the earth pony size. When the fire burned itself out, a huge black changeling stood in the center of the room. The only thing that had stayed the same, Mare noted, was his red-grey eyes.  “I would hate for you to end up like him. I don’t want to have to kill anyone, if it’s not necessary. Not like you, I hear.”

Mare instinctively took a step back. “Woah. I didn’t they came that big.” The changeling towered over her, his spined head almost scraping against the ceiling. No normal changeling should have been able to alter their size that much. Clearly, Mare decided, the monster’s threats were not idle. Joining the little conspiracy seemed to be the only possible choice.  “What’s your name?”

“Zero. If you prefer it, Lord Zero.” Zero chortled darkly. “I did entertain a noble lady, long ago.”

“Stow it, sailor boy. Who do you work for? The EOC? The griffins?”

“Are we gunna have to say it again?” Dash rolled her eyes.

“Alicorns.” Zero nodded. “However ‘work for’ is too strong a term. I should hope at least. Against my better judgement I seem to be dancing to the ava tune closely.”

“Boy, do you ever talk. I thought Gilda was bad. What you’re saying is all nonsense. I have no context for any this.” Mare tapped her hoof impatiently.

“You really are making it hard to justify preserving your life.” Zero began pacing the tight confines, barely getting a step or two in before he had to turn around. “Pah, but the truth is it has been quite a while since I disguised as a mare, and I find it none too pleasant. I woul prefer to leave her intact, I feel.

“Wait, what’s wrong with mares?” Dash grunted.

“Nothing. Just a few hours ago I was you. It isn’t difficult, only unpleasant for me.”

“Me? Okay, that’s creepy, but ignoring that… It is because of anatomy? You changed into a bird! They only have the one thing!”

“I was male bird. There is a distinction I doubt you would understand” Zero huffed. “Would you like me to replace Mare with a male version of herself? I could do that. I’ve done it before, and it turned out every bit as bad as you are imagining. Hey, what are you blushing about?!”



‘Just what the hell am I dealing with?’ Mare muttered to herself. “Hey! Idiots! Plot my death later. Tell me what’s happened to Gilda.”

“Alicorns.” Zero shrugged.

“The hell it is.” Mare spat. “I’ve had it with you right now. You can step out, so I can talk to my employee alone.”


Zero stood fast. “That’s not going to work.”

“I’m unarmed. I’m sleep deprived. I couldn’t beat a ewe in a wrassle right now.” Mare growled in exasperation. “Now, let me talk to Dash alone! Private conversation, chop chop!”

“Hmm, fine. Don’t bother trying to deceive her.” Zero matched her gravelly tone, something he could make infinitely more intimidating. “Mis Dash, keep her back from Gilda. She may try something .” He changed into a sparrow in a shower of green fire, and jumped to the door. He changed again into an anole, allowing him to barely fit through the gap in the frame.

“He’s a Star. Apparently that’s an ancient order of philosopher-magicians, who achieved immortality with a blasphemous ritual.” Dash said nonchalantly. “He’s a cool dude, once you-”

“Are you under duress?” Mare demanded. “Is he holding anything over you? Or Gilda?”

“What? No no, nothing like that. We’re trying to do the right thing!” Dash protested. “We have to stop the sarcophagus from being abused.”

“The one we have?”

“And the other one. The one we missed in Stirrup. But it’s close. We can save it, and protect it.” Dash noded eagerly.

“Explain.”

“The derelict. Everyone’s gotta be talking about it deckside now.  A ship of the dead, with only one passenger who’s meant to be.” Dash was talking too fast for herself and tripping over her words. “Xaron, the ava we met in Coltcutta, was the one who nabbed it from Stirrup. Now that we’re pals, he’s going to give it to us!”

“What the hell.” Mare closed her eyes and tried to connect the dots in her mind. “So the sarcophagus in Stirrup was taken by an ava. Ava, a hippogryph word, interpretation of alicorn. Hippogryph. Maredia! Inquisitor! The inquisitors are after Do. They want the sarcophagus we have! No, they’re giving us one, and the one we have is a Bard replica. Wait, the one from Stirrup must also be a replica! They’re giving it to us as a…” She opened her eyes. “Second replica. Are we starting a collection?”

“The ancient bodies inside them are going to let us unlock the treasure in Chitin.” Dash corrected.

“Treasure…  Alicorns… That changeling...” Mare looked to Gilda. “The Tower of the Bard. I’d never heard of it before Do mention it. Two two sarcophagi fit into that myth somehow. It’s a creation myth, of sorts. This treasure we’re after, relating to the tower that challenged the power of the gods themselves…” She paled.

“We don’t know what Daring knows. I really want to trust her, and believe she wants to do the right thing too.” Dash said quietly. “We need your help to steer her.”

“Goodness gracious this is…   This is really something.” Mare dragged her hoof against the floor nervously, tracing all the imperfections in the grain. “The right thing? How can I even know…” She clear her throat. “I’m going to have to talk to Gilda.”

“You didn’t-”

“Zip! When she wakes up, I’m going to be the first to talk to her, and I won’t hear anything else about this until it’s her telling me!” Mare shouted, glare hardening again. “Dash, inform the helm that I wish to inspect the derelict. But hold us away! Noone boards before Gilda and I!”

Mare’s look was fiery, and as much as Dash was ready to get into an argument she was reluctant to do it over Gilda’s sleeping form. “Mare…  You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”

“Piss off! What would my promises even mean to a deceiver like you? Go to the helm, now!” Mare stepped aside and opened the door. “She’s safer with me than any of you lot.”

Dash looked hurt, and indignance flashed across her features, but with a quick glance at Gilda she sighed and complied. Mare shut the door behind her, depriving herself of the ensuing argument between Dash and Zero.

“What have you done to yourself.” Mare took a deep breath. Was she talking to Gilda, the absent Dash, or the comatose Gilda? She didn’t know. “How are you going to get out of this?”

Gilda’s chest continued its slow rise and fall, and her eyes continued to flutter.

“Make room.” Mare pushed the griffin over and lay on the bed beside her. She let her own eyes droop. “It’s impossible…  Gods almighty, just kill me now so I don’t have to deal with this…”


~~~~



Visions of demons and destruction had faded, but Gila was still blinded by the shock of what she’ seen and felt. She pushed herself on her belly, face down, eyes clenched shut, whole body trembling uncontrollably. She pulled herself South, taking it rock by rock, unwilling to lift her head or dare raise her eyes to the horrors that could still linger in the storm.
With her hindlegs, her wings and her leg foreleg she pushed in excruciation; Her right foreleg she let hang limply. Though it felt just the same as it had before, she rejected it. It was an alien construction, contrivance, a facsimile of flesh, that dared to shake and ache and sweat with the rest of her body. It couldn’t be possible. It couldn’t be real.

At her back, the North wind jeered cruelly, it’s whispers come back to life in the godhand’s departure. It whipped around her, trying to find a purchase to snag, to rip at in mockery of her latest failure. ‘Get away from here’ the nonsense whispers seemed to tell her, ‘never come back’.
‘ ‘Til’  The dark qualification rumbled in Gilda’s mind, ‘you kill the Stars’

“Impossible!” Gilda screamed into the ground, her words drowned out by thunder. How could she possibly match Black Bell? And why was she even contemplating it? It was madness!

‘ Stupid little child! The Stars are pathetic has-beens. The Dark Lady surpassed their milenium of effort, and she did it with a dweeb like you. Are you going to pine for a limb that isn’t there anymore? Or are you going to accept me?’
How could it be that the jeering voice matched the godhand’s, speaking in the sarcastic cadence of a cocksure youth, like Gilda’s own only slightly more? She gathered her courage and darted her eyes over her right leg, to reassure herself that it had not sprouted a lolling mouths with which to taunt her endlessly.
It had not, yet the Dark continued to be given voice. 
‘Common looser. Try it out, before we have to scrap. Don’t forget this is what you wanted.’

“S- Shut up!”

How the voice in her head loved to talk.
‘Tonight we face with Black Bell. Rejoice or despair!’
The windblown whispers laughed in an echoing resonance, letting their uncontainable happiness be known.
‘We subvert her plans, and subvert her kin. Rejoice or despair!’
The whispers became a cacophony of euphoric screams, fluctuating into sporadic mockery of Gilda and her mother’s powerlessness.
“In tonight, we subvert her life. Rejoice or despair!’
The whispers could no longer be discerned from one another, rising as one into a progressively rising whine, until Gilda felt as though her brains might melt.

“No! I can’t! Let me go! I- I can’t...” The poor griffin writhed, grasping for anything that could give her solace from the Dark. “J- Ju- Just kill me.” 

The basalt rock that formed her bed fractured, and in the shadow of the millions of fissures and holes there peered the red-grey eyes, and just as many jagged mouths.
Lolled and mouthed, wagged and chittered, gibbered sheer insanities in sounds that could vaguely deciphered as language, if one had infinite time and an infinite sternness against the maddening and otherworldly utterances of the other. The phantasmagoria extended its tongues and caressed her. She was coddled, she was helpless, and it was purely her choice to be such now.

‘Oh, poor poor Gilda. Geez, what a baby you are. Why did it have to be you? Why couldn’t I have died for some other shrimp.’ For a fleeting moment, the red light of the godhand scattered through the black skies. ‘What a bucking disgrace, that I got sacraficed for you. Wait for hundreds of years in watery solitude, and this is my reward. What a lame joke.’


~~~~


“You’re familiar with that ship?” Zero queried.

“Yeah. Gilda worked on that ship, and convinced me to join her. I was assistant navigator and weathorpony, under the Captain Pleiades. It didn’t last long, just between Baltimare and Clawstantinople, because I-” She sighed. “I screwed up, got us in big trouble with a mercenary company, and out of a job. Mare saved us. Actually, we saved Mare, and she got us out of there on the Kyte.”

“I hope to hear the details of that eventually. Sounds exciting.” Zero nodded.

The Flyer Kyte now had its sails furled and was drifting parallel to the derelict Seapony’s Pride. Most of the crew had taken shelter from the sun belowdecks, waiting for Mare’s next command. Do was on the forecastle, watching the Seapony’s Pride for signs of trouble. Dash and Zero were on the aftcastle monitoring the beige pegasus.

“Err, it was eerie, looking back on it. I thought adventure and getting into trouble was the kind of life sailors had. But pretty quickly I found out that it’s just me and Gilda. We’ve got an aura of trouble.” Dash said dourly. “The Seapony’s Pride though... There’s no way it’s a coincidence. GIlda could probably tell you better but I don’t think there’s any way it could actually be here!”

“Indeed. The transatlantic leg from Clawstantoinople to Filly Delphia, from there to Baltimore, and from there around the south cape to here, would take a ship of that size and configuration nearly three months. And that’s nonstop. There’s a sorcery of the highest caliber at play here.”

“Could it be a fake?” 

“Like an illusion. Not a chance. Illusions don’t have crew who scream in agony.” Zero scowled. “The sarcophagus below us is mewling incessantly, and her counterpart over there is calling back. It is nauseating like I can’t describe. I feel like I am on a dingy, buffeted by a raging sea.”

“That sounds intimidating.” Dash gulped.
When they were traveling Equestria together, little more than girls, Gilda had told her wild fairy tales of fanciful heroes and heroines using magic and wits to overcome the odds. Growing up in Cloudsdale, Dash had only ever had pegasus myths and madrigals. Hearing about not only griffins, but unicorns and earth ponies too, using magic in their quests for renown or greatness, was bitter. Pegasus magic had destroyed Cloud Creche. Pegasus magic had used her as she used it, and murdered hundreds of fillies and colts.
Dash had been happy to forget about magic in her day to day life in Baltimare. Now that she was with Gilda again, and their adventure had taken a swerve into the magical and bizarre, she wasn’t sure what to think. She knew she was consciously holding herself back, keeping herself from tasting the magic that threatened to flood her with power and happiness. She didn’t know what nearly ten years of pushing it down was doing to her.
In a way, seeing Gilda and Zero suffer because of their magic made her happy. She needed every reminder of the terror that magic was so she could deny every temptation. She couldn’t trust herself, like a petulant child who could help but seek the forbidden cookies.
Dash was burning up inside with an envy she couldn’t explain. Gilda, Mare, Do, Xaron, Zero… They were all fascinating and spectacular people. Who was she? Only a murderer with no self control. She knew it, in the cold moments when she was alone in her bed. She was a murderer. Her anger was a murderer’s anger. She couldn’t let herself get mad like she had in Coltcutta. If she did, the magic would use her and she would use it. She would be responsible for hundreds of deaths again. It was best that she never tried her magic again.

And then there was the nagging fear that she dared not even consider for the terror it caused her: That by inaction, by letting the likes of Xaron and Gilda run amok, she was just as guilty. 

“The air is getting colder again. I guess we’re making northward progress.”

“Is it?” Zero stuck his tongue out, tasting the air. “I can’t taste anything but pollen. The pollen of the marsh rose, native of the Greentail Marsh, in the Baltimare marches.” His words caught in his throat. “How could…”  He stuck out his tongue out again, and walked around aftcastle. “It’s everywhere!”

“Pollen? Notta big surprise. It’s Spring.” Dash was confused by his behavior. Maybe it was a changeling thing.

“Pollen that should only exist in Equestria. To assert it would blow this far is absurd, especially in this concentration!” Zero was distraught, pacing furiously. “This whole area around the Seapony’s Pride is saturated! It couldn’t have been dispersed from the ship. Grace preserve me, this is a conundrum and a half.”

“It is colder, I’m sure of it.” Dash clasped her wings to her side. Zero’s anxiety was getting to her. “I- I’ve felt this air before!  In Baltimare, where I used to live, we used to get fronts of cold air that settled down from the Badland Mountains to the south. The fronts would make the hot and humid springs cooler, but carry a bunch of nasty smells from the swamps it passed over. That air from the mountains felt exactly like this!”

“I trust your pegasus instincts.” Zero said. “Baltimare air, Baltimare pollen, and a ship that was due to be leaving Baltimare round this time…  What does it mean?”

Dash gulped. “Could the whole-”

“No, impossible!” Zero swore. “Not even an alicorn like Celestia could transplant so much water and air on the opposite side of the world. Not even a deava.”

“But it happened!”

“It’s got to be something impossible then.” Zero closed his eyes. “Like phantom time.”

“Phantom what?” Dash cocked her head.

“Time. Phantom time. It was a thought experiment the Stars and I had about what the most dangerous ability an ava, an alicorn of Light and Destiny, could have.” Zero explained. “It turned out to be true. Celestia the First activated it during her battle with her sister, the Nightmare Pretender. A decade ago, Celestia one-seven-nine did it again. But I can’t tell if it happens. Almost nopony can. I didn’t even know until Black Bell told me.”

“Yeah, but what is it?!” 

Zero hesitated, clearing his throat nervously before continuing. “Desynchronizing the course of Destiny.”

“Now I know how Mare felt. Nothing you say makes sense.”

“Destiny is time, Mis Dash. Whoever did this, presumably Xaron, stopped time and dragged a bubble of air with the ship inside halfway across the world, from Baltimare to here.”

“Damn it Zero! There’s Chitin, ten kilometers off our port. If you want to have a mental breakdown, have it over there where nopony can see you.” Dash shouted. “Because that’s impossible!”

“Don’t vent your frustration on me, Mis Dash. I’m want to find an explanation, but even more one that doesn’t scare me to death. Right now I only have that one, and it is terrifying.” Zero said. “And keep your voice down. Daring Do is looking out way.“


~~~~


“Finally. It’s the moment I’ve been waiting for.” If she still had a pony’s mouth it would be upturned into the widest of grins. She could still do it, but it wasn’t quite the same with a beak.



The grand hall of Gottrakt Keep was the largest interior space in the port town, soaring up to great heights with the support of flying buttresses and perfect engineering. Multatures of hideous gargoyles lined the crown and buttresses, carved like the rest in the decadent gryph-gothic style. In any direction, one could rely on hundreds of tiny eyes to be watching from the masonry.
The hall was more cathedral than court, a gross mockery of Celestia’s throne room in Canterlot Castle. Where the stained glass in the princess’s castle might inspire faith, pride, or awe, the graffina’s grizzly and depressing commissions, visible during the fleeting lightning’s illumination, brought nothing but fear.
Black Bell, the graffina of Gottrakt and mistress of the School of the Black Bell, was pure evil. And she love it.



The grand doors were pushed open. “M- Mother!” Gilda gasped, exhausted. She didn’t know how she’d had the strength to make it to the town from the north shore, but that godsent tenacity was beginning to fail her.


“Oh Gilda, you came back! You’re such a clever little griffin.” Nearly fifty meters away, at the head of the enshadowed hall, sat Black Bell. She was reclined against the wall, as one would against a tree during a nature hike. Her roc skull helmet was laid beside her, it’s empty gaze and permanent sneer matching her’s. On the wall above Black Bell was her ego writ large: A great tapestry with the black talon that served as her personal sigil and icon of the School of the Black Bell both, caressing the coat of arms of House von Gottrakt.
“How was your test?”

With the doors open, Gilda had to shout to be heard over the wind that had followed her in. But she could do nothing more than whimper. “H-Help...” She was dead on her paws, barely able to keep herself up. She hopped forward, putting no weight on her right leg. “The test was too much for me.”

“Oh come now. Don’t think like that.” Black Bell soothed. With a flick of a talon, the doors swung closed. “You did very well. For one, you’re still alive. The last few times a student tried to beseech a godhand, they ended up as steaming piles of flesh. Not that isn’t entertaining in its own way, but truly, Gilda, congratulations.”


“Y- You knew?!” Gilda squawked. 

“I’m insulted you would think otherwise.” Black Bell chuckled. “Come closer my dear. But not too close.”

Gilda’s mind was cast adrift in a sea of confusion. She slowly walked herself across the hall. The pelting rain on the roof echoed around them, punctuated by earthshaking thunder.

“Anima Astral Nacre is a good friend of mine. Back during the War of the Nightmare Pretender, when she was still trapped in that oh so disgusting body everyone called the Twisted Sinner, we would go on long walks through the burnt and ravaged countryside together. Dear oh dear, her soul was beautiful! Never was anypony so eloquent and deep.
“When she ascended back to the cosmos, I entered a deep depression. I searched high, and I searched low, for a way to follow her. Alas, Destiny only allows the migration between earth and space in one direction and only once could her rule be flouted. But in a fluke, I came upon one of the long lost relics of the end of the ancient alicorns: The abyssal deava who called themselves the gohands. They had been born with a fragment of their soul tethered to the stars. Each time a godhand was destroyed, I could communicate with Astral for a feeling moment it’s soul was returning to it’s mistress.
“Shame to say, the godhands deava are dreadfully annoying a far cry from Astral, but isn’t that always the case with derivative works. They speak in this grinding patois that I simply cannot stand! So whenever I want to commune through them, I have to send a student.”

Gilda tripped on the curled edges of a rug and fell flat on her stomach. Too weak to stand, she crawled like she had on the rocks. Gargoyles and monsters of stone and painted glass were audience to her humiliation.

“Fair is fair, right? Astral has her godhands, and I have my students.” Black Bell shrugged. “I’m sure it pisses her off, but honestly who else is she going to talk to. The other Stars? They hate her non-corporeal guts! The Celestiaan? Girl, if this latest Celestia communed with a windigo, it’d be twice as impressive as anything she’s ever done.”

GIlda got the impression her step-mother was trying to be funny, but all she could feel was pain and emptiness. Flickers of aggression grew at the edge of her consciousness, and wordlessly, the godhand, her hand, compelled her to keep advancing. 

“Never mind that stuff though, let’s talk about how great it is that you succeed. What messages do you have for me? Oh!” Black Bell smacked her forehead. “I just said to talk about you. Not like we can’t talk about all that stuff at a better time, right? I bet your head is teeming with thoughts. Later, tomorrow maybe, we can sit down and decipher it. Be a dear and try not to forget anything. Astral’s voice is a big step up from the little whispers you’re used to.”

Astral’s voice? GIlda had only heard, and lamentably continued to hear, the godhand. It dawned on her that the experience on the rocks was not as Black Bell had planned for her. With gut-crushing dread, she began to fear that she had done something punishable, to veer from expectation.
‘Hey, don’t look at me. I followed the script perfectly.’


“I knew from the instant your father and you arrived on Gottrakt that you would be perfect. Unadeptness to magic is good, complete deafness is ideal. Otherwise, you wouldn’t make your wish at the rock, and attract the godhand’s attention. Astral simply loves irony. Something about teasing a mortal and crushing their dreams turns her on. Oh, naughty girl!” Black Bell’s cheeks burned red when she remembered who her audience was. “He he… Forget all that I just said.” She cleared her throat.
“I’m sure you remember your ancestor, Gharl the Martin, the Eagle of Boseburg, the warrior-king who crushed Prance at the height of its power. I’m sure it made you burn with self-loathing that you could never live up to his legacy, and would never wield magic like he did. You wondered if your magical deafness came from your mother, despite the apparent paradox that it was through her you were descended from Gharl. You wonderment was correct. That whole linage, ending with you, is tainted by the curse of magical impotence. Isn't it ironic that Gharl’s victory, which made magic more acceptable to griffins, attached a stigma to his descendants? I find it hilarious.
“Gharl was the case zero, as it were, for my vicarious communions. It didn’t work quite right unfortunately, and instead of recieving my messages he got incredible magical power. A power that didn’t carry to his children, interestingly. Ever since then, I’ve had a idle desire to try again on his progeny. Perhaps they wouldn’t muck it up like he did.. I was correct!”

Gilda’s anger was growing. Every despicable word the Star said made her unnatural urge to kill grow stronger. She closed her eyes, clenched her beak, and started crawling again. She didn’t care how much it hurt.

“In most of the world, not having the ability to channel magic is no big deal. Here, on Gottrakt, it puts you in a category below the slaves. That unspoken truth must have grinded your sanity like nothing else, huh Gilda.” Black Bell chuckled. “Especially with the rumors. All those griffins joking and jeering. The absolute worst was the one about your mother. Graff Goric can use magic, so why can’t his daughter? Well, the rumor went, her mother was an unscrupulous lady and-”

“SHUT UP!” GIlda screeched.

Black Bell was caught mid word, poised to enunciate. She closed her beak, and slowly drew herself up. Her cold eyes were infinitesimally narrowed “Gilda, my darling, do you have something to say?”

Gilda considered walking back her outburst, but the rage kept building inside her, and she refused to be abused a second time. “I do.”

Black Bell smirked. “Let’s hear it.

“Your plan…  It needs a student to beg with all their heart and soul.” Gilda struggled to keep her tone even. She felt like leaping and tearing at her step-mother. “Those that died during the communion died unvindicated. They were wretched and broken, and they carried that feeling with them on.”

“Gilda, I taught you better than to make religious allusions in serious magical discussions. Why do you care about the other students? They wouldn’t have cared about you.”

“It could have been me.”


“Oh come now. If you hadn’t executed the communion to anything less than perfection, we would not be here right now. I wouldn’t risk you.” Black Bell stomped. “A hundred percent, I wouldn’t risk your life. You and I are family, Gilda. Put my trust in you, and you succeeded.”

Gilda swallowed. “Trusted me to be a messenger girl?”

“Don’t you think you are being ungrateful?” Black Bell seemed to be getting wary of Gilda’s insolence. “You have done what none of the rest of the students on this island have. You have survived a deava. And not only a deava, but one of Astral’s sadistic godhands. You can walk among them smug in your superiority over them.”

Gila stopped crawling. She had to rest, her gasping breaths condensing in the freezing air. She dared to glance at her right foreleg.
It was plain, normal, yet infecting her with an energy that she’d never felt before. She couldn't understand it, except through primitive emotion. Its heat was soaking into her body, putting fire to her feelings. She looked back to the Star at the end of the hall.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Are you upset with me? You know I couldn’t tell you the truth behind the test. Your expectations would have changed. You wouldn’t have had pure and earnest feelings. Instead they would be paltry, and paltriness is no way to lure in a gohand. Are you feel disappointed that you didn’t get your magic?”



Suddenly, Gilda understood. She erupted into giggles. “He he he he he!”

Black Bell frowned. “Gilda, kiddo, what’s so funny. One second you’re crying and now you’re laughing.”

“N- n- nothing! I- It’s just-” Gilda’s attempt to explain devolved into more laughter. “Heee ha ha ha!”

“You know I hate secrets.”

“He he he…” GIlda’s giggling slowly dwindled. “I get it now. I get the joke.”

Black Bell sighed. “Joke? I don’t remember making a joke.”

“Nah, you didn’t. It was the godhand. It said something about Astral surpassing the Star’s milenium of work in mere moments. I didn’t get it at first. But now…” Gilda rolled into a sitting position and, very deliberately, pushed herself up with her right leg. Putting weight on the reformed limb made it tingle. ”That god you keep talking about, Anima Astral Nacre, sure does love irony. She sure does love teasing fools and dashing their dreams. She just can’t get enough of it.”

“Gilda, I should think you know very well who Astral is. Isn’t it her message that compelled you here?” Black Bell was getting wary. “You did see the godhand, that much I can tell. And yet…”

“Sorry mum. I take after my grand-pappy Gharl.” Gilda sneered. That idea that had seemed so impossible before, of assaulting and destroying the Star, wastantilizingly close. So close it hurt. “To us, the messenger mattered more than the message. The death of the godhand was not trite and insignificant, like it was to you. We were kindred spirits. We sacrificed together.”

Black Bell ran her eyes over her step-daughter. “Another failure…” She titled her head back and stared up to the ceiling. “Ahh. Astral must not be very happy with me right now.”

“HEY! You’re conversation isn’t with Astral right now, it’s with me! ME! She did more for me in five minutes than you did my entire life.” Gilda laughed darkly. “I don’t know why, but I was chosen. I was chosen, Black Bell, and you couldn't change that! Doesn’t that make you mad?”

“No. What makes me mad is that I could have changed that. I should have been smarter, and realized that there were more similarities than blood between you and Gharl.” Black Bell ran a talon over her face, ceremonially wiping away the regret and indecision. Her expression hardened into a stoic mark, with only her raging eyes to betray her true feelings. “I should have stopped you from eating ponies.”



~~~~


“Aaahh!” GIlda jumped up. In her attempt to stand she tangled herself up in the bed sheet and fell flat on her face. Still thrashing, she knocked her head into the base of her cabinet. The burst of pain stopped her movement, letting her realize her surroundings.

“Calm down, or you’ll give yourself another injury.” Mare untangled Gilda’s legs from the now shredded bedsheet and propped her into a sitting position. “Gilda, hey, are you hearing me? Give me a sign here!”

“Wuh…” Gilda swallowed her mouthful of spit and tried to decipher the tangle of memories in her mind. Her dream was still fresh, and filling her with phantom sensations of hatred and anger. “Mare? Where…  How did I get here?”

“You dove off the crow’s nest but fell a little bit short.”

“I did?” Gilda took a deep breath. Her head was clouded with thoughts and emotions that she could not be sure belonged to her or her dream. The lack of the constant drum of pelting rain or the intermittent booms of distant lightning was making her agitated. Nothing felt as it should have been. “S- Sorry. I had a bad dream. But it was just a dream. Just a dream.”

Mare arched a brow. “Then again, maybe it’s too late for you.”

“I’m fine. Just fine. Really I am.” Gilda insisted. She gingerly flexed her right claw, making sure it wouldn’t start whispering maddening abuses. “I was exerting myself under direct sun too long, that’s all.”

“Your brain is fried if you think I’m going to accept that answer.” Mare snorted. “And what could you have possibly been doing? All you do is stand around and gab.”

Gilda knew Mare would recognize the name of the Seapony’s Pride as soon as she saw it. The paranoid mare had pulled records on everypony on this ship on the way to Stirrup, and had been especially scrutinized for Rainbow Dash and Gilda.
Mare would have to get her answers right away.

“Daring Do has gotten us wrapped up in some very dubious business. Umm, squirly business, even. It’s difficult to explain but if I had to summarize I’d basically say…” Gilda tapped her chin. “Alicorns.”

“Mother bucker.” Mare swore under her breath. “It’s true.”

“What’s true.”

“Mis Dash and your coltfriend said much the same thing after I grilled them.”

“Coltfriend? You mean Bowline Tight?” Gilda drew in a panicked breath. “No no, he’s just-”

“An inexplicably massive shapeshifter. Yes, ‘Lord’ Zero showed me. So I don’t need the lies.” Mare interrupted. “Exactly the opposite, actually. I want to know everything you have to say on the subject.”

“Damn it.”

“What? Damn it what?” Mare frowned.

“I must have given Dash a heart attack. Gods, she had to have thought I was dying or something.” Gilda sighed. In a certain way, it wasn’t far from the truth. The terrors of her dream kept welling up, an Gilda felt as though something was climbing up her throat. Sudden death by brain hemorrhage wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. “No offence Mare, but they were just placating you with whatever they told you, trying to get you off their back.”

Mare laughed. “On the contrary, Mister Zero seemed to indicate he usually dealt with problems like me by killing them. But, then said you vouched for me, which I found hilarious as you’d be right onboard with the killing.”

“Well…  I did vouch for you.” Gilda confirmed reluctantly. “

“Glad to hear it.” Mare trotted back to the bed and sat herself. She felt tired, an she had done very little. “You and Rainbow Dash had dragged me into a situation I can hardly understand. I need any explanation you can give me, if you would be so kind.”

“You already heard the kicker. Alicorns. Ava to be exact, or as most creatures would know them, the Fires of the Gryph.” Gilda began. “The treasure Do is after is, as I’ve been told, the trinket-y prison of an ancient god. You can understand that might draw some attention.”

“And this Zero character is…”

“Advisor basically. He came with Dash and me to make sure the sarcophagus gets to the treasure. The inquisitor in Coltcutta-”

“Whoah whoah woah. Run that by me again.” Mare groaned. “Did you say inquisitor?”

Gilda stifled a sigh, and immediately after, a moan of pain. Aura of misery radiating up from the cargo deck was starting to effect her just as bad as the phantom dream. The reply from nearby, the call of the second sarcophagus, was pounding into her head like a dusty cod of earth, making her feel hurt and dirty all over. “Mare, I said you’d get answers, and I stick by that. You deserve them. But right now I have to go up and get some fresh air.”

Mare nodded slowly. “Fair…” She stood up and opened the door. “Gilda, we’re not exactly comrades, but we have an understanding, right?”

“Yes, why?”

“Being a tough-assed bastard means you lose some opportunities to open up to ponies, as you probably know. Perhaps I’m understating it a bit here, but I’m out of my league with this supernatural shit.” Mare confided in a low, strained tone, like it was physically hurting her to admit it. “I hope you decided to inform me about this not just because of practicality, or because of some responsibility you felt towards me, but because you trust me.”

Gilda was silent for a while. “Okay.”

Mare glanced away. “Okay then. Um…  I should let you go.”

“Yes, I think you should.” Gilda agreed. She gingerly stepped around Mare and beelined for the deck.


“Shit. I thought I was getting better at this.” Mare swore to herself, pressing the bridge of her nose with the edge of a hoof. “I’m losing it. I’m losing it again. The slightest hiccup, and I start falling apart. Fuck. I need more rum.”
It took a few minutes to regain her composure and follow Gilda to the deck.



Dash was debating going down to check on Gilda when the object of her concerns flapped her way onto the aftcastle beside her. “Yo.”

Dash scowled. “Stuff your yo, you big dumb idiot! What were you thinking, scaring me like that?”

Gilda threw up her claws defensively. “Hey, I get that-”

“Are you stupid? Why are you out of bed?! You were bleeding out of your head half an hour ago!” Dash thumped Gilda in the side lightly. “We’re stressed enough already.”

“Well, princess, it wasn’t your smiling mug I awoke to, now was it.” Gilda shot. “I get you’re scared and concerned, but everything’s fine. Will you accept an apology? Not like I did anything wrong, though.”

A look of mortification slowly overtook Dash, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hide tears. “I know. Apology not accepted. You did nothing wrong.”

GIlda felt a pang of regret. “Buck up D. I promise everything’s just fine with me.” 



“You are making a lot of promises you might not be able to keep.” The disguised Zero approached them. “Gilda, what happened up there?”

“A dream decided to drag me back. I was surprised by seeing the Seapony’s Pride and wasn’t able to protect myself against it. It’s fine.”

Zero did not look pleased by that answer. “You need to be more vigilant, especially now. We need your full power and attention in the case that bringing the sarcophagi together triggers something bad.”

“Bad.” Gilda parroted. “Could you be more descriptive than ‘bad’?”

Zero stared at her in silence for a time. “Yes. It’s my belief, though Mis ash disagrees, that this ship was moved through a phantom time.”

Gilda stared at him from almost a minute. “We will talk about this later.”

“G, you know what he’s talking about?” Dash hissed.

“It’s nothing to get worked up over. Zero was just messing with you, probably.” Gilda cleared her throat. “Okay. Okay. Dash, you to check that derelict?”

Dash sighed. “I am, I guess. I just have a bad feeling about this. Lemmie go talk to Do real quick and I’ll join you over there.”


“Alright.” Gilda let her pass, before turning back to Zero. “When we talking this morning, I was standing on your right, right? I only ever touched you with my left claw.”

Zero scowled in confusion, but after a few seconds replied. “That’s correct.”

“And back in Coltcutta too, I never touched you with my right claw, right?”

“No. except when you offered me my sacrifice blade back.” Zero agreed.

“Dosen’t count. You grabbed it with your magic. No contact.” Gilda clacked her beak as she sorted through her thoughts.  “ Let’s keep it that way. When you can, stay on my left.”

“Lady Gilda, you have me profoundly curious for what this is about.” Zero laughed in mild exasperation.


“Taking precautions. If I touched you with this right leg of mine, it could kill you.” Gilda said. Before Zero could demand an answer she launched herself into the air and began the short glide to the Seapony’s Pride.

“Keeping so many secrets from me already. Silly girl! She is going to get us killed.” Zero trotted in place in agitation. There was more happening in her dreams than she was letting on, from moment to moment, Gilda’s disposition and magical awareness was changing. Gilda was letting her relieved traumas effect her more than she was letting on.

“That’s not the only answer, because I happen to know there is a creature who loves turbulent dreams.” Zero knew there was a blighted dreamer near, a malignant black speck in the dreamscape that reached out to all nearby.
After all, the corpse in the second sarcophagus was that of Vlelveran, the first nightmare.


~~~~~


The beat of the rain on the roof far overhead stopped. The  whistle of the wind around the spired corners of the hall stopped. The echoes of rattling glass that roared airily from every corner ended. Black Bell’s rant ended.

GIlda opened her eyes. The waver and flicker of every one of the two thousand candles tacked around the hall was frozen. The rain outside was suspended, so that anyone that cared to could have pluck individual raindrops out of the torrent. A lance of cloud lightning was just beginning to branch, it’s luminescence flashing over acres of the black cloud above. 

It was as someone had put a stop on the progress of time.


“That’s exactly what’s happening.” Black Bell laughed in disbelief, breaking the abject silence. “It’s happened again. Can you believe it?” Her anger dissolved into wonder. “Oh, this is amazing! It’s been so long I thought I would never see this again. Amazing! Amazing!”

“What’s happening?!” Gilda demanded, pushing back the fear of the unknown with anger.

“Amazing. Look at how the rules of physics and thermodynamics break under the strain of sustaining the spell!” Black Bell skipped down the hall with child-like wonderment, brushing her talon over every frozen flame. She could swat and flick it, moulding it like clay. “Gilda, this is the greatest power of Light, the aspect of Destiny. We walk in the phantom time, when destiny is distracted.”

“You’d better stop it then!” Gilda barked, cheeks turning red. Without heat dissipation through the frozen air, her skin began to burn under her own body heat. 


“Talk about coincidences! Talk about infinitesimally unlikely coincidences! Gilda, somewhere in the world, right now, someone has knocked this planet into another dimension. Look closely at the floor or the table.” Black Bell was in full student mode, running around to take everything in. “See how every atom has been shifted infinitesimally. A spell of inconceivable complexity of power has nudged the earth, sky, magic, an all energies a few nanometers out of it’s alignment. Destiny moves us from A to B, and organizes everything in between. When she can no longer touch us, in the phantom place between existences, the movement stops and we no longer move towards our destinies. Time stops.”

Gilda felt overawed again, and then she felt insulted. Someone was trying to steal the wind from her sail. She was on the verge of asserting herself, of declaring her place in the world, and now that world had been stopped.

“I know what you’re wondering. ‘Why aren’t you and I frozen?’ We would be. But you and I have a guide that does not rely on Destiny. We can pass from A to B here. I made my guide, my tether to time, a thousand years ago when I learned about the phantom time from Astral.” Black Bell tapped the beak of her roc skull helmet. “If we went outside and walked up to anyone else on this island, they would be frozen, utterly helpless. Naturally, if there was an enemy who learned about phantom time, I would need protection against them. I would so eagerly like to know who has stopped the world right now! Was it Celestia? Did that dopey fool finally work up the courage to examine her ancestor’s forbidden grimoires?”

She came closer and closer to Gilda, not at all paying attention as she went from candle to candle, toying with the light.  Realizing that she would overheat if she didn’t move, Gilda slowly advanced on her unaware step-mother. She could feel the air move to fill empty space, almost viscous, holding her back.

“And the elephant in the room: Why are you moving, GIlda? What exactly happened during your communion?”


“I honestly don’t know. I guess I’m just full of surprises.” Gilda shrugged.
Black Bell was not a large griffin, almost a head shorter than her step-daughter. When Gilda charged her at full speed, she hardly had time to react before she was caught in the chest by a headbut.
“Guuh!” Black Bell went flying. She bouncing and rolled across the ground, but the moment her roc skull helmet separated from her head, she froze. The helmet continued to roll and clatter another dozen hooves from its owner.

“Amazing!” GIlda mocked in a nasal reproduction of Black Bell’s voice. She cocked her head from side to side, strutting over to her incapacitated step-mother. “Amazing! Amazing!”
She look in the look of shock etched on Black Bell’s face. “Mum, it’s really unfortunate for you that you decided to tell the truth.”

She could do what the godhand had said. She could kill Black Bell. It was not so impossible after all.
Gilda stared into the frozen eyes, noting the subtle distortion that betrayed the ‘nudge’. How did it feel to be pushed out of your own dimension, out of the flow of destiny and causality that created time.

“Time that should be there, but isn’t. Phantom time. That’s dangerous. Really dangerous.” Gilda took a step back. She imagined she was the only person in the world unaffected. The entire world was literally waiting for her. There was only one creature who could challenge her over the matter.

“Well, I don’t know what to say. You were my mother, kinda, but right now I think it’s going to be better for me if you stopped living.” Gilda said roughly. The urge to kill surged from the same place as her hunger: She had to rend, bleed, dominate viscerally. “I’m going to make a new life for myself. For however long this lasts, I’ll take and kill at my leasure! The dweebs of this world can’t stop me now.”

She confidently stepped over Black Bell and grabbed her throat with a claw. Unthinkingly she had chosen her right claw, and immediately upon contact Black Bell unfroze, with momentum preserved. She collided with Gilda’s legs and dragged her down. They tumbled another five meters before coming to a halt.

“Shit!” Gilda tried and failed to scramble away. Black Bell’s neck had impaled itself on her talons. The graffina’s wheezing breaths were bubbling blood out of the holes.

“Gothha.” Black Bell gargled. Unable to speak, she settled for a smile. She raised a claw to Gilda’s face and traced gingerly down her right side to her claw, jammed into her own the downy neck. “M’mathing.” 

“Oh SHIT!” Gilda put her left claw on Black Bell’s face and held her down while she yanked with all her might. Her right claw came loose of Black Bell’s neck in a spray of blood that froze in mid air, as did Black Bell, moments after. “Shit shit shit!  She knows! She figured it out!”

‘What does it matter? She’s still trapped phantom time unless you touch her wrong.’ The grinding low squeal that was the godhand’s voice popped into her head. ‘Kill her now.’

“I- I was wrong! I can’t kill her! She’s a Star! Even if I chop her up into a hundred pieces she can come back.” Gilda combed her crest in frantic nervousness, staining it with her step-mother’s blood. “I can’t do it!”

‘Bah, back to being lame! Grow some confidence, you sniveling baby!’

“Then give me some confidence.” Gilda pleaded. “Like you did before!”

‘Come the buck on, G. I’m dead! What you’re hearing is your mad inner voice trying to integrate your dissociated leg! You almost had it! Kill Black Bell, accept the leg, and I go away forever. Capiche?’

“I’m insane. I’m insane. I can’t… I don’t…” Gilda curled up and covered her eyes.  Absolute silence reigned.



Black Bell unfroze and slumped back against the ground. She waited for the huge gash in her neck to close sufficient before rolling onto her stomach and reaching for her roc helmet. For a brief moment , she feared she was desynchronizing again, but finally she clutched her tether.

“Whaa. That was uncomfortable. Getting stabbed always is. That’s why I never consummate my marriages.” Black Bell tested healing windpipe. “You almost had me there. Had me there a hundred percent. Except that you pinched yourself on my larynx, and a droplet of your blood dribbled ever so slowly down to my heart. Hat’s off to you, Gilda. I’m seriously impressed. Gharl came nowhere as close as you just did.” She put the roc skull on.  “Astral Nacre has a lot to answer for. Turning my daughter into an assassin isn’t cool”

Gilda declined to answer, or do anything other than stay curled up with her claws over her eyes..

“If you need time to decompress, that’s cool by me.” Black Bell went around the room picking the flecks of her flesh out of the air. “I’m going to go take a nap and wait out this phantom time. I trust you not to try anything again.”  She reached up and snapped half the cheekbone off her roc skull, and jammed it into her stomach. She patted it to make sure it would stay in place, as the skin healed back over. “But just in case, I’ll make it a bit more difficult to desynchronize me.”
She cantered down the hall to the big doors and cracked one open. “We will be talking about this tomorrow. Don’t think you’ll get off easy. I’m not so impressed I’ll forget discipline. Trying to murder me is against the School’s code of conduct.” She stepped into the darkness. “Damn. Frozen rain is just as cold!” She griped, before teleporting away.


Gilda wasn’t listening.
Gilda was too riveted by the other throne room, a golden throne room thousands of miles away that flashed in her vision. She saw a golden princess, pure white with a radiant mane, and golden student, petulant yellow with a burning red mane, and dozens of inconsequential lookers frozen around the golden duo. The student was triumphant. She had been the one to cast the phantom time, and thus she surpassed her mentor. The princess was defeated, humiliated, unable to stop the red-haired unicorn for siphoning off her magic.
The student gave her princess a last bow, and cast another spell. She disappeared from existence, and the world resynchronized. Time resumed. The crowd came to life, and after a moment of shock ran to the aid of their princess.

The vision faded, and Gilda was left staring at the palm of her claw. The creases had been soaked with blood, making a pattern which had not been there before: A thickly lidded eye whose long lashes traced up her talons. The khamsa blinked at her, blinked again, then closed itself. The pattern began to well up fresh blood, washing itself away.

The world around her, like in the vision, had resumed its Destiny. Rain pattered, thunder clapped, and the frozen sprays of blood fell back to earth in a shower.
Unlike the vision, the student had lost. Gilda elected to stay curled up on the floor, until self-pitying tears carried her to a terrible sleep.