684 - Bardic Knowledge
“Hey…”
The awkward greeting made Spinner glance behind her, a cordial smile crossing her lips as she watched Thermal Draft finish extricating herself from the bedroll that she’d been sharing with Lex, moving gingerly so as to not wake the sleeping unicorn. “Hey yourself. Can’t sleep?”
Gently flapping her wings, Thermal Draft flew toward the other side of the dome Lex had conjured around everyone, setting down a short distance from Spinner. “Not really,” she admitted, keeping her voice low to avoid disturbing the sleeping forms of the bard’s teammates, Lex, or draw Solvei’s attention, the winter wolf patrolling a short distance outside of the protective bubble. “I keep drifting off and waking up again. It’s like I can’t settle down.”
Spinner quirked a brow, her grin turning sly. “Let me guess: you’re used to your boyfriend ‘relaxing’ you when you turn in every night?”
Thermal Draft blushed at the unsubtle innuendo. “It’s not like that! He’s not even really my boyfriend.” Seeing Spinner’s eyes, as well as her grin, widen at that, she waved a hoof. “I mean, we’re not officially together or anything. We’re just…we’ve known each other for a little while, and we kind of wound up here all by ourselves and things just, you know…sort of happened.”
“Hmm…” Spinner made a show of eyeing Thermal Draft for a moment. “Something tells me you were hoping things between you and him would ‘just sort of happen,’ am I right?”
Thermal Draft tried very hard to keep the guilty smile off of her face, but felt her muzzle betray her a moment later, not able to bring herself to make eye contact with the bard. “What time is it anyway?” she asked, looking at the snowy darkness outside of the dome.
Spinner chuckled at the blatant attempt to change the subject, but didn’t push the issue as she joined the other mare in looking at the featureless night. “A little after midnight, I think. I’ve got the third watch, so there’s a while to go before dawn. Valor will be next, then Mysty, and that’s when we’ll start breaking camp.”
“And make our way to the mountain pass, where whatever Solvei saw is likely waiting,” sighed Thermal Draft, idly pulling out the magic rod Lex had given her. On a whim, she pointed it outward and concentrated, only putting it down several seconds later when it failed to register anything.
This time, Spinner’s smile was genuine instead of teasing. “If that’s what you’re worried about, don’t be. I know that last fight wasn’t exactly our finest hour, but we were caught unprepared. Mysty and Woodheart hadn’t prepped their best spells, and we were going in blind, after which we were surprised by that hag. This time we’ll be ready.”
She canted her head toward where Lex was sleeping as she continued. “Not to mention you’ve got a guy who’s practically an archwizard over there, plus his big bad wolf. And besides, from what I overheard before I turned in before, his little gem-experiment was a success, right?”
The corners of Thermal Draft’s lips turned up at that. “Yeah.” On impulse, she reached into the pocket of her trousers with one wing, extracting a small carnelian and looking at it. “I knew he stored spells in these sometimes, but I just assumed they had to be his. It never occurred to me that he could put spells from other people into them.”
Fighting down the urge to lick her lips, Spinner stared at the gemstone. “So, what happens after the magic’s released? Do you just throw them away, or…?”
“Sorry,” chuckled Thermal Draft. “Releasing the magic corrodes the gem. It crumbles like a piece of coal that’s been thrown in a fire.”
“Damn it!” Spinner slumped in place, groaning at the thought of those precious stones going to waste. It was only after spending several seconds mourning their future destruction that she looked at the stone Thermal Draft was still holding. “So what’s in there that’s worth ruining all that cash for?”
“Two castings of a spell that creates a low-grade force field around a single person. It’s not impenetrable – according to Lex, it has a ‘modest repulsion effect, which is far from true inviolability’ – but it’s supposed to be as good as a light suit of armor. And this one” – Thermal Draft picked up another gem, this one a bloodstone – “has two castings of a cone of fire.” She paused then, looking them over with a heartfelt sigh. “Offense and defense, in case things go bad tomorrow and can’t be there to protect me.”
Spinner rolled her eyes at the smitten tone in the pegasus’ voice. “You know, far be it from me to ruin the romantic symbolism of him wanting to make sure you’re safe before we venture into the unknown, but if you were the one who put those spells in those jewels in the first place, isn’t giving them to you kind of a moot point? Why not give you some gems with super-powerful spells of his own?”
The questions earned her a wry look from Thermal Draft, putting the gems away. “He said I’m not ready for anything stronger,” she groused. “Apparently, even though the spells inside these things have already been cast, it’s possible to improperly release them, and if that happens it can be dangerous for the user as well as those around them.”
“Ouch,” laughed the bard. “Yeah, I imagine that stings a bit.”
“It’s still a thoughtful gesture that he gave me those,” huffed Thermal Draft. “At least this way, I just have to release the spells from the gems, which is a lot faster than building each spell piece-by-piece in the middle of a fight.”
The admission was enough to make Spinner cock her head. “I’ve never heard of a style of spellcasting like that. Which I suppose explains why Mysty kept watching you guys so closely the whole time you were making those.”
Thermal Draft’s eyebrows went up. “Is that what her deal was? I thought it was because Lex was using gems instead of scrolls. That’s how she made it sound, at least.”
Spinner shrugged. “The gem thing is unusual, but only because it’s not the repository of choice for most spellcasters. Spell scrolls are pretty easy to make so long as you have the right kind of ink and specially-treated paper, neither of which are very hard to process, or so I’ve been told. But plenty of spellcasters in other cultures use different mediums for that sort of thing. Like, I once met a sea horse wizard who stored spells in kelp strands that had been tied in these really complicated knots-”
“Wait, hold on, back up a second.” Blinking as she gave her head a quick shake, Thermal Draft held up a hoof. “A what wizard?”
“A sea horse,” repeated Spinner. “You know, the aquatic tribe of ponies?”
“The aquatic tribe of ponies,” echoed Thermal Draft, saying each word slowly and deliberately, as though she couldn’t wrap her head around what she was hearing. “Unbelievable…”
For her part, Spinner found Thermal Draft’s surprise as unusual as the pegasus seemed to find the existence of sea horses. “I’ve been meaning to ask you this for a little while, but you’re not from around here, are you?”
Just like she’d expected, the question set the pegasus to squirming. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” mused the bard, her voice filled with false nonchalance. “I was just thinking of how, back when we first met, you didn’t seem to know that Bright Night was a famous magic school, despite having an unusual style of spellcasting.”
“Hold on,” protested Thermal Draft. “That was-”
“And then,” interrupted Spinner. “I could have sworn that, when I was explaining to you that I’m a filidh, your face was completely blank when I said who The Author was. Almost as though you’d never heard of the whole world’s creator goddess.”
“Okay, look-”
“And now you seem shocked to find out about sea horses. Next you’ll tell me you have no idea what zebras are.”
But rather than the cornered look she’d expected, Thermal Draft’s expression turned smug. “For your information, I happen to know that zebras are the black-and-white striped tribe of ponies, thank you very much.”
Spinner turned that over for a long moment, not taking her eyes off of the pegasus as she processed that unexpected turn of events. “Curiouser and curiouser…”
Thermal Draft frowned then, but it was an expression of discomfort more than anything else. “Look-”
“Oh relax, already.” Turning away from the other mare, Spinner grabbed her lute, looking it over critically before giving each string a gentle pluck, listening to the resulting sound to make sure it was still in tune. “As much as I love a good story, I know that not everyone’s comfortable talking about their past. Hell, Shadow still hasn’t told us why she left Blevik, and she’s been part of the group for over a year now.”
Thermal Draft glanced at where the mare in question was sleeping near the center of the dome. “She’s been with you guys for that long, and she’s still keeping secrets?”
“‘Secrets’?” snickered Spinner. “She doesn’t even take her mask off if she can help it. Even when we’re eating, she just undoes the lowest tie and passes the food up to her mouth beneath it. She uses a piece of straw to suck up whatever she’s drinking the same way.”
Thermal Draft’s eyes widened at that. “Seriously?”
“We’ve actually got a pool going about what her deal is. Mysty thinks it’s some sort of curse. Valor says it’s a taboo. Woodheart says it’s religious.”
“What do you say?”
“How can I put this? I don’t think all of her strings are tuned correctly, if you know what I mean,” chuckled Spinner. “But in case you haven’t noticed, that’s sort of the norm in our group. I mean, Mysty’s more sheltered than I thought anyone could ever be. Woodheart’s always getting naked in front of everyone. Valor thinks more like a sun cat than a pony. Shadow’s got her mask. And I’m, well…”
Her good humor faded away as she plucked the last string on her lute, satisfied that the instrument was in perfect working order. “I love the idea of being able to predict the future, but a lot of the times I end up regretting it when I actually do.”
Thermal Draft glanced back at Lex then, and it wasn’t too hard for Spinner to guess what she was thinking. “Lex says he’s not worried about what you said happens to him.”
“But you are.” It wasn’t a question.
“…Lex is the strongest pony I’ve ever met,” murmured Thermal Draft, still watching the stallion sleep. “He’s stronger than I knew anypony could be. But he just…he always does what he thinks is right, and sometimes its like he doesn’t care what happens to himself in the process.”
She turned her face back toward Spinner then, and her expression was haunted. “You remember how he set off that fireball right in his face when he was fighting Grisela? He’s done stuff like that over and over, and that scares me, because I can see him letting that stuff you predicted happen if he thinks it’s the only way to help someone else.”
Spinner digested that for several seconds before opening her mouth again. “Listen, you heard what Mystaria said before, right? This isn’t like those stories where someone tries to avoid something bad happening and ends up causing it in the process. If he goes out of his way to avoid what I predicted, then it won’t happen. Period.”
Thermal Draft let out a slow breath as she nodded, her wings coming up to wipe her eyes, and the glistening moisture at the corners of them spoke volumes. In that moment, Spinner knew for sure that the pegasus didn’t just have a crush on the dour unicorn, nor was she following him because he was good in bed, could create sumptuous feasts, and was apparently rich enough that he could burn off gemstones in order to store spells.
The poor girl was completely and utterly in love with him.
“Sorry,” sniffled Thermal Draft after a moment. “I don’t know why I’m getting so worked up over this. Actually, no, I take that back; I know exactly why. It’s because we’re heading toward an elemental bleed.”
Spinner could hear the story there, knowing that the pegasus just needed a little prompting. She hadn’t been lying about not wanting to pry, but if the perplexing pegasus felt like sharing a few choice anecdotes, that was something else entirely. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” Turning her gaze back toward the clouded sky, Thermal Draft let out a slow breath, and Spinner knew she was seeing memories rather than the night stretching out above them. “One of those things destroyed my hometown.”
Spinner winced at the tone in the other mare’s voice then. “…I didn’t know.”
“None of us knew. All we knew was that the city was suddenly flooded. Some ponies got out while they could; they were the lucky ones. Those of us who couldn’t evacuate, or who chose to stay behind…” Thermal Draft shuddered. “It got bad…really bad. There were creatures there, things we’d never seen before and didn’t know how to fight. Some friends and I holed up, waiting for help to arrive, but…”
“No one came?” ventured Spinner.
Thermal Draft shook her head, her expression distant. “We waited and waited, and things got worse and worse. After a while, I got sick. My friends did everything they could for me…Cloudbank did everything she could…but I kept getting worse. I was starving and thirsty, I was in a lot of pain, and I was so scared, because I knew I was going to die…”
She trailed off then, and Spinner tried to respect the fact that the pegasus was undoubtedly reliving one of the worst moments of her life. But eventually the silence went on too long, and she couldn’t keep her curiosity in check. “So, what happened?”
It took a few seconds for Thermal Draft to answer, her voice coming out quietly enough that Spinner had to strain to hear it. “A hero arrived.”
Spinner put two and two together instantly. “Lex?”
“He saved me,” answered Thermal Draft with a nod. “He saved us all…”
And then she launched into the most incredible tale Spinner had ever heard.
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Well, I knew that it was inevitable that Thermal Draft will pour her heart out to the more amiable members of Fail Forward and with that being the party's resident Bard, not too surprised though even if her profession makes her more than familiar with embellishments, she's bound to recognize the inconsistencies between Equestria and Everglow though she'll likely ignore them in favor of Thermal Draft's rendition of Lex's incredible journey towards becoming a king or to dramatize things a bit, a tyrant doing what is right by his subjects.
Though whether the rest of Fail Forward will believe the admittedly tall tale or not remains to be seen. Then again, the Everglow is a pretty crazy place itself...
The Sea Horse Wizard used a Kelpu?
if you want to know that story go back to chapter 1 and start reading.
i have a idea of how this ark is going to play out ,, well 50% of a idea.
a grate chapter for this ark.
When you are the author and you 100% want to stroke your ego
11146258 Unlike Lex, Thermal Draft is a well-adjusted pony (or at least she was, before Kara got her hooks into her), which means that she's the sort of outgoing and gregarious pony you'd expect from someone who grew up in Equestria. While it might be hard for her to open up to the likes of Woodheart or Shadow, it was really only a matter of time before she hit it off with the friendlier members of Fail Forward. And no one among the group seems friendlier than Spinner.
Of course, as you noted, Spinner is likely to notice that a lot of what Drafty's telling her doesn't fit with basic facts about Everglow and the Pony Empire, at least unless Drafty has the presence of mind to withhold certain pertinent facts. But it's tough to tell whether or not she'll be that circumspect. Even if she is though, there's still a lot of stuff she can tell the bard about Lex; enough so that it's a toss-up as to whether or not they (since it's hard to imagine Spinner not passing along what she's told) believe it.
11146317 If there's a pun there, I'm not seeing it. Sorry!
11146496 If she were to give her every detail about Lex's adventures, it would probably take her much longer than just the rest of Spinner's watch. So she's probably just getting the highlight reel.
Glad you liked the chapter, though! Let's see if it goes where you're thinking...
11146528 I usually go with 20% ego-stroking, but I was feeling self-indulgent today.
11147011
Sorry, its just the South American information storage device made of knotted string, is a Qipu?
Its just, this is made of Kelp?
11147755 Ah, a quipu, yes. Those were what I was alluding to with the sea horses and kelp, here, but I didn't quite get the pun. My bad, there.