The sun was already high in the sky when Hope sleepily lifted her head off of the pillow. She immediately jumped up. She had not meant to sleep so late. But it had been so long since Hope had slept in an actual bed, in actual warmth, actually comfortable. The doleful chills of the Frozen North had been so incredibly conducive to sleep deprivation that Hope had begun to believe she had a natural talent for it. Apparently, her body disagreed.
Hope had wanted to be up at the crack of dawn so that she could get her things together and slip out of town without any of the fanfare she was sure would accompany her if the townsfolk knew it.
For all she knew, they would try to make her stay. And she could not afford that, not when Sombra was still lost out there somewhere.
But it was too late for that now. Hope threw on her cloak and saddlebags. She would just have to push on and endure whatever adulation the good people of Whinnysburg threw at her.
Admittedly, there were more unpleasant tasks….
But as Hope trotted down the stairs and into the great common room on the ground floor of the inn, she was not met with adulation. True, there were not many ponies there, but the ones who were barely seemed to acknowledge Hope. Oh, they looked, but then they quickly cast their gaze elsewhere, in that studied sort of fashion one does when one is trying to deliberately avoid making eye-contact with another.
It was strange, Hope thought. But it did not much concern her. She turned to the innkeeper and told him that she was done with the room upstairs. He merely grunted and went back to cleaning some plates and tankards.
It was all very strange. Almost as though there was something wrong. Hope wondered whether she had done something to offend the patrons of this inn. But what could she have done? She was a stranger in these parts and had not had the time or the opportunity to offend.
So, Hope shrugged it off and trotted toward the door. A quick bit of magic opened it and she passed into the open day.
Well, here I go again, Hope mused. As she steadied herself for another venture into the icy wilderness, she took a deep breath of the noontide air. It would, Hope assumed, invigorate her for the long and difficult journey to come.
She started coughing immediately, and did not stop. Hope had to cover her nose with her cloak before she could feel like she was breathing normally again. There was a rank, putrid odor in the air, stronger and more disgusting than anything Hope had smelled before. She had to do a quick healing spell on herself just to keep from becoming sick to her stomach.
Hope resolved to discover the cause of this sudden miasma. With cloak still wrapped around muzzle, she strode slowly into the street beyond the courtyard of the inn. It was not long before she met a sight she would wish she had never seen. Large wagons were passing by. On each of them were piles and piles of what looked like…. Bodies?
Bodies, ghastly and wan. Hope let out a gasp as she realized that she recognized every corpse she caught a glimpse of. They were all the ponies she had treated the day previous. And yet, every one of them was so completely covered with the boils, now dark-red, that nothing else was visible.
Tears began to cloud her eyes. She wanted to look away, more than anything. But she could not. She could not let herself. She had to find out what had happened.
There was Oriflamme, standing by the roadside and directing the procession.
“Is that the last of them?” she said. “If it is, take them all down to the cremation grounds. Then burn the hovels. You know the drill. Just like all the rest.”
Hope approached her. “What happened?” she asked.
“Plague,” responded the mayor. “Plague took them all between midnight last night and three in the morning.”
“But, but… I… I cured them!”
“Apparently not,” said the mayor.
Hope frantically shook her head. “No, no, I…. How could this happen? I used my best healing spells.”
“I really thought that it would be different this time,” said the mayor. “I thought the Princesses had finally sent us a pony that could finally save us from the plague. A pony who actually knew what she was doing, not like that lout Fallen Fortune. Guess I was wrong. That’ll teach me for having too much hope.”
“I… I don’t understand what went wrong,” Hope said, the tears now flowing like a mighty waterfall. “I did everything right! I did everything… just like I’ve always done! I’ve never lost a pony before!”
The mayor sighed. “Well, there’s always a first time for everything, isn’t there?”
Oriflamme now looked over to Hope and noticed the heavy saddlebags around her waist. “Leaving?” she asked.
Hope did not answer.
“I agree, it would be for the best,” said the mayor. “But they’re never going to let you leave.”
“The townsponies?”
“The guards outside the town.”
Hope looked down to the sun-badge still affixed to her cloak.
“Oh, that won’t help you,” said the mayor. “They may have let you in, but now that you’ve been in close proximity to the plague, they can’t let you out, even if you are a princess. It’s why Princess Celestia and Princess Luna never came back after the quarantine. Or maybe they just don’t care.”
“I’m sure they–”
“No, that might be it,” Oriflamme continued. “Maybe the Princesses haven’t done anything because they just don’t care. Them, up there, in their castle, why should they care about a little town in the middle of nowhere? If we live or die, it’s all the same to them. And you, they must have sent you as a joke. A big prank played on this town. Because, clearly, you have no idea what you’re doing. And the Princesses wouldn’t send a pony like that unless they thought it was funny.”
Hope was silent for a moment.
“The Princesses didn’t send me,” she said. “Princess Celestia didn’t want me to come. It was only after I insisted that she gave me this badge.”
Oriflamme's mouth spread into a caustic smile. “So, she really doesn’t want to do anything to save this town.”
“No, I’m sure that’s not–”
“And why did you come? Hot-shot little princess, thought you could fix everything where they couldn’t?”
“Honestly, I didn’t even know there was a plague until I got here. Celestia – I mean, Princess Celestia – didn’t tell me that. She just said I shouldn’t go to Whinnysburg.”
“They really don’t want to get involved at all, do they? Maybe they’re just afraid that the plague will get them next. I say, if only we didn’t need them to raise the sun and moon, we’d be better off without any princesses or rulers. I mean, we don’t need a pony ruling over us just because of power or who they’re descended from.”
“I thought you said that you inherited your position of mayor from your family.”
“Yes, but a mayor isn’t a ruler. Just a high-powered official with life-and-death authority over her little plot of land.”
“Oh…. How is that different?”
“It’s complicated. You’re a crystal pony, so I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
Hope decided to shrug that off. Instead, she said, “I was so busy with fighting the plague that I never thought to ask where it came from or what it is.”
“So much the worse for us, then,” Oriflamme responded. “Maybe if you had slowed down instead of gallivanting around town, those poor ponies would still be alive.”
Hope lowered her head a little. “Maybe. I don’t know. But I won’t make that mistake again. I’m asking now. What is the plague and where did it come from?”
“I… I don’t know,” Oriflamme said.
Hope’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know? But you just said–”
“Oh, I’m sure it comes from where these things normally come from. An imbalance of humors. Too much blood. Or maybe too little. One of the two, or both.”
“This air can’t be helping,” Hope observed. “Haven’t you thought about doing something?”
“Can’t burn the air,” Oriflamme responded. “Well, you can, but it never turns out well.”
“No, but you could have the pegasi clear it, or set up some windmills or something. Anything to keep it from infecting more ponies.”
“I don’t think you’re in much of a position to tell me how to do my job. Not after a failure like this.”
Hope looked at her hooves in shame. “I know. I just… I just want to help. Maybe I can’t make up for my mistake, but at least I could make sure it doesn’t happen again. Don’t you know anything about where the plague came from? When did it start? Was there anything different about that day?”
“It was some months ago. But the only big thing that happened then was we drained the swamp to have more farming land.”
Hope felt realization dawning. “Maybe there was something in the swamp–”
“Swamps don’t cause plagues,” Oriflamme said. “You’re just wasting my time, just like you’ve wasted all our time. I’ve got a mass cremation to preside over. So, if you’ll excuse me….”
Without turning around – she had not glanced at Hope once throughout the conversation – Oriflamme began to leave.
“Wait!” Hope said. “Isn’t there anything else you can tell me?”
“Yes,” the mayor called back. “Stay inside the inn today. I imagine, if you meet any of the relatives of the ponies you couldn’t cure, you’ll be in some real trouble.”
Hope felt all the spirit drop out of her. She said nothing in response. She just looked to the ground. Soon, she was alone again.
How? How could it happen? Hope thought. I failed. I failed Sombra and now I’ve failed all these ponies. Why do I keep messing up? And why do other ponies keep paying for it?
“What’s going on? And what is that horrid smell?”
Hope knew the voice. But she did not care. At this point, she did not care who she met. Even a horde of angry relatives could not make her feel worse than she already did.
“It’s all my fault,” she said quietly.
“What’s that?” asked Fallen Fortune.
“I messed up.”
“You must have. You look like somepony died.”
Hope closed her eyes to keep more tears from pouring out. “They all did. All the ponies… all the ponies I tried to cure…. They died from the plague!”
Hope was surprised by the sudden clap of hooves. Fallen Fortune let out a loud, exuberant laugh.
Hope’s eyes burst open. Through crystal tears, she glared at Fallen Fortune. “How can you be so happy? Don’t you care?”
“Of course, I do,” Fallen Fortune said. “But I can’t say it was unexpected, with them letting an amateur do magic tricks when those poor suffering innocents needed real help. If only you had let me take care of them, they would still be alive today. I guarantee it.”
Hope could not respond. She began to sob. Slowly, without really knowing it, she stepped toward the curb – or what passed for a curb in those days – and sat down. Fortune sidled up beside her, being careful to avoid touching the refuse in the gutter just below their hooves.
“There, there, it’s alright,” he said. “Nopony can blame you. You just thought you’d pull one over on the poor, superstitious populace. They are gullible, after all, and they bought it. ‘Healing powers,’ ha! What a lark!”
With that, Fortune flicked Hope’s horn.
“But it was just your bad luck that those plague victims had to die so soon. Just a few days more, and you could have cashed in and cleared out with nopony being the wiser.”
“I… I… do have… healing powers….” Hope said in-between her sobs. “I wasn’t trying to deceive anypony. I… I just wanted… to help….”
“Oh, face it, little lady,” Fortune responded, putting his foreleg around Hope. “You’re as much a charlatan as I am.”
Hope half-opened her eyes, just enough to look at Fortune. “I’m… I’m not a charlatan…. I never deceived anypony….”
“Oh, no? What about all that hullaballoo about being a princess? You’re no princess, are you?”
“I’ll be one someday,” Hope said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Not anymore,” Fortune said, his voice having become a parody of comfort. “Celestia’s never going to make you a princess. Not after a failure like this.”
Hope’s sobbing intensified. She buried her head in the folds of her cloak.
“Now, don’t be like that,” Fortune said. “It isn’t so bad. There’s still a way out of this, you know. Just leave town! I’m sure those old guards won’t be too hard to get past for a smart little schemer like you. Or, if you really can’t escape, there are other methods….”
Hope lifted her head out of her cloak. Her eyes met Fortune’s. His smile disappeared. He did not see the despair he had hoped for in her face. Instead, there was determination.
“I can’t leave,” Hope said. “I can’t run away. Not now. I can never leave these ponies to suffer. I did that once when a very special pony needed me most. I will never do it again.”
Just then, the mayor, Oriflamme came galloping by with her herd of underlings.
“What’s happening?” Hope called out.
“Another case of the plague just broke out,” said the mayor.
Hope’s horn began to glow. I'm an instant, she was gone.
Fallen Fortune, finding himself leaning on air, nearly collapsed onto his side.
Down the road, a blue flash brought the officials to a halt. Hope stood before them.
“I’m coming too,” she said.
“Do you think that’s the best idea?” Oriflamme asked.
“I know I let you down before,” Hope said. “But I did manage to turn back the plague, at least for a little while. So I’m the best hope you’ve got.”
“You’re the only Hope we’ve got,” responded the mayor.
“That’s putting it a little dramatically, but sure.”
“No, I mean, you’re the only pony in the whole town named Hope,” said Oriflamme.
“We do have a Wishful Thinking down in the fens,” said one of the petty officials, in a tone that suggested he genuinely though he was being helpful.
“It’s not really the same thing,” responded another.
“No,” Hope said. “I mean, I’ve had the most success – such as it is – of anypony in fighting the plague. You need me. And besides, I don’t intend to fail again. Now, come on! We’re wasting time!”
Oriflamme looked to the petty officials and then to Hope. She nodded.
“Very well. Follow me,” she said.
Hope did so.
A look of bemusement appeared on Fallen Fortune's face as he watched Hope and the officials disappear down the street.
“I don’t understand it,” he said as he looked down to the dirt path that passed for a street. “I chose my words so precisely. They should have destroyed her. Instead, she’s more invigorated than ever. What did I say wrong?”
As the alchemist pondered this, a carriage – Whinnysburg’s first predecessor to the taxi cab – whirred down the lane. As it rolled by, the large wheels rolled up an even larger amount of muck, completely showering Fallen Fortune.
“You menace!” he called after it. “They shouldn’t even allow those newfangled deathtraps on the road!”
Looking down to his now-brown robes, he whined, “Oh, but this cost me a fortune!”
Catching a last glimpse of the carriage, a sneer on his muzzle, Fallen Fortune shouted out, “Bah!” and then hurried home to change with what little dignity he still had left.
Would Radiant Hope fare better against this second round of plague?
Read on.