Chapter IX
Any Storm in Port
Chapter IX
Any Storm in Port
Graargh and I traveled onward for the better part of two weeks. Along the way, we encountered a few wandering monsters, which I dispatched rather easily. I omit those encounters in their entirety from the narrative for two reasons. Firstly, ‘I dispersed it with a single spell’ is an extremely boring description of an encounter. Secondly, it offers very little by way of a lesson on heroism. Despite what some unicorn nobles might tell you, ‘be born with a better horn’ is not a very useful piece of advice to anypony, save perhaps a master of time travel.
Partway through our journey I lost some fundamental part of my sanity. Personally, I hypothesize it disappeared in the course of learning the fine art of rock arrangement needed to achieve a state of blissful fang shui in a cave. All I knew, though, was that for the first time in my life, Wintershimmer’s brand of amorality was starting to be really tempting.
Only one other topic of our discussions while traveling is worth repeating. It began with a frankly unexpected question from Graargh. “You like Gale?”
“Hmm?” It wasn’t so much that the question caught me completely off-guard for its contents, but rather that Graargh would have even had the understanding of romance necessary to ask that question. “What makes you think that?”
“She is pretty.”
“Graargh, let me explain something. You see, Gale may be a very beautiful mare. I’m not going to deny that. More than that, she’s interesting. If nothing else, I really would love to know just where she got her money and her fancy sword. At the end of the day, though, she’s just too rough around the edges for me. I proposed traveling with her because her bag of stolen gold would have been convenient. And, if I’m being honest, because I was curious about her story.”
I deliberately neglected to mention my third reason: that in a conflict with Silhouette or Jade, a mare with a talent for stunning spells and a fancy pegasus sword would likely come in very handy.
“So you not like?”
I shrugged. “No, I suppose not. I wasn’t looking forward to hearing her say words I won’t repeat twice every sentence. Had she come with us, honestly, I would have probably let you tell her all about your rock arrangements.”
It isn’t that I wanted to do anything untoward to Graargh. I merely felt that foisting his lectures on somepony else—literally anypony else—would do just fine.
The two weeks I allude to ended at the Equestrian port city of Lübuck. Before I offer any description, let me make a simple oath here. Someday, I will find the pony who put the two dots above the ‘u’, even if I have to use time travel. And when I do, I will force that mälignänt little töäd to carry around a set of stüpid döts over his heäd all day. Then we’ll see if he thinks that guttural noise and the irritation of having to add unnecessary dots is so funny.
Apologies. It appears a pet peeve of mine escaped its leash there.
As I was describing, we reached the city of Lübuck. Though technically a part of the Equestrian government, Lübuck wasn’t really ruled by the Triumvirate of Hurricane, Platinum, and Puddinghead. Instead, its meaningful government was the Horseatic League: a bunch of merchant ponies who basically ruled by right of their wallets. They’d chosen Lübuck as the seat of their power because it was a thriving port and the booming center of a developing timber industry (in some contrast to the struggling, gem-oversaturated economy of Everfree City itself). The former fact, Lübuck’s port, was obvious because I could see the masts of countless ships in the harbor over the tops of the city’s mostly squat buildings. The latter I gathered from the deforestation surrounding the walls of the city for the better part of a mile in every direction. As we got closer to the city, we started passing traders and travellers of all breeds. A huge, burly earth pony sailor with tattoos bursting through his coat. A unicorn noble in a heavy fur jacket, twirling a walking stick that was clearly more for show than any arthritic dependency. A pegasus with an eyepatch and a missing ear, wearing no less than four swords under his wings; I had no idea what the three that wouldn’t fit in his mouth were for, but I had the sense to steer to the other side of the road from that one.
Best of all, there wasn’t a crystal in sight. For the first time in my life, I was experiencing a real city made of something other than glimmering rocks. I felt like I was in the Summer Lands. Everything was brick and mortar, wood and stone. It felt so physical, so real, so… decadently not shiny. The Crystal Union may have been many things, but most of them were unpleasant to look at directly.
The gates were guarded, but wide open, and with all the carts of vegetables and fish (please forgive any vomit left on this page, either by myself or readers who precede you) I passed by with nothing more than a nod from one of the two spear-wielding pegasi flanking the entrance.
The cobblestone streets of Lübuck were nothing short of spectacular.The ever-present smell of salt hung in the air, and wood groaned from some passing cart or towering windmill at every corner we passed. I barely paid attention to where we were going, too focused on the city at large. At least twice I bumped into ponies going about their working days. Both times, they swore at me in an incomprehensible accent that I won’t try to recreate.
Where I was struck with awe at the sheer life of the ‘big city’ (remember, at this point I’d never seen Everfree City) Graargh seemed perturbed by civilization. Again and again, Graargh tugged me to the side of the street, away from wagon wheels and ponies carrying barrels on their shoulders and all manner of travel and trade and… well, the point was, it was intoxicating.
Finally, however, Graargh’s fears won some small sympathy from me, and I decided to pull him aside into a inn. Hopefully, he could rest in a rented room while I explored the city. The first likely candidate I saw had a wooden sign depicting a frothing mug in the eye of a stylized hurricane (a symbol I ought to have considered ominous). Given that I had no real contacts to ask about which lodgings in the city were the cleanest, and being fully aware that my immaculate hygiene and attractive appearance tend to linger in the mind, I decided that my first option was probably my best. That way, if Silhouette or Jade came asking around, at least only a few ponies would remember me.
As advertised, the building was an inn. And like all good inns, that meant its bottom floor was dedicated to a public house. This one was dimly lit, musty, and smelled strongly of some horrible alcohol that didn’t at all resemble the wine Wintershimmer and I used to take with our dinner. Thus, in every respect, it was superior to the sad little excuse for a tavern I’d found in Hodunk. All around me, sailors and traders caroused, tossing carved bones and sharing rowdy stories and half-remembered songs as they went. Moving from table to table, a stallion younger than I struggled to keep everypony fed and—presumably more importantly—inebriated. I suspect that the multitude of… let’s call them “mares of negotiable affection” were doing a better job at that second bit, however.
The bartender, whom I thankfully do not remember with the clarity of his Hodunkian predecessor, was glad to accept my crystal shards in exchange for lodging and… well, something loosely resembling food.
“Two grogs,” was what he told me, slapping two mugs full of some thick substance down on the bar.
“Not eat me!” Graargh called up to him defensively.
I shuffled the little colt away before he could draw attention to us, and we found a shady corner in which to sit, undisturbed by the rest of the tavern’s occupants. Only in retrospect does the significance of my being the shady, dark-jacketed stallion in the corner of the rough-and-tumble tavern stand out to me. Don’t worry, though. Even without knowing, I still lived up to my narrative duties.
For those of you who haven’t had the joy, what I now refer to as ‘grog’ consists of kelp and some other aquatic foods served in lukewarm ale. Thank Celestia the name was applied incorrectly (real grog being watered-down rum), but nevertheless, somepony thought it was a good idea to put seawater, along with all the flotsam and jetsam that implied, into a tankard of beer. Even more disgustingly, other ponies paid for the stuff. I was hesitant to call it food, and even more hesitant to call the ale ‘drink’, but I was also hungry enough to at least try.
To put the result of that experience in words Graargh would understand, “Grog bad.” I must have turned a bit visibly green at the taste, as a nearby patron felt the need to slide over to our table. He was a weary old stallion with a bum leg and a missing eye. Even his pegasus wings seemed misaligned on his back. When he fell off the stool he was attempting to slide over from his table, he was forced to limp his way over to us. Without asking, he pulled out a seat with a mustard yellow wing and flopped down into it. As a result of this process, I estimated that roughly half the blood in his veins was alcohol.
“Not a fan of Commander’s Quarters grog, son?”
I looked at my own mug. “Honestly? I think I’d rather die.”
“More for me then.” With a flick of his wing, he snatched my grog and dropped down a half-eaten piece of stale bread in its place. I didn’t feel like I’d lost anything in the trade, but I hadn’t gained much either. “I’m assuming it’s ‘cause of the fish?”
I took a brief moment to lean under the table and… shall we say unburden my stomach? When I came back up, hitting my head on the table along the way, Graargh was laughing hard enough that he struggled to breathe.
“That’s not funny, Graargh. That’s disgusting. It’s meat.”
The old stallion joined in on the laugher at that pronouncement, banging a hoof on the table loud enough to gather the attention of others in the room. I glared at him, but the unspoken message was clearly lost in translation. “Not sure what you were expecting, son. It’s a Cirran tavern. Why do you think they called it ‘the Commander’s Quarters’?”
“How was I supposed to know the name?”
He smacked his forehead. “It was right there on the sign outside. I swear, son, not much slips by you. Anyway, yeah, this is a Cirran tavern—that means pegasi, in case you didn’t know—so they serve fish. Beef too, somedays.”
“Beef? You eat a sentient species?”
“Grow a spine. It tastes pretty good.”
Images of a stallion clad in jet black armor, glaring with fires in his eyes flashed through my imagination. “So I have to imagine if I sat down to dinner with the Butcher, I’d wind up eating another pony?”
The old stallion took a long sip of grog before cocking his head. “Is that some sort of strange god?”
I shook my head. “Hurricane the Butcher. You know, the pegasus—”
My comment died like a knock-knock joke at a funeral when I realized everypony in the tavern was staring at us.
It was almost six seconds later, in total silence, that he spoke to us with a raspy voice. “Badmouthing the Commander is a bad move in these parts, little pony.”
I held up my hooves. “I didn’t mean any harm. That’s what everypony calls, um, Commander Hurricane up in the Crystal Empire.”
“Oh, that’s no joke.” The mustard pegasus growled back. “The Commander wasn’t kind to the barbarians.” At that, he focused his single eye properly onto me, gazing deep into my soul. “See, back when us pegasi first flew in from the old lands—from Old Cirra, across the sea—the Commander made a deal with the other tribes. They’d give us food and land so we could recover from the thrashing the griffons gave us, and in exchange, we’d do two things. Work the weather, and fight the crystals.”
I felt like his eye was somehow going to snatch my heart out of my chest.
“The crystals were good at fighting unicorns; they had these black rocks that ate magic…” His mention of void crystals made me think of Silhouette, who was probably still following me somewhere. “…and they had big ol’ catapults that took down walls real fast. But against a pegasus… well, those catapults weren’t much good at hitting a flying target, and we were fast enough that we’d get behind their lines and cut down their archers before they could take more than a few of us down. And when they tried to run away, the Commander made it snow on ‘em, everywhere they went. They froze to death, got sick… we made Hell for ‘em right here on this earth.”
“Hell?” I asked.
The old-timer leaned forward across the table to recapture our attention. “Old Cirran name for Tartarus, son. Hurricane deserved to be called a butcher by the crystals. But he saved us. And not just pegasi; the unicorns and the earth ponies too. He’s a hero to us. You better watch your back, unless you’re wanting to end up as a red star.”
“Sorry, a what?” I asked, halfway worried that not to ask would cause trouble in the tavern.
The pegasus leaned forward further still. “See, years ago once, there was this pony name of Red Star. They say he was in basic with the Commander, back before he was Commander; like they knew each other for a long time. Maybe even friends, the way some tell it. But one day, after the Commander got to be the Commander, Red Star takes a swipe at the Commander’s sister, Twister. It was just an argument over politics or something small like that, but he leaves a shiner right on Twister’s eye. And when the Commander sees it, he gets Red Star in front of him. And he asks ‘Red Star, how high up off the ground is Cloudsdale, you think?’ And Red Star says to him, says ‘I dunno. I’d have to measure it, Commander’. Well, the Commander, he says ‘Gimme your best guess,’ and Red Star says some number; let’s say thirty furlongs. So the Commander, he turns to his assistant, and he says ‘Go get me thirty furlongs of rope.’ And then he takes steel binders, and he clamps ‘em on Red Star’s wings so the poor sod can’t fly. And the Commander ties a noose in all that rope, and he puts the top of it on Cloudsdale. And he tosses it on Red Star’s neck.”
I shook my head, gathering where the story was going. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that wouldn’t hurt at all, would it? You’d fall a lot, but then the force would… well, it would be over really fast.”
“Right,” the old stallion replied. “But that weren’t the point. The Commander didn’t want to torture Red Star. He wanted to make a point. See, if the rope’s too long, then the end is… messy. And of course if it’s too short, still messy. Either way, there’s a message. Everypony knows what happens now, if you hurt the Commander’s family. Everypony knows, on account of there’s a big red star on the ground under Cloudsdale.”
The stallion nodded slowly to me. “I hope you remember that story next time you’re thinking of disrespecting the Commander in Equestria. We’re not Crystals here. You and your shiny friend best remember that.” Partway through standing up, he muttered “And above all else, ya don’t ever, ever touch his family. Nihil post legionem.” At the time, I didn’t recognize the strange language, nor the famous statement it contained. Instead, I was more concerned with two facts. Firstly, I was getting very nervous at the number of ponies who’d been convinced to pay very close attention to me. Secondly, he’d mentioned a ‘shiny friend’. As I looked across those eyes, the swivel of my head stopped cold at an uncomfortably familiar glint. At a table not far from the door, drinking alone, I saw a decidedly unpleasant face staring back at me. Silhouette smiled, raised a mug to her lips, and drank. I watched for a moment, until a colt with a tray full of drinks walked between us. In the mere few seconds of distraction and cover the server offered, Silhouette had disappeared.
And, for the record, I didn’t just leave it at that; every few seconds from then on that I spent in the tavern, my eyes would jump around, searching for the crystal mare.
“Graargh, we’re leaving.”
“Not sleep here?” Graargh asked. “But you said to big pony that—”
“I know what I said. But we’ve got to get going. Keep close to me.”
I stood up, turning toward the door… and then immediately set my eyes on another familiar face.
Before I continue, let me remind you that it had been two weeks since I’d last seen head or negligible tail of Gale. I merely omit boring travel for your benefit. Thus, when the naturally crass young mare entered the bar, every single fragment of instinct and insight I’d gained in my studies as a mage screamed at me that forcing my way past her to leave the bar was going to lead to trouble—from her, from Silhouette, or from literally anypony else, I couldn’t yet tell.
For her part, Gale didn’t bother looking at the shadowy corner of the tavern (rookie mistake). Without so much as a lick of hesitation, she moved toward the bar. Her journey, however, was short-lived When a particularly inebriated sailor reached out and brushed her flank with a hoof, she bucked him square in the jaw hard enough to flip him over the bench he was resting on and onto the table of another group of patrons.
You may notice that nopony ever has a proper one-on-one duel inside a tavern. The reason for this is a natural law I discovered with the aid of a particularly alcoholic pegasus named Pathfinder well after these events. I mention him so that you understand this law's name: the Finder-Coil Law of Brawling Constancy. I’ll present it with a proof by induction.
First, our base case. As I’ve presented above, every proper brawl starts with a single blow between two parties and a matter which only involves them. Ours is between Gale and her particularly forward admirer.
However, as you may notice, those two ponies were not the only ones involved. In flipping the stallion with her buck, Gale caused his body to spill several drinks of otherwise uninvolved ponies. This may have been an accident on her part, but it was also strictly guaranteed by the fact that taverns serve as a common meeting ground. There’s always a third party. Usually a fourth, fifth, and sixth party too. In every case, because the room is likely to be crowded, and because fights are violent, a third party will always be wronged.
The third party, four musclebound porters who didn’t like having their ale and ‘grog’ spilled over their chests, stood up from their table and rolled their necks and shoulders, readying to throw blows at Gale. You may notice that this returns us to our base case.
Thus, we reach our conclusion: any private fight that takes place in a tavern will not stay private for very long. Q.E.D.
Forgive me for a brief distraction from your daily dose of banal alcoholic violence. My former editor, Pedantic Whim, informed me at the time of my presentation of a first draft, that a proof-by-induction does not belong in a narrative of high adventure. He also argued that Wintershimmer, for example, could have a private fight in a public tavern by simply ripping out his opponent’s soul in an evil, but admittedly hygienic and controlled fashion.
Consequently, this text is presented without the unnecessary and unhelpful purview of ponies who would probably know more about being a traveling hero if they:
1) bothered to remove their muzzle from a dictionary for the span of seven minutes at once,
2) possessed the charisma not to drive away potential romantic interests by criticizing their misuse of ‘the Oxfjord comma’, and
3) would listen to the authoritative figure on the subject, instead of pedantically attempting to rewrite his life story for the benefit of ‘textual standardization’.I should also mention that, at least for the foreseeable future as of the time of writing, the tome you hold in your hooves/feathers/magical grasp/talons/manipulatory limbs of choice is likely to be the sole copy currently in existence. This record contains some information that Celestia and Luna have requested I keep under careful control. I trust that if the sisters do eventually allow my narrative here to be reprinted, they’ll have the decency to edit out my chapter titling gaffe from a few chapters back… and also this paragraph. Actually, Celestia, if you’re having this transcribed, just go to town taking out whichever of my asides don’t seem to belong.
And more importantly, Luna I expect you to have the maturity not to tamper with the narrative outside of those necessary technical edits. After all, mine massively swollen ego verily depends upon this this narcissistic endeavor to cast me in a perfect light, lest I should crumble into existential dread and sob like a filly newly born unto our nation.
Back to violence. The porters lunged at Gale in a sizeable rush. Gale responded by leaping atop another nearby table and blasting the oncoming ponies with her simple stunning charm. Two crumpled, but the remaining heavyset earth ponies upended her high ground onto a small cluster of blood merchants fishmongers. And from there… chaos ensued. Ponies rose and fell, lost teeth rained like hail, and beer mixed with little stains of blood from broken noses as both liquids spilled freely, creating a foamy tide across the floor.
I was content to keep Graargh out of the brawl, more for the safety of others than his own. Further, as an aspiring archmage, at the time I believed myself above bar brawls. My militant talents lay in the field of formal unicorn dueling, a topic that I promise will be covered before this tale’s end. Untempted to join, I settled back to paranoidly sweep the room for Silhouette, and to watch Gale. For her part, the latter was brilliant. Not only in the literally ‘bright from glowing arcana’ sense, but jumping from table to table, tossing stunning spells every which way like the mad lovechild of a hurricane and the sun.
The violence continued for several minutes; near its end, most of the tavern was lying stunned or unconscious on the floor, spread about between broken wooden furniture and discarded tankards. Gale’s head pivoted slowly between two mares and a particularly irate stallion holding a table leg in his teeth. My acquaintance seemed unperturbed, and her horn glowed as bright as ever despite her extensive use of magic.
The impending threat never came, however. Instead, what I can only assume was a huge gust of wind blew the tavern door wide open. On a perfectly clear day, a mighty squall howled at us, around the shoulders of a group of pegasi who walked into the room in a perfect diamond formation. All were in armor. With swords. Drawn.
Trouble seemed the appropriate word.
Their leader was a pale blue stallion—though far bluer and less white than myself—with an icy white mane and a prominent tuft of scruff dusting the bottom of his chin. Little red bands decorated the collar of his light leather armor. When he entered the tavern, those ponies still well enough to stand stopped what they were doing.
“Alright, who started this?” He spoke rather cleanly, with a warm timbre that seemed to match his laid back expression.
Literally the entire tavern turned toward Gale. I was surprised at just how many hooves rose from the ground to point in her direction.
Sighing audibly, Gale stood up. “Hi, Tempest.”
“Gale!” Despite the friendly greeting, this ‘Tempest’ gave a slight gesture with his wing, and his three subordinates started to spread slowly throughout the room, blocking off any obvious exit. “You know what’s hilarious? I didn’t actually come here looking for you. I just heard about the bar brawl. Your mom is going to be pissed.”
“Maybe she should pull her horn out of her fucking flank,” Gale shouted back, ensuring I couldn’t possibly forget her choice of vocabulary. “And since you’re here instead of Pathfinder, I’m guessing that nopony thinks it’s that big of a deal.”
“Hey!” Tempest sounded wounded. “I’m a scout-centurion, Gale. I worked for this!”
“You’ve never worked a day in your damn life, Tempest. Is your mom outside to kiss you better when I buck you into next week?”
Tempest’s wings flared wide, and I felt a sudden warm wind flow through the room. “You’re playing with fire, Gale. Come with me peacefully.”
“Hold on.” That was me, stepping up from my shadowy corner and fulfilling the narrative obligation of my seat. Unlike the earlier brawl, this conflict had a party clearly in the right. And, loathe as I was to admit it, that party was Gale. “Scout… century-something, was it?”
“What the fuck? Morty?” Gale slapped a hoof against her brow, demonstrating her immense gratitude for my assistance..
Tempest didn’t seem to care that I’d butchered his title. In honesty, something about the way he stood and the way he shaved suggested he didn’t care about anything very much.
“Gale didn’t start this fight,” I explained calmly. “She was assaulted by a very drunk, very stupid stallion. And she rightly defended herself. I understand what it looks like, but—”
“Shut up, colt.” Tempest rolled his eyes. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“Colt?” I felt my eye twitch.
Gale stepped off the table she was standing on, moving to face Tempest and I properly. “Seriously, Morty, go jerk your ego off somewhere else. This doesn’t concern you.”
“I’ll give you that it didn’t before,” I replied. “But a seated archmage doesn’t get called ‘colt’ by someone his own age and just walk away.” The statement was strictly true, even if I didn’t happen to be a seated archmage at the time. Despite being ignorant of my slight falsehood, Gale rolled her eyes.
Tempest grumbled under his breath “I’m at least a few years older than you.”
I ignored him. “My name is Coil the Undying of the Crystal Union, Pale Master, the As-Yet-Unkindling, Guardian of the Amethyst Sea, Grandmaster of the Order of—”
Gale slapped me across the face. “Are you seriously not going to go away? Are you that fucking thick?” She turned toward the soldiers. “And over here, you’re full of hot air, Tempest.” In a pop of magic, Gale produced her sword, pointing it in Tempest’s direction. Not only the four active legionaries, but the better part of the remaining conscious members of the tavern scampered backward, upending tables as they dived backward in fear that a mere sword ought not to have inspired.
“Whoa… okay.” Despite his nervousness, Tempest dared to walk forward. “Gale, let’s be careful with that—”
“Walk away,” she told him. “You know I can fucking take care of myself. I don’t need foalsitting,” she turned toward me “and I especially don’t need some jackass wizard stalking me everywhere. Even if you and your squad can take me, I’m not going to let this go without a fight. Both of you should just go away and let me go to Cyclone.”
Ponies in the tavern gasped at the name. A few pegasi amongst the group drew some symbol on their chests with their wings. In the middle of all of it, I felt like a feather in a snowstorm. That is to say, completely lost.
“Gale…” Tempest drew in a slow breath, visibly filling up his chest and raising his shoulders with the air it provided. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“It’s your funeral.” Gale sighed. “Morty, if we’re really going to do this, I guess you can help.”
“Wait, what?” The reversal of her position confused me for just a moment, and once I pieced its cause together, it worried me. If my read on Gale was right, she was too proud to accept help she didn’t need.
Which meant that I was entering into battle against four armed pegasi, at least one of whom was an aeromancer of unknown skill. Before I could get a satisfactory read on how Tempest’s squad was likely to attack us—or indeed, any read at all—Gale was hurling a flurry of her pink magic at the legionaries.
By the time I adopted my favored dueling stance (Sovereign Aggression, for those readers with knowledge of magical dueling theory), two of Tempest’s soldiers were unconscious on the floor, and Gale had leapt her way to the top of the bar, still hurling spells as she went. One flew past my face, aimed squarely for Tempest’s brow.
Some days, when I was younger, I would wake up in the middle of the night, and the only thought on my mind was envy that I would never be as sure of myself as Tempest was in the moment. His lip twitched up in a smile as he watched the bolt coming, almost in slow motion. Instead of making any effort to dodge, his wings snapped out to his sides, and to my amazement, an even stronger wind than we’d felt earlier filled the room. It was an obvious display of pegasus magic, but nevertheless, I found myself impressed. The flurry picked up a table knocked over in the conflict, bouncing it up into the path of Gale’s oncoming spell. Rose magic dissipated across rough wood.
“Do we really have to do this again, Gale? Can’t we just go home? Peacefully? It’s not like there’s anything for you to prove here. I always win.”
So my read was right. Gale was outmatched even against just Tempest. What had I done?
Letting my opponent know my worries would hardly do in the middle of our fight, though, so instead I addressed Tempest firmly. “I wouldn’t count on it,” I told the stallion only two strides away. That felt good. He wasn’t looking at me, I’m not sure he was actually aware I was in on the fight, and to top it all off, I didn’t even feel that drained when I hurled Foghorn’s Frightful Force in his direction.
It felt somewhat less good when he casually dodged to the side of the point-blank attack, and my spell blew a circle in the far wall of the tavern about three pony lengths in diameter. I admit, though, I got some satisfaction back when he glanced over his shoulder to see what the terrible sound had been, and some of the color drained from his face.
“Okay…” Tempest frowned around the handle of his sword. “I don’t know what Gale’s told you, but you don’t want to get tangled up with her. And you definitely don’t want to dance with me. I’m not going to hold back.” The eloquence of his speech, unimpeded by the hilt of the sword in his mouth, should have been impressive to me, but the adrenaline of an impending battle mostly overrode that feeling.
I turned my attention to Gale, and saw her crossing blades with with the remaining conscious soldier in Tempest’s entourage. If anything, she seemed like she was having fun, so I nodded to Tempest. “Let’s dance.”
I started with a favorite trick; something Wintershimmer had taught me from the days of his own youth, before he learned to snuff out his opponents with a thought (which, in retrospect, takes all the fun out of a good duel). I lowered my horn, lit it up to glowing with magical energy, and charged straight at Tempest.
Of course he had no idea what I was going to cast; he was a pegasus. So all he could do was brace himself, or pull back. It was a game of chicken, but he didn’t even know the stakes. To his credit, he stood his ground for a very long time; longer than Iconoclast or Emerald had ever dared to back in Union City. But when I was a stride away, he pumped his wings to dodge whatever spell was going to fly out of my horn.
To his disappointment, there wasn’t any spell. I was just tossing mana on my horn for the sake of keeping his attention. Fighting a unicorn, nopony really expects to just get punched in the face.
What I hadn’t considered until my blow utterly failed to phase him was that I was a tall, lanky wizard student who went out of his way to avoid heavy lifting, and he was a trained soldier. Then he punched me back.
You may recall, earlier in my story, that I used to think a crystal pony’s rocky coat was the most painful punching implement. You may also recall my note that I was wrong in that belief. It was Tempest who corrected me. As his hoof struck my jaw, air sucked in against its surface, forming a tight and visible vacuum that only released when the blow connected fully. The result was an explosion of pure force, as the compressed air shot out against my chin, already rippling from the force of his foreleg. It sounded like a crack of thunder, which left my ears ringing and only served to confuse my sense of balance further; I say further because I was picked up off of all my hooves and flipped over in the air several times before I fell onto my back on a broad circular table that split cleanly in half under the weight of my landing.
This is yet another experience I can’t really recommend. I was alive and conscious (for a change), but in enough pain to regret that state of existence.
Tempest walked forward slowly, still holding his sword between his teeth. “That was your warning shot, colt. You’re interfering in Legion business.”
“Colt? Again?!” I braced myself on a piece of the broken table and pulled myself up to my hooves. Tempest seemed nothing so much as amused that I had bothered to get up. Then I said the four words that would linger with me for the rest of my life.
“My name is Morty.”
The scoff on his face didn’t look so smug when I hit him with a half-empty mug of that ‘grog’ stuff—a light enough weight that it didn’t cause me to flare up. As he struggled to wipe the filthy, meaty substance off his face, I broke into a sprint and rushed straight past him. Subsequently, I found myself out the hole I’d blasted in the wall and onto the streets of Lübuck. To my left was the busy main thoroughfare, crowded with carts of timber and ponies watching our battle in a mixture of awe and horror. To my right, the crowded harbor.
“Gale, get out here! I’ve got a plan!”
I felt my coat flapping against my sides as I ran, and the salty air burned in my nostrils, but compared to the brutal tempo of my heartbeat, they barely registered. I turned out onto a thick wooden dock, and in my peripheral vision, saw Gale come charging out of the hole in the Commander’s Quarters. Both Tempest and his conscious lackey were on her tail, only kept from physically tackling her by the sword she still waved wildly in her magical grip.
“Over here, Gale!” I shouted. To my disappointment, despite her lit horn, she turned on her hooves toward me. “Teleport!”
“I’m not a wizard!” she shouted back, as if that were any sort of explanation for not knowing basic teleportation. Rolling my eyes, I took quick survey of my surroundings. Mostly, they consisted of ropes, barrels, and water.
I could work with that.
When my magic tore open a barrel, I found it filled to the brimming with more dead fish. “Really?” I shouted. “And you call Crystals barbarians…” Without actually waiting for a reply, I grabbed a half-dozen of the unfortunate creatures in my own arcana, and turned toward the two pegasi rapidly approaching. I admit, holding the fish aloft really didn’t have quite the same effect as a classical duelist wielding a unicorn’s rapier, but I was working with what I had.
And, to be fair, it was quite effective. A fish may not be a terribly lethal weapon, but they are quite distracting. At least, that’s what I have to assume from the fact that my first slap knocked Tempest’s lackey out of the sky. For the leader of the small group, though, a sword proved to be the better of the two weapons. Trying not to gag, I dropped the half-fish I was holding and readied the remaining five.
I can't claim my fight with Tempest was one of the greatest swordfights in all of pony history… but only because I wasn’t technically holding a sword. He dove and twisted between my blows with agility that could only have come from his pegasus wind magic. I slapped him with a trout. He tried to close with me in hopes of ending my assault. I jumped onto a boat and knocked him over the brow with an eel.
“Gale! Get moving!” When my companion looked over at me from the pony she was dueling, I added “I can take that one. I’ve got lots of fish.” Admittedly, the weapons were disgusting, but even my necromancy wasn’t just going to bring the poor creatures back to conventional life.
Gale leapt onto the boat I was standing on, and from there, took a running jump onto yet another sailing ship docked beside it. Meanwhile, my claim to ‘lots of fish’ was mostly disproven when Tempest bisected three of the late creatures in a single slash. It seemed merciful, at least, that they were already dead.
“I’ve had enough, ‘Morty’,” he told me with a glare, lunging forward at me. “Give up and save us both the trouble. I really don’t want to hurt you.”
There was a certain irony to asking for surrender mid-lunge. Regardless, the rope I’d looped around his hoof while he was distracted by the fish turned out to have been a wise decision. His sword clattered onto the wooden deck in front of me, and dropping the remaining fish-bits in my grip, I reached out for it.
Tempest flapped a wing and a burst of wind caught the sail of my ship. It lurched to the side, and I fell onto my muzzle not more than a stride from Tempest. His sword rolled along the deck, stopping close enough that he grabbed it casually in his teeth before standing up.
He didn’t say anything more. He just stormed toward me (a description for walking that I would come to learn utterly infuriated him), visibly compressing air on the blade of his sword in the same way he formerly had on his hoof.
“Uh, Morty…” The fact that Gale was standing right behind me, and not seven ships away, was another really bad sign.
When I turned back, I found her facing down not the one remaining member of Tempest’s forces, but all three. “I thought you stunned them.”
“I did. It doesn’t last that long.”
“That long?” I rolled my eyes. “It’s barely been five minutes.”
She snorted through her nose. “Yeah, well how long can you stun somepony, Morty?”
“Day and a half.”
Tempest took a threatening step forward. “Do you two ever shut up?” His attention turned to his soldiers. “Kill the stallion if he tries to cast anything.” Then he turned to us—really, to Gale. “Drop Procellarum, Gale. It’s over.”
I remember completely losing track of our conflict in that moment. Gale’s sword had a name? For the sake of historical understanding, I obviously have no idea if the cultural practice of naming weapons will suddenly take major surge, and they’ll be available at every corner apothecary. However, at the time of these events, they were a little hard to come by. Even as a trained mage, well-versed in unicorn history, I could only name perhaps a dozen such weapons.
The plot thickened.
Of course, to sate my curiosity, I’d have to somehow get Gale away from Tempest and his mooks. That process began by looking up into his eyes and smiling. “You think we’ve lost? Just because there’s four of you and two of us?” I shook my head. “Ready, Gale?”
The response I got was the sound of metal bouncing on wood.
“Gale?”
“Fine, Tempest. Let’s go.”
At those words, Tempest sheathed his sword and started walking toward the strangely named weapon Gale had dropped.
I’m sure he felt dumb about three seconds later, when my horn flared up and both Gale and her sword vanished before his eyes. The pop of distinct teleportation made it clear exactly what had happened.
“Morty!”
“Yes?” I replied, doing my best to sound innocent.
Tempest drew his sword and held it to my throat. “Where. Is. She?”
“No need for swords,” I told him. “If I weren’t willing to tell you, I’d have teleported myself instead of just sending her.”
“What?” One of Tempest’s companions asked.
In response, I took a small step back to remove Tempest’s blade from direct contact with my throat, and ran a hoof through my mane to fix its appearance. My sweat from having surged on two fairly complicated and potent spells was likely to give me an appearance of being worn out, and my plan relied on seeming fresh.
“It’s fairly simple. As I attempted to explain inside the tavern, I’m a mage. In point of fact, I’m the best mage any of you have likely ever met in your lives. I assume I’ve demonstrated at least my sheer strength suitably either by the hole I blew in the tavern wall, or by the distance I just teleported Gale. Now, it’s at least ostensibly possible that the four of you could apprehend me, or as you so pointedly order, try to remove my horn. However, it would take all four of you, and I’m ancillary to your mission. You could also, in theory, arrest me and then try to drag me along with you. However, as you’re all pegasi and I am a unicorn, the delay of making me travel with you would mean the huge lead I’ve already given Gale—”
“I don’t care about you, Morty,” Tempest grumbled, visibly irate at the soundness of my strategy. “Just shut up and tell me where Gale is.”
I smiled at my victory, and then pointed a hoof southward, along the coast. “I didn’t want to have her show up halfway embedded in a tree, so I chose the beach. Just follow the coastline, and look for hoofprints in the sand.”
Tempest frowned at me. I made a show of smiling back. “Nice to meet you, legionary.”
“I think I’ll take a page out of Gale’s book. Fuck you.”
I chuckled. “Since we’re being crass and honest, Gale’s more my type. I am flattered, though.”
Pegasus eyes rolled. “Squad, we’re flying.” As the other legionaries in his company spread their wings, Tempest looked straight at me once more. “One last thing, ‘Morty’. If you want to live to be thirty, never touch Gale.”
I waited for Tempest’s squad to disappear beyond the walls of the city before turning toward the mast of the ship I whose deck I was standing on. Sighing from the fatigue of even a minor spell after two full surges, I unsealed the potent work of deception I’d created. In an utterly disinteresting lack of flashes and smoke, Gale appeared seemingly out of thin air—even though in my memory, she’d never disappeared in the first place.
“Morty!” Gale shouted, leaping onto my neck and hugging me tightly. “You crazy stupid fucking genius!”
“I appreciate at least one of those titles, Gale,” I told her back, before helping her off my neck. “And at least one of them is demonstrably wrong right now.”
She turned to the south, where Tempest’s forces had disappeared.. “How did you do that?”
I smiled. “Magic.”
“No, I mean… turning somepony invisible is impossible.”
I brushed a hoof against the lapel of my coat. “Gale, when I tell somepony I have a list of titles six breaths long, it’s not because I’m getting paid by the word. I am probably the third best mage in the world right now, assuming Star Swirl hasn’t keeled over from old age yet.”
Part of Gale’s joy disappeared. But only a bit of it. “There’s that fucking ego again.”
“Well, if I’m full of hot air, why don’t you tell me how I did it?”
She opened her mouth to spit back and answer, and looked like she caught it halfway up her throat. Rubbing one hoof against her other foreleg’s fetlock, she avoided my gaze. “It should be impossible.”
I nickered, a response which seemed to irritate my friend. “Gale, what’s the difference between arcana and magic?”
“Do you think I’m some kind of dipshit, Morty? Because I’m not a fancy trained wizard like you? Arcana is just unicorn magic. It’s a category.”
“That’s the rigid way to look at the world. It’s the kind of thinking that says things like ‘some things are just impossible’.” I was quoting Wintershimmer shamelessly, but the words were good enough that I wasn’t going to try and rephrase them. “What’s magic to a foal, Gale? Pulling a rabbit out of a hat? Snapping a coin out from behind your ear, maybe?”
“That’s stupid magic; any unicorn can do that.”
“But it’s magic to a foal nonetheless. And it’s exactly the same kind of magic I just did to Tempest. At least, it is to you. Because you don’t know how it’s done.” I couldn’t help breaking into a wide smile. “Real magic has nothing to do with mana or horns or fancy tricks. Magic is ignoring what’s supposed to be impossible and doing it anyway. That’s what I do, Gale. It’s what makes me a wizard instead of just a book-smart unicorn.”
“Huh…” Gale seemed enraptured, if her pause from swearing was any indication. “So how’d you do it?”
I shook my head. “Then it wouldn’t be magic anymore. I don’t want to spoil it.”
“Fuck you, Morty.”
Unable to resist the sarcastic quip, I nodded back to the massive hole I’d blasted in the wall of the Commander’s Quarters. “At least wait until we’re inside, Gale.”