//------------------------------//
// Chapter 13: The Flesh is Weak 
// Story: Pride Goeth 
// by Zurock 
//------------------------------//

	There was so much Scrolldozer wanted to say—to ask, to beg, to scream—but he simply couldn't.  His strength had bottomed out, and then it fell further.  No more details from Mrs. Totaler were even needed; all the horrors of yesterday were already returned with an agony tenfold as powerful as before.  The brief reprieve of Bookworm's safety had been a lie to heighten the sudden torment of the killing blow, and the absolute failure of his fatherhood pierced him to his core.  He felt the slow and insufferable shutting of the iron maiden.
No death was more terrifying and evil.

"I'm so sorry!" Mrs. Totaler desperately apologized to him.  She was herself broken in pieces because of her guilt.  "I don't know what happened!  Bookworm was there with us when we left; sure as sunshine she was!  But-, but after we got some ways down the road I was doing a round to check on everypony and-, and-, and she-... she-..."
All the grief and sorrow in the world wouldn't have measured up to hers.  It took her the longest moment to find her lost voice.
"Gone...  She was just gone.  I don't know how; nopony saw her go!  I asked and asked and asked; everypony swore to me that they didn't even hear nothing!"

Prideheart's ears twitched.  An echo from yesterday slithered uncomfortably into him:
"Quiet as we can now!  Hoof flat, then down, right?  Focus on your weight... one leg at a time... and always mind the cover.  It's as much about not being seen as not being heard.  Isn't that right, mister?"

From the great wall came a constant tide of intense and frightened cries, rising endlessly.  Ponies scrambled about in the unmeetable hope of being ready for the waves of flames that were about to crash down upon them.  Mayor Desk Job's hooves were frozen in place, but she frantically turned her head to and fro like it was being batted about by a menacing cat.  A terrible look forward over the wall at the oncoming fire, back at the stiff and silent Crumble Pie down below, forward again, back again; her each shout to the gray mare was more urgent than the last as the final seconds continued to tick down.
But Crumble Pie couldn't respond, paralyzed by the last minute news of Bookworm.  Her mouth hung open helplessly.
Again it had happened.  Again!  Again Scrolldozer and his daughter were an unfortunate, dreadful distraction in the face of Stony Nook's crisis.  Again two ponies, through no unreasonable feelings of their own, demanded to be so much more beloved than everypony else.  Again a father's love was a danger to the whole town.
Hailstone, not even begun on the task of rigging the bridge with explosives, had spotted the distressed Mrs. Totaler racing into town and had followed overhead.  Nearly all of the blasting charges remained waiting by the bridge, and only one of them dangled from the pegasus by a strap as she landed besides the older mare.
"What's your best guess on how far out you were when you lost her?" she asked Mrs. Totaler.  "Maybe I can-"
"We can't afford to give up anypony!" Crumble Pie objected.  And finally, finally her sturdy walls began to give way and tumble.  Pained, frustrated tears seeped from her.  "The heckhounds are here!  We need everypony!"
"But this is Dozer's filly we're talking about!" shouted Hailstone, hardly defiant in the face of her boss but nonetheless furious with desperation.
"I know that!" the gray mare cried.  A loud crack broke into her voice, and all her uncommonly tough patience slipped out through it.  "I love her!  But I love everypony here also, and all those running to Mule's Head too, and we can't risk all of them just to look for Bookworm!"
And then she heaved and wept.
"Well-!  Well-!  Argh, Celestia scorch it!" the pegasus violently swore.  In a bout of rage she whipped the explosive charge off her neck and smashed it into the ground.  (Fortunately the charges were quite stable devices and would never go off without intention, even under the most brutal agitation.)

The loud plunk of the charge against the dirt called to Prideheart.  He blinked his eye at the mistreated explosive, and more phantom echoes deviously snuck into his ears:
"I can't believe it; who could have taken the eighth charge?"
...
"Oh!  You're going to use a blasting charge to bury it!  ...  Yeah, that'll definitely work!"
...
"Ms. Crumble Pie is awesome!  ...  She shows me all sorts of cool stuff!  Like she taught me how to actually use a blasting charge to blow up rocks!"
The stallion gazed back towards the bridge, yet the horizon beyond appeared colorless and without meaning.  Something small, something not really there, nipped him from behind and he swiveled about and looked westward instead; to wall, to fire, to road, to forest, and all that laid beyond.
A cold, frozen, silent worry came over him.

"Crumble Pie!!"
Desk Job's voice convulsed as if a seizure had a hold on her, strangling her with fear.  The call barely rose above the growing chorus coming from the frightened ponies on the wall.
Crumble Pie felt their shouts.  She turned to her friends and said, "Oh, Scrolldozer... ah, I'm sorry.  I am, but we all have to get on that wall right now!  Otherwise those ponies we sent running are never going to-"
She was caught off her guard by the way the father faced her with all the resolve of one willingly standing before death's door, resigned to whatever was on the other side.  He also had tears in his eyes but his gaze pierced clearly through the mist.  His heart hung out from his open chest, vulnerable and slaughtered, but as he walked up to her his pulse throbbed with thunder.  Fear was a shadow over him but yet he outshone with decided purpose.
First came the light touch of his hoof against Crumble Pie's shoulder, but then suddenly he moved in and embraced her softly.
"I know you're only trying to do what everypony else needs you to do," the hopeless, determined words came, "but there's somepony who needs me to-... to-... What I-, I-... I-... I have to try and find Bookworm.  This time-... this time, I have to."
And then he let her go and turned away from all his panic-stricken neighbors on the wall.  He stared out east over the bridge.

But as he began to walk off while the others debated anxiously his choice, Prideheart stayed fixed to the west.  More echoes haunted him, stitching themselves together into the truth piece by piece:
"Nopony is trying to stop the heckhounds!  ...  That crack is their weakness, remember?"
...
"Those defenseless who must flee will need a hero...  Can you promise to me that you will ensure they arrive at their destination in safety?"
...
"... I super promise that they'll be safe."
...
"But it's like you said before: a hero has to do the right thing, no matter what else!  ...  I don't want to break promises but I'll break every promise I have to, especially bad promises, to do the right thing.  Just like you said."
...
"You... are right, Bookworm.  Once... long ago... I too gave my promise in reply to an order.  But in the darkest moment I broke my promise; I violated my order... and I was right to have done so."

...

"... My little pony hero."

"She is not that way."
Prideheart's convinced assertion fell upon the others like a heavy stone.  Their ongoing argument evaporated in an instant when they all went dumbstruck, and Scrolldozer especially was stopped by an icy silence before he slowly turned back around.  Unmoving, the cloaked stallion still gazed solemnly westward, and whatever he saw was far, far off; through the wall, past stone, mortar, fangs, and fire; down great leagues of road, alongside forest and river, and right up to the end of the trail.
"Bookworm is making west," Prideheart said grimly, "returning to your quarry of old."
"What?!" Scrolldozer's voice shattered.
"It is she who has pilfered your missing explosive," Prideheart nodded towards Crumble Pie after he faced everypony again, "for her goal is to bury the rip in the earth that has spawned these heinous heckhounds.  Our final sacrifice here was not a story so fitting to her world of heroes, villains, and fables—"
He looked directly at the distressed father, and the invisible fires which forever gnawed on his dragon-wound seared especially sharply as they spread down into his heart.
"—and so she has herself undertaken the task of writing us a victory."
The excruciating blow landed on Scrolldozer in perfect, horrified silence.  His eyes pulled the rest of him towards the wide wall and he searched blindly for whatever it was the cloaked stallion had seen, looking for anything which might have made the awful revelation wrong or impossible.
Atop the wall the trembling townsponies still scurried about in near-hysteria, without a hope to rally around.
From his position below, the father couldn't see the incoming threat which tortured them; only their fearful reaction to it.  He had to picture the scene: the road stretching out towards the mountain; clouds of dirt fleeing from the storm of burning paws tearing up the ground; the grass cowering as embers fell from hot fur and threatened to spark small fires; the frenzied, fanged snarls with boiling slobber flowing; death closing in with heartless speed.

And into that crisp vision of barbarous evil his mind suddenly added Bookworm.

Scrolldozer would have collapsed into an unsalvageable heap of despair if not for Prideheart who all but grabbed his face to ensnare his attention.
Into the father's face Prideheart pushed his own scarred image, closer than a hair.  Already aged, his wrinkles deepened with remorse, spreading long across his blame-heavy grimace.  Every light within him was dimmed or shut out completely by a shroud of regret; all except for the sick mist which filled his dead eye and the despondent poison glow hidden within the pustules growing on his shattered horn.
"This is my doing...," his whisper sounded like a hammer of guilt.  From his clean eye came tears as clear as unstained crystals; from his cloudy eye, a bitter and viscous venom issued.  "She has a voice.  Her own.  She has a voice and I did not listen to it.  I did not listen.  I did not speak to it.  Carelessly I dismissed her voice and favored my own.  Only my own voice; my own desires; my own flaws.  I fed her voice my faults, heedless of consequence."

A wicked fire, fended off forty years ago.
Forty years ago he had saved countless ponies in Canterlot.  Saved them, and then ruined them.  Saved them so that he could have dragged them away from their world, spread his desolate infection into them, and subjugated them under a toxic shadow lord whose bloodthirsty rule had left them enthralled under backwards, misguided ideals.
And now Bookworm too.  She was the next to be devoured by his insatiable, wounded shadow.
Just like the Dryponies.  Just like the innocent foals abandoned.

Just like his own daughter.

"It is I," he absolved Scrolldozer.  "I have ever been the worst danger to her.  Here but two days, and I have brought this.  There is no good forgiveness for me."
"Blame...," the father weakly picked up his voice, "... doesn't matter now.  Only Bookworm matters.  I have to at least try and get her back."
And he sidled past Prideheart, heading towards the wall.
Crumble Pie, more distraught than anypony had ever remembered seeing her before, quickly latched onto his tail and held him.
"No!  If you go over that wall all alone then you will get killed!  Besides, we need every last pony we have!  Those folks on the road are counting on us!"
Scrolldozer, despite hard efforts, couldn't break free; his friend's physical strength far outclassed his own.  He growled protests as he still dug his hooves fruitlessly along the road, until suddenly his whole body stopped.  Inside he felt a shock; a sudden crash.  He soared past some hideous threshold he had never crossed before, and there were new, awful, monstrous feelings.
A light jumped from his horn and grabbed the gray mare's face.  It pried open her mouth and then shoved her back a step.  The attack did more than catch her by surprise; she wobbled and teetered hard before she found her balance again.
Everypony there was stunned.
"I don't care if it gets me killed!" Scrolldozer furiously shouted.  "I have to try and get her back!"
And again he went, this time storming away.
Crumble Pie rubbed her jaw.  The wrenching had been forceful enough to have slammed a stiff soreness into, and she wondered briefly if only luck had kept it from being broken.
Briefly.
"Scrolldozer!"
She ignored the rough discomfort and suddenly jumped after him.  Rather than seize him again she came alongside him, and she made clear through her positioning that she intended to block his path if he refused diplomacy.
"I sympathize!  I do!  I know how evil it is to make you stay!  But I can't let you put Bookworm above Stony Nook!  I can't!  You're needed here!  That horn of yours is probably the mightiest thing we got!"
The father came to a halt and right away his horn flared up, almost daring the mare to back up her threat.  He hit some depth anger he had never found before, so boiling it spun his head in confusion.
"I-!  I-!  Just... get away!"
But of course she didn't.  She went to move in front of him.
Never, ever, ever would he have wanted to have hated his best friend.  But suddenly there is was, plain as day: an odious slime covering his every emotion as he looked at her, as if the years of friendship had meant nothing.  He could feel the spell to toss her aside aching to fly out of his horn.

"Crumble Pie!!!"
The mayor's pent-up fright exploded out of her.

Hailstone revved up her wings.
"Whatever!  I'm going!  I can find her faster and safer from the air!" she cried in exasperation.
Her wings hardly worked through a single beat before Crumble Pie barked, "Don't you go buzzing off!  We need everypony!"
"Yet still, some are more valuable than others," Prideheart unexpectedly interceded.

His stolid eyes at first briefly rested on Hailstone's awful wings.  Wicked things, pony wings; with innate magic in them that orchestrated the air like a conductor.  What good were they for, except a coward's retreat?
...
Or perhaps, they could serve to fleet over a battlefield delivering buckets of water faster than any water pump.
The stallion's sight turned next to Scrolldozer's despicable horn.  Baleful thorns, pony horns; spiral conduits of magic that influenced the world in evil ways.  What good were they for, except making suffering or telling lies of strength?
...
Or perhaps, they could make shields of boulders to protects others.  Like the father had done yesterday when he had pinned the heckhound, or when he had dropped a safe cage of stones around Bookworm.
The very thought of those wings and horns fighting to save Stony Nook filled him with many nasty feelings: loathing, disgust, livid rage, and worse.  What an abomination!  Items whose very purposes were inextricably bound to the detestable power of magic, being asked to serve the noblest defense?  False strength being used to gird the most sacred duty?  The ether of betrayal being entrusted to safeguard the lives of the innocent?
...
But the stallion endured his deficiencies.  Like the brace on his wounded knee, he quelled the screaming inside him until it was bearable.  He put away his faults, hiding them with the rest of his body under his dusty cloak.

He gestured to his damaged knee, his shattered horn, and the grotesque scars upon his face.
"An old, broken fool has little value in this fight here," he told the others.  "Nothing of me will be missed were I to pursue Bookworm."
"But-, but-," gasped Crumble Pie, "but you can't just... hop the wall and chase her!  The heckhounds'll tear you up before you get a hoof down on the road!"
"So they would," Prideheart acknowledged coolly, "but that is irrelevant.  Bookworm would not have taken that path."
The bizarre statement caused everypony to recoil then gape at the cloaked stallion.  There was, after all, only one road to the old quarry.
"The filly is a wise fool for her tender age," Prideheart explained to them.
With just his nose he started to trace a long, invisible line through the air.  He directed it first to the east, running it over the bridge out of town, but then he immediately spun it northwards.  He hugged it along the far side of the river, moving against the current.
"By holding to the farther bank she would have dodged both us and the heckhounds.  Thus, no risky passage through Stony Nook where we might have caught her and spoiled her heroics, and no crossed paths with the enemy she has sought to outwit.  She knows the river will guide her to the quarry.  Far enough out she will find a place to swim across."
That was her plan; the stallion had no a single speck of doubt.  After all, Bookworm had been the one to have taught him about the heckhound's crippling weakness to water, so she knew that the farther side of the river was safe.  And he had in turn taught her that the river was a fresh water source which she could rely on all throughout the journey.  He, her "hero," had originally devised the plan to have blasted an avalanche over the crack to Tartarus, and now she had adopted it as her own and pooled it with her other knowledge so as to see it through.

She was mimicking him and his "heroics."  Much as he had stupidly instructed her to do.

Scrolldozer trembled.
"She's-... she's not-...?" he glanced uncertainly at the wall.
"As of yet, under no risk.  But what risk when she reaches the quarry?  Suppose even a lone heckhound stands guard?" feared Prideheart.

She was copying him and his "heroics."
He had tangled with a lone heckhound and squelched the monster with his canteen.  She had seen it, and later she had boldly and worthlessly tried to slap a hound with her homework.
She wouldn't abort her plan in the face of any danger.

That was what the father believed as well.
Fast he turned about and began to run towards the bridge, chasing after his daughter, but Prideheart stopped him before he got far.  The old stallion moved before him and barred his path, but not like Crumble Pie had done earlier.  Prideheart humbled himself low, bowing deep enough to kiss the earth and shaking from the pain it brought to his wounded knee.
"I will retrieve her," he swore to Scrolldozer.

For every pony he had saved in Canterlot only to have unsaved them by trapping them in his noxious shadow.

For every foal who had been abandoned to the unknown in his cursed name.

For every parent who had suffered a living death because they had to share a world with his pain, cowardice, hate, pride, foolishness, and ever-grieving faults.

"This wrong of mine I will undo.  Thus so, or my death."

Nopony spoke a word.  Some waited for something to be said by Scrolldozer, but there wasn't any thrust in the father's throat.
In his mind was the sacrosanct duty a father has; their responsibility to their foals.  A responsibility immortal, having existed since the beginning of time and lived forever in the most unfathomed depths of the heart.  A love woven by the universe itself, not in any place the eyes could see, or in any sound the ears could hear, but within the very beings of parents themselves.  The love had first been born inside Scrolldozer the very day that Bookworm had herself been born, and that love had been birthed in him again and again repeatedly for every second of every day he had ever spent thinking about her.
If he had been a stronger pony, perhaps he would have had the voice.  If wiser, perhaps he would have had the words.

But what he did have – what he found in Prideheart – was a trust.  A trust that the older stallion knew, and felt, and understood that same immortal love.  A trust that the older father held that love in the same holy place.
Scrolldozer cried softly, but he didn't speak.

Prideheart waited for nothing more.  His oath was burned onto him like a brand of red iron, and he stood and charged towards the bridge.  The hard pounding of his gallop awakened the wound in his knee and he relied wholly on his new brace to overcome its tormented screams.  Without so much as a fragile stumble he roared over the bridge, turned, and sped along the riverbank.

The others, unsure of what to even think, looked to Crumble Pie for any sign of approval.  For any sign of answers, or leadership.
But the weary mare's limitless strength was still overwhelmed.  Her teeth chattered lightly.  Her each breath was scant, not so panicked as to gasp but certainly not under firm control.  She couldn't find a single spot to set her eyes and no focus returned to them.  Under circumstances dreadful or mundane she had always been the confidence which had kept everypony afloat, but now in the same way her frigid despair was a giant anchor on them all.
Yet another call of her name came down from the wall.  It wasn't only Mayor Desk Job; several others shouted for her desperately as well.  They were besides themselves with uncertain terror, but no response came from the silent street below.
So it was an uplifting surprise to everypony in the street when Scrolldozer unexpectedly touched his hoof to his gray mare friend.  The father was still riven by heartbreak and shuddering from all his cold fear, but nevertheless his touch was gentle and warm.  When Crumble Pie looked up at him she saw his desire to speak something, but he didn't bother using his mouth for what his eyes said just fine.

She hugged him.

"Alright everypony," the mare sighed, picking up her strength again as easily as that, "let's get on that wall."
Right away her crew obeyed.  Hailstone gave her boss a salute and zoomed off.  Scrolldozer, meanwhile, nodded and expelled a frozen breath before he marched.  On the way he often glanced north wherever he could, catching fast glimpses over the river of Prideheart galloping away.
Mrs. Totaler, puffing her red cheeks still, tried to follow as best as she could.  Decades of serving drinks on her hooves had fortunately left her with legs younger than her face, and it only took her a moment to join the rest of her town.
However Crumble Pie was quick to cut in front of her.
"Come on, turn around now, Mrs. Totaler," she said, throwing a pleading flick of her head towards the bridge.
"No, no; I'm here now; might as well be a part of the end.  Rather tussle with those hounds than do that run again," she wheezed, laughed, and sighed all together.  "Besides, I told the others to just keep going without me; they'll be fine, Crumble Pie; they don't need no more encouragement than they already got."
"Okay, okay," the gray mare reluctantly relented.  What difference did make, trying to toss out a single stone when the quarry was already flooding?  The ponies went together towards the stairs up the wall.
Crumble Pie confessed to the elder mare, "I'd just hate to see anything happen to you, you know?"
"Well, keep your eyes closed then; don't worry about it; I promise I'll throw down any hound that tries to get you."

They emerged at the top of the steps, and Crumble Pie's very, very last minute appearance on the wall was just enough for the poor mayor to pull herself together.  Mostly.
Desk Job terrified babbling was only partially-coherent.  She threw her hooves out from the wall a lot, whenever she wasn't gnawing them off.
Stepping up to the parapet, right next to where Scrolldozer stood, Crumble Pie looked out.

There they were.
True to Hailstone's count, twenty-four heckhounds were charging at Stony Nook.  They barreled down the road and over the grass, their numbers spread wide.  Because of the gray mare's long delay they were already nearly upon the wall.  The fearsome pack of fiery predators fanned out the closer they came, with many hounds splitting off to engage the southern portions of the wall while the rest came straight for the west face.  As they rushed in they didn't slow, not in the slightest.  They barked, they howled, they frothed; they smoldered with their dark intents.  Behind their awful eyes a hungry fire flickered while they scanned the frightened ponies who lined the top of the long wall.

Crumble Pie punched out her voice, lobbing it high over the town.
"Buckets up!  Get ready!  Wash'em out first chance you get!  Don't let even one over!  Remember to listen for the bells!"
At her command the terrified townsponies steeled themselves and clutched tight their watery weapons.
The gray mare allowed herself a last, slow breath, and then she whispered quietly, "Here we go."
A soft, supportive tap came from Scrolldozer.  He was at the worse ends of his nervousness, but even so there was still a braced glow which swirled around his ready horn.
"... We can't fall back until our friend returns with Bookworm," he murmured.
"... Then we'll hold until he's back," she answered simply.

Broken far apart at the very doorstep of the town, the many heckhounds searched for their own individual avenues of attack.  The closest of them lunged straight at the wall, snarling with ferocious hunger, and suddenly he sprung high.  The mighty leap wasn't enough to clear the full height of the wall but his heavy paws scratched with such power that he easily skittered up the remaining distance, climbing against the stone.  His forelegs clamped over the low parapet.  He emerged, pulling his face up and bringing all his savage growls to the ponies who stood before him.
And immediately he took a faceful of water.
Down the dog plunged, a long tail of billowing smoke chasing him, and he crashed against the ground where he gasped and wheezed and whimpered.
All the other heckhounds quite wisely took in the warning and held back from heedlessly launching themselves up the wall.  They slowed and stalked about below, searching for vulnerable openings.





Bookworm had reached where the land north of the river began to rise sharply, the earth jumping up in sudden steps, forming an oversized stairway.  Some of the rises were taller than the filly herself even when she stood on her hind legs, and some still were taller than an adult pony doing the same.  But she had learned a lesson from her hero and his climb out of the quarry.  At every rise she sought out the largest pile of stones to scale her way up.
The climbing was hard, slow work because of her small size and young strength, but she went at it relentlessly.  Her efforts earned her a few dings and scratches every time she slipped or fell, but they weren't anything more than the usual for rambunctious foals.  Certainly her small mistakes didn't dull her determination.  But that wasn't to say the very slow pace of her climb didn't frustrate and tire her, especially with the blasting charge hanging from her by its strap like an anchor.  It wasn't any schoolbag full of books, but having to constantly pull it along as she wormed up the rocks, where it so easily got snagged and pulled back on her now and then, didn't make for any sort of fun excursion.
Yet her noble goal was always clear in her mind and it gave her patience an unbending shape.  Heroes, like her new friend, surmounted the tallest snowcapped peaks when they had to, and so she could scale a few piles of rocks when needed.

The filly held one hoof solid while she searched for a good hold with her other, and when she found it she pulled with everything she had.  Very nearly she slipped and she began kicking, trying to paddle herself up like she were a boat.
In the midst of her straining and sweating she thought she heard a distinct noise coming from somewhere behind her.  Something faint; a whistle on a far wind that was higher than the rush of the nearby river below.
But she couldn't spare the attention to look, and very little she even thought about it.  Every last one of her little muscles were needed to haul herself up and the gritting of her teeth was a noisier grind than whatever the shallow whisper had been.
Once she was stable again she didn't waste any time and started scaling the next rock.  Rock to rock she went until at last she made it to the top of the shelf.  Only then did she pause to pant, bringing in heaps of fresh breaths, and she shook out the uncomfortable stiffness which kept trying to lock up her legs.

"Bookworm!"

The same sound as before rode up to her on the wind, louder this time; enough to tickle her attention.  But she was still too determined on her task to give it much recognition.  The tired, half-glance she quickly threw backwards wasn't enough to notice anything particular on the blur of landscape behind her.  Shrugging the distraction off, she looked ahead at her next challenge.
The next shelf wasn't much different from any of the ones she had already passed over: another tiny stretch of ground running away from her for a short distance until it hit the next rise.  The small plateau was dirty, with little vegetation to speak of; a flat and open arena not much longer than the bridge which spanned the river back at Stony Nook.  Likewise the next step up didn't look any shorter than the one she had just scaled, but there were fewer mounds of stones available to climb.
Nevertheless, her plucky resolve was undeterred.  She stamped her hooves once to pound some purpose into them and get her blood going, and then she started towards the largest rock pile she saw.
The strap around her body jerked her back before she got anywhere.  Once again the explosive had gotten caught, this time on the previous ledge.  Grumbling only lightly she turned about, reached down, and slipped it out from its loose trap.

"Bookworm!"

This time, with the filly already facing the stretch of land that led back to Stony Nook, the village itself a miniature model of a town in the lower distance, the call of her name finally shot right into one of her ears.  She looked up.
Below, just a few shelves down, Prideheart was bounding up the same rock piles she had been climbing.  He vaulted his way up with frighteningly more speed than she had managed, yet he seemed the worse for it; each time his braced knee bent he took a clear blow of pain.  But he didn't let his pace ease and, if anything, he pressed himself faster now that he was so close.
The surprised filly dropped the explosive charge on the ground and leapt with joy, bringing out a grin so large that it was all the cloaked stallion saw.  On the edge of her shelf she waited for him to catch up, restlessly bouncing her legs in excitement.
"Mister!" she cried happily as he came to the stack of stones just below her and without pause began to tear his way up.  "You came!"
"I-," he gasped, but his broken breathing forced him to swallow every following word.  He only wheezed as he continued to slash his way up the rocks.
When he finally crashed upon the top of the shelf he came to a careless, heavy stop in front of the filly.  It was much like a train forgetting that the station was the end of the line.  His relentless pursuit had left him a wreck.
"You really came!" Bookworm continued to bound in place.  "Oh, I knew you would!  Just like when I came back for you at the quarry!"
"Filly, such was not-"
Again the air rapidly plunging into his lungs cut him off.
"Do not equate-," he haltingly restarted, but he still lost to his laborious rasping.
"Come on, mister!" she quickly slipped the blasting charge's strap back over herself.  "No time to catch our breath now!  We got a long way to go!"
She ambled onwards with confidence, and Prideheart nearly collapsed when he tried to chase after her.  Had it not been for his brace his wounded knee would have split apart like a soggy branch bending too far.  He staggered, falling behind her gingerly pace.
"No!" he wheezed anxiously.  "No!  We are returning to Stony Nook."
The arrow he fired went right through her heart and pinned her where she was.  Only with a wilted twist did she turn around and look straight at him.

"But mister... we're supposed to save Stony Nook."

"Little this course will serve that end!" the stallion scolded as he hobbled up to her.
At the sight of his fatherly sternness she was only pained, angered, and disappointed.  All the joyful little lights were stolen from her.
"We're the heroes, mister!"
"Too young yet are you!" Prideheart lowered his scarred face right into hers, "and that title would never befit the execrable likes of myself!"  The hard commander came out in him, "Now, to Stony Nook we return!"
It was not loyalty or submission which washed over Bookworm.  Instead, a grim meanness slowly came into her, mixed well with a nasty and selfish disgust.  Small dismays exploded into unspoken outrage.
Her constructed world had failed her.  Her fantastic expectations had emerged into reality as so very dull, tarnished, and marred.  The only weapons she had against spoiled imagination were her underdeveloped emotions.
She gave a huff; one wet enough that it didn't quite conceal the pouty beginnings of her angry tears.  Then wordlessly she secured the blasting charge and turned away from Prideheart.  Off she went, marching harshly on her way to finish the task on her own.  She leaned into each of her stomps.
Quickly Prideheart limped in front of her, gritting with each spike of pain his steps drove into his worst knee.  She said nothing and tried to maneuver around him, taking rather sulky turns and twists in her effortless attempts.  Never did she look him in the eye.  But for each grumpy evasion she made he continued to waddle into her way and block her.

The bitter coldness that had swept into her cast an awful regret upon the stallion.  It hadn't been his intention to have taken so harsh a tone with her.  After all, the trenchant anger which saturated him was reserved so completely for himself; she was merely acting on his mistakes.  He had such love for her pure acceptance of him; him and all of his foolishness.
He forced the thoughts into his mind and held them there: she was a filly of capable vision, with strong wisdom and her own, unique, if sometimes misguided voice.  That alone demanded respect, even if he had to plead with her through great sadness and grief.
"Young Bookworm!  Your plan is valorous at heart, but it would not do the service you wish it to!  Please... please hear my sorrow, and continue not this way!"
At that the little filly stopped and began to stamp her hooves in a fierce fury.  She snapped at him, "The heckhounds are just going to come back if we don't bury the crack to Tartarus!  Then Stony Nook will be in danger all over again!"
"You must see: there's no significance!  The ponies of Stony Nook, fighting now, are not taking up a battle they think to win.  They are the ones who are heroes!"
He bent his battered knee, dropping it to the ground.  No matter how unsteady, it held his weight as he loomed low and close to her.  The two halves of his face – bright but old, ruined but remembered – could not tell a more complete tale.  They stared into her together.
"Those who love you are making the sacrifice of real heroes.  You are bold enough yourself to make it, but too young yet.  And I... I am too worthless and weak to live up to it."
"No!  You're a real hero!" Bookworm insisted suddenly.
The glass of her eyes didn't hold any reflection of her father.  No scenes of a dead-tired stallion sitting at his daughter's bedside while reading aloud through the night for as long as it took.  No flashes of a face fraught with worry over her every sneeze or scrape, no matter how big or small, no matter how innocent or alarming.  None of it was there.
"You're the only real hero who has ever to come to Stony Nook!  Stop saying you aren't one!  You saved me from the heckhounds at the quarry, just like a real hero would have!  You stood up for everypony in Stony Nook as soon as they were in danger, just as brave and fearless as a real hero is!  You even came from somewhere far away and amazing, just like all the real heroes do!"

In the back of his mind Prideheart heard once more the mocking whispers of the darkness which lived on the other side of the Pearl Peaks; the deranged taunts of his shadow doppelganger and its many torturous voices.  This, though he was wide awake in the daylight.

"There is no wonder or security in that land I came from."
The stallion's admission was sore and ashamed.  With every unhappy note he uttered he withdrew all the wishful praise of it he had given to the filly when he had first spoken to her of it at the tavern.
"I had many times told myself delusions of its freedoms, but what fulgent lies I had blinded myself with!  No hero led a march to that place.  It was an escape fled to by a wounded coward.  But the forest there is a hungry hole, Bookworm; a pit devouring goodness greedily, engulfing noble sacrifices and vomiting back heartless malice.  If heroism I ever had, it was wrested from me there when it consumed the innocence I had so willingly and so fatuously brought before it.  Yet such bounty wasn't enough for it.  Decades of my forlorn loyalty to feeding it did not satiate the monster, nor did it ever surrender to me the the cold, numb relief I had sought out from the very beginning.  Ever-ravenous, and me enslaved, it cast me away to fish for more nourishment for its evil.  It sent me to find you, Bookworm... so I might lure you close and toss you into its waiting maw.  Like the others...  Like her..."
The filly went still and quiet, showing confusion and sadness.
Prideheart pleaded, "I am sorry, Bookworm, that I brought my shadow over you.  My valor is long-broken.  Seek not to emulate it."
Bookworm found no solid place to stand.  She was buffeted about, like one struggling to stay staunch under the battering of a heavy windstorm.  Plainly she was fighting to understand this story of his; one that she had never read the likes of.
The stallion put some of his weight back onto his stronger leg so that he could stand again, but he took his weakened, trembling leg and touched it to filly's face.  The tender rub caught her focus, and she looked up to see his lips take on a sad, amused grin.
"As much of a mistake as swallowing warm water when steps away sits a refreshing river to quaff from, know that the 'heroism' you saw in me is only the same.  Use my error to better help remember the lessons taught to you by the good ponies of Stony Nook..."
"... Mister...  I don't understand..."
"I did not save her, Bookworm.  When I should have, I did not.  And without you, I will fail again.  Aid me.  Please.  Turn back to Stony Nook..."

A long, gentle silence followed.
The little filly couldn't even understand why she was crying.  Looking up at the old stallion she could see in him a strange kind of sadness the likes of which she couldn't grasp at all, but somehow it still softly pulled the tears out of her.
And he wept as well, each of his eyes producing a different kind of tear.  However, the sorrow leaking from him carried in it his inner darkness, drawing it away from him drop by drop.  His weary face, though it stayed swollen with regret, took on an enduring strength that didn't resemble anything like the fierceness of warriors which Bookworm had time and time again eagerly read about.  The streaks of sadness left on his cheeks shined, happy and hopeful.
It was familiar to the filly but she couldn't quite recognize it.  He again had the shape of her father, though this time she couldn't consciously see it.

The blasting charge slipped off of her and slumped limp onto the ground when she lowered her head.
"Okay...," she accepted, downcast and faint, but thankfully not bitter.  "... I'll go back..."

Her face was picked up by the sudden and affectionate touch of Prideheart rubbing his wet cheek against hers.  The blackened skin near his dead eye, despite its sickly appearance and the greenish ooze that had smeared over it, had a warm and cushioned feel.
"Then me you save.  My little pony hero..."
He encouraged her to turn about with harmless little pushes, which she did.  First came a wary step or two, then a sluggish sigh, but after that she finally was on her way earnestly, making no shows of sour resistance and pitching no tiny protests.  Even her disappointment was a shallow shell wrapped over a peaceful surrender.  Only at the edge of the shelf did she come to a stop, and that was solely because she had to search for a safe path to climb down.
Prideheart stood behind her patiently, helping her search but not controlling her with any forceful suggestions.  Quickly she found a suitable path and she started to drop a hoof down onto the first rock below when the old stallion's ears shivered from a sharp, fast tapping against the earth which came from behind them.

The scratching sounds moved rapidly.  They soared towards the ponies, and with them came heavy thuds like the rumbles of racing thunderclouds.  Then something else came with them; a noise high-pitched but broad in volume.

Like panting howls.

Prideheart spun about.
Upon the edge of the next rise suddenly appeared three bulky, menacing, red shadows.  Their eyes burned like deep fires on a lightless night, and a glow emanated from behind their jaws which resembled the glowering of a black iron furnace hungry for more coal.  The largest of the three shadows, dead in the center, stood out with its sharp, sinister pair of horns.
"Hello again," Kerby said in his smooth, formal, diabolical voice.





The fast first blood was an immense boost of encouragement to the timid townsponies; right away they saw that all of their desperate preparation actually had enabled them to fight back; at least, to some degree.  What's more, the heckhounds recognized their overeager comrade's failure and chose to bide their time.  Instead of a battle between a swift, raging fire and a trepid tide of water, Stony Nook's fate balanced on a slow and grim standoff.  Hounds wandered below, glaring up and growling foul threats when not sometimes teasing attacks.  Ponies waited above, tense and jumpy with buckets held close, whether by hoof or magic.
The trundling ordeal took an agonizing amount of patience to endure.  It was a matter of which side could suffer waiting longer before crumpling under their respective fear or bloodlust.
One by one the heckhounds started to make feints.  A lunge forward here, a dash towards the wall there; occasionally some of them even skipped up the stone face only to dive off early and retreat.  Individual hounds tried their luck, daring the ponies to flinch while they tested just how far they could take their attacks, but altogether along the breadth of the wall their independent strikes felt almost viciously coordinated.
Often the ponies responded to the slightest threats by chucking down waves of water.  Each time a single hound dashed at them only to suddenly veer aside, at least a few jumpy ponies fired away.  Some of them turned out their buckets at the mere sound of snapping jaws, even if the taunting hound was miles out of reach.  The longer it went on the more their uneasy panic flooded around them, their courage sinking, and their carelessness only got worse.  The pegasi defenders had hooves constantly full of freshly-filled buckets to resupply the wall, their wings whipping hot while they shed feathers by the pound.

It all concerned Crumble Pie greatly.
The longer things were dragging on the more the townsponies' willpower was eroding, making them more frantic and sloppy, and the heckhounds were in turn becoming bolder.  Their fire, doused a little by their early failure, was building back up into a roar.  Sooner or later one of them wouldn't hold back in a feint but actually try to scale the whole wall to the top; a single spark that could ignite Stony Nook's end.
Making matters worse, the frightened townsponies were spending their buckets faster than they could be replenished.  The terror driving their hapless defense had them emptying buckets like they were bailing out a sinking boat, and the pegasi who were making flights to the river for resupply simply couldn't keep up.  There were still many extra, full buckets lined on the wall waiting to be used, but their number shrank quite a lot faster than it grew.
For the gray mare, watching them rapidly vanish was like eying a hissing fuse.

"Easy!  Easy!  Careful with your shots!"

Her warning didn't do much good.  The ponies still poured waterfalls over their rampart, too afraid of what might come clawing up if they were to hesitate.  And certainly they were much too terrified to think any further than five seconds into the future.
Crumble Pie cut her way to the center of the wall, where the heckhounds were the thickest and the buckets seemed to be disappearing the fastest.  There, a constant stream of panic-stricken ponies, Mrs. Totaler included amongst them, were dumping water with such reckless speed that they were like a water wheel spinning out of control.  Some ponies ran up to the edge and tossed their buckets out without even looking.

"Everypony take it slower!  Easy!"

Yet not even that strong shout broke through their repetitive daze.
Next the gray mare bolted her hooves to the stone below.  She pulled back on her lungs until they sank into her stomach.  The weighty tone she belted out was little known and rarely heard, but this time it came down on the others like a crashing mountain.

"Ease it up!"

For good measure she threw herself into their mix where they couldn't possibly ignore her, jamming their gears.  The ponies who stopped and stared in confusion still fidgeted from their bodies' desire to keep a feverish pace.  The churning through defensive motions was the only thing holding them together.
"Take it steady!  Wait for a good shot!" instructed Crumble Pie.  "Throw when you really think you're going to hit!  Otherwise you're just wasting water!"
Mrs. Totaler spoke up, "They're mighty fast, Crumble Pie; flash up like a grease fire!  If we're too slow in keeping'em off-"
"If we're too quick then sure enough they'll get up anyway, right after we empty our last bucket!"
A few sloppy splashes sounded, coming from the ponies who hadn't been caught by the interruption.  They were still scrambling about and lobbing water.
"Here, gimme that," Crumble Pie slammed herself into one of the manic townsponies and snatched their full bucket from them.
She set it upon the parapet, keeping one hoof clasped to its side and her mouth near the bail handle, ready at any point to fling water where it needed to go.  Quiet and still, she kept a stern watch on the hounds stirring below, and likewise the stunned ponies behind her watched while awed by her stony calm and unprovoked focus.
One heckhound dashed in to make another false attack run.  He shot forward then curved, coming at the wall from an angle.  His high leap cleared the moat of mud all the townsponies' misses had created, but instead of climbing he kicked sideways along the wall before pushing off.  Landing safely past the mud, he slowed and gave a crackling chortle.
But immediately he was baffled to hear no splashes crashing down behind him.  He stopped abruptly and gazed back at the section of wall he had bounced off of, and he spied only a lone gray mare standing there.  All the other defenders had, apparently, fled.  And this last one was too scared to even move!  The look she held on him was pristinely unflinching; probably dead cold with fear, the hound assumed.
A cocksure wisp of smoke twirled up out of his nostrils and he took off in a fresh charge straight at the stone face of the wall.
And with perfect patience Crumble Pie let him come.  She let him fly over the mud; let him slam onto the wall; let him rake his paws to scramble up the stone.  And then she merely spilled the bucket over him just before he could clear the top.
The hound, bleeding plumes of dark smoke, tumbled and plopped onto the wet ground.
"There," Crumble Pie set the bucket down and turned about to address the others, "you see?  It's not all that hard to wait for a good-"
A burning snarl from behind her blew a wave of blisteringly hot air over the back of her neck.  Everypony standing before her had their jaws hanging, their eyes shrunken in fear, and the color fading from their frozen faces.  Peeking from the corner of her eye, the gray mare saw a heckhound perched upon the parapet and looming over her backside; a second beast which she hadn't noticed coming because of the intense focus she had given her target.
A hot light flickered.  A ball of fire bubbled up in the sneaky heckhound's throat.

But a mesh of fat stones suddenly leapt into the way.  They deflected and split the launched fireball into a dozen small, harmless streams of flame that quickly dissolved in the air.
The confounded heckhound gawked at the floating shield of stones that had spoiled his shot.  His dumbstruck stare lingered on the mysterious weave of rocks right up until they unexpectedly pulled apart to reveal two gray hooves whipping straight at him.
Crumble Pie's hard buck landed square on the hound's nose, knocking him backwards.  While his hind legs slipped, his forelegs managed to hook onto the wall and tenaciously refused to let go.  The monster was a tempest of angry growls as he rapidly worked to pull himself back up, but then a shower of water poured down from above and cast him from his hold.  He spun down the wall with smoking wounds and a sharp whine.

Scrolldozer magically set down the many stones in a fast, neat pile, and Hailstone landed while carefully laying down her heavy legload of fresh buckets, one of them now empty.  Meanwhile the rest of the townsponies rushed back to the defense lest any more heckhounds spring up suddenly, and each of them tried to work some of Crumble Pie's rock solid resolve into themselves.
The father couldn't plug the gushing oil well of his nervous tension; his last-second intervention and that momentary flash of fire had given him quite an unpleasant surge of adrenaline.  He nearly stumbled over the stones he had himself just set down when he tried check on his gray mare friend.
"A-Are you alright?"
"Not a scratch, thank you," Crumble Pie puffed a sigh of relief.  Mostly it was true; there was only a bit of an echoing twinge in her legs from the heckhound's deceptively sturdy snout.
Hailstone said, "Maybe don't turn your back like that, boss.  Keep the buckets flying instead."
"No, no, no!" the gray mare hollered.  "Unless you've only been warming up your wings, we've got to play it more carefully!  We're spending water too fast!"
Both of her friends noticed the dismal count of buckets for the first time.  Hailstone, feeling a sudden sense of inadequate performance, popped into the air and raced her wings into a flurry.
"Oh geez!" she gasped.
"Crumble Pie, we can't run dry," pleaded Scrolldozer.  Bookworm was in his eyes.  "We can't...  Not until they're back..."
"I know, I know," groaned the gray mare.
But she whirled her eyes up and down the long wall quickly, taking in the disappointing scene.  Everywhere distraught and consternated ponies were throwing water with reckless haste and disregard.  Even the townsponies she had moments ago chastised for it, though improved, were defending themselves more wildly than rationally.  Rallying the troops would be no small task, if even possible at all.
Just to vent some of her frustration she threw her head up and spat skywards a blistery moan, almost sulfurous like a volcano's eruption.  Everything in the sky far and wide was a crystal blue; an infinite expanse almost empty save for the rare streaks of white.
"Agh, I wish we just had a rainstorm!" she said.
"Well wish harder cause, like I said, we're not getting one," Hailstone grumbled.  And then she carelessly tossed about an insincere glance and muttered loudly, "Unless you've got some actual rainwater you keep stashed away on a shelf..."

"'Scuse me."
Mrs. Totaler's interruption was as tender and professional as her regular service, despite the unusual moment for it.  Dropping in and out of tavern chatter was one of her very honed skills.
They all turned to her in surprise while she set her bucket down.
"Rainwater, you say?" she asked.  "As in, Cloudsdale Rainwater Mead?  As in, the caseful of the stuff I bought a few days back from that traveling merchant; the poor, wise soul smart enough to be out of this place in time?  The caseful still sitting behind my bar?  That kind of rainwater, you mean?"

The battle continued on about them, sizzling here and there where it was not roaring.  But they were silent a moment.

"... Hailstone...," Crumble Pie slowly began to ask, "... would-... would that-"
"You're...," the pegasus' answer coalesced gradually, "... not going to get any rainstorm... but..."
Her eyes took over her face, glowing bright with excited realization, and her whipping wings blew off any weight of doubt.
"... it's probably enough to bind together one raincloud strong enough to hold a downpour of river water!"
"Go," commanded Crumble Pie immediately.
Perhaps because of the chaos going on about them, or maybe because of the incredible speed of the sudden raincloud revelation, or maybe even because of how ordinarily simple her order had been; it didn't pierce.  She tried again, much louder.
"Go on!  Hurry!" she shooed Hailstone and Mrs. Totaler like they were birds bothering a picnic.
The pegasus blasted like a lightning bolt into the sky to gather together whatever tatters of cloud she could.  Meanwhile the older mare, still finding a deep well of energy within her body, galloped down the wall's steps and off towards her tavern.

Scrolldozer looked at Crumble Pie, and she looked back at him.  The father's nerves were still too shaky to cling any tighter onto whatever hope there was.  He let an involuntary shudder pass, washed his throat to clear the dryness, checked that his horn still worked, and then returned to duty at his friend's instruction.
The gray mare tightened every loose knot she found in her body and resumed shouting directions and encouragements at the townsponies, stronger and steadier than ever.  She had to really thunder to overcome some of the increasingly tremendous barking, splashing, scratching, shouting, and snarling which was invading Stony Nook.