//------------------------------//
// V - A Bear-Faced Lie 
// Story: A Beginner's Guide to Heroism 
// by LoyalLiar 
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Chapter V
A Bear-Faced Lie



It was late when I woke up buried to my neck in the endless tundra that surrounded the Crystal Union, and for the first and only time in my life, I briefly regretted not having allowed myself to be hung.  On that day, I lost my last shred of sympathy for my future foals complaining to me that I woke up too early, or that breakfast wasn’t ready yet.  For reiteration, the enamel of my horn was cracked and torn in five places (one from casting with Wintershimmer, four from the screws in my horn, for those of you interested in keeping track).  In the event that there are any non-unicorns reading this, let me be entirely clear: a single crack in the enamel of a horn tends to constantly burn, all the while throbbing with the heartbeat like the sting of a hornet that happens to be on fire at the time.  Try and use magic, though, and the feeling is magnified a dozen fold—usually resulting in the loss of the spell in question, and a persistent migraine of the kind produced by a marching band the morning after an earth pony wedding.

I had five of these things.  Five.  Tartarus doesn’t scare me anymore.

Of course, the whole ‘giant spiders’ thing also helps with managing fear, but that’s a story for another sizeable tome.

When the motion of sitting up ceased its attempts to kill me, I looked around.  To my left were the mountains that barred the way to the uncivilized lands of the Yaks.  Nothing to be gained up there, even further north of the part of the world that mattered, since the Crystal Union was already a backwater compared to Equestria.  However, the mountains did tell me something useful: that I was staring to the east.

I shivered; a fashionable black mage’s coat might have been appropriate apparel within the magical wards of Union City, but it didn’t do much for somepony outside.  I briefly considered going to fetch my traveling cloak, before remembering that Queen Jade and a few thousand crystal guards stood between me and my belongings.

That recollection made the next set of decisions fairly obvious.  As long as I stayed anywhere in the Crystal Union, I was a wanted stallion.  That left only two places for a practicing mage to work his craft with any respect anywhere in the civilized world: River Rock, and Everfree City.  Both lay far to the south; much farther than I had ever traveled in my studies with Wintershimmer.

Both also were devoid of murderous crystal soldiers, so the distance really seemed like a perk.

I walked for miles that night, wearing out my legs without working down my horn, for a change.  I won’t lie to you and claim it was a pleasant experience; I was more-or-less freezing the entire time, and I had to frequently stop and wrap my hooves together inside my balled up jacket to make sure I was keeping them from freezing solid in the cold.  Still, I encountered not a single one of Jade’s soldiers, which was not terribly surprising in the dark, but also not unwelcome.

The sun was just beginning to rise when I reached the edge of the Frosted Forest, named for its evergreen trees, and their ever-white caps.  Of course, ‘ever white’ really meant three quarters of the year, since we still had something resembling a summer up in the Union (a season that I was missing rather badly in the blankets of snow).  Still, despite a poorly-chosen name, the forest was delightful in the morning.  Hibernating animals made no noise, and all the birds had migrated south for the winter, so the forest was quiet.  Peaceful.  Even beautiful.

I admit I wasn’t paying terribly much attention to the sights, though.  My mind was elsewhere, trying to figure out my next move.  Who had actually killed Wintershimmer?  I knew I’d ripped out his soul, but I could have fixed that with a simple spell.  Who had used the knife?  And why hadn’t the candlecorns turned on them, like they had on me? Whoever had done it, Wintershimmer himself didn’t seem to care.  What had he been trying to tell me when Jade conjured him?  On the surface it seemed fairly obvious: move on. Find a new mentor.  But was there something more to the message?  Who did I turn to?

I bit my lip, trying to remember the magical history lessons that I so frequently blew off from Wintershimmer; I was always more concerned with becoming a better wizard myself than hearing about some former researcher.  It was the truly ancient archmagi—the ones who won their titles in duels, and their fame in defending the Diamond Kingdoms from monsters and evil spirits, and who were archaic enough be referenced in plural as ‘archmagi’—who really interested me. Unfortunately, they had all kicked the bucket long ago, and now some less-than-memorable mages had taken their places.

I scratched my chin as I tried to remember.  There were… eight archmage seats?  Or were there just eight archmages, and a bunch of the seats were empty because of the Windigos and the wars with the old crystal ponies?  When I couldn’t figure that out, I tried coming up with names.  Some of them were easy: Postulate the Warrior was always fun to hear about for his battles with Queen Jade’s predecessor, Warlord Halite.  And Grindstone the Short and Fennel the Suffixless were always good for a laugh on account of their terrible epithets.  (I’d been told Grindstone’s was intended to refer to his temper. That his actual height-impairment was an unfortunate coincidence only made me laugh harder as a foal.)

But I didn’t want to learn from any of those ponies anyway; they were second-rate archmages; the sort of unicorns that Wintershimmer loved to use as examples of the inexorable progress of the Diamond Kingdoms—that is, the unicorn nation that preceded Equestria—toward ‘barbarism and ruin’.  No, on reflection, there were only two other archmages I knew of worthy of sharing that title with Wintershimmer: Star Swirl the Bearded, and his former apprentice, Clover the Cruel.

Just as Wintershimmer held the title ‘Archmage of the Crystal Union’, Star Swirl still held the formal title over River Rock, the old capital of the Diamond Kingdoms, now frozen in eternal winter—supposing the hundred year old stallion hadn’t died of old-age or disease in the seventeen years since he and Wintershimmer last spoke.  If he was still alive, Clover might be holding the title of Archmage over Everfree City, the Equestrian capital.  But if he’d died, she would probably prefer the more prestigious title in River Rock.

Most ponies would probably consider those two options, and immediately leap at the location that was physically closer, dramatically more inhabited, and not trapped under the curse of an ancient ice spirit.  My mind approached the problem a different way: both cities were still inhabited, and thus it stood to reason that both required an archmage to protect the citizens. Given the choice between the two, I was more likely to find a better mage (and thus, a better mentor) in River Rock.  That meant heading east as well as south, and I adjusted my heading accordingly.

After another hour of walking, and a sparse but pleasant breakfast of raspberries and loose foliage eaten right off the tree (only slightly preferable to death by starvation), I found myself looking down at the massive chasm known as Grievous Gorge.  It cut northwest-southeast, eventually joining the river valley between Mount Peridot and Mount Garnet that marked the border between the Crystal Union and Equestria.  I could see the mountain peaks in question ahead… at least three days’ hike away.  I might have sat there, thinking about what to eat and how to stay warm, had my ears not perked up at the sound of an unexpected but familiar noise.

It rang through the quiet forest, humming like the rattling of crystal on crystal that happened fairly often during magical experiments.  Or, you know, everywhere in a city literally constructed out of crystals.  I turned toward the source of the sound and found my pet rock floating forward, a leather-bound spellbook pinned tightly between its luminescent gilded halos.  Despite the fact that it was a rock and two discs, literally faceless, I knew the stupid golem well enough to tell that Guardian Angel was beaming with pride.

“Oh, my hunch was right.  Thank goodness I found you, master.  I searched all through the palace, but the guards merely laughed at me when I inquired as to your whereabouts and refused to explain.”

“Yeah, I’m not exactly the most popular pony in the Union right now, Angel.”  I took Wintershimmer’s spellbook gingerly from the golem’s grip.  The belt attached to its seasoned carrying satchel fit nicely over my jacket, though it took some work to get the belt cinched and tightened without using my magic.

It’s halos now freed, Angel spun in a circle—its equivalent of a pony shaking their head.  “Oh, I quite disagree, Master.  I dare say you’ve never been more popular in your life.  Positively everypony is talking about you, and near to everypony is looking for you.  Why, if it wasn’t for Queen Jade advising me that you teleported out of the city, I might never have—”

“Wait!”  I held up a hoof to stop the golem’s blathering and scanned the forest.  There was nopony in sight for the moment, though that did little to quell my concern.  “Queen Jade told you to look for me here?”

“Well, not here precisely, sir.  But outside the city.  Once I knew where I was searching, I was able to pick up on your magical trail without too much trouble.  That is, after all, how you taught me to answer summons.”

I think I growled at him; not a metaphorical growl, but like an angry dog.  “I know, you stupid rock!  I put you together!  And, go figure, that means you’ve led Jade to me.”

As if on cue—and you have no idea how much I loathe that phrase—the sound of metal scraping against wood caught my attention off to my right side.  When I turned in that direction, I saw her.  Jade, carrying her sword in green magic, clad in full armor, glaring at me not with hatred, but determination.  A cat’s glare, staring at a mouse.

You wouldn’t think somepony that big and that armored could be that quiet. She was only a few strides away.

“...Your Majesty.”

Then I started running; specifically, I aimed myself inland, away from the cliff.

Trees whooshed past my ears: real, bulky trees; not the kind that whiz when you run through them, like those sticks down in southern Equestria.  I ducked between them, deliberately choosing a zig-zagging lightning bolt route.  Every time I felt one of Jade’s spells make the hair of my mane stand up, only a few inches from a killing blow, I knew I’d made the right decision in that crazy path, slipping on snowy ground and sliding around the trunks of the broad trees that shattered in splinters under the force of Jade’s attacks.

“Sir,” Angel called to me, keeping up with ease due to his ability to fly.  “I understand if this is—”

“Get out of here, you stupid rock!” I shouted between pants.

Glancing back, I saw the golem fly away without a reply.  I barely registered the departure, though. Jade was gaining on me; alicorn legs will do that.  I distinctly remember being grateful to whatever warrior had cost her a wing years ago; it was the only reason I was still alive in that moment, even if I only had a few seconds left to spare before I’d be in reach of her much more accurate sword.

In what would later come to be called ‘true young Coil fashion’, I braced against a tree and pivoted into a sharp turn to my right, straight toward Grievous Gorge.

As you might have guessed, ‘true young Coil fashion’ was a euphemism for ‘stupidity, excused by occasional magical brilliance.’

As you imagine my heart rising into my throat and the feeling of vertigo ripping through my ears yet again, let’s take a moment of calm to pause and consider an important phenomenon of magical physics: namely, gravity.

The teleportation you’re probably familiar with… isn’t.  Real teleportation is a cantrip—what we consider to be a fundamental spell, not made up of any lower-level logical units of magic, just like the seance spell I’ve described.  All it does is move something, in its exact state, from one place to another.

If there’s something in the place you’re going to, the spell doesn’t care.  Your blood vessels and organs and any tiny holes in your anatomy conveniently fill up with whatever you’ve teleported into, and the rest of you gets shunted apart in various directions to make room.  In short, you just die, with the promise of a closed casket funeral… supposing enough of you is left solid that you do not require the use of an urn instead..

The teleportation most ponies use is a compound spell, made up of a few cantrips put together.  It works by checking to make sure the target location is safe—and there are fun variations that check for things like whether or not the target area is on fire, in addition to being occupied by something solid—before allowing you to teleport.  They also don’t use teleportation; they use another cantrip called ‘summoning’, which gets rid of things like your momentum, and most ambient magical auras around you.  It’s a lot harder to cast and takes a lot more mana, but when that spell was developed, a lot less apprentice wizards wound up effectively taxidermized, with their heads sticking out of their mentors’ walls.

In case you’re about to throw up, that was a joke.  I promise.

There’d be nothing holding the head to the wall, so it would just fall off immediately.

If you are brave enough—and I do not recommend trying this for fun under any circumstance—it is possible to rotate oneself while teleporting.  The interesting quality of this motion is that the momentum you build up while falling, such as the momentum of a young mage falling off a cliff into a gorge hundreds of strides deep for example, can be reoriented so that you’re actually ‘falling’ up.  Gravity is forced to slow you down, and then start you back downwards again.

Of course, if you point yourself straight up, you’ll still die from the fall; it will just happen later, after you’ve flown upward, turned around, and fallen back down.  However, if you’re clever, you can orient yourself upward at an angle, and turn all of that falling momentum into speed going in a useful direction, like heading down a canyon just over the surface of…

And it was in that moment of falling that I realized the probably-fatal flaw in my plan.  Namely, that the water at the bottom was the delightful combination of rapids over sharp rocks, icy from the chill of February in the frozen north of the Crystal Union, and leading directly to a waterfall.

Fortunately, though already midway through a deadly fall, and also midway through the immense physical agony of casting a true teleportation spell that would drain me of my only partially restored mana, and knock me unconscious yet again, I realized my mistake.  Even more fortunately, perhaps a result of the adrenaline pushing back some of the pain my my horn, I remembered a very interesting compound spell I'd developed in my youth, when walking on the ceiling seemed funny instead of the source of yet another headache.

By adding just a bit of ‘evocative reapplication’ (the act of transmuting energy, instead of matter), my spell not only hurled me downstream, but also reoriented gravity to ensure that I would eventually ‘fall’ onto shore. With gravity pointing down at an angle for me, towards the southern bank of the river and the matching canyon wall, my soon-to-be unconscious form would stand a much better chance of making it to dry land alive.

That is to say, I casually redefined a universal constant for the convenience of not getting quite as wet.  Remember that next time you admire a smug roguish type over a wizard: they might break the laws of personal property, but it takes a genius like me to bend the law of gravity.





Before we continue, I should promise you that this particular series of events was a blemish in an otherwise excellent record of not draining myself to unconsciousness as a result of my magical condition.  If the impression that you get from my story thus far is that I ran from all my conflicts by hurling myself blindly into the distance, I’m hoping that you will continue reading if only to dispel that notion.  I promise, I didn’t live a life worth writing about by warping from one end of the known world to the other, knocking myself unconscious as I went.

The next time I came to, I found myself in a cave next to a crackling fire.  The realization of waking up relatively comfortable kept me from remembering events that, for you, occurred mere paragraphs ago.  After shaking off the last vestiges of slumber, I sat bolt-upright in the realization of what had happened.  The act rattled no chains, resulted in no crystal guards pointing spears at me, and apart from a brief moment of vertigo at my sudden shift in equilibrium, passed painlessly.  That was very good.  Before even looking around, my mind raced through a few mental checks.

Firstly, I probably wasn’t dead.  This cave certainly didn’t look like the Summer Lands, and I at least quietly hoped that if I had died, the Sisters would recognize that I hadn’t really murdered Wintershimmer in cold blood, and would reward me for a life of “heroism” and ambition—that is to say, I was expecting the cave not to be some dreary corner of Tartarus.

I also wasn’t falling sideways; gravity was affecting the pile of branches and pine needles in the fire the same direction it was affecting me.  That meant my spell had worn off on its own, so at least eight hours had passed; a previous run-in with Iconoclast and a few other corrupt guardsponies had proven that duration, much to their fury and my amusement.

“You awake!”  The voice startled me, and I jumped a good half-stride into the air.  The acrobatic feat nearly set my leg on fire, but when my motion settled, I finally set eyes on my rescuer.

He was a foal.  An earth pony foal, with a brown coat, a darker brown mane, and huge black dots for eyes that reminded me of a puppy.  When I got past my surprise at his miniscule size and age, I noted that I could clearly see his ribs.

“Hey… um… little guy?”

“Am,” he stated, before roaring at me.

I’m not making that up.  That was his response.  Naturally, I was slightly confused.  “Uh… do you speak Equiish?”

“Am,” he said again, and again he roared at me.

I swallowed.  “Ooookay.  Um… A ty, um, goovorish’... po draconski?”  I knew my draconic was miserable at best, but if he spoke the language he’d get the picture.  It was my best guess for a language heavy on roaring noises.

The colt slapped his face with a hoof.  Thanks, kid.  “Am,” he stated again, following it up with another roar.  As he did so, he held a hoof to his chest.  Then, gesturing in my direction, he said “You?”

“Oh!”  I realized what he was saying, and then shook my head as I tried to wrap my head around the absurdity of what he meant.  “Your name is… Groooaaagah?”

He shook his head, and then roared again.  Only on that fourth noise did it occur to me that a tiny colt should not have been able to make such a noise.  It didn’t sound like ‘a little colt roaring’.  It sounded like a bear.

“Um… Gurrraaarrrguh?”  He slapped his face with his hoof again.  “Look, I’m trying.  I don’t speak roar.”

He roared again.

“Real helpful, Graargh.”  I shrugged.  “Well, I’m Mortal Coil.  Just call me Coil.”

“Yes, Coil,” the colt said, before pointing with a hoof toward the exit to the cave.  “You bad swim. Catch on rocks with fish.”

I snorted in laughter.  “Well, I was kind of unconscious at the time.”

“I good fish,” he answered, thumping his chest proudly.

For what seemed like the dozenth time in my spare few minutes of being awake, I shook my head.  “You… do you mean ‘swim’? You're a good swimmer?”

Graaaagh (or whatever) shook his head.  “No.  Not swim.  It cold.  Catch sick if swim.  I fish.”

I winced. “You eat meat, Graargh?”  I decided I liked that name; it didn’t seem to piss him off, and in a vague sense, it was loosely pronounceable.

Graargh nodded proudly.  “Good fish.  I feed you many.”

My stomach promptly offered a performance of the Crystal Flugelwaltz.  Ponies weren’t supposed to eat meat.  It was disgusting.  It was unnatural.  Only the Cirran pegasi ate meat, and growing up as a crystal foal, I knew enough stories about Hurricane the Butcher to know that pony meat wasn’t exactly off the list for them either.  I didn’t want to be like that.  I was supposed to be a hero, not some… monster.

Having spectacularly failed to vomit, I decided to tactfully change the subject.  “Where are your parents, Graargh?”

Naturally, he responded by bursting into tears.

I hate kids.  And, as demonstrated, the feeling was generally mutual.  “Look, uh, Graargh… I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.  I just—”

“Gone!” he wailed.  “They gone!  Left behind!  I was bad.  Bad bear!”

I swallowed hard.  Had his parents been eaten by a bear?  “Um… Graargh, uh… it’ll…”  I stretched out a hoof to comfort him, and then hesitated.  Was that the right move, hugging some colt I didn’t even know?  After waiting for a moment, I wrapped a leg over his shoulders and held him tight.  “Look, um, Graargh… it’ll be okay.”  To my amazement, it actually worked… sort of.  He was still crying, but after a few seconds held against my bare pale blue coat—and only then did I realize he’d removed my jacket—he stopped wailing.  Tears still poured from his eyes, though, and he looked up at me with far more similarity to a puppy than my previous metaphor might have led you to believe.  With nothing better to do, I continued talking to him.  “I’m sure they’re still alive somewhere.”

He rubbed his tears on my coat, nuzzling my side in the process.  When his face was relatively less wet, he spoke up with a wavering tone.  “Yes.  I know.  They not hurt.  Left me behind.  Bad… bad bear.”

“They ran away from a bear and left you behind?”  I decided I didn’t like his parents much.

Despite his distraught state, he looked at me with a sort of pitying expression, like I was the one in need of sympathy.  “No.  You not think right. Like fish.”  He pounded his hoof against his gaunt chest yet again.  “I bear.  They bear.  But I bad.  Left behind.”

“You…” I couldn’t help it.  A little hint of a laugh slipped out of my chest.  “You think you’re a bear?”

“Am bear!” He shouted indignantly.  “Am! Am! Am!”  And then he ended the pronouncement with a roar.

“Alright.  Wow.  Play pretend if you want; it’s no fur off my back.”  Those words seemed to satisfy the little would-be bear.  He curled up next to me, put his jaw on his forelegs, and in short order, fell asleep.

In the newfound quiet of the cave, tinted only by the crackling fire leaking smoke out along the sloped ceiling, I took a moment to reflect.  It didn’t last long when I realized I was missing my coat.  Fortunately, it was right on the other side of the fire, propped up on a stick to dry, next to the case containing Wintershimmer’s personal spellbook.  I levitated both over to myself… and then realized what I was doing.

Namely, levitating two objects without excruciating pain from the cracks on my horn.  Once I’d released the spell, I slid a hoof up and down my horn.  To my joy and also confusion, the cracks I had been enduring since my attempted execution were altogether absent.  In their place, I felt my whole, though still overly spiraled horn.  But those injuries would have taken days to heal...

Had Graargh been watching me for a whole week?

Where was I?

There was only one way to find out, but I hesitated after only a single stride.  Leaving Graargh behind seemed… frankly, wrong.

A rational part of my mind reminded me that he could take care of himself: he could apparently fish, and he had more than the talents necessary to survive…

Except those gaunt ribs.  Had he been giving me his food?  If so, I needed to repay him.  And even if it was something else causing his clearly frail state, I couldn’t just leave some foal who’d lost his parents to live out his days in a cave, completely alone.

I settled on letting a discussion with the colt rest until I’d had another nap.  Whether through legitimate fatigue or the lingering effects of some head trauma I won in the process of a substantial fall into a canyon, I was beginning to feel tired again.  As I faded off, I thought about what it would take to find Graargh’s family.

It might not have been the slaying of some monster of legend, or saving a nation from the wrath of some icy spirit, but you’ve gotta start being a hero somewhere.  I was at rock-bottom, both literally and metaphorically.  With my exile from the Crystal Union, I’d left behind my reputation, my titles, all my worldly belongings that didn’t happen to be in the breast pockets of my jacket, and my mentor.  For some reason I still don’t fully fathom, the feeling was freeing.  I was ready to tell my own story, and Graargh was going to be the first pony I helped on my way to fame.

If only I had noticed that in the mere few minutes since I first spoke to him, his gaunt ribs had begun to fill out.