When the Everfree Burns

by SpiritDutch

Bridge Chapter 6: A Truth Comes to Light: Xaron

The stars love the timpani. The stars love the viola and violin. Even the novice could hammer out a tempo that could make the stars above jitter and dance in wild exultation. The stars love the drum. The stars love the horn most of all. It is never for the art of the music that drives the stars to their dervish dances, but for its violence, as even in harmony there is the violence of the waveform advancing through air and space. The stars love a chorus. Songs about lost loves please the stars less than songs about empty roads by moonlight. They dance and dance and twirl and vibrate, for there is never a moment that someone somewhere is not playing music for the sake of the stars alone. The stars are jealous, of mortals and of each other.

Three Weeks Before the Summer Sun

Coltcutta, several hours after dawn.

Gilda, was face to face with great danger. It was not just because of the danger of hooves, claws, swords, or guns. There was a haunting reminiscence in the creature she faced off with. It was silent but overwhelming.

A squawking and plaintive cry echoed through the warehouse. It sounded like Gilda was in big trouble. But Rainbow Dash didn’t look, didn’t even flinch- She was locked in her staring contest with the massive hippogryph before her.
Flowing robes and a thin smile, it was an inquisitor of Maredia, here to put a stop to heresy. The large hippogryph blinked, slowly, deliberately. One eye was real, the other fake- Or perhaps, in another sense, both were real.

“Your eyes, they show to me determination and strong will.” The inquisitor said. “You are difficult to fool.”

“What do you want?” Rainbow Dash barked. Gilda’s screams began to die out, until it was all quiet in the warehouse. “Hey, I asked you a question!”

“Lower your voice, too loud. Peace follows me, I am its bringer and receiver.” The hippogryph said. Her crackling voice was not very well suited to the dulcet tone she was attempting. “Put down your sword, so we may talk calmly.”

“You’d have a better time taking the claws off a bear! You can’t fool me, birdbrain.” Rainbow struggled to calm her breathing, shivering despite the heat. But she was resolute and did not lie.

“I do not pretend. Honesty and humility are lights most core to the gryph. I mean no harm, truly.” The inquisitor slowly ripped open the front of her red robe and shrugged it off. “No weapon. No sword in my soul, either.”

Dash flicked her eyes down to the hippogryph’s equine body. Though there was indeed no weapon, the inquisitor’s wings had been modified with slivers of silvery metal. Weapons in wings were something she’d only ever heard about in stories. The way they reflected the dusty light of the warehouse was oddly mesmerizing.
“Good gods, can you fly with those?” She whispered.

“I see what you think, but my tools do not destruction, they construct, add.” The inquisitor slowly circled to the right, clearing Dash’s path to the front entrance. “I am not enemy, you know, Rainbow Dash of Cloudsdale.”

Dash blinked away her daze and lifted her cutlass again. “So you know my name. Congrats, but we knew you’ve been following us, creep.” She spat. “Why don’t you tell me what you want already?”

“You will not disarm? Very well. Talk first, yes.” The hippogryph squawked amusedly. Dash though she saw the gryph’s artificial eye twitch, of perhaps it was her imagination. “I am Sarbaz Yazatan.”

“And? Just another weird name to me.”

“Not name, no. Am. Khar. Profession, you say?” The hippogryph squawked amusedly. “Sarbaz, fighter. Yazata, the gods of the earth.” She reached up and tapped on the platinum sphere taking the place of her right eye. “I hunt, I fight, I suffer for Xaron, the one who fills me with blessings.”

“Good for Xaron, but I already know what you are. An inquisitor, which I hear is just another word for murderer.” Dash sneered. “What’s your name?”

“Inconsequential it is, I am Sharamin.” The servant of Xaron shook her head. The hippogryph seemed to be having fun. “Rainbow Dash, do you now desire my birth day and weight, or we proceed and talk?”

“Sharamin... And another weird foreign name. They just keep coming.” Dash scowled, but very slowly her dour expression turned into a slim smile. “How long have you been following us? Since the Sahella Strait? Or Andoulu? There's gotta be bigger fish." She pointed at the hippogryph. "You need something from us!"

“From you and Dame Gilda. Rather, not need, no, we do not need. But we like you two.” Sharamin laughed. “I desire see you prosper. Your inclusion with the plan brings benefit.”

The way Shamamin said it gave Dash pause. It was caring, but hinted of an doting obsessiveness. “So, you want to bring us in on a job or something?” Dash mulled. “Then why was Gilda shouting.”

“Scream as she did, Dame Gilda is in no danger. Two ponies with me came, unable to harm. She will come when able. We go check on her?”

“Stay right where you are.” Dash debated believing the inquisitor. Her heart, freshly aching from her hurt feelings, wanted to be seduced by the inquisitor’s promises. She looked over her shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of Gilda and what had happened to her. “So, Gilda and I can trust you?”

“Now and forever. Such is my vow, the Pale Flame smite me do I break it.” Sharamin pressed a hoof to her chin, then her forehead. Dash wasn’t familiar with hippogryph customs but she guessed it was a pledge. “Tak! This brings benefit to us.”

“If you say so.” Dash grunted.

The hippogryph’s ear flicked, and her metal eye quivered. “I hear approach. Gilda comes.”

Dash was about to retort when she heard the sound the inquisitor spoke of. It was supremely unpleasant on the ears, a kind of wet scape like spreading mortar over a brick.

Sharamin scowled, but not at Rainbow Dash. “Wrong? Qhui migie Ava Xaron?” Her platinum eye twitched again, trying to source the horrible sound. “The ponies dead? Then Dame Gilda…”

Gilda stepped out from behind one of the pillars.
She was covered from paw to crest in blood, and not just sprays, but as though she had been fully submerged, practically painted. Tangling around her claws and paws were somepony’s guts, and bits of skin were stuck to her beak.

“Rainbow? Are you out there?” Gilda’s eyes were covered by a skin blindfold cut from somepony’s blue pelt. She staggered forward, feeling out her path. “Everything is faded. And my head, it hurts!”

“GILDA! Gilda can you hear me?!” Dash felt her steadfastness falter. She turned back to the inquisitor. “What’s happened to her?!”

“She play rough with the others, it appear.” Sharamin clacked her beak nervously. The platinum eye glanced up, between Gilda and Dash. “Dame Gilda, have you remembered something?”

“I’m- I’m back home. Godswing. It’s so cold.” Gilda ran a trembling talon over her cheek. “Rainbow, save me. Save me from Black Bell!”

Rainbow Dash dropped the cutlass and bounded to Gilda’s side. She scraped as much of the wet blood off as she could. “Gilda, it’s okay. I’m right here, okay?”

Sharamin, increasingly nervous, pranced in place. “This goes not how we expected. Dame Gilda’s reaction most ill... This reverie reeks of Star’s magic. Curses upon the Graffina of Gottrakt!”

“Did you… You must have caused this!” Rainbow accused.

“Nay, nay. Ah, well, somewhat. Xaron apologises. That devil, Black Bell, spoke a spell onto Dame Gilda reduce her utility to us!” The servant of Xaron trotted around Gilda, looking her up and down. “Be wary. She may do at you as she did the other servants. Evisceration, Xaron says.”

“Black Bell… Yeah, she said Black Bell. Oh no.” Gilda had never been very forthcoming about her childhood, and even less about her stepmother Black Bell. Dash’s impression of her was sketchy, but absolutely terrifying. She took a step away from Gilda, fearful. “Will she be okay? What can I do?”

“It being we caused Dame Gilda’s plight, Xaron shall aide her. I and you execute his desires, az’megheh.” Sharamin pushed Gilda’s rump into a sitting position.
She turned her head to the left and met it with her wing. Very carefully, she wedged one of the metal shards between her skin and the platinum eye, and popped it out.

“Guh” Dash gagged. The back of Sharamin’s left socket was bare bone.

“The wind was always strong here. The north wind was the worst.” Gilda was starting to babble. “The naked slaves would freeze to death before they even got off the docks, but that didn’t save them. Dying is only the beginning of the torture on Godswing.”

“Dame Gilda would most upset losing an eye. Praise be, there are other ways interface.” Sharamin scooped up the platinum eye off the ground. Dash noted that her words were more accented and harder to understand than before she’d taken out the eye. “Rainbow Dash, please hold open her mouth-beak.”

Dash hesitated. “What are you planning? She’ll choke on that thing.”

“Eih? Nah nah! Dame GIlda will not choke if not swallow, merely hold she will.” Sharamin cawed. “Hurry please. The bile of the mind bubbles baddly in her head.”

Giving in to the hippogryph’s unwavering gaze, Dash pulled Gilda’s beak open. Gilda didn’t resist, but nor did she stop trying to talk, resulting in airry gargling. Sharamin had to encourage Dash to pry a bit more before she could nest the platinum sphere in. Gilda’s tongue licked over the foreign object.
Slowly though, Gilda’s spasms and gargling stopped. She slid down to her stomach and lay there, taking long breaths. The platinum eye staring out from between her mandibles looked like a strange third eye, or the apple of a stuffed pig.

Dash disentangled the guts from Gilda’s paws now that she was restive. “Is she going to be okay?”

“Away from me, I can not hear Xaron. But Dame Gilda’s calm is good. The spell of Black Bell is bested.” Sharamin explained. “Tak, Xaron is orphan master to dreams, as all Yazata.”

“Eversnake was not nearly as annoying as you are.” Dash let out all the anxiety she’d had in a choppy sigh. “But I guess you’d have to kind of a freak to be a murdering zealot.”

“Rainbow Dash, you aim at maim with your words. I am not blind deaf to the talk such as that.” Sharamin, since her commandingly upbeat facade had fallen, had a much more cautious and harsh look about her. Up close, her fur-parting scars were much more intimidating, some recent and pink. “All other play at faith, make amusement with religion. Only gryph, and Sarbaz Yazatan, do as necessary. ”

“You’re not going to make a convert out of me, pal.” Dash rolled her eyes.

“Hmm, as you say. We talk, of business.” Sharamin invited Dash to sit. “Of khar.”

“Profession.” Dash sat. “First I gotta know how you know about me and Gilda.”

“First at Andoulu, I saw you. Only small too late there, did Daring Do escape the Sarbaz Yazatan.”

Those two sentences were so loaded with information Dash almost exploded. Gilda had been a hundred-percent spot on with her guess that the inquisitors were after Daring Do. Now the way Daring had snuck onboard the Flyer Kyte, and all her following paranoia, made sense. Dash sensed a conflict of loyalties in her near future.

“I do not fail often. I was angry, most destructive in hate. Next place my khar was needed, was Reqheh Besurje, I think ponies call it Stirrup Town. I punished them. Death followed me, and the ponies heard me say it.” Sharamin leaned back and closed her one good eyes, and began reciting something like a poem.
“I am the bringer and receiver of death. The lords of darkness welcome, and unbidden I trot until the gates of damnation close. Death follows me.”

Dash was surprised. The way the poem sounded made her think it wasn’t a translation from the maredian tongue, but equestrian. “Gilda was telling the truth. Stirrup really was wiped out.”

“Thieves hide there no more.” Sharamin cackled triumphantly. “I learned Daring Do, lowborn heretic, was mastermind there too. I made a trap for her, but Dame Gilda broke it instead. I did not know her, but Xaron did, and he gave me the love he had. Dame Gilda and you became the new task for my khar. I reunited.”

Dash would have remembered if Gilda had ever said anything about some ‘god’ named Xaron. The was a non-zero probability that Xaron was just a schizophrenic voice in the insane mind of the inquisitor projected, as Dash was gathering, on her artificial eye. It didn’t explain Gilda’s swoon though.
“So, you followed the Kyte here with the two issues of us and Daring.”

“Yes! Xaron urged patience, telling that I let the heretic go to catch later. I obey. Xaron said I give a job-test for you and Dame Gilda, so I and you have honesty and humility for honor of Yazata. I obey again.”

“You pretty much lost me on that last part. Humble’s never been my thing, really. Not honesty either.” Dash said. She looked over to her cutlass, laying on the ground on the other side of Sharamin. She had a feeling it would have been useful if she’d been planning to turn the inquisitor down. But she wasn’t going to. “What’s the payout?”

“Fulfilling wealth, friendship, benefit. Most marvelous, thanks of Xaron. More pleasure than that gold full bag brings.”

“Must be a hard job to earn a reward like that.” Dash sniffed. A certain mercenary instinct was taking hold of her, and now that Gilda was seemingly out of harm’s way, she was approaching the situation with cold logic.
More valuable than any currency, it was said, were connections. Her current job was with Magistrate Mare, who’d proven multiple times her ability to get in over her head. Odds were, the plucky bureaucrat would end up dead before forty. Daring Do too had gotten on the wrong side of the law, with inquisitors and unfeeling corporate force of the EOC looming over her.
On the other hoof was Sharamin, and what she offered. One of the foremost agents of Maredia, one of the most powerful, if not THE most powerful states second only to Equestria, was offering an alliance of sorts. “But there’s been one thing you’ve been dancing around, Sharamin. What do you need us to help you with?”

“A small thing.” Sharamin reached into the folds of her wadded up red robes and extricated a dagger, and held it out to Dash. She noted with alarm that the dagger was the same one as the blue unicorn thug had used, its pommel embedded with teeth. “We kill the Maharajaja of Coltcutta, and free his secret.”

-------------

Gilda hated the north wind. It whipped the northern sea into a frenzy of icy and salty spray, and with its cutting gale stripped all vegetation and life from Godswing. It had made many assignments of solitary contemplation into moist and miserable experiences.
But those experiences had done their purpose. After hundreds of hours with only the shriek of the wind over the rocks and the crash of waves on the jagged shoreline, the young Gilda had heard what she was there to hear. Carried off the arctic ice sheets south to Godswing was a windblown whisper, come down from an unknown world. The students of the School of the Black Bell listened, and gradually, they would grow to understand secrets too far to see.

It was mid afternoon on Godswing. It made sense. Latitudinally, it was a quarter circumference west from Coltcutta. The basalt mountain that dominated the island was beginning to cast a shadow over the water.

“Gilda! Gilda!” A desperate voice said behind her, difficult to hear over the whistling wind. Black Bell was approaching, braving the sharp rocks and tempest. She was not wearing her roc skull, instead letting the wind ruffle her feathers freely. She looked overjoyed. “I can hardly believe it! Finally, you’ve come back to me.”

Gilda couldn’t see her own body, for of course it was still in Coltcutta. In Black Bell’s eye she could see a reflection, a oblong chunk of the black basalt omnipresent on Godswing, encased in the faint shimmer of golden magic. Of all the things her dreaming perspective could have latched on to...

“You are back. I’m simply… overjoyed. These past ten years have stretched out longer than any before in my thousand years of life. Your absence had weigh heavily on your father and I.” Black Bell looked exactly how Gilda remembered her, maybe even a bit younger if it were possible. “It was hard being patient. I knew that you would eventually, inevitably, dream this dream again. All that time, I was thinking about what I could say to you, to convince you to come back.”
Gilda was helpless to do anything but watch and listen, but perhaps it was for the best. She knew she probably wouldn’t have been able to keep herself from yelling and antagonizing Black Bell until one of the did something they regretted. At the same time Gilda hated the sinister griffin, she loved her.
“But at the same time, I know you must have changed greatly over the years. You are not the naive and willful girl who slept through cooking class anymore. But surely, my child, this will not keep you from appreciating the majesty I have created in your absence.”

The wind stopped. Gilda saw that the sea was now entirely placid as well.

Black Bell could not restrain a growing smile. She held a glowing talon into the air, warping the world to her will. “This is the power we’ve been after, Gilda. We are at the threshold of being able to reshape the world how we want.”
She began dance to the now absent tune of rushing wind, enraptured in her euphoria. “Oh, GIlda, this is it! This is the justice we can give. My poor child, you didn’t believe me, didn’t believe that what we were doing here was worth it. “

Storm clouds began form around the basalt mount,hiding the sun behind a curtain of grey. Black Bell’s mood similarly darkened. “Somepony- nay, some alicorn, is trying to pull you away into another dream.”

The grey clouds contorted and twisted, pushing down in some areas and pulling up in others, until out of the turmoil the shape of an eye could be seen. Lightning streak inside the clouds, creating the complex but fleeting patterns.

“Xaron. So, it was one of Wintertide’s ilk who found you.” Black Bell said sourly. “As Ava go, there are worse. He has a habit to pick narrow-minded bigots as his servants. I release you to his care. I trust that you are smart enough to see through any lies he offers.” She stepped back. “Gilda, a critical moment approaches that will upturn the balance of this world. When it happens, be prepared to seize the moment. Always know that your father and I will welcome you back.”

Gilda’s perspective was jerked into the air, and the world around her faded into murky dark. For a minute, she could see a universe of the faint motes of dreams, nebulas of coursing thought, and tangled thought; The deeper Dreamscape. That faded away as well.

Gilda’s reintroduction to sensation was a her own breathing. She felt the tickle of grass on her back, and when she opened her eyes she saw clear night sky full of stars. The air was thin, but warm and dry.
She was laying in the middle of what looked to be the garden courtyard of a palace complex. The buildings around her were of beige stone interpolated by pointed arches and fresco, topped off with turquoise tile. Towers stretched up to the sky, reaching with all their might to reach into space.

“Maredia.” Gilda sat up. She had never been to the reclusive mountain nation, but even in a dream the feel of the place was unmistakable. Under the sent of the fragrant flowers planted everywhere was a acerbic smell, like some was burning something nearby.
She yelled into the air. “This is a very fine dream you have, but you wouldn’t let me loose in it unchaperoned.”

She heard the patter of feet on tile nearby. A wavering and melodic voice spoke from the shadows. “I’m just giving you a moment. Are you well?”

Gilda looked for the source of the voice. “Peachy. Vulgar memories attacked me earlier, but I got the best of them.”

“Naturally so, Dame Gilda. Or as graffina Black Bell said, ‘my child’. But that’s simply too charming for me.” It was on the masculine side of gender neutral, but shifted up and down the scale. A diminutive figure stepped into the starlight.
Xaron had taken on the appearance of a crimson ibis, and was no larger than one either, barely coming up to Gilda’s chest. However the tiny bird had many, many more legs than it should have, and it glided like a caterpillar on the hundred spindly legs. It only had one eye in the center of its face, whose jagged pupil widened and contracted at random. “It has been too long, my darling niece. Do you recognize me? My my, you’ve gotten taller since last we met.”

Hearing that voice agitated Gilda’s memories. She saw visions of a tawny hippogryph male standing on black basalt cliffs of Godswing, watching the raging ocean below. In the place of his left eye was a platinum orb, it’s smooth surface reflected the world in inverse. “Yes, I remember your visit to Godswing. Xaron, child of Wintertide, Fire of the Gryph, and seer of the Sarbaz Yazatan. You had a different vessel, a male.”

“Correct. Your memory has indeed returned.”

Gilda frowned. “The only reason you stood out to me is because of how many slaves you brought.”

“I remember you making the same mistake then.” The Xaron chided. “The Ava have servants, I corrected, not slaves.”

“I saw what you did to those ponies. Stone eyes don’t lie.” Gilda clucked her tongue.

With such a narrow beak, Xaron’s manifestation did not emote well, but Gilda got the impression he was smiling. “It is taught among the gryph that the Ava’s methods are inscrutable, their goals unknowable.”

Gilda was already getting impatient. “Save the preaching. No doubt, Rainbow Dash is getting the same in the waking world. I’m ready to hear whatever you have to say, but if you try to gaslight or lampshade me, you won’t find me very receptive.”

“Oh well done, well done indeed.” Xaron chuckled. “A scholar comes into my dream, my memories, and addresses me flippantly. You Gottrakt griffins are a league above.”

“Do me a courtesy and cut the bullshit.” Gilda snapped. “What is in the sarcophagus Daring Do has? Definitely not an alicorn, since it’s a fake.”

“A replica, Dame Gilda, but not a fake. Yes, it was not made by the maredians, and does not hold a Fire of the Gryph, but it has much the same purpose. Reverence, but at the same time, containment.” Xaron said. “The real-world counterpart of this palace complex is one big sarcophagus. My kin and I are all effectively dead and buried, and receive from the same ‘servants’ our praise and our shackles.”

“I only asked one question, bucko. Try again. What’s in the box?” Gilda demanded coldly.

Xaron struggled out as short an answer as possible. An alicorn without flourished and flowerly monologuing was a neutered being. “A dead horse.”

“And the significance of that is…”

With some difficulty, Xaron sat down and pacified his myriad legs. “Would you like for me to start from the top?”

Gilda too made herself comfy on the grass. “Oh, please do.”

“Over the course of your education, you doubtlessly heard a creation myth or two. The various pantheonic griffin mythologies, for example. The sun-worship equestrians like to say that the sun, source of all virtue, created the earth. Other pony civilizations retain the ancient alicorns as their gods of choice. All of those have their tidbits of truth. For you, my niece, I give a greater framework.

Before we begin in earnest, I will admit that I do not have much of a memory beyond a few centuries ago. None of the Ava do, except perhaps my lord father Wintertide, and he is reticent of the secrets of the past.
The maredians are insatiable hunters of the arcane. Everywhere the Sarbaz Yazatan operate, they are seeking artifacts to plunder. What I know is what they have pieced together. Soon, I fear, the Fire priests will find a way to channel magic without the Fires of the Gryph, and my kin will lose the only thing we have.

Ahem…

Approximately ten thousand years ago, a tribe of mountain hippogryphs began to hear something. It was a faint whisper that intruded on one’s mind, filling empty heads with knowledge. Fire, agriculture, bronze working, architecture, all the tools to begin a primitive civilization. The proto-mardians called these whispers, who had given them the light of truth, the Fires of the Gryph.

The hippogryph’s blessing came inadvertently. The children of Wintertide, the Ava, were at our lowest. Once, we shared a cosmic home with the deava, our darker counterparts and embodiment of all conceivable evils, but there could be no harmony between us. We were defeated by the Deava and cast out of the heavens, and were forced to make our home in the skies of this planet.
Exposed to the physicality, the ava were gradually becoming corporeal. After several millennia this shift would yield the ancient alicorns. But during this time mortals were a new phenomenon to us, and aside from deviants like Myriadess we stayed away from them. On the highest peaks if the tallest mountains, such as where the mardians lived, they could hear our voices. Refrains from the limitless dreaming sky, by proxy.

In another part of the world, there was another whisper being heard. The Bard, proud ponies of the deserts of Sahella, felt upon their cheeks the breath of a much darker divine.

When the Ava came to earth, they did so in the knowledge that the Deava could not follow them. Any amount of matter would disperse an unformed god’s manifestation. In that way, retreating here was the ultimate concession that we Ava could never match the Dark Ones, and that dirtying ourselves with physicality was more befitting of us.
One of the Deava did follow us though. Anima Astral Nacre imbibed physicality and joined us as a gesture of reconciliation, or so she claimed. Wintertide dared not let her live inconspicuously among us, and so with matrimony did he make certain her ambitions were known to him.
Astral Nacre’s intentions were obviously anything but kind. Her first target were the mortals underneath us, and her dark allure sung to the lonely ponies on their sand dunes.

With Astral Nacre’s voice in their ears, the Bard began to advance rapidly. They went from a society barely mastering the wheel to a civilization of steel-smiths and philosophers. A great city was founded in the heart of the desert, an oasis for both the thirsty and the clever.
One day, Astral Nacre’s voice changed its pitch. The Bard, seduced by its melody, were twisted by the new compulsion that pounded in their skulls. A tower, she asked of them, that could reach all the way up to the sky. Once it reached high enough, mortals could tear down the Ava and finish what the Deava could not.

The Bard devoted the combined efforts of their people into the tower. The first iteration was of sandstone, and it collapsed less than four-hundred hooves off the ground. The second iteration was of marble, and it rose a measly thousand hooves before it fell. Obsidian, black as night, was mined from the dead volcanoes under the seas of sand, and comprised the third iteration. The obsidian tower did not sway, did not falter, and clawed its way higher on the toil of the Bard. It was their tower, but at the same time they belonged to it.
As the Tower of the Bard rose, it began to conduct the voices of the alicorns, both Ava and Deava, better. Whispers grew louder, suggestions became thoughts, distant gods became near. Many left the city, choosing to endure the desert rather than hear the intruding susurrations.
The Bard suffered, but did not relent. Those who could not stand the god’s power were unworth, those who went mad were blessed. The volume of revelations swelled, offering power beyond mortal reach, but the Bard were too preoccupied to act on them.

The tower reached a kilometer high, then two, then three. Every meter brought them closer to the alicorns and made the voices stronger. The power conducted down the tower to the city below, where it pooled into a stupefying haze. Jumbled words and emotions of higher beings is unhealthy, to say the absolute least, and the Bard began to mutate subtly. The voices began to subtly terraform the hapless ponies’s minds and dreams, to make them more hospitable for their grandeur.

But the Bard built too high, and too ambitiously. After a hundred years of construction, the tower came in range of the whispers of the cosmos.”

Xaron fell silent. His turned his eyes skyward, to inspect the twinkling stars above. “Questions?”

“How far away are the galaxies and stars?” Gilda asked.

“Trillions, nay, trillions of kilometers away. No power, mortal or Ava, could reach them. But they can reach us triflingly easily.” Xaron lifted a hoof up, as though to caress one of the lights, but thought better of it. “Have you ever been to the Deeper Dreamscape, Dame Gilda?”

“When I was a student.”

“The Dark beings of the cosmos operate on a level inconceivable to us down here. Reality is their dream, outer space their dreamscape. We down here are just parasites, infesting and polluting their dreams with our thoughts.” He shivered. “What utter carnage it causes when the stars stop their idle whispering, and begin to shout. What horror it inflicts when the cosmos pays attention to us.

“And pay attention it did. The Tower of the Bard was the earth’s antenna, and through it the Bard received the unfiltered Will of the Dark Ones.
Utter ruination, complete and instant, coursed down the obsidian spike to the Bard’s city. The Dark One’s words were too powerful for mortal minds, even those made fertile by Astral Nacre’s whispers. The lucky ones were disintegrated, and they passed to Elysium with their dreaming sanity intact.
The less fortunate were horribly corrupted. Those with a poor grasp of the divine had their flesh and souls revert to a more primal state, in an effort to escape the sin of knowledge. The scholars, priests, and magicians had their very souls burned away by the Dark voices, leaving empty vessels for Deava to inhabit. The most knowledgeable and powerful retained their sanity at a terrible cost, for the Dark inflicted upon them a mad hunger of dreams, making them the first nightmares.

The records to this point have come from archaeological clues. Written accounts, first-hoof and hearsay, are all but nonexistent until Astral Nacre descended, for it was she who inscribed upon platinum tablets her deeds in the lost city.
For you see, Astral Nacre saw the deathly slaughter down below with disappointment. She had been cultivating the Bard for her purposes. That her cosmic kindred had so thoughtlessly erased a hundred years of work made her angry. She ordered the Dark Ones to turn their attention elsewhere, but they could not help themselves.”

Xaron paused again. Gilda took it as a sign he would be asking another question.
Indeed he did. “Dame Gilda, what do the whispers sound like?”

“It starts as nothing, a phantom in the wind. You wonder if it’s really there or a trick of the mind.” Gilda explained. “Before you realize, words in a language you don’t know start leaking into your inner voice and your conversations. You start listening for real, and when you close your eyes you begin to see symbols and patterns. After a couple decades, my teachers said, you can clearly hear the will of the Deava lingering at space’s edge.”

“That sounds like gross hyperbole. Even Clover could not do that unaided.”

“Well, I’ll let you sit in the north wind and decide for yourself.” Gilda smirked. “But wait, you already tried that last time you visited Godswing. You’re deaf, and your silly servants can’t hear anything but you. The cosmos has nothing to say to the Ava. Just us mortals.”

“For how much you hate your mother’s work, you defend her quickly.”

Gilda glowered, but she didn’t have a proper response. “She’s my step-mother.”

“It’s not a very big step. You two are very alike. So, how does it feel to be beside your step-mother at the leading edge of your species’s evolution?” Xaron pried.

To which Gilda had no answer but a sour gaze.

“For me and the gryph, plunging into the past has evoked a very similar feeling. Every time you think you understand what you are, the bottom falls out again, and new secrets are revealed.

“For the Bard it was, understandably, different. They were not digging, but climbing. Too bad they were doomed from the start. A fate like their awaits any who pry too far into the unknown. Unless, like Black Bell and many others have sought, there is a way to tear down god and get her secrets without her being able to fight back. You can’t help but wonder…

Those who survived the Dark One’s initial attack were plagued by the mutated husks, hollow shells, and hunger-mad nightmares. The tower which had become the focus of their civilization and religion was broadcasting Dark madness, and the city containing all their recorded knowledge was burning around them.
Astral Nacre’s arrival on the surface brought a great hush, it was said. In that time, no mortals had the facilities to see magical beings like the ancient alicorns, so she came to them as a dominating voice and cold presence. All the corrupted ponies and malformed beasts bowed down to their overlady, not just as the greatest of the Dark Ones, but as the true face behind the whispers. Of course, she was calculating how to use the tragedy to advance her goals.

Astral took the afflicted under her care and sent the others into the desert. The Bard were nomads once more, stripped of their anachronistic god given grandeur. Astral held two back: A mare by the name of Velvetine, and a stallion by the name of Vlelveran.
The platinum tablets go on at length about Velvetine. She was the sister of one of the great archons of the city, Vlelveran, and was herself an skilled listener, some say the most skilled. She was attentive enough to Astral Nacre’s whispers that her dreams had been completely remade. Velvetine could survive the presence of the Dark Ones unharmed.
Vlelveran is less known about. He did not have his sister’s prowess, so he was one of the unfortunate few to be twisted into a nightmare. He did, however, possess a sight that transcended mortal powers. His eyes could see the magic, the Light and Dark and grey that flowed through the air and along the ground. With that sight, Vlelveran was able to see the ethereal Astral Nacre and the Dark Ones who accosted his people from just beyond the edge of space. As Astral commanded, he relayed.

Now, my dear. we get to the point.
Velvetine began to climb the Tower of the Bard. For a thousand miles she climbed against the flow of the Dark Ones’ power. Vleveran and the nightmares stayed in the husk of their city, and waited.
Astral does not go into detail when she inscribes what happened to Velvetine at the top of the Tower of the Bard. Her mind, a living ritual, was able to steal from the cosmos without punishment. In the era when the unicorns of Old Equestria were still hunting game, she was witnessing the pure aspects of Light and Dark. That remade her into more.

The tower shattered. Obsidian rained down on the dead city and the surrounding desert. Astral Nacre protected the nightmares and the abominations as best she could, but she was not corporeal and could only do so much. The rockfall lasted for days.
The last chunk to fall carried with it the body of Velvetine. She had, and I quote Astral here, ‘Greatly blessed in death’.

After that, Astral inscribed the story in platinum and buried it under the rubble. The Sahella sands swallowed the city, and the only surviving proof it happened was the myths of the Bard.

We Ava, utterly ignorant of doom averted, welcomed Astral Nacre back from her mysterious sabbatical and went about our boring lives. Our benign voices continued to grace the maredians, the griffins, the equestrians, the highland zebras, and wherever else one was close to the sky.
And then of course Astral betrayed us and obliterated the ancient alicorns with her play at reviving the omnipotent Giver. The Ava became the Fires of the Gryph, prisoners of mortals.”

“Yeah, nice story, but let’s focus on the stuff that matters to me.” Gida said. “Daring Do said she pulled the sarcophagus from the ruins of the Tower of the Bard. But the sarcofagi for the Fires of the Gryph came centuries after the fall of the tower. Did the Maredians copy the Bard?”

“No. The replica is much newer, only nine-hundred-ninety-nine years old.”

“ -1 SS. The year of the Nightmare Pretender's rebellion. Oddly specific. I can’t remember anything interesting happening in Sahella in that timeframe.” Gilda scratched her chin. “So… Did someone dig up a body, put it in the replica, and put it back in the ruins? No, there wasn’t such thing as archeology back then.”

“You are missing the obvious.”

“The obvious answer would be Velvetine, but you said she died on the tower. Who then? Vlelveran? I don’t know a nightmare’s lifespan.” Gilda grasped at answers. “Astral Nacre or Clover, maybe?”

“Gilda, darling, think about who we are dealing with. The Bard have lost all their knowledge of the gods and their city outside of myth and conjecture. Some pony of enormous religious significance, newly ‘deceased’, is interred in a copy of the most holy graves in the world. This horse was interred like a god.” Xaron posed. “Now what does that tell you?”

“Grr, you just said Velvetine was dead!”

“I said that Astral Nacre said she was dead, or rather ‘blessed in death’. Who knows what that means to a Dark One such as her.”

“Stop jerking me around! What happened to her on the tower? How could she die if she was already dead?!” Gilda demanded. After a moment of angry pouting, she realized something. “Wait… She doesn’t have to be dead. Like the Fires of the Gryph, reverence and containment in one. Imagine this: On the eve of the Celestiaan’s battle, an ancient hierophant goes to sleep. His/her followers entomb her and put the sarcophagus in the ruin of their holy city. It’s undesturbed until Daring Do digs it up.”

Xaron nodded slowly. “There’s one way to find out.”

“This could be big. Who knows what secrets Velvetine could have! I mean, if it really is her, and she is who you say she is.” GIlda cawed eagerly. “It’s obvious why the Stars or Black Bell might want that sarcophagus, but why do you? I haven’t heard how this story ties to the Ava or the ancient gods, aside from Astral.”

“Oh come now Gilda. Does this history not fill you with burning curiosity? Why would I not desire to know more about my mother and her deeds?” Xaron shrugged. “We potentially have a ‘firsthand source’ for the nature of the Dark Ones. That is powerful leverage.”

Gilda had a lot to think about. Xaron could be, and probably was lying, or at least exaggerating certain things. But there was indeed one way to find out.
If there really was a mare named Velvetine in the sarcophagus, Gilda would be pleasantly surprised. If said mare showed signs of alteration, then Gilda would have to start thinking about how she was going to go forward. If that mare was alive, Gilda might find herself diving headfirst into the perilous life she’d tried to leave behind on Godswing.
“Can you and your servants handle Daring Do by herself?” Gilda cautiously asked. It would be good to know how many hippogryphs and Ava she might have to deal with.

“We could have even whilst you and Mis Dash defended her.” Xaron said with a tinge of smugness. “Though my servant protests, it is much better to watch her from a distance until more is unfolded.”

“What does Do know?”

“Next to nothing, I should say. Whomever she works for will only have told her the absolute minimum. Without the education one could get from Canterlot or Gottrakt, it is doubtful she could piece things together.”

“Hmm… I let slip that I was from Godswing, and she started asking a lot of questions. Yet she wasn’t suspicious. She’s totally paranoid about inquisitors though. So, yeah. She’s clueless.” Gilda said. “But somehow, she learned about the sarcophagus, and about it’s connection to a ‘treasure’ in Chitin.” She leaned forward slightly. “What do you know about the treasure?”

“Not much. Chitin is a very large place. Who’s to know what that mare thinks she’s found.” Xaron’s smile did not give much credence to that claim. “But that it requires Velvetine and Vlelveran’s sarcofagi would suggest it is something related to the Tower of the Bard.”

So, the sarcophagus that Do had been trying to buy from philosophiser Hyle and sniper Pip in Stirrup had been Vlelveran’s. It was a second replica.
Xaron could have been talking completely out his ass about ‘other artifacts’. Everything he said might could have been learned from Vlelveran’s sarcophagus after the he and the inquisitors sacked Stirrup. They had been hunting Daring believing she had a genuine Fire of the Gryph. Not that they knew, none of them had bothered intercepting her at Coltcutta, except for Xaron.
The ava was pursuing things for his own end.
Gilda was getting a clearer picture. “Do you suspect one of the other Stars is behind Daring’s expedition?”

“I do. They went to great length to hide their activity.” Xaron nodded. “Not all the Stars are as respectful of Maredia and the Sarbaz Yazatan’s jurisdiction, as Black Bell and Cadmirzan.”

“Respect?” Cadmirzan made annual visits to Godswing to stay apprised on Black Bell’s discoveries, and all the hippogryph litch did was gripe against the maredian fire priests and their misuse of the Ava’s potential. “Sure, you can call it respect.”

Xaron guffawed airily. “They are less likely to be meddling than, say, Phyte or Shale. That whole equestrian coteree has been silent for too long. Equestrian ponies are clannish sorts, and I would not be too surprised to find that the EOC and Celestia’s state are complicit in this deception.”

The idea of running afoul of the Empire of Equestria, in addition to the immortal Stars, didn’t make Gilda very happy. “I’m not going to get involved with your politics.”

“I have too much invested in this to leave it on your say so, my dear niece.” Xaron said, hinting at a threat. “Therefore you have to ask yourself if you should run away, or keep working with Daring Do.”

Xaron was right. There was no way that such a relic could exist without some contention, as demonstrated with whatever was going on between Daring Do and Emerald Rose. But Gilda didn’t necessarily want to make her choice without consulting Dash first. For better or for worse, Rainbow Dash would share her fate.
Therefor, with the weight of both her and Dash’s lives on her back, Gilda needed to make the responsible decision. The responsible thing would be to run away, and leave behind the Daring Do, Magistrate Mare, and the sarcophagus. But Gilda felt revulsed at the idea. It felt like surrender. She had to advance against the world and better herself, and become more. It was her calling as a lady and as a student of the Black Bell.

Then what was to be done?
Daring Do’s intentions for the sarcophagus could not be relied upon. Gilda might have to take it for herself. And if the sarcophagus held great power, she could do great and terrible things with it, if she so desired.

“I’ve seen that look. You’re thinking evil thoughts.” Xaron smirked. “Dame Gilda, if you undertake this dangerous game on your own you would make a lot of enemies. Allying me would be much easier.”

“Then perhaps I should wait too. When the treasure in Chitin is uncovered, I’ll decide which is worth keeping and use the other to pay everyone off.”

“Oh, my dear, you are quite devious. Thankfully for me, hippogryphs can be devious as well.” Xaron laid back in the grass. “You didn’t forget this this was a dream, did you? One could only imagine the hijinks my servant Sharamin dragged Rainbow Dash and your body into in the time we’ve been talking.”

“You…” Gilda sucked in a breath, then exploded in anger. “BASTARD! I’ll get you for this!”

“All’s fair in love and war, they say. Astral Nacre had a different take on that idiom: Don’t hold back for plays of power and passion.” Xaron laughed and laughed, like a colt who’d pulled off a wily prank. “When you wake up, you’ll find yourself beholden to my plan, my idiom. Like the Dark Ones out there in the sky, I have made the world into my dream, mine to manipulate. You will have to make the best of it.”

“This isn’t over.” Gilda swore. She could feel her manifestation waver. Xaron could eject her from the dream faster than she could get up and squish the little bird.

“Yes it is, unless you can go back in time and unkill my servants. Now all you can do is offer tulips to their grave and pray for forgiveness.” Xaron’s smile became rigid and severe. “You Stars are all the same. You think you can break whatever you want. Well, my dear niece this time, unless you cooperate, something you love will be broken. Now, get out of my dream and start suffering your punishment.”

Gilda clenched her jaw. “Listen here, you shiny-ball, rock-headed, one-eyed, bucking piece of living sh-

The dream disappeared in a swirl of blinding white. It took a few long second for her mind to ‘wake up’ from the dream, and adjust to the sudden change in setting.
She was flat on her stomach, lying on the roof of one of the short Coltcutta townhouses. Her talons were clutching her arquebus, pointed over the side of the roof. She felt itchy all over and her jaw ached terribly.

Then, she heard the yelling. It was not one thing, not fearful terror, or anger, or pain, but a cacophanus combination of all those things, roaring out from below.
Gilda extricated her phalanges from her gun and pushed herself up. The streets were roiling with bodies of every species and every class. At the head of the crowd was Xaron’s inquisitor in her red robes, urging the incised masses with screeching exhortation. Gilda saw, or maybe she imagined it, Rainbow Dash’s chromatic mane pop up in the crowd before disappearing.

And the building across the street was the great palace that she Rainbow Dash had been working towards all morning. Where the maredian palace in the dream had been topped with turquoise, a receptacle for the night sky, the maharaja’s palace had a bulbous dome of white marble with many smaller cupolas jutting out at even angles, an imitator of the sun’s light.
The palace guards, burley zebras in yellow garb, had formed a shield wall barring the front door. The back line poked their spears through, ready to stab at any of the angry crowd who got too close.

“Reinforcements have been sent for. The garrison at the city wall will come and kill the mob.” Xaron’s voice echoed in Gilda’s skull. The reason her mandible ached so much was that the platinum eye was holding her beak open to it’s maximum extent. “Rainbow Dash will either be crushed by the resulting stampede, or try to fly away and be shot down like a bird.

Gilda saw guards with bows and arquebuses taking position in the palace cupolas. They were setting up to rain death on the street below.

“If you do nothing, my servant and your friend will die. I would say you have about ninety seconds before time is up.” The ava was calm. He knew exactly what was going to happen next. “I have prepared you. The gun is loaded. Powder in on the left, lead balls on the right. How fast and true can you shoot, my dear?”

Rainbow Dash waited anxiously, a hoof hovering at the sacrificial dagger on her belt. Sharamin was shouting grievances against the maharaja, shifting between the local languages none of which Dash knew. In a matter of minutes, the restive market crowd had been transformed to frenzied ‘revolutionaries’, ready to tear down the despot that lived above them in his white palace. Even though Dash did not understand, she felt the power of the hippogryph’s words, a magic that demanded attention. She wondered if she had been charmed herself, by subtle magic on that harsh voice.

A gunshot roared from above.
One of the palace guards was hit in the neck, and his blood sprayed across his comrades as he crumpled. The guards and crowd hardly had time to process what happened when another bullet tore through the head of the next zebra in the shield wall.

Gilda popped open the breach and blew out the gunpowder residue. Reloading as recklessly as she was, with little care for measuring out the powder, had the high risk of literally blowing up in her face. She snatched another lead ball out of the bag and thumbed it in the breach. She snapped the breech closed and took aim. The process took mere seconds.
Xaron’s platinum eye watched from where she’d tossed him. He prodded at her focus, daring her to make a mistake. It was all very amusing.

Another shot rang out, another guard was hit, and the mob charged in. There were still thirty guards in the shieldwall, but the gap in their line spelled death, as ponies and zebras jumped through and hit them from behind. The guards were swallowed by the volume of bodies, but their incapacitation did not end it, as the attackers began to trample and buck them. With blood-crazed fervor, the shield wall was torn apart.
The guards in the cupulas with the bows and arquebuses shot into the crowd, trying to hit Sharamin or cause random casualties. Gilda shifted her aim up, and began picking them off one by one.

“Come, Rainbow Dash. Our business is inside.” Sharamin yelled, her shrill beckon cutting through the roars and screams.

Dash followed her past the beset-upon guards to the front door. Sharamin experimentally pushed it with a hoof but it wouldn’t budge. “Locked. Not surprise.”

“But not a problem, right?” Dash asked nervously.

“Not very problem, no.” Sharamin agreed.

Gilda waited until an archer was leaning over the side of the cupula to fire. He toppled forward and slid down the palace’s dome, right off the edge to the street. He suffered the same fate as the shield wall at under the hooves of the mob.

Xaron interrupted her sniped. “Take me to my servant. She is in need of my power.”

“I’m not going down there! I’ll be torn apart.” Gilda balked.

“Don’t forget what’s at stake.” Xaron warned.

“Oh, I haven’t. The archers are dead. Rainbow’s escape route is clear.” Gilda wasn’t going to gloat yet, but she was feeling in control. “You’re going to have to incentive me.”

Xaron’s platinum eye, inexpressive though it was, radiated annoyance. “You don’t understand what is at stake here, Dame Gilda.”

Gilda swung the barrel of the gun down to point at the red-robed inquisitor. “How fast and true do you think I can shoot, my little metal friend?”

Sharamin waited patiently for Gilda to bring her master, but every moment battered against Dash’s resolve. The deafening yells, the gunshots, the smell of blood and urine, it reminded her of another chaotic moment so long and far away now. Foalish screams and eddies of dust and cloud muddied her mind. Was she going to be responsible for another catastrophe.

Sharamin’s crowing voice dragged her out of her daze. “Dame Gilda is be very cockish.”

“Uh, what?” Dash had to yell to be heard over the din.

“I am most sorry it is this way.” The gryph unfurled a wing and draped it over Dash. “Dame Gilda does not play nice.”

Dash could feel the dozens of metal slivers laying flat against her fur. If she moved at all her skin would be cut to ribbons. “I- I- I thought I could trust you.”

“No harm shall come to you and Gilda. This I promised.” In the midst of the din and uproar, Sharamin’s voice was soothing. Dash once again wondered if there was some magic messing with her head. “Your friend values your living too much to continue this.”

Gilda watched and did nothing as the inquisitor laid her deadly wing against Dash. If she shot her right then, Dash wouldn’t get more than a few bad scratches, but who could say what the berzerk mob would to if they smelled her blood and weakness. “This is a bit of a standoff, isn’t it.” She remarked to Xaron. She felt much calmer, and now her anger was cold and hard. “It’s too bad I care about Dash, or I could shot your zealot and toss you in a gutter. No skin off by back.”

“Mortals are as undone by their emotions as they are made by them. There would be no such things as the Stars or Fires of the Gryph if creatures didn’t feel insecurity about their place in the world.” Xaron counted the seconds. The guard reinforcements would be arriving soon, and if the palace door wasn’t open by then, all their lives would be forteit. “You want the reassurance that someone out there still cares about your hide. That is the feeling of one full of doubt and fear.”

Gilda cast a glance in the platinum alicorn’s direction. “Are you going to entice me with an alternative?”

“You are clever enough to realize that there are parts to the story here I am leaving out. You have asked yourself why an ava would risk himself for a long-dead horse? The reason lies at the end of this road.” Xaron said. “You and I, the Stars, the Ava, the Deava, we share an aching need. All the greatest of this world feel a hunger to fill the holes in our dreams with power and control. Deprived of our native cosmos’s caress, we attempt to love life, and become decadent.”

Gilda took her talon off the trigger. “But in Chitin, there is a solution to our pain? A solution to our yearnings, our hungers?”

“Exactly so, my dear neice.”

Gilda forgot about the turmoil in the street below, and of her friend’s danger. The way Xaron kept repeating that phrase, that confession of a fictive kinship, was just another way he was trying to manipulate her. But in an odd way, it made her feel good. “What is it? What’s waiting for me in Chitin?”

“I hear there’s a lot of changelings there.”

“Ha!” Gila laughed. “You know you have me interested, so now you’re going to string me along. It’s easier than trying to trick me, isn’t it?” She pulled her arquebus back from the lip of the roof. She emptied it of the gunpowder she’d stuffed in during the hasty reloading. “I’ve killed for less.”

“Base, purposeless murder. You should find a cause worth fighting for, and let out this aggression that’s caused this misunderstanding between us.” Xaron said with a hint of sarcasm. “Well, now that we have a tentative understanding, please take me to my servant.”

“Tak! Conflict resolved.” Sharamin lifted her wing off Rainbow Dash. “I am in relief. I would be regret to die, without anyone to lay a tulip on my grave.”

“You have regrets? Yeesh, that makes me feel good about the situation.” Dash giggled nervously, bordering on sobbing. Why was she doing this? What was she proving by joining reckless destruction with a murdering zealot?

Mercifully to Dash’s sanity, Gilda flew down to them, flattening several of the mob in her landing. “Doing alright Rainbow?”

“I’m fine, I guess.” Dash swallowed her fear. She pushed aside the doubts and doubled down. Gilda was beside her. They were doing what was necessary. “You?”

“Just dandy.”

“That was some amazing shooting.”

“Thanks. Soon I hope, I’ll find out what I was killing for.” Gilda said dryly. She turned to the red-robed inquisitor. “Hiya. Guess we’re working together now.”

“Sharamin, I am. Servant of ava Xaron.” Sharamin gave a little bow. “He has praised much of you.”

“Yeesh. That guy huh? He sure is putting a lot of pressure on me.” Gilda joked, absolutely humorlessly. She pulled the platinum sphere out of her bullet pouch and held it out for Sharamin. “Speaking of which, this is for you.”

“Tak! I thank you.” Sharamin scooped Xaron up with her wing and put him back into her left eye-socket. “A moment I beg, friends. Xaron’s voice builds in volume slowly after separation.” She closed her natural eye and began humming. The platinum eye continued to watch the world.

Dash took a deep breath. The crazyness was only beginning. “Something happened to you in that warehouse. You were, like, talking crazy, and you doused yourself in blood. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“When I left home, I forcibly stopped myself from dreaming about it anymore. Seeing the stone eyes triggered unwanted memories. I had to take a few seconds to pull myself together.” GIlda explained, not entirely untruthfully. “That inquisitor already explained Xaron to you?”

“Kinda. It’s only been a half-hour since we left the warehouse, so not much time to talk. You separated to set up on that roof, while we whipped up this, uh, this mess.” Dash tried not to look at the coltcuttans, braying and destroying each other in blind mania. “G, is it alive? What does it want?”

Gilda cast a tired glance at the platinum eye. “I’ll tell you everything when we get back to the Flyer Kyte.”

Sharamin snapped her eye open. “The Light are returned to me.”
She turned and touched her hoof against the sturdy door of the palace. With a crackle of red magic, it exploded inward in a shower of splinters. The guards waiting in ambush just inside were too surprised to stop the huge hippogryph from striding into their line and cutting them to shreds with her wings.

Gilda nodded appreciatively and stepped smartly after her. Dash lingered at the threshold, staring blankly at the bleeding bodies, thinking about how it could have been her on the recieving end of Sharamin’s acuminus metal.

Taking her time to admire the magnificent art and architecture, Gilda wandered in the grand foyer while Sharamin forged ahead. Exquisite sculptures decorated every corner and priceless diamonds were on display in the halls. Except for where the slain’s blood now stained the walls, miniature scenes were painted around the room, telling an epic myth in vivid color.
“Hey Dash!” She called out. “Dash, get in here!”

Dash obeyed, The mob stayed outside, compelled by an unseen will to block the way of arriving reinforcements. So much the better, Dash though. Maybe some distance from Sharamin would dispel the bloody trance. “Yeah G?”

“Xaron and I talked a bit, but mostly about esoteric stuff. So I’ve gotta ask what we’re doing here.” Gilda made sure she worded her question in a way to fend off future curiosity. She didn’t plan on getting caught for her lies again. “What’s the return on suicidally attacking the stronghold of an incredibly powerful and wealthy ruler? Not money. Inquisitors and gods don’t care about that crap.”

“We’re here to kill the maharaja.” Dash said.

Gilda blinked. “Okay, what? What?!”

“Yeah. He’s been flakey about his alliances with the inquisitors, so Sharamin said he has to go.”

“Dash, DASH, do you have any idea what kind of shit we’ve gotten into?! I mean, not that breaking in wasn’t awful already, but KILLING a noble monarch will get you outlaw in eighty percent of this world’s nations! If word gets, we’re screwed. The other rajas will put bounties on us. EOC will be out for blood. Royally screwed!” Gilda screeched. Keeping things low-key was the only way her ambitions could possibly go forward. “Dash, we have to get back to the Flyer Kyte right now. It’s bad enough we lost the bits-”

“Hey, me and Sharamin hid the bits in the warehouse. We can grab them on our way back.” Dash interrupted sternly. “But only after we do this.”

“Jeez louise Dash, one bad decision does not need another.” Gilda was having a hard time not cursing out her friend. She sighed. There was still a remote chance that things could work out, but only if everyone who saw them didn’t live long enough to spread their descriptions.
Burying her anger for later, Gilda cracked a smile. “First Lightning Dust, then Do, now an inquisitor? I’m starting to think liars and murderers are your thing.”

Dash flinched. “Yeah, whatever. I’ve got a secret to free, down in the dungeon.” She trotted deeper into the palace in the opposite direction of Sharamin.

Gilda was left to wonder if she’d hit closer to a nerve than she’d meant. Rainbow Dash, a mare who’d never gotten along easily with anypony, was throwing herself any whoever so much as smiled at her. The pegasus must have been hurting badly.

“Gilda, my dear, are you still with us?” Xaron’s phantom voice rang in her mind. “You are needed in the throne room.”

If Xaron thought he could use Dash to lead her around, he had another thing coming. Gilda unholstered her arquebus and cleaned it properly before loading it again. With it in couched against her breast, she hobbled along the trail of bodies to where Xaron and Sharamin was waiting.

The throne room was circular, about a hundred hooves across, but hundreds more tall. A scaffold spiraled up the wall all the way to the underside of the palace’s dome, allowing access to the cupulas.
Ponies and other courtiers were running out as Gilda came in, screaming terrified from Sharamin’s butchery. The hippogryph was standing before what Gilda assumed was the throne: It was a golden box decorated with hundreds of sparkling jewels, and shaded by long peacock feathers.
Sitting cross-legged atop the box was a orange tiger wearing a golden headdress. His gaze shifted from his dead guards to the new arrival.

“Yo!” Gilda slowly strode up to the inquisitor. “Is this the maharaja?”

“A griffin who speaks equestrian too? Ava Xaron, az qeh mohourd dari?” The tiger sighed. His equestrian was impeccable, something he needed for his dealing with the EOC. “I am Birza Behanust Bengal, maharaja of the Delta Lands, raja of Coltcutta, raja of Ewear, raja of- ah, but what do titles matter now.”

“Nice to meet you, sir.” Gilda noded. “If I hadn’t run into this joker, we would have been meeting under different circumstances. Unfortunately, Xaron’s got it in his head that killing you will accomplish something.”

“So his servant has just explained.” Birza Behanust said. He took off his headdress and set it on the throne beside him. “For being such a spiritual people, the gryph have chosen for themselves very pragmatic and cynical gods.”

“Five thousand years of exile from our cosmic home has taught us one thing, my friend. And that in the immortal words of Thuclydesdale, ‘The the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.’ “ Xaron intoned. Half a second later, Sharamin echoed his words for the maharaja’s benefit. A degree of magical training was needed to hear the ava’s voice. “My friend, it’s too bad I happened to be in your town when I kick off my rebellion.”

“You could have not, though.” GIlda remarked. “Because I’m still failing to see why you’re doing this.”

“You misunderstand. The peasants outside are not the rebellion. It is I. I hereby declare myself free of the shackles of the maredian fire priests.”

“What…” It took Gilda a couple seconds to process what had just been said. “WHAT!” Gilda screeched. All the yelling was making her hoarse. “Bucking, WHAT?!”

“Why did you think I came alone? Why do you think I contacted you, but for a lack of the limitless resources and reach of the Sarbaz Yazatan?” The platinum eye quivered enthusiastically. “It is a great and glorious thing you and Mis Dash are helping me with, to reassert the right sovereignty of the Ava over ourselves.”

“Oh geez.” Gilda was shaking, half in fear and half in unequaled anger at being so tricked.
Yet, it all made disgusting amounts of sense. Xaron was paranoid that the fire priests were trying to usurp the powers the Fires of the Gryph provided to the hippogryphs. The maharaja’s murder would drive a wedge between the inquisitors and the priestly diplomatic administration. But to truly secure the Ava’s indispensability, Xaron had to secure the cosmic artifact that awaited in Chitin.
“You got me good, Real good.”

“For what it is worth, I’m sorry to have lied to you. I had to gauge how you would react.”

“And you determined I too pansy to do anything.” Gilda choked out. “How very deava of you.”

“I’m not a villain, Dame Gilda. I’m trying to do the right thing.” Xaron said, and Sharamin parroted. “Was it a bad thing that I’ve done, returning your dreams to you?”

“It’s not bad or good. It’s just…” Gilda slouched a bit, feeling utterly defeated. “I think I understand. We’re all trying to be more.”

“That in exact.” Sharamin agreed, then waited for Xaron’s corroboration. “This world’s dreams all shout upwards, reaching for the sky. Soon. Soon we will grasp god and rip her from her perch. Soon we will gut her of her secrets. Haa hee hee!” The ava chortled. “Now, my lovely niece, since you’ve truly open to reconciliation between us, I will give you the honors.”

Birza Behanust had been listening to the exchange in morose silence. He could not help but wince as Gilda turned to him and raised her gun. “Not in the face, please.”

~~~~

As she trotted through the hazy underway of the dungeon, Rainbow Dash reminded of the griffin adage, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’. The cells were small, but cleanly by equestrian standards (Dash had seen the inside of the Baltimare drunk tank many a time). The prisoners sat at their desks, reading or writing by candlelight, only a few sparing glances for Dash as she passed.
It was a prison for those out of favor in the court, nobles and administrators used to suffering the whims of the rajas. A few of them called out her Dash in sahellan and other languages she couldn’t understand, but she didn’t stop until one said something in equestrian.

“A pegasus? Now this is a marvel.”
Dash peered inside the dark cell. Two figures were firefly illuminated by a firefly lamp, sitting across a table from each other. One was an orange tiger, who was almost emaciated lean, but held a regal bearing in his pose and movements. He was the one who’d spoken. “Look at the way she walks. Those legs are used to cloud-kicking and hard landings. An equestrian peasant pegasus.”

“Excellent deduction, Bevri. If we were closer we could likely smell Celestia’s sun on her.” The second prisoner was almost invisible against the background, except for his glowing red eyes. It was a changeling drone, freakishly large for one of that caste, being almost twice as large as the tiger across from him. The way his tattered wings buzzed intermittently made Dash think of a fly. A huge, red-eyed fly… “Who do you think sent her?”

“One would first have to discover why she is here.” The tiger stood up and approached the bars. “She looks unsure of herself, and of us. This is no professional.”

“Well excuse you bub. I’m a mercenary.” Dash blustered. “I’m Rainbow ‘Danger’ Dash. Maybe you’ve heard of me.”

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to offend.” The tiger bowed his head. “My name is Bevri. I have nothing nearly so precious to my name as even mercenary work.”

“She doesn’t react to your name. She is not here for you. Therefor…” The changeling stirred. “Not many people, pony or otherwise, know I’m here. Lady pegasus, are you one who searches for the Stars?”

“I’m here for Zero. Are you Zero?” Dash asked.

“I am.” The changeling named Zero nodded. “Bevri, tell me since my eyes are failing, is that a dagger on her belt?”

“It is.” Bevri confirmed. “It is as sharp as a leaf’s blade, and decorated with bone. There is a subtle aura to it.”

“My own sacrificial blade.” Zero pushed up from his seat and joined Bevri at the bars. Closer up, Dash saw how his red eyes were patterned just like the platinum sphere. “Who, Lady Dash, have you come with?”

“Xaron.”

“He’s finally gone and done it. The gods strike back against the mortals.” Xaron scowled. “This bodes poorly. I hoped this day would never come.”

“Are you leaving?” Bevri looked distraught. “What shall I do without you?”

“Don’t fear, friend. You are much stronger than you think you are.” Zero patted his fellow prisoner’s shoulder. “But it is time to end my self-imposed exile.”
In a sweep of dark green magic, Zero became a sparrow. The little bird hopped between the bars before transforming back to his original size.

Dash blinked. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Depending on how long we will be working together, you may not have to expect it again. I don’t change often anymore.” Zero remarked, causing Dash to blush. “Harumph, no matter. I’ve been around zebras long enough to forget old taboos. Now, the dagger, please.”

Dash grabbed the morbid blade with a dexterous wing and held it out. “A gangbanger in the slums had it.” The changeling smelled strange, like the open skies only emptier. It didn’t make much sense. “You’re going to leave your friend?”

Zero and Bevri shared a solemn look. “This is where he has chosen to be.”

“It is what I deserve.” The tiger agreed. “I am still unworthy of freedom.”

“You guys must have weirder ideas of honor and stuff than even griffins. Do what you want I guess.” Dash cocked her head. “But you know, somepony might let you out soon. Xaron was going to kill the king- er, I mean maharaja.”

Bevri paled. “Zero, let me out, please.”

~~

The deafening report from Gilda’s arquebus echoed thunderously around the domed roof.
The maharaja topped backwards off the throne and rolled down the back of the dias.

Gilda waited for the ringing in her ear to stop. “Think they heard that back home?”

“I think the fire priests will be hearing that shot for decades, Dame Gilda. The contentment and complacency of the order of nations is greatly shook.” Xaron said. “Wintertide’s children announce their ascendancy.”

“Now is the Wintertide of your discontent. Made glorious summer by, uh, yours truly.” Gilda strode around the dias. The shot to the heart had killed Birza Behanust, probably not painlessly. “It feels a bit like a betrayal to help you. Take everything away from me, I’m still mortal like them. You’re ava, the other, the indecipherable, the enemy.”

“Not right now I’m not. Listen to the voice of my servant, and understand that what I am now is mongrel. The Fires of the Gryph are a mortal contrivance, a tidy name to the wretched shackle holding us down.” If Sharamin was disturbed by Xaron’s badmouthing, she didn’t show it, as she continued to say aloud his thoughts vigorously. “We can be more. The ava will cease to crackle as the Fires of the Gryph, and begin to roar as immortal blazes in the dreams of this world.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Gilda secured her gun to her back. She didn’t plan on using it any more that day. “I need to know now, Xaron, what’s waiting for us in Chitin.”

“A Deava.”

“You can do better than that.”

“Wulei, child of Astra Nacre. His soul has been crafted into a tool of immense magical power: The Alicorn Amulet. The amulet has stolen the souls of millions of mortals, and with it I will be able to grant dreams to the Ava.

Gilda had heard of the Alicorn Amulet, but classes on artifacts that powerful were for more senior students of the School of Black Bell. “That sounds incredibly dangerous.”

“It will be. Ancient ruins deep in the hinterland, past the maps of ponies and griffins. Corrupted changelings with dark masters will try to stop you at every turn.”

“I mean the amulet. Deava are no joke.” Gilda said. “Will you really be able to control it?”

“Would it be worse that you or I have it, or that Daring Do delivers it to whomever she works for?”

Gilda was silent for a moment. Xaron was losing utility to her with every secret he let slip. Time would reveal if she could betray him, and take the sarcophagi and amulet. “It’s you and me all the way, buddy.”

“Gilda!” Rainbow Dash entered the throne room. With her were two others, a large changeling and another tiger.

“Has the endevor been success, Mis Dash?” Sharamin asked her, without prompting from Xaron.

“Obviously so.” The huge changeling cantered up to Sharamin. “I never imagined you would be the one to ‘rescue’ me, Xaron.”

“I finally decided to uplift you from your own ignorance.”

Zero watched Bevri rush to the side of the dead maharaja. The young tiger cradled his father’s head and he began murmuring soft apologies.
Zero turned back to the hippogryph, staring angrily at the platinum sphere with his own red eyes. “I refuse to destroy anymore. All I ever wished to do was improve this world, and to end these kinds of senseless death.”

Gilda met Dash. “Is that Zero?”

“Yeah. He said he’s a Star.”

“He looks a lot older than he did in the schoolbooks.” Gilda remarked.

“It’s not going to be how it was. This time you can use your power to help mortals transcend the divisions created by race and religion, instead of enforcing them.” Xaron explained to Zero. “I found the first nightmare and the first dreamer.”

“They’re just myths.” Zero spat dismissively.

“They would beg to differ. Xaron sniggered. “Zero, my old friend, you can do so much more than teach one little whelp at a time. Help me teach the world it’s forgotten history.”

Zero sighed. Wordlessly, he walked away from the hippogryph to Bevri.

“I would have liked to say goodbye a last time.” Bevri sniffled. “I- I think more than that, I wish I could hear him forgive me.”

“You’re going to be fine ruler. I’m sure he knew that.” Zero consoled softly. “You still have friends out there, willing to fight for your birthright.”

Bevri closed his eyes, letting out a shuttering breath. “Let us hope the coup is successful this time.”

Zero wasn’t really listening. He was enthralled by the visage of a spritely young griffin, talking to Rainbow Dash. She had a gun in a harness on her back. Her aura, the magical emotion she exuded, made Zero ill to try to decipher. “Who are you?”

Gilda perked to who’d spoken. “Hi. I’m Gilda. Or, Gilda von Gottrakt, if you want to be formal.” She extended a claw in greeting. “Nice to meet you. I don’t get to meet Stars that often.”

Zero did not take the offered claw. “Have you ever tasted the dreams of your fellow animal, Lady von Gottrakt?”

Gilda was briefly puzzled. She cleared her throat and matched his hard tone. “We all sate our hungers in different ways, sir.”

Zero grunted. “What fine allies Xaron has found him himself.” He rounded back to Sharamin. “Are you using children for you misdeeds now?”

“Do you hear that?” In the silence between the words, one could hear the roar of the battle raging outside between the citizens and the guards. “I’ll use every soul in this world twice over if it would ease my family’s pain but for a moment. We all have an understanding here. If our abilities fall short of our ambition, we will get crushed.

Zero nodded. “So be it, ava. Bevri!”

The young tiger drew himself up to his full height. Old memory of princely behaviour was coming back to him. “Yes?”

“We must part, for certain now. Know that this battle I commit to is no more important than battle against ignorance.” Zero bowed. “Fight the good fight, my student.”

“As you wish.” Bevri bowed back.

“Well, uh, nice meeting you.” Gilda gave Bevri a little wave. “Sorry about your dad.”

“Until next time.” Bevri nodded stiffly. “Lady Dash.”

“See ya later.” Dash could not sustain an earnest smile. “Maybe…”

~~~~~

They were back in the warehouse. The afternoon had worn on. The lengthened shadows were offering space places for floating dust to hide.
Dash and Sharamin had gone to where they’d hidden the bag of bits, leaving Gilda and Zero to contemplate the mangled bodies of two ponies: An earth pony sailor and a blue unicorn, whose left eyes were replaced with ones of stone.

“The unicorn was the one with my dagger?” Zero asked.

“Yup.” Gilda said unenthusiastically. There was something deeply unsatisfying about the ponies being dead, and not remembering doing it.

“It is a little tradition I have to give my dagger away when I come to a new place. How it travels from person to person is a fascinating study in the ties that bind us together.” Zero said. “Those who give, those who take, those who build, and those who destroy. My dagger has beheld more than its fair share of the destroyers.”

Gilda couldn’t help but feel that was directed at her. “I didn’t mean to kill them. My mother’s charm was making me see things. I couldn’t understand what I was doing.”

“You don’t have to defend yourself to me.” Zero snorted. “Live as long as I have, and the little atrocities just run together.”

Gilda let out a despondent sigh she’d been holding since before the dawn. “Was it fun to just let loose?”

Zero nodded. “My fondest memories was being a mercenary like you. I think all the Stars tried that somewhere along the line, as we tried to identify our niche in a world that died without us. Hastening the cycles of death just seemed natural. Oh, the slaughters were glorious monuments to our Dark gods.” Zero shrugged. “But even the most dangerous game becomes passé. Of the twelve of us, only Salvador Flair stayed in that line of work.”

Gilda thought about that band of friends. They had come so close to clutching the heart of divinity, but missed. What would happen to Dash, Magistrate Mare, and Daring Do if they failed and darkness overwhelmed them all. What if they succeeded? “When we get to Chitin… Can we all get what we want?”

“Of course not. Xaron will have to die.” Zero said. “The rule of the Ava will not bring the harmony he thinks it will, but rather the kind of injustice one sees in Equestria. Gods can force obedience, but not happiness.”

“Will he really try to take over the world?”

“Oh, doubtlessly. The Ava can’t go back to being dispassionate observers. Just like Celestia and her sister, they will try to fill the holes in their dreams with decadence and domination.”

Gilda plucked the stone eyes out of the corpse of the blue unicorn. “The Alicorn Amulet can’t fill that hole, sate that hunger forever?”

“Lady Gilda, nothing can fill that hole. It’s took me a long time to learn that lesson. The other Stars refuse to believe it. They can’t stop chasing that elusive dream of perfection.”

Gilda sat on the rough, dirty floor. She felt so helpless sometimes. She had to take more, become more, to keep from feeling that way ever again. “I probably won’t either.”

“To each their own.” Zero shrugged. ”The creatures who can settle down and be happy with their lives are the special ones. I got very close this time, with Bevri, but it was inevitable that we fall to our ambitions again. Princes and Stars are made of the same stuff.”

Gilda knew that for sure. “So, getting back on topic, think you can swing that earth pony’s look?”

“Effortlessly.” Zero was encased in a flume of green magic. When it passed, he held the shape of the sailor stallion. “The dead live again.” His voice was also identical.

“Nice. Drink and swear enough and nopony will tell the difference.” Gilda nodded appreciatively. “His name was Bowline Tight, or something like that.”

“You’ve already changed. Good.” Sharamin and Rainbow reentered the warehouse, the latter carrying the heavy bag of bits on her back. “It’s getting late. Will you three get back to the ship okay?”

“We will have to take a boat since earth ponies can’t fly.” Gilda nudged the disguised Zero. “There’s enough confusion in the city right now that no one will wonder too hard about a missing dinghy. Between the three of us, we’ll come up with a good excuse for Mare and Do.”

“Then we part! I shall meet you all in Chitin, and there we begin the fight to destiny. Dame Gilda, and Mis Dash, au revoir.” Sharamin bowed at Xaron’s compulsion. “Zero.”

“Xaron.” Zero grunted back.

Sharamin cantered to the exit of the warehouse, only to turn back and give Dash a lascivious wink with her right eye. “Seeing you soon, Mis Dash.” The hippogryph took to the twilight skies.

“Let’s go.” Gilda prompted. “Every minute here is minute farther away from Chitin.”

Author's Note:

Interestingly, there is not much of a record of Gilda in between the time she left Godswing and exploits the Equestrian Civil War. I have based her personality mostly on writings by ponies 1001 SS or later, so it is possible that she was a much kinder and gentler individual whilst her memories were sealed away. It is an amusing (though morbid) idea, since she is known to have eaten ponies during that time.

Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, has a lengthy record for her time in Baltimare. The Weather Factory there maintained reports for every worker, which survived the Civil War.

What we know of their adventure on the Flyer Kyte is compiled from scraps of testimony from various ignorant observers. Nopony who survived the expedition spoke publicly about it, and the Crown has never released it's findings on the incident. Though I can and do guess, one really does wonder what they were thinking when it was all happened.

Comments

[SpiritDutch]

Hopefully, no chapter will ever be as convoluted as this one. It's just all the secrets of this arc get dumped out all at once. Boy I'm tired right now, but I have a research paper I put off to finish this chapter. Tomorrow is gunna suck.

[TyroidMary]

Why would Xaron bring on Gilda and Zero, who have a reason and the ability to kill him? He screws them over and then talks about it like he did them a favor! The old gods are such arrogant assholes.

[Starlight Nova]

6886371 Does it bother you, how your comment didn't get answered?

[TyroidMary]

7778635 lol I don't think it needs an answer really when its a rhetorical question or pointing out things I just think are weird. I do that alot, or comment with just anime memes and dumb observations. Authors don't usually give answers anyway. I'd like to know sure but idk about getting bothered. When I want an answer I'll make bullet points.