Pride Goeth

by Zurock

Chapter 9: From Out That Shadow

Fortunately there wasn't much in Prideheart's stomach for him to get queasy over.

It wasn't long before the river seized a strong hold on the flatboat and bumped the vessel along its vigorously swift current. Though it was far from a dangerous ride (not nearly as perilous as the quarry itself had been, certainly) the river didn't care to shower leisure or comfort upon its guests. It barely recognized the concepts of 'straight' and 'smooth.' Again and again the jagged current rocked, jostled, wobbled, and rolled the bouncing boat in ways that were not nearly as large as an earthquake but were always frequent and unexpected.

Bookworm and her invincible youth didn't have much trouble with the shaky ride. Her rubber body handled the jumps and wiggles of the boat with counter movements so natural that it was hard to imagine she hadn't been born on the water. The stallion however showed no such ease. In all the last several days his one lonely apple had thankfully left him just below the threshold of strength necessary to vomit a stomach of empty air. As it was he still had to lock his focus down tight, concentrating on his shallow, strong breaths which came to him weaker and weaker as the journey dragged on.

He maintained a station at the stern where he never let go of the sculling oar, and as best he could he guided the barge down the center of the river. The river itself did a healthy portion of the work despite its bumpy grumpiness, and whatever more potential trouble there could have been was averted by Bookworm who was delighted to be of assistance. She had no trouble recognizing the stallion's struggle against unfamiliarity, and so she kept a place at his side with her hooves on the oar where she pushed and pulled to help guide the way. All the while she rambled happily, reciting everything she thought she knew about steering barges, all picked up from a dozen different books near and far from the subject itself.

Before long Prideheart had developed enough of a bare talent for the task that even in his weakened state he was able to handle it significantly better without her direct help. The smoother ride allowed him some focus on taming the wailing parts of his body, and he encouraged Bookworm also to rest for the drifting journey back to Stony Nook. Behind their eastbound barge the sleepy sun was fading, preparing to make its bed in the Pearl Peaks.

Free of responsibility the filly recovered her knapsack from the flatboat floor. But when she picked it up she immediately felt something wrong, and she set it back down before flipping it open and peering in.

"Aww," she moaned lightly. "My ink bottle broke."

She tilted the knapsack nearly all the way over, far enough for one of her school workbooks to poke its head out. Blue and black ink had granted the flimsy book a new, unreadable cover and had also soaked in thoroughly enough to have camouflaged the words on each page with exceptional secrecy.

But Bookworm ultimately found her tiny misfortune more funny than disappointing. In jolly spirits she lifted the bag back up, let the stained book slide back in with a plop, tucked the flap shut once more, and then thanked heaven for small favors.

"At least I didn't have any good books in it!"

"Be grateful to have broken only your inkwell," Prideheart said. A hoarse cough invaded his voice as he spoke.

"Nah, we whomped those dumb heckhounds!" she laughed. "They never had a chance!"

The weary stallion endured a cold shiver, troubled as ever by the filly's stubborn and fantastic imagination. He eased the oar lightly out of the water and let it rest, comfortable enough with the boat's course, and then he set his own tired body against the stern.

"To me you swore a promise that you would obey my commands," he reminded her grimly. "Such was the very condition on which I accepted your companionship."

"Yeah, I know," the young pony groaned. The frivolity she had been freely trading in fled quickly, leaving behind a wash of frustration. In a way she was truly aghast that the issue still bothered him, as if it hadn't all worked out well. "But what kind of ordinary pony hero would I be if I left somepony all alone with a pack of heckhounds?"

Prideheart forced an angry sigh through his teeth. The official reprimand of a commander and the disappointed harshness of a parent came out as he chastised her, "And what kind of pony are you now that you have trampled an oath underhoof? I have before felt good promises betrayed, young Bookworm, and I did not hope for such honorless disaster to come from you! I beseech you: be not like those I despise, who boast vows they cannot keep."

The physical memories of forty years ago came back into him like they always did. But this time, for once, even his dragon-wound seemed too fatigued to fully ignite its burning pain. It simply buzzed him with a heavy tingle.

"... inflated ponies whose bright and shining faces hide their failures unforgivable."

His accusation struck the filly hard. Not only had it been delivered with such emphatic venom, even if not intended towards her, but it had also been targeted so precisely at the places of honor and respect that a foal well understood. Frantically she pleaded in reply, "I wasn't lying!"

"You promised!"

"I know!" she gasped. "And I really meant it when I did!"

What hurt the stallion the most was her sincerity. His depth of experience allowed him to recognize when ponies her age were trying to peddle serious untruths, for they simply didn't have the practiced face for it like a charlatan might. Honesty was within her. She fully believed herself; fully believed that she had taken her promise to heart when it had first been sworn. Oh! If so, then how shamelessly fast she had been to have disregarded it as soon as it had suited her!

"What value," he asked of her sadly, "do your promises retain if your whims can slay them whenever you wish? What value, if you do not hold them strong when the choice is hard? Do you truly not see your mistake?"

"Mistake?" Her agitation greatly grew, reaching an age beyond her years. She stepped before him and stomped her hooves upon the boat bottom. "You were going to fight the heckhounds all by yourself!"

Prideheart's temper flared; or at least, it did what little it could to blaze up. So tired was he that he could hardly raise his voice, and what came out sounded like softened stones grinding in his throat.

"Yes, alone! And you away, so as to protect you! No hurt, no harm, no scratch, no scrape! None for you, on my life! That is why I commanded you away! Never would I have accepted your companionship had I not had your own promise to guard you with! Please, can you not understand this?!"

But though he ranted at her with sure authority, elsewhere in the thunder of his pounding head some part him told a different story to himself:

Liar! Selfish deceiver! Her mistake? What of your own, 'hero?' Leading a foal towards danger out of desire for happy company? She was no less a tool for you than your former canteen! And with the same abandon you would have thrown her into the jaws of Tartarus' dogs!

Her, like the rest!

"Mister!" the distraught Bookworm woke him up with her wounded howl. She had been trying very hard to claim his fractured attention.

She insisted, "Of course I understand all that! I know you didn't want me near the heckhounds cause you didn't want me to get hurt! Dad did the same thing! But it's like you said before: a hero has to do the right thing, no matter what else! And just like in the best stories, the hero tells their friends to leave but then they always come back and wind up being a big help!"

The brutality of the stallion's weariness was so fierce, the drain of his battered body so exhausting, the ache of his whimpering heart so frail; that he actually came close to weeping in distress at her continued confusion between fiction and reality.

"This is no fable, young filly!" he warned her.

And it was just about the most horrid thing he could have ever said to her.

The younger pony shrunk as she backed down; not in defeat, but in despair. She wandered away from the stallion, to the corner where the stern met the starboard side, and her every step had that impossible foalhood mix of sorrow and indignation: nothing so foolishly vengeful enough to swear that she would hold her breath until her face turned blue, but also not pouting enough to lose all control and burst open in tears. She stood and draped her hooves over boat's edge, her head lifted so low that her chin hovered just above the wood, and she gazed at the sparkles which danced upon the mountains' outlines as the hidden sun pulled more and more of its final color down behind them. It was a powerful and beautiful sight: the last light of the sun twinkling goodbye before the blue promise of night came.

But in the morning the sun always returned.

Aloud, with a shaky disappointment in her voice, she moaned, "I came back because I cared about you more than I cared about my promise."

"... Are the two not the same thing?" Prideheart claimed after a long and perturbed quiet, himself having supreme difficulty speaking at her cold and grieving backside.

"No!" she painfully insisted, gasping and turning her head at him. Her hooves scraped and scratched on the wood, her throat pulsed in shivers, and her tail threw itself down in an tantrum on the floor. A pack of a thousand heckhounds chasing her couldn't have upset her as much, and she filled with the everyday world-shattering distress of a young filly.

Prideheart, still quietly horrified at the sight of the distraught child even if he was otherwise so practiced in the most unbalanced moods of foals, had to labor hard to give the lesson, "If... you do not care to honor a promise to me... then... you do not care to honor me."

He watched reluctantly as his each hushed word drove Bookworm further away. Little did it matter how much kind wisdom he had weakly tried to levy; to her it still reeked of nasty accusation, doubting her motives and claiming to know her better than herself. She withdrew inwards, bubbling with the kind of pain that intentionally confused love and loathing, and because she had no rational thoughts to counter him with she only silently built her way up to an explosion of indiscriminate emotion. The way she shook was recognizable to anypony who had spent but a day watching over an immature child, though it still hurt him to witness her taking such a young, foolish despair onto herself.

And finally her bomb of bitter, reckless, ignorant feelings burst. Hoping to do maximum damage she cried out with loud, squeaking, wounded, vengeful, small anger:

"Well then my dad must hate me a lot!!"

Then with one great sour sob she huffed and faced away again, crashing all of her weight against the boat's side. There weren't any whimpers from her after that, but the breaths she took rumbled in and soared out with hisses of resent and sorrow.

No matter how predictable her sound, no matter how many times he had coached a foal in the midst of common angst, this particular instance wounded Prideheart deeply. And like all the times before with this filly, it wasn't her fault. She had plunged the knife so far in without even having realized it.

"... No...," he tried so hard to be the adult soundly rejecting her silly assertion. Yet he had no strength in him; not in his battered body, but even less in his sorry soul. "From a-all you have t-told me of him, much better could he t-treat you... B-But... you should not feel that he-, he-... that he-... You cannot believe that he-... he-..."

She lifted herself up only to slam her body again, and the hit broke open whatever wall had been holding back her outraged disappointments against her father.

"He makes a lot of promises that he doesn't keep either! Even after he comes back from being gone and makes me do everything he says and never listens; he still doesn't do everything he promises! It's always Miss Crumble Pie who tricks him into doing the stuff he said he was going to! And when I tell him-, when I tell him he said he'd do this or that but then he didn't, he always says he 'sorry,' and he always says he 'really cares,' and he says I'm always supposed to know that he's 'sorry' and that he 'really cares,' but if he's not any good with his promises then maybe he doesn't really care at all!"

It was hard to distinguish the truth from the natural embellishments that seeped into young worldviews, especially ones so momentarily contorted. Even after her blazing rant she still didn't sob or heave or bawl. She just again let her shivering, frustrated, furious weight slap against boat's edge.

"... No...," Prideheart whispered again, even weaker and more ineffectual than before. Bookworm scarcely heard it. She didn't heard it at all when his voice died further, becoming a ghostly echo as he added, "... about her I did care..."

His tiny denial did nothing to defuse the filly, and after several moments she rumbled and struck herself against the boat for yet another time. But then instead of crying out or spitting more fire she suddenly softened, slinking down lower.

"He does read me stories still, though... so he must care a little I guess...," she spoke sadly into the corner of the boat, letting in the first glimmer of real truth now that she had emptied out all her knotted frustration.

And then it was as if the sloshing of the river murmured some secret encouragement back to her. Her head snapped up, then her body fully, and she faced the stallion, strengthened by some firm decision within even if she was still sorely unhappy. Whether from his earlier guidance or not, no more was she going to bend to the inevitable will of fathers. She was going to demand better.

"I know broken promises hurt! But if keeping my promise was going to get you hurt even worse than breaking it was, then it was a bad promise! I don't want to break promises but I'll break every promise I have to, especially bad promises, to do the right thing. Just like you said."

Prideheart rendered no reply. His mismatched eyes had fallen onto the floor, and his strengthless hoof laid dead and quiet on the oar.

The filly waited a long time for something – anything – to come out of him. Her serious resistance had after all taken her into uncharted territory, and she had little idea of what kind of response she should have expected. But he had died, crushed by the stompings of his own demons and the spiritual superiority of an ignorant filly. Eventually she gave up, resigning herself entirely to her feelings of grief over how her first amazing adventure had come to such a stupid and upsetting end. After a low humph she turned away to sink into quiet sulking.

Until...

"... You are right..."

The new words entered her ears and tickled them in a way she had never felt before. Never had she been granted such genuinely submissive words; not in that fatherly tone he had given them over with. Rubbing her eyes she looked back at the stallion slumped over his oar in surrender.

"You... are right, Bookworm," he said again and nodded faintly. "Once... long ago... I too gave my promise in reply to an order. But in the darkest moment I broke my promise; I violated my order... and I was right to have done so. Many would have suffered... Many would have perished... How noble you are that you perceive such wisdom, again showing your great worth, though small and sometimes naif you otherwise are... Understand – oh do understand – that I still quiver from the danger you faced today, and wishing you away was only out of love. If I have many means to protect a dear pony, and means of absence is best, would I not be right to push that course hardest? Say please that you see my words' truth..."

She took a step towards him, then another, and then in one big rush trotted into him, vanquishing every trace of her riled sadness. She did her best not to interrupt his idle hold on the oar as she got her hooves around him and snuggled up against him.

"Oh mister, of course I understand! You were just being the good hero that does their best to save everypony! I'm sorry I made that bad promise to you. I guess I shouldn't promise to do everything you say. But I can promise – super promise – to listen to you about being an ordinary pony hero, since you must know what you're talking about cause you're such a real hero! And that's a promise I'll never have to break, right?"

Many worries spoke up in Prideheart's mind, but he pushed them to silence in favor of taking the small happiness for what it was. At least now she was no longer distraught. His leg was too stiff to properly return her fondness, so he only managed to drape the sagging limb a little around her.

"Mm... My little pony hero," he called her.

She squeezed harder, pressing her lifted chin against him and beaming up at him.

They stayed held together through the sways and the swishes of the boat until one untidy motion threw them enough to urge the stallion to regrip the oar. Bookworm again reached up to help him and together they dumped it back into the water and before quickly returning the boat to normal turbulence. When finished she left the oar to Prideheart's care, still smiling up at him.

"So, what do we do when we get back to Stony Nook?" she asked.

The stallion's weak legs gave the oar a feeble, corrective pull.

"Warn them," he said in his hoarse, battered voice. "The hounds have dark designs for your home. Tomorrow they send not one, but all their number to bring fire upon the ponies there."

"Ooooooh!" Yet again only imaginative concern came out of the filly, and she could barely hide the stars in her eyes at the exciting plot twist. "Yeah, Ms. Crumble Pie and the mayor should definitely hear about that! Okay, mister! Let's get back and save Stony Nook!"

And she stormed to the bow of the flatboat, looking ahead down the bends in the river at the far forest crawling closer in the deepening color of the evening.

The boat wobbled, then rocked with a heavy jump, and then wobbled again; all to little notice by the excited filly who absorbed the motions with ease. Prideheart continued his weary best to guide their ship smoothly, though he did shake and shutter involuntarily with each movement of the boat, and sometimes even when it wasn't so unsteady. So weakly tethered to the world was he that he started to sway far and jerk hard to each movement of the boat under him. His nose sagged over the oar, but he carried on with his limp pushes and lame pulls.

---

In not long Nightmare Moon began her rule of the sky from within her glowing prison, though she was weak and faint, especially compared to the night prior. She left a foreboding darkness over all the land, first upon the silent road running along the river and then tangled up around the trunks of the forest trees. Everything came under shadow except for the rims of Pearl Peaks which still clung to sunlight, but in the end they too finally surrendered and dimmed. The thick black was impenetrable enough to quiet even the usual critters and bugs who lived in night like it were day. None of them had any wish to disturb whatever could have been on the prowl under such a lightless moon.

And so the only noise through the night was the slush of the river, backed by the slapping of water against wood as the boat bounced along. Prideheart was unbothered by the unusual darkness, for to him it was better than the full brightness of an awful sun. Such searing light during the day angered his always-throbbing dead eye, so a thick night was a cold and welcome reprieve. However, the lonely silence that also came with late hours was a completely different matter. He felt fortunate to have the company of Bookworm's occasional babbling to beat back the especially brutal hush of that night.

There was just enough moon glitter on the river to keep their path visible; a sparkling road of wet stars which led back to Stony Nook. No more than weak pushes of the oar were needed to stay on course, and for over two hours the ponies flowed downriver. But even if it was a swifter and less tiring trip than their walk out had been, the stallion regardless slipped more and more from consciousness as the journey wore on. His body struggled badly under the combined weight of his earlier foodless mountain trek, the heckhound hunt over hours of road, and the freshly-escaped heated battle for a warrior too old.

When the river ran out the low hills the ponies at last saw the village again, not far off. Its sight was something of a surprise given the strict darkness, but the unusual visibility of it came from strange flickers of light which danced in front of Stony Nook like agitated fireflies blinking in rapid warning as they buzzed about in endless circles. Bookworm had never seen such a thing from her town and wondered aloud what it was. She nailed herself to the bow of the barge, stretching her eyes down the way in the hopes of catching every tiny detail as the village drew nearer.

It took many more minutes for the running water to carry them the rest of the way. The river grew wider and wider as it entered into its great bend around Stony Nook, and its fatness brought a sloth to the water which went from running, to jogging, to walking, to ambling. By that time the ponies had a clear enough glimpse of what had changed since they had left the town that same morning.

A sturdy wall had been built around the village, eight feet tall and reaching from river edge to river edge, surrounding every side not already guarded by the bending water. The lights that had been seen were no insects lost in the dark but ponies on patrol carrying lanterns in their mouths. Along the wall they paced, ten in number and spaced evenly to leave no gaps. In vigilance they marched, they stopped, they looked out into the dense blackness staring back at them, and then (usually after a faint breath) they marched again.

But for all their attention they were focused very much on the land around them, and they had not a single eye for the river. The shadowed flatboat slipped on by, catching notice from not one of the sentries.

Prideheart dimly recalled that Stony Nook had no place to dock, and as he doubted his ability to perform a proper landing anyway he did what the quarry ponies of yesteryear used to do: steered the barge straight into the shallows of the bank. The boat cut up onto the mud with only a quiet thud, and even without cargo the lazy river didn't seem interested in taking the barge back. The stern jiggled in the tiny waves while Bookworm skipped over the bow and onto the safe shore. They had landed just behind the sturdy structures on the northern half of town; in fact very near the spot Prideheart had filled his now-destroyed canteen the night before.

"Come on, mister!" the filly called in sleepless excitement, driven also somewhat by impatience for her now very slow friend.

The stallion moved worse than a snail's pace. His hoof slipped off the oar as if it had the entire weight of his body in it, stomping numb onto the boat floor. His walk towards the bow came one measly hoof at a time, dragging on so long that the night would have perhaps ended before his arrival. When he finally made it he got his forelegs over without trouble, but carrying his hind-half over was like drawing a hitched wagon up over a cliff edge. His legs wouldn't go high enough to clear. Eventually one of his careless tugs forward slid them over, but in the tumble that followed he planted his dead eye into the cold, moist earth.

The suddenness of his fall caught Bookworm unprepared with any amused laugh but she did momentarily smile. Yet it faded fast; the stallion didn't rise. Barely he even budged. His forehooves in paltry efforts pawed at the ground making no progress, and his hind legs as well twitched like branches without wind. The motions needed to stand up weren't in his bleary memory any more.

Carefully the filly crept nearer the disconcerting sight. She wanted to nudge him with her hoof, wondering if he was in fact the same strong hero who had fought his way through heckhounds hours ago, but she held back because of her imaginative fear that he might pop like a fragile bubble the instant she were to have tapped him. Instead she put her face up to his, trying to greet his half-open, glazed eye. In it she saw how faded he was; how he didn't even seem to perceive her despite that she must have taken up all his vision.

"Mister, I think you need to sleep," she worried.

His body shuffled, stimulated by the close noise, but most of his minimal new energy he pressed into objecting:

"... First... a warning..."

Bookworm grabbed the neck of his cloak and leaned herself back, giving him some guidance on which way to direct his wobbling body, and he finally started to right himself, though only tiny bits at a time.

"Everypony's probably sleeping," she said through her clenched teeth. "We can tell'em all about everything in the morning."

"... No delay...," his words mumbled out as soft as the thin breath they rode on.

A few more gentle tugs from the filly and he was at last up, though her final pull had almost enough power to throw him to the ground again. When she let go of his cloak he immediately seemed lost, wobbling with a sightless eye and numb legs. Unthinking he picked any odd direction and started forward, but after only four limp steps his worst knee collapsed. He didn't keel all the way over like before, tumbling merely into a kneel, yet he wiggled on as if he could still walk plainly; not from some inner determination but from simple, tired ignorance.

Fast, Bookworm renewed her grip. Only a little prodding was needed to straighten his leg out and get him standing once more, but she was growing rather troubled. Before he could stumble off again she rapidly assured him, "Okay, okay. I'll warn everypony. Alright, mister? But you need to go to bed!"

"... The warning..."

"I will!" she swore. "I promise!"

In an enormous effort Prideheart summoned some attention into his eye and actually managed to look at her.

"... Promise...?" he sought verification, delirious as he still was.

"I super promise!" She ushered some upset urgency into herself. "And it's not like there's any heckhounds here or anything to make it hard! I'll do it no problem!"

That pitiful amount of focus he had called up retreated. The vanishing of his strength left his face to curl down towards the ground until his lifeless nose nearly touched it.

"... Very well...," he wheezed.

"Okay! This way!" Bookworm perked up slightly, and she gently tried to pull him onwards. "We'll go to my house! I'm sure Dad can get you some blankets or something."

She had only guided him through a single step before he realized her intention. When she tried for another she was jostled by his sudden failure to move. Each of his hooves sunk into the earth with the dead weight of an anchor.

Though his head was fuzzy Prideheart remembered Scrolldozer quite clearly. But through that lucid break in his foggy mind his memory distinctly didn't show him an image of a detestable unicorn with a glowing horn. No picture came through of the pony who had flung abominable light about to wield magically-buoyant rocks as craven weapons. What did appear was a pony on a barstool whose spine had shivered at tales of roadway marauding enough to have clutched his dear filly in protective terror; a pony whose first order of business when fanged death had come was to have built a safe prison for what he had valued above life and home; a pony in love in the most frightened and loyal way.

He recalled a father. A father to a foalnapped filly.

"... No...," Prideheart whispered in weighty denial. "... No, not your home... An alley is near... It will do..."

"An alley?" Bookworm earnestly thought he was joking. But of his own will he started to move that way, threatening to collapse with every one of his uncertain steps. She threw herself in front of him to stop him.

"Oh, no no no, mister! What kind of pony sleeps in an alley?" she pleaded with him.

"... The night before, it served me..."

"What? No! No no, mister!"

Still he wanted to drag himself away and surrender his body to the cold ground. The filly reared up and put her legs on his chest, actually enough of a weight to hold his weak walk at bay, and meanwhile she racked her brain hard for a fast answer that wouldn't set off any sleepy anger he might have had.

"Uh, uh, uh...," she gulped, running her head around the back of the moon-shadowed village. Then at last, "Oh! Okay okay, mister! I know a nicer place where you can sleep and everypony'll leave you alone! Here, follow me!"

But she had no trust in his shambling legs, and rather than lead him she practically positioned herself under him and carried him. For his part he of course gave his best effort to haul his own weight, though it was very feeble because of how muddled he was by his exhaustion. Yet it was enough for the filly to nobly bear the rest of him. In many ways it wasn't different from riding the river, only now he drifted to her will than that of the water's.

They moved behind the buildings by the river, and she lead him eastward past a few homes and houses before they came upon one which had a large back lot surrounded by a low stone wall, set there to do scarcely more than keep minor river flooding out. A thin, swinging gate divided the lot from the alley. Nopony had ever bothered to have left a lock on it, certainly not in so small a town and definitely not for that short of a wall, and the filly shoved the gate open without trouble despite her load.

The night's heavy darkness made it difficult to pick out the many articles stacked about the lot. A pile of lumber might have been a miniature pyramid misplaced for a faraway desert, and the row of detached wagon wheels all leaning on one another could have been the neck of a slumbering dragon. However the filly seemed to know the layout blind and she moved right by the tricky moon-shadows, carrying the stallion towards the one big lump of blackness which was too large and solid to take any distorted shape.

It was set in a corner of the lot busy with discarded items and bullish grass grown too tall from infrequent trampling. Sprinkles of moonlight splashed off of its lumpy face, which aside from its broad bumps was otherwise smoothly curved. Up top it came to a hairy peak, yet overall it was squat and tucked low on the earth. Only when the ponies came a single step before it did its black coating recede enough to reveal that it was a round storehouse, no wider than the barge they had disembarked from and built of stone except for its hay hat and wooden door. Two skinny, tall slits were cut through on either side of the door to serve as minimal windows; the sharp but lightless eyes of a cat in the night.

Same as the lot gate, the door of the storehouse had nothing to bar intruders. Again Bookworm pushed it open with little fuss. A few moonbeams stole their way inside, but even added to the trickle of light from the windows it wasn't enough to clear the wall of black just beyond the doorway.

Prideheart felt the filly let go of him, and more by luck than design his weight fell upon the frigid and rocky doorframe. He tried to look for her – pathetic turns of his sagging head and limp winks with his eye – but his senses were so muted he couldn't perceive any distinctions between the darkness inside and the cold night outside. There was only dry grumbles in his throat, too raw and rough to be hammered into an actual call of her name.

Bookworm had hardly gone out of his reach though. She stood herself under where she knew a lantern to be, hung inside on a big metal nail just besides the door. She was quite used to not being tall enough to reach it and she didn't even bother trying. Instead, in one of her rare moments of magic, her horn glowed. Its light was small and deeply orange, indistinguishable from that of a candle's flame flickering only enough for stealthy midnight reading. Her magic groped its way up the wall and then jumped to the lantern where it found the flat metal knob which controlled the wick, and she dialed it up. After a moment longer, concentrating quite intently due to her crude and inexperienced ability, a tendril of her magic slipped inside the glass and sparked.

There was no outburst from Prideheart at the loathsome display of reviled magic. In his strengthless search for her he still hadn't found her. His dimmed good eye had caught only the odd flashing of orange color outside of his vision, something easily mistaken by his mushy mind for a more mundane lighting of the lantern.

And similar to him, even the lamplight proved sluggish and drained. The weak burst of fire from Bookworm had scarcely been enough to have lit the lantern, and its shine spread slowly. Stroke by thin stroke a brush dry with orange paint colored the scene one line at a time. Perhaps it was just the ponies' eyes being too in love with the moonlit darkness, but it seemed a long minute before there was any clarity to the scene before them.

The small storehouse, like the lot it sat in, didn't contain all that much. Mostly scattered about the dirt floor were light collections of unorderly things that were useful to such a frontier town, but not things so useful that their excess supply – tucked away in so forgettable a place – would have been remembered in an hour of sudden need. It was likely everything there had been long forgotten altogether, and new supplies had been acquired in their stead. Certainly the shelf of rusted metalwork told such a story: hooks, pegs, clamps, braces, tools; all turning in color to brown or black. There also was a pile of sewn sacks laid askew, collapsed on one side after one of them had been almost completely deflated; pillaged by a troupe of rodent thieves who probably fancied themselves quite the master criminals for their unknown heist. A leftover milling wheel, hewn from fine quality Stony Nook stone, sat by its lonesome self propped against the wall, and it looked so old that the dust piling around its chin was a longer beard than had by some of the wisest ponies.

"Sometimes when I want to get away from the sitters I hide in here," Bookworm explained. "Nopony uses this place much, so it's nice for reading and not being bothered. I don't ever hide here when Dad's around though. He'd rip the storehouse right out of the ground trying to find me!"

She gave a meek laugh, hoping that her friend might share it with her, but the stallion was slumped stiff against the doorframe and all but unconscious. Again and again his eyes squeezed shut and his head reached to touch the floor only to timidly pop up in a weak startle a moment later.

Quietly the filly took on much of Prideheart's weight again. He was even heavier than before, but it hardly mattered as there was so little distance left to take him. Just a few steps in and already they were near the other side of the tiny room, and set there on the dirt was a flat heap of hay laid down like a rug, mostly still in soft condition. It would have been good for patching holes in the town's roofs if anypony had remembered the extra were there. Not so tall as to be a pile, but also not so thin as to inherit the ground's hardness, it was perfectly wide and long enough for just one pony to rest on, as if it had been ready-made to act as a bed.

"Here; you can lay down here, mister," Bookworm said, and she let him go, biting her lip with the hope that he wouldn't tumble over.

The still-nodding stallion wobbled and weaved in place, and his hooves took tiny jumps like he might take a step in no particular direction. Eventually he seemed to understand he had come at last to his destination, and he entered into his cloak and drew up his small travel satchel. After a miserable effort he managed to open it, and he pulled on a tuft of his woven blanket which poked out. It came reluctantly, and not all the way at that. Again he tugged, getting a little more, and then again with his empty strength. One last pull brought it the rest of the way out, but the piecemeal pulls had gotten it out long and twisted instead of neatly wide and flat. However his numb mouth didn't bother with it, and he simply dropped over the hay where it landed in a tangle without taking any comfy shape at all.

That was the final sliver of willpower the pony had in him. As he bent low to lay down he merely gave up, flopping his right side onto the creased, bent, shamble of a blanket and the bed of hay underneath. No groan or grunt came from him; he fell with a cushioned thud and then there was no more sound save for the dry whispers of his weak breath crawling in and out of his nose at a tortoise's pace.

Many times over his ordeal Bookworm had fidgeted in uncertainty, thinking she should have helped him lay the blanket or have smoothed the hay, but her constant uncertainty had held her back. She had never read a story like this, with a battered and incapable hero. With him finally down she stood stiff for a time, watching him lay there lifelessly. He faced the wall, his back to her, and through the wrapping of his cloak she couldn't even see the faint pulse of his body breathing.

"Uh," she spoke up softly after many, many loud seconds of silence had passed, "do-... do you need a bedtime story, mister?"

"... The... warning..." It trickled out of him almost without purpose, like a little puddle of drool incidentally escaping during a snore.

"Right. Okay..."

The filly took a few backwards paces towards the door and then half-turned around. But then she stalled.

Maybe it was too sneaky a thing to attempt while he was so delirious and out of his good mind, but he had never specifically sworn her to ignorance on the matter. It was at least worth one last polite try. Another time she asked him:

"Mister... what's your name?"

At this his ears flicked, though with only a frail flutter like they had been pushed by the very first descending breeze of winter. It was enough of a sign to lure the filly into waiting for a bigger response even though he immediately made no further motion or noise except for his scratchy breathing. Then, finally, his cloak puffed up with one meager catch of wind, and he brought it back out as a long, spindly sigh.

"... It... is not relevant..."

Bookworm bowed her head with the disappointment she had been anticipating, but she jerked it up again when he quite unexpectedly rolled his neck about just enough to turn a slim cut of his good eye at her. His peek hardly lasted more than a moment and then his face fell back into the hay.

He sighed another time and mumbled almost incoherently, "... So tired have I grown... of hearing my name..."

Little twinges twitched him and he shook little shuffles, and then he was motionless again. His low rasping filled the quiet storehouse once more.

The filly was very slow to renew her retreat, but eventually she did with no more than a soft, "Good night, mister." Her thoughtful melancholy didn't keep her from recalling his training on silent movement, and taking what he had taught her she disappeared almost without a sound. The creak of the door going with her as she pulled it shut was the only noise she made.

Though all his senses were dashed into dust, all his mind was cracked apart in disarray, and all his body had reached the furthest places beyond exhaustion; there was no sinking into fast sleep for Prideheart. In fact, coming to stiff rest only made things worse. It gave him enough idle recovery to maintain painful consciousness as his army of injuries used the recess to make their war upon him. Ranks of prickling tingles led the charge before detachments of awful pangs pounded on any soft points they could find. While that front was blistering with battle his throbbing aches launched their arrows at him, sometimes using burning hot ammunition and sometimes freezing cold. Any effort to quell one rebellion only invited ambushes from others elsewhere, always with new weapons: hammers, and whips, and spears, and fire, and lightning!

The only escape the pitiful pony had was to close himself away from the world and fade into his unconscious mind; a place alone in the lamplight which for forty years he had always sought to avoid, often without success. In some ways the retreat into his own pit of despair was not even his choice; he would have stayed at waking war with his body if he could have. But once the threshold of his solitary mind had been crossed – once he had fallen from the edge – he tumbled into a sea of inky darkness.

In the blackest depths of his mind, in a place stuffy with the forever-fresh smell of dragon fire, there was only a long rope of history which slithered like a snake through the ether, glowing in awful colors and screeching hideous noises and as it weaved about. The floating trail of memory repeated itself to him in flashes, sometimes as blaring pictures shouted into his face but most often as palpable sounds which shoved him down and crushed him with their unbearable weight. The monstrous rope pulsed; it would unwind and expose its discrete threads of terrible history for horrible moments before it would collapse and entwine again with the clap of a heavy hammer back into the form of one oppressive and incomprehensible rope of personal agony.

And through the living nightmare which engulfed him the stallion was pulled, drowning in the current of darkness. The rope, braided of his sorrows and his griefs and his pains and his regrets, steered him along the helpless black path until it brought him to his abyss' heart. There was the source from which it was woven, twisted together out of an aura which spilled from a familiar and unrecognizable figure: a shadow of a pony white, with golden mane shining, body lifted tall and proud to the highest heights of noble heroism; some unreal ghoul that had claimed the name 'Prideheart.' The phantom spoke with many voices, all known no matter how old they were, and the stallion heard each whisper as if the sharpest points of them were being driven into his ears and breaking through his eardrums.

The first of them faded in from far in the past:

"Lord Prideheart!"

"Again, must I remind you? Do not call me that."

"Oh. We're sorry, my lord."

"Ah! You have no lord! We have left behind any corpulent throne-sitters or fatheaded crown-wearers; vile ponies thinking themselves regal with their filth magic. We all here stand for our own lives now! None is lord above another."

"Uh... yes. Apologies, sir."

"Hmph. What is your purpose?"

"We only wished to thank you, Lord—AHEM—Sir Prideheart. This forest is a wonder! Where is the sun?; yet we have light! Where is magic?; yet we have life! All magic is devoured by these native crystals, and they give back glorious glow to us, revealing the hidden depths between the trees where we have found bounty enough to survive! You have led us safely far from Equestria, over the perilous Pearl Peaks, and at this place we have found a quiet home which is forbidden to the ponies we once called sisters and brothers! Never will they, or the magic which befouled and endangered us, find us here!"

"Home this is not. It is well, what these crystals can do. But what evil they weaken they do not wipe out. See, there, how some of the unicorns can yet shine their horns if they bring all their focus to bear? Farther still we must travel, away and away until even the longest tentacles of magic cannot reach us!"

"But my lord-"

"—!!"

"S-S-Sir Prideheart! We are weary! Plains, then hills, then mountains! And now deep into this Dryearth Forest! We do not remember the start of our arduous journey, so long has the trail been since Canterlot! What good would more journey be if it wore our hooves down to the knees? Is not this place, with crystal shields, good enough?"

"Was the Arrogant Sun good enough? No, she was not! She grew complacent lingering in magic! Deathly complacent! And so neither should we linger, even where magic is so haggard."

"But please, at least some rest then? We are but little ponies!"

"And little ponies must rise to do big things if they are to write their own destinies! Faith; you will find the determination."

"But the foals, sir! Much harder has this been for fillies and colts! New lands are first an adventure, but in time the harshness of long roads breaks into their spirits. They have bodies built for growing years, not for walking miles and climbing mountains!"

"T-The f-foals? ... Y-Yes... yes, they have admirably given more than their share..."

"Will there not be some respite for them and for us? Truly we love you for having saved us in Canterlot and for having brought us so far, Lord—SIR Prideheart, and we would go to the very ends of this world for you if you were to command it! But what is your command?"

"I-... I command no things. I am one of you all. If your will is to rest, then rest; it is not my approval you need. And you ponies I love truly. Forever I will hold to my word of deepest promise which I swore to you when we began: never shall I leave you all, and always shall I fight to keep you safe. When our strength renews, then we push farther from Equestria."

"Yes, thank you Lord Prideheart!"

"Hmph!!"

In his makeshift bed the stallion rustled uncomfortably. But no wriggling of his brought him relief. It wasn't his external wounds which drove away any solace.

And the voices carried on after they had aged a season:

"Ah! Lord Prideheart! Thank our crystal light, you have been found!"

"You have found only Prideheart; none so lordly."

"Oh, yes, our apologies!"

"What is it you need? Where comes this urgency from?"

"A dilemma terrible, sir! You are most needed to resolve this!"

"—!! What danger?!"

"Some of the pegasi wish to level platforms higher in the branches, but the earth ponies are griping that they will not be able to reach! Right away we came for you so that this impasse might be resolved! Where do we find livable balance in this matter, sir?"

"... Am I a builder? Do my wounds sear from an errant pound of hammer or a miserable slip of nail? Why do you lay your personal trifles before me?!"

"You-... you are our lord!"

"No! Not your lord!"

"But your leadership, sir! Where else could we turn to settle our differences? You guide us!"

"Guide you? Through the rigors of putting food in your own mouths? Or finding a place to lay when sleep comes? Of speaking to your fellows when you have a thought? These are not the dangers of life away from the Sun for which you need me to face!"

"Many pardons are begged, my lord! We did not wish to anger you!"

"My anger is a love! I do set down a path for you: one of self-reliance! One of strength and answers within! Submit to that example, not to the one who sets it! I am not a new Sun, ruling your days from the sky! Rule yourselves!"

"Give us humble forgiveness, Sir Prideheart! We might yet try, though we are but little ponies!"

"Little ponies! Even the littlest try as they can to learn! If you fail, simply take lesson and try again! Meanwhilst, cease beseeching me for every answer! I will levy no more judgments on which direction the leaves should fall or which wind feels best in morning!"

"But who amongst us has the wisdom to guide us through thorny issue, besides you?"

"Gr! Form a council! Discuss your minds with each other! I care not, so long as it brings you to find decisions of your own! I share of your burdens; I do not bear them for you!"

"Is-... is that what you order of us, Lord Prideheart? A council, for decisions?"

"Rrgh, yes!! My final command! And then no more do ponies look to Prideheart – who is not lord – for answers! Such relief would make this delay in the forest bearable until our departure for lands further distant."

"Might we not... stay longer, sir? It may take time for a council to settle in."

"I fear how settled we are already. But... you must gain mastership of yourselves..."

More the pony tossed and turned, as if he were trying to wrestle the phantom of himself into submissive silence. Over he flipped, burying his good eye into the hay, and his blanket twisted around him like binding rope. But even with only his dead eye catching the low flare of the lantern he could not find silent darkness.

Still the whispers came, aged by ever more seasons:

"Esteemed council, I have found and brought our lord! We may now, after great wait, come at last to order."

"If I may put forward an immediate item?: that we again thank Lord Prideheart for his place on this council and his presence with us. Let us lay no blame on him for his repeated lateness to its meetings and seek no apologies from him for delaying our starts. Too eternal is our debt to him."

"I am late because I again sought to be not present at all. No place have I on this council, as I must for yet another time insist."

"But my lord, all Dryponies have called your name whenever the question was asked: 'Who shall take this open seat at council?'"

"Indeed! None were called louder! 'Our hero! Our hero and savior, Lord Prideheart!' they chanted brighter than our forest glow! They love you, Lord Prideheart, and they cannot help but pay back to you what you are owed in adulation and honor."

"Honor unwanted. For the best of all: it is still not my place."

"I do not understand, my lord. Many times you have asked the Dryponies to exercise their own will. Surely you would not deny them the high place they have chosen for you?"

"They seek 'Lord' Prideheart for their council, but I am not such! I am Prideheart their defender! My place in front of them comes only when evil skulks nearby, and elsewhen they should set their place in front of me, forging a path of their own design."

"And their design has your voice in this council."

"Yes. Who are we to tell the Dryponies that we have denied their great hero his rightful station as selected by them? Moreover, it cannot be hidden: you love them, my lord, and would not deny beloved ponies your promised service."

"... I love them, yes, and I serve them wholeheartedly, yes. But by my love I choose to serve them only where best I can. My voice serves none if it is to substitute for sovereignty."

"Such it is not, my lord! We seek only your thoughts, to better aid in determining our outcomes."

"Lo, I have been overjoyed to have seen some matters here resolved without my senseless approval! But many things merit only silence from me. What are so many of these debated matters to me? 'Dryponies' we are now? A new name does not put fresh distance between us and Equestria. Yes! That matter of our escape is the only one my voice has championed here, and it has yet to see debate and resolution!"

"It is too soon, Lord Prideheart."

"What count of months has it been since first council? What count, since we saw first the light of crystals? What count, since last hoof left mighty mountains?!"

"Please be calm, my lord!"

"You have asked for my voice! Now I give it! Where stand we on retreat to farther lands?!"

"It is too soon. My lord, your dream of leaving foul magic forever behind is also our dream, and we will pursue it when the time is right. But at present, let us not waste the words of our council on a matter the Dryponies themselves have determined they are not ready for. In vote, I say 'nay.'"

"'Nay,' as well. And I see the rest of the council concurs."

"Thank you, Lord Prideheart. Your dedication keeps such an important thing in our minds. But, for now, the motion sees no movement."

"Rrg..."

"My lord?"

"—!! What then if I accept this claim of lordship that has long been offered to me, and drive these ponies onwards by unopposable command?! What say you then?!"

"Lord Prideheart, it would be done, such is the loyalty and love you are owed. But this council, on behalf of all Dryponies, asks you: stay your wrath, and show your mercy."

"Mercy, such as no foe in magic would show you!"

"But you are no foe, and certainly not in magic! We beg you: do not ask for live roots to be ripped painfully from the earth; do not ask tired families to fold and carry their fresh homes far; do not ask the mares, bodies weighed down with foal, to suffer a hard and weary journey with no known end and no choice but to bear precious life somewhere unfamiliar."

"... Families... Foals..."

"Is it what you ask of us, Lord Prideheart? If by your command, then we stand ready and proud! Order us to suffer for you!"

"... No..."

"Great is your wisdom, my lord. And greater still your mercy. Thank you. Let all here accept it as settled then: the matter is for tomorrow, not today."

"... Rightful has the Sun has been left behind, yet I feel as though tomorrow will never rise..."

"... No...," Prideheart leaked the wounded whisper.

His good eye was already locked shut and buried in the blanket, but he pressed it in deeper, hard enough to feel the bends of hay beneath the wool poking back into his eyelid. He tremored, passing his shaking into his ever-tighter hold on his blanket, and in turn it tangled worse around him.

It was coming. He felt it. And he was helpless to stop it.

"... No... please..."

"Lord Prideheart, long have I been looking! From the council I was sent in order to-"

"... You may tell council to abandon their wait... Once again I will not be joining them..."

"—?? Uh, my lord, that is not—ah, I-, I have news."

"... News of council matters is of no concern to me... These 'Dryponies' lead themselves... As-... as is proper..."

"I-, I was ordered to share this news. Please open your ears. The destiny of Dryponies and of our beloved home Heartwood is bound to it."

"... Hmph... Destiny; ever claimed, never sought... Very well... What news...?"

"Much discussion has been had about the increasing number of vile Sunponies who have been skirting the borders of our Dryearth Forest. The council fears-"

"... More unheeded lectures does this council need?... Our former compatriots – the so-called 'Sunponies' – are merely harmless travelers... Always some have visited this far land, and never have they stayed or even breached the forest..."

"But their numbers have been growing greater! That is cause for alarm! My lord, the council whispers in worry: perhaps they scout, and in time plan to build! Near us! Too near Heartwood!"

"... If they build, they will fail and leave, to no bother of ours... The crystals ensure that fate... We have strength to survive without magic... They do not..."

"But Lord Prideheart, that itself is at the heart of the council's trouble: we have not survived without the curse of magic! Many years we have been settled yet some of the unicorns still have not abandoned using their horns!"

"—? For little more than moving gentle weights... They can do no greater in the presence of the crystals... It is little bother..."

"The council sees it different: that we cannot wean ourselves off the curse is a sign of weakness in Dryponies! And if it comes to dealing with Sunponies again, weakness we cannot afford! All agreed that stronger measures to free us from the curse are needed."

"Stronger? Ah!! Hope had fled me! Is it at last the time to depart this false home?"

"'Depart,' my lord? No! Our former home was spoiled by the curse; we shan't cede our new one to it! What good would departure be? If the Sunponies were not to follow us the curse still would, for the curse is in our blood. The council has realized this, and so voices did raise: 'We must bleed until the curse has been run from us.'"

"... What?..."

"This is our sacrifice: henceforth, all foals born cursed with horns are not Dryponies, and will be delivered in secret to the intruding Sunponies. Let them bear the cursed back to a land tolerant of such weakness."

"—!!!!"

"Drop by drop we will squeeze out this cursed blood until to us are born no more cursed. Thus our strength will free us at last. A heavy sacrifice, inspired by your example, Lord Prideheart!"

"...... No..."

"My lord?"

"NO!!"

"L-Lord Prideheart, I-"

"Reckless insanity! Abominable iniquity! Unstomachable evil! NEVER would I offer even one hair from my mane in approval of this!!"

"But my lord, your approval-"

"Has this confined forest suffocated their minds of all reason?! Has the fractured light of these crystals stained their thoughts incoherent?! Has the-"

"Lord Prideheart, please! Be calm! I cannot follow this rambling-"

"'Sacrifice'?! 'Bleed'?! Whose blood?! No! No, this wickedness is not going to be! The most innocent lives and the youngest futures are too holy for some wretched, errant council to condemn in an act of damned unwisdom! There will be no vote for this unspeakable lunacy! Take me to the council!"

"I cannot, my lord."

"—!! This INSTANT, to the council take me! By warmth or wrath I will disabuse them of-"

"Please listen, my lord! I cannot, because their meeting is long concluded!"

"What?!"

"So rare have your appearances been these late months, even when ponies are sent to retrieve you, that the council has given up notifying you of meetings and of also delaying for your sake. The matter of our cursed foals was deeply discussed without your presence and concluded by unanimous vote. It is the will of the Dryponies."

"It is-... it is-... No!"

"Already cursed foals under four weeks age are being gathered, and they will be left on the forest edge where the Sunponies can find them and rid us of them. The same fate is set for all such newborn foals, until we are purified. I was sent only to inform you of this news."

"How-? How does such a... judgment stand? Their crime is their birth? No! No... How has this been decided...? They are only foals..."

"... They are cursed, my lord."

"Ah... ah... no... What is this world I have come to...?"

"Your opposition is... much unexpected, Lord Prideheart. Your many harsh words against magic are well remembered. ... Shall I-... shall I attempt to regather the council, my lord? Too late it may already be... but do you wish them to hear your new words? Or if-... if you have some command greater than the will of the Dryponies..."

"Ahh... ahhff-ffh-ffh... No... no, no, no... ffh-ffh-ffah..."

"Lord Prideheart? My lord? M-My lord?! Can you not stand? Are-, are you injured? My lord?!"

Prideheart wept.

Like so many nights for nearly forty years, he wept.

Untold innocent lives in Canterlot... defended. But then, when the most innocent... the most precious... the most helpless had needed defense...

Standing before the pure ruin of a malevolent dragon had been a simple thing. There had been no unworthy costs to save them. But when the enemy had been his own beloved ponies and their twisted obedience to his corrupt shadow, where had his courage gone?

At the start of their self-exile he had promised them: he would never leave them, and he would always guard them from evil.

... Courage... Promise...

Even through his soft sobbing he tensed. This nightmare he had relived many times, and he knew full well he had not yet endured the worst of his phantom's sadism. All his haunted senses became slaves to the ghost's power, and it pulled away the world so that the catastrophic climax might hit the grieving stallion hardest.

"Where is she?! News came, and with all speed I have raced! Where is my cherished one?!"

"Calm, Lord Prideheart. Lower your voice."

"Where is she?"

"She is well, but resting. See, over there?"

"—Cherished!—"

"No, my lord. Do not go to her. She must rest. It was a hard birth for her to give, and she is exhausted. Even after such time, we are... still learning how to best handle these miracles without the help of... ah, well... I shan't name it."

"... It is over already then?"

"Yes. Fear not; she is safe and well. Some time to lay in soft silence is all she will need. You may resume whatever duty you were engaged in, my lord. Here I promise to look after your cherished one, and will send word when she is awake once more."

"—? And the new one? Where is the foal? ... My foal...?"

"Ahh... Ahem. Lord Prideheart, that-... that-..."

"... Where?"

"I... do not recommend it, but you may see if you wish. This way. ... Here, Lord Prideheart."

"—! Oh! My own! Dark in forest deep, vanished from Sun of old, given shine only by hungry crystal... But this one, in her eyes is the pure light that has long been missing from my life! How again I feel fullest, blessed devotion at just her sight! In this bassinet is placed all my last love. She is so beautiful!"

"My lord... I am so sorry..."

"—?"

"Do you not see the forehead? This one is cursed, Lord Prideheart."

"—!!"

"My heart shares your grief—but now comes the usual matter: a report has already been filed on this birth, and fortunately Sunponies have been spotted moving through the land only a day past. This one will be put out soon to be taken."

"No... no no nono no! Not her! Any but her! Please!"

"Long now have we cast all cursed from Heartwood and from Dryearth Forest, my lord. In these years that has not changed."

"But-, but-, but she-... she has done nothing! Nothing in her few minutes of life save for been born to me! My silence for the others has been shameful, but her-! For her, I-! Spare her, please!

"There... are no exceptions, my lord. Never have there been since we have first started the cleansing."

"... No... please... do not take her from me..."

"I see this hard response in all who suffer a cursed birth. Do not let it trouble you, my lord. You should rejoice! Many parents endure grief at the severing, but they will be most comforted to know that our great hero shares their pain."

"... I will not-... I cannot-! She is my-! She is my-! She-..."

"Do not touch it, my lord. That only makes the process harder. Here now; come away."

"... I am sorry..."

He coughed and sobbed into the tangle of blanket and hay.

"... I am unforgivably sorry..."

Out of his good eye came the ordinary salt of immense sorrow, trickling down his contorted face. But his dead eye leaked a crusty slime, bitter and poisoned, which stung with every drop squeezed out and burned as it scorched a trail down his cheek. Yet he was so deep into his personal anguish that he felt nothing of his body. He could not feel it at all when then pustules clinging to his ruined horn began to glow an ill color and when the sickly light within the cracks of his horn started to throb.

And then it fired. For just a flash – for one slice of a flickering moment – a light of gold tarnished a putrid green shined out from his diseased horn-stump.

"ARRGGHH!!"

His eyes crashed shut so fast that they blasted out the tears caught in the way. Onto his side he rolled, and he let go his blanket and the hay, instead throwing his hooves against his head. Hard he pressed them into his skull in desperate reaction. The sudden pain that had exploded within felt like it was prying his head apart.

Few ponies knew, but the broken hero's magic was not gone. Long ago the caustic dragon fire had clashed with his magic and had invaded him through it, shattering his horn and scarring his body, and at the same time injecting an incurable poison far into him. But it had not taken away his magic. The wicked toxin had merged permanently with it. The truth was so hidden to others because for forty years he had always elected to never use his magic anymore. Not only from contempt for the power itself, but because using his grossly poisoned magic was no different than using a broken limb to lift a heavy stone.

The irony of it all was so contemptible: the Dryponies had called unicorn foals 'cursed' despite their innocence, but for decades now the magic of their 'great hero' truly had been.

Between his bout of ultimate grief and the loss of the soothing aura of the magic-hungry crystals he had grown long-accustomed to living besides, his guard had lowered just enough to have let through that one reflexive spasm of his magic muscle; that one spark of light.

And instantly it had felt like the dragon himself had returned and begun raining down fire over him from above. Everything burned, from the sizzling fires erupting over the furtherest corners of his body to most especially the inferno which roared in his head. Every bit of the corrupt flesh on his face became hypersensitive, crying out to the touch of each fleck of dust which landed on him like a lightning bolt. Heavy claws, hot as lava, ripped open the top of his head and drilled down the center of his brain where they pulled the two halves apart. And as if his suffering were incomplete his recent wounds were empowered by the poison's influence; they piled on him anew with their magnified strength.

Although the height of the excruciating torment lasted only as long as the quick flash of his horn the lingering pain of it stayed like a powerful echo resounding upon itself in an empty canyon, booming for minutes after the first shout had gone silent. He laid there, holding his head and kicking his legs against the air while tortured moans slipped out of his clenched jaw and tears still poured from the corners of his shut eyes. When the thunderstorm of physical agony had finally quelled just enough for him to have opened his eyes again he wasn't able see much. His good eye rejected most of the light that came in, and the rest it distorted beyond comprehension. The orange glow of the lantern cast against the wall looked to him like only a vast smear of evening color, and the shelf of metalwork there was no more than a blur of shadows which danced in circles with a dozen copied images of itself.

Minutes more dragged on, and as the pain slowly faded his vision cleared. His broken gasps for air returned to weeping breaths. He heard again the diabolical taunts of his phantom shadow creeping back into the recesses of his scorched mind. It sounded like they had never been silent at all but that their loudness had only been drowned out by the storm. During the missed interval they had moved on many, many years:

"My love... It is late. Should you not take repose? Why do you pace?"

"I am restless!"

"For years it has seemed so now."

"Each day brings a new tale of nonsense to these Dryponies, and what one says others repeat until it spreads through the forest like wildfire!"

"What harm is there in it? They speak things to lift their spirits."

"My cherished one, they speak contemptible tommyrot which fiendishly undermines their spirits! What is this absurdity of the Sun 'hunting' us? Or of her having chased us helplessly from Canterlot? Such are not my memories of it!"

"None here love the Wicked Sun. Is it any surprise they speak of her so vilely?"

"It is how of themselves they speak that inflames me! They remember themselves as cowards, not as arbiters of their own destinies! We left of our own, to secure ourselves from her weakness!"

"We followed you, my love. If your vision we have ever failed to share, we have always trusted what you have seen."

"Make not any excuses for them, my cherished one. You only sound more like them when you do."

"I apologize, my love. I mean only to comfort you. You are beloved to the Dryponies, as you are beloved to me. The tales of your heroism and virtue are inscribed in our hearts: Prideheart who held fast against the dragon! Prideheart who leapt ledge-to-ledge through the mountains with ten foals on his back! Prideheart who shepherded us into the darkness of the forest to find the saving light within! We know you intimately, and you are the guiding pole around which we dance our lives."

"As I look, I see it not."

"Very grim you have grown as your years have waned on. I do not remember seeing this from you when our son you raised. Then there was light in you. You forgot this world and gave yourself fully to him."

"... Our son... The spot of bright love in a sea so dark..."

"There! I see it again now, if ever small: the light of your smile! My love, you remember how cherished he is, as am I."

"Mmm... Yes. My cherished one, thank you for giving him to me. The years of fatherhood to him was love overwhelming, more powerful than the sear of old fires and the weariness of worldly wounds. All the good I remember comes through him."

"Will you now smile full for those memories?"

"... But only memories they are. He is older now; the age of his own stallionhood is upon him, and much less he needs me. Though always he is my beloved son, he is not mine anymore. That-... that is the plain truth of growth, and I accept it."

"Then... perhaps there is another way I might return those happy years to you. My love... my love... we are not so old just yet. One more, my love. Come. Share this bed with me. One more foal I will deliver to fill your years with joy. One more heir for the hero of Dryponies."

"... Another...? A foal... a beautiful foal..."

"Yes, my love. Another light for you; another love for you. A foal. Our second."

"—? ... Second...? Third!"

"Third? There is only your son, my love-"

"The filly, my cherished one! The first!"

"Ah. Yes. I had forgotten."

"Forgotten?! Forgotten?! How is it not a nightmare conjured every time your eyelids fall?"

"That one was taken by cursed fate, and one who is cursed is not a Drypony. That one was not ours, and there is nothing for holding it in mind."

"How is it you can speak like that? You were put to sleep by birth and did not see her, but I did! I cannot forget the sight! Her eyes... her face... her love... Do you not wonder of her? What the world has done with her? Has it given her happiness? Has it given her grief? Did another father find her? Did he love her? Did he love her... more than I would have? ... D-Did-... did he only have to hold her but once to have bettered me...?"

"Have no tears for it, my love."

"... Less and less I feel I know you each day, my cherished one."

"They are hurtful words. I am overjoyed to be yours; closest to you of all Dryponies."

"... I am sorry... Not in anger I meant it..."

"I know. It is your gloom which speaks. But I will heal it. Come and embrace me with your love. For you, my love, one more foal."

"... I cannot... I-... No, I cannot endure it again..."

"My love?"

"That we ever had a second foal in our son bewilders me! I do not know how I survived it! Were the day of the dragon to come again I would have no fear in my heart. Were his fire to chew my flesh from my melting bones I would not be afraid. For never in my life have I felt more terrified than on the day of our son's birth! W-What if he too-... if he-... if he had been-... like the first... and taken... My cherished one, to suffer that fear again I could not... It would be my death."

"Too much to the past you look in fear. Bravely see instead the future you have made for all Dryponies."

"I see nothing but a dark forest, twisted by rioting crystal light. Within are ponies trapped under a ghoulish shadow lord, and while they falter there is a maw of nothingness which consumes their unadulterated foals one by one... !! Ah... What have I protected them from, my cherished one?"

"My love, I cannot understand your despair. There has never been more strength and hope in Dryponies! Whatever magic the Wicked Sun may chase us with will fail, and one day the Walking Desert, their wholeness unstained by charm or enchantment or spell, will come to show us a place beyond magic forever!"

"—? You too recite their drivel now? For decades we have been free to run, but never have we. Only here we have lingered, and lingered, and lingered while sacrificing our own and whispering insanities to ourselves in the darkness."

"No. We have stayed at Heartwood home to build lives in your legendary honor, my lord."

"—!! Your lord? Or your love?"

"My love, of course! ... My love? My love! Where are you going?"

"I am restless!"

No more did Prideheart weep, but not for lack of sorrow. Empty of strength and exhausted of tears he had no more life left in him worth living. He laid as a corpse in his bed of hay, still half-tangled in his twisted blanket.

One final verse his nightmare doppelganger became to recite, but even his shadow was losing interest as the broken stallion failed to response to any further jabs. The voices it took on now were not so very old at all; pulled not from across a great distance of mind but taken from the freshness of very recent memory:

"Lord Prideheart! Found at last!"

"... So you say..."

"There is wonderful news: the Heartwood Guard is fully organized! Our defenses are ready!"

"... There is little need... The 'Sunpony' village has long ago failed..."

"We would not take the chance that the servitors of the Wicked Sun would not return to try again. After all, even though they have retreated we still see their scouts surveying our lands outside the forest."

"... So you say..."

"My lord, I bid you to come and address our new Guard. Your words shall inspire them."

"... And what words would I share...?"

"I do not know, Lord Prideheart. But surely they would feel rather honored to be lauded by their hero. You remember the darker days we came from; the foul days of Equestria ruled under harsh Sun. But our strong, young Guard knows only the forest home they were born and raised in. Be the example for them, of the strength and sacrifice they must embody. Extol the Drypony greatness they must protect. And remind them of the evil they stand against."

"... So you say..."

"... Will you come, my lord? I should think you would be most proud to see your son installed as their captain. How proper that our hero's heir continues the legacy!"

"... He has chosen that path then...?"

"The Dryponies are on the grand course that you have set for us all, Lord Prideheart. Come now, and pour praise and honor onto those that will ensure our venerable and lasting future!"

"..."

"My lord? If... this time is not ideal for it then perhaps tomorrow at the celebration feast you could address them?"

"... Hard you must have searched to have found me here in my seclusion...?"

"—? Yes..."

"... You are dedicated..."

"Thank you, my lord. When called to find you, never would I rest until the whole forest was searched."

"... So you say... And so... if tomorrow you find me... then I will surrender my words to this Heartwood Guard..."

"—? Very well. Until tomorrow when I find you, Lord Prideheart!"

"... The Prideheart you will seek has long been found... But, this one..."

And that next day he had not been found.

The Dryponies had searched the forest whole: high to the topmost branches, low under the deepest roots, thorough between the darkest crevices, and far near the brightest edges. But there had been no trace of the pony they adored. For never would they have thought to have looked for him outside Dryearth Forest, on the hard trail leading up into the Pearl Peaks and back towards Equestria.

Forty years of promise. 'He would never leave them,' he had promised. 'Always he would guard them from evil,' he had promised. But only an old fool like him would have needed those decades to have figured out that those vows had excluded each other, and for all that time the stubborn pain inside him had told him to have valued greater the wrong promise.

His soul had been poisoned by toxic dragon fire... and by holding himself near them for so long he had passed its wickedness on to them.

Finally, finally after all those suffering years he had broken one promise to them so that the other might have a fighting chance to live, no matter how small. Without him there to helplessly act as a physical reminder – as a corrupting idol for them to worship around – perhaps 'Lord Prideheart' would in time wither and die.

How better would it have been if the dragon's fire had felled him completely? The ponies of Canterlot would still have been saved by his last act of true heroism, and those that then had become the Dryponies would never have been lead astray in darkness, and she-...

She-...

Was his betrayal so dooming that it were better she had never been born?

The lantern gasped, needing more fuel to keep bright its flame. In the twinkling orange light Prideheart laid stiff, still, and dead. Sweeter dreams would have seen him tortured by Nightmare Moon herself instead.