Under a Grey Sky

by Achaian

Interlude: What Was Said

Interlude

What Was Said

Ditzy sat upright at the sudden words. Eyes widening, then narrowing at the honeyed tone. She stared down the batguard silhouetted by the gold and purple hues of the sun breaking.

“You won’t be happy to hear all of this,” Eris continued, “but more than your need, you deserve to know some things about Tick and all the reasons we’re making this trip.

I don’t believe you.

“When did you start caring about what I deserve?”

In any other circumstance it would have been a terrible thing to say. Yet Ditzy wanted to push Eris’s new attitude, test it. Because Eris wants something from me. Even if it’s just to listen. And then there was the hunger too, the promise inherent in word and tone. If Eris really wanted to tell Ditzy something, then Ditzy held the position of power in the deepening night.

Ditzy should’ve known Eris would have none of it.

“I don’t have to tell you anything.” Eris’s glare met Ditzy’s and equaled it. “I know things you will never know if you try to fight me now. That’s not what I want to do.”

The batguard paused and softened, letting Ditzy wrangle her rising anger. I don’t need to—

“Take me at face value,” Eris implored. “We have a long way to go and it will be safer to cooperate.”

As if this was my fault. But…

Slowly, Ditzy stifled her malignant feelings. Breathing calmed forcibly, tempered with reminders that Eris was not her enemy and prodded by the lurking thought that it had been awfully stupid of her to try to fight her.

It was my fault. And this is my fault. Ugh. She wins. Why does she win? This must be getting to me.

Ditzy lifted her head, refocusing, and spoke almost as a murmur. “Do you know about the Nightmare?” Her voice was without a trace of her earlier venom. Maskless, Eris went cold at the question, studying something inside. The conversation faded like a falling star, soundless, bright, then nothing.

“Yes and no,” Eris answered; Ditzy’s attention hadn’t faded and her eyes were locked on her opposite. “Princess Luna told me about it, but don’t think I got everything that happened before the ruins. Things Quirk said about your encounters before I was involved caught her attention. I have guesses… and suspicions.”

Eris gestured with her hoof, a little wave that said something else first or simply later. Leaning forward as the surrounding dark convalesced their weary minds, Ditzy made no show of hiding her hunger.

“What about Tick?”

Eris opened her mouth, then cocked her head, snapped it in another direction and then relaxed slightly. “Quirk is coming back with your daughter. I’ll explain all of this once you’ve taken care of that.”

What!? What did Quirk—

~~~~~~~

Near panic, Ditzy dove through the dying beams toward the two figures at the edge of the clearing. Upheaval and havoc played at the fringes of her mind; the jolt of Eris’s words was as rough as her hard landing in front of Quirk and Dinky. Harried, she glanced at both quickly and wasted no time in saying:

“What did you—”

Similarly, Quirk wasted no time in cutting her off.

“Your daughter thought it was a good idea to follow me when I was looking around. Without telling me. That’s all that happened. I’m tired.”

With those blunt proclamations out of the way, Quirk turned and threw up what there was of a door to his tent behind him. Dinky looked up at her mother, Ditzy feeling like a razor floating in air, sharp, ready, her mind chaotic.

What did she mean that they want me and Tick for other reasons? Who is they? What does Quirk know about it? What about those books and the Nightmare, those reasons that I’m doing all this in the first place, and they don’t even make sense! If they were that dangerous and I was touched by it then why haven’t I gone crazy or why hasn’t anyone else who’s been touched by it gone crazy and what could be beyond all this—

“Dinky, we’ll talk about this tomorrow. It’s time for you to sleep.”

Curious, sullen, and reluctantly compliant, Dinky retreated under her mother’s watchful eyes to the tent they shared.

Ditzy fled back to where Eris waited, not waiting a moment. The temptation to dive into the tent and hide with her daughter would take her otherwise.

~~~~~~~

“Some of the things I’m going to say won’t make sense without context. I know you’re waiting. This has to come first to make sense.”

Among her hammering impulses, Ditzy noticed in some observant corner of her mind that Eris gradually slid back towards her laconic and almost offensive confident tone. Desperate with a fire that fed a desperation Ditzy hadn’t felt just a few minutes ago, she halted the urge to squirm and waited. Just go, just talk, talk about something, get there!

“I was already a guard by the time that Princess Luna returned. Not for long; it was mostly training before. Nopony saw her for months. We thought Princess Celestia was keeping her alone for whatever reason, but it was guesswork. When she did appear in public months later, we all immediately noticed that she and her sister were different animals. I know you ran into Princess Celestia once; she’s very informal; blah blah and so on. It’s obvious that Princess Luna doesn’t act that way. Princess Luna has…”

Waiting in the maddening silence, Ditzy eyed Eris intently as she looked for the right word. Caught in worried feelings, she couldn’t act to cut to the core yet.

“She has an iron will,” Eris finished, tossing the words out in dissatisfied fashion. “It’s a boring way to say it, but I’m not a poet so I won’t try to be one. That’s not what is important. What’s important is how she uses it.”

If only you picked up some of that decorum, an internal voice whispered before being beaten back by every bit of sense Ditzy had. Oh come on! It’s obvious she’s trying to make an amend at least in some ulterior—

“She’s disinterested in everything. In a good way, so that she’s a fair judge. I saw this more than once. After Princess Luna came out of her seclusion, it didn’t take her long to get a guard organized. Mostly bats, obviously. Through the couple of years that I’ve been under her command, she’s not broken the pattern of being apart from things.”

Looking Ditzy straight in the eyes (not a chance of one wandering off now!), Eris breathed in.

“This is different from everything I’ve ever seen her do. It’s personal and discreet. So discreet that it’s not even listed in limited-access mission logs. I checked them myself. You remember that the only two guards that went into the ruins were me and Aphelion. That’s extremely out of our guidelines. We don’t ever go into a potential danger in groups of less than eight, let alone two. And Princess Luna ordered us directly not to talk about what happened inside. To not acknowledge that it happened if brought up. The few of us are the only ones that know that happened. I know that, whenever and however you got into this, Princess Luna made a contract with you. No, not a good word. An oath. You know by now that she expects you to follow it.”

Remembering how her mind had wandered when the details of that oath had been hammered out, Ditzy cringed but managed to hide it. Most of it. Eris continued without breaking her focus on Ditzy, giving no hint she had noticed.

“She… this isn’t how she likes to do things. She doesn’t like to bring in the everyday pony. And I’ve never heard of her striking bargains with them. I was talking about how she was disinterested. The reason I mentioned her strength of will is that I’ve never seen her take that personal interest in everything. She always keeps impartial. This is different. I can see her personal thoughts on the edge of her expression, and only barely, after serving her for years. She doesn’t let us in on why she’s doing it. Usually she explains her reasoning for her decisions when she’s not busy. But this? She’s kept apart from us.”

Eris brought her gaze to the ground, a minute bit of her composure unraveling into uncertainty.

Does Eris know how this started? Does she know about how Tick can look into you? And… I knew it seemed personal for Luna, I guess on some level at least, but what is Eris going to show me with it?

“Do you know all the details about how this started? And… are you endangering yourself by telling me this?” Ditzy put in, barely audible in the night’s veil.

Eris opened her mouth and closed it, waving the latter question away with a minimum of movement. “If she didn’t want me to talk she would have said so. She’s that way. Tell me about it another night.”

Given how abnormal the whole situation was, Ditzy doubted it that still held true.

There might be something that completely changes how you think about—

Eris stared out at nothing. The sudden thoughts disappeared into an incoherent whisper against that wall.

“There’s more. This is only the first thing and it takes all of it to get.”

Ditzy nodded slowly, but to Eris she might have been a hundred miles away.

“There’s more guards going to the Crystal Empire, except officially. They were in the mission logs when I checked back in Canterlot. Not just a few either. At least two dozen, with orders to search out and secure something that wasn’t recorded. They’re headed to the capitol, which is where we’re going. I’m certain that they’re not headed after Tick. The orders would be completely different: it looked like a seizure of property, and if it was Tick it wouldn’t mix with how everything has been handled. I think it has to do with Tick, because it was logged after…”

Eris stopped herself, pausing.

“I hope you don’t like Tick. Or hate him.”

The blunt words ricocheted off a cautious Ditzy, shaking her. From nose to wingtip she felt a little jolt of energy pass through and she resettled her sitting position with no small ominous ache.

“I hope you don’t like him because he’s not going to come willingly. I hope you don’t hate him because I think he’s more central than we know. I don’t think they plan on letting him go once they have him: there was an incident that caught Princess Luna’s attention in the ruins.”

Eris’s voice was low and dark as she described momentary connection between her and Tick.

~~~~~~~

That excited face, that conspiratorial intent stared back at Ditzy, even in the utter black of the tent.

“They must need him because of how he looks into minds, and they’re interested in you because of how you handled him; the order was logged after Princess Luna got back to Canterlot and they’re headed to the one place that information would be and the place Tick would go. It would be quite the coincidence. I think they’re going after the same thing—”

Eris did not mention the Nightmare.

No, no, It can’t be that but—if Tick touched Eris then is she? But if we’re all tainted, then why hasn’t something happened? Are we all going to go crazy? I don’t know, I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense; the only insanity is this! How can I tell her? Will she even believe me when I’m unconvinced that there’s danger in this? When I question the authority she swore to follow? And there’s more, there’s more, there’s always more. That prick with his cog-eyes went and did exactly what he wasn’t supposed to even before he abandoned me. If we need him after for Celestia-only-knows-what, this might never end…

We’re all tainted because of him, one way or another.