A Beginner's Guide to Heroism

by LoyalLiar

XXVI - Father Figures

XXVI
Father Figures

It almost didn't surprise me when Graaaagh tackled me with a bear hug—though thankfully he wasn't actually a bear at the time. What surprised me far more was Blizzard's show of enthusiasm. “We were worried, Morty.”

“I'm fine,” I answered perhaps a bit flatly.

“Time to head to Everfree City?” she asked. I only nodded back.

“Where Everfree?” Graaaagh asked.

I didn't bother answering, but my pet rock unhelpfully chimed in. “A few weeks hike south of Union City. It's the capital of Equestria.”

Feeling the need to give a remotely useful answer, I added “It's back the way we came. We have to get back to where it isn't snowing.”

Graaaagh frowned. “Not want go back. Not want visit fire pony. Not like.”

Blizzard chuckled at that, but after a moment’s thought, grim realization brought our gazes together. “We have to get through River Rock,” I muttered. “We barely have enough food for the trip back.”

Blizzard nodded. “We should have packed more supplies. We could have gone around.” Her hoof tapped the sack on her side, which was clearly nearly empty. “Could you get some from Clover? Can we go meet her?”

“Better if we don't,” I responded, more out of interest of putting the encounter behind me than anything else. “I doubt Clover has much food to spare, unless the dragons are feeding her meat. And even if she did, we can't carry enough for that long of a trip on hoof.” I scratched at my chin. “Is it possible to take a boat from River Rock and reach the ocean? Or are there rapids or waterfalls in the way?”

Blizzard shook her head. “All the interesting parts of the river are north. Father says the unicorns used to take their big sailing ships up and down the river, because it’s deep enough. Nowadays, with the ice, it’s just barges and little ships, but we could hire one fairly easily going either way. All the settlements actually on the river to the north are abandoned, so nopony sails that way, but south will work just fine.”

“Not abandoned!” Graaaagh announced. “Have bears!”

Blizzard smiled at the colt and ruffled his mane with a wing. “That's true. But for the most part, the bears prefer to be alone. It's nice to actually get to talk to one.”

Graaaagh grinned wide enough I was worried he might somehow rip his cheeks.

I, for one, was satisfied to just start walking. The ash and snow weren’t going away if I waited.

---

“What did Clover say to you?”

I twitched at the sound. “You’re still up, Blizzard?”

The sun had set almost four hours earlier, though the change in the light was minimal. It was the first night after leaving Clover behind and heading back, and I was sitting on the side of a mountain staring off at nothing in particular.

“Graargh is adorable, but he takes ‘bear hugs’ a bit too much to heart.”

I couldn’t help a chuckle at that. Blizzard smiled, paced forward, and sat down next to me. “Can I ask you something, Morty?”

“You just did, but go ahead.”

“What’s wrong?”

For a two-word question, the phrase left me quiet for some time. It wasn’t that I didn’t know, but finding the words proved a more involved quest than I would have ever expected.

Seeing my quiet as hesitance, I assume, Blizzard patted a wing on my back. “You’ve been quiet since you talked to Clover.”

“I was quiet almost the entire way here.”

“You were working then. Making those gemstones.” Blizzard smiled softly. “There’s a big difference between being focused and seeming lost.”

“It’s hard to explain.”

She hesitated before adding her next though. “Feelings often can be.”

“No, I mean… it’s about magic.”

That got Blizzard to quirk a brow. “Did Clover do something to your emotions?”

“No, no.” I shook my head earnestly. “It’s about the practice of magic. Let me ask… Nevermind.”

“Ask what?”

“Don’t do that,” I scolded. “Wintershimmer always used to do that. He could never drop anything.” When I said his name, I didn’t realize that I scowled or glared or something, but whatever I did, Blizzard’s focused eyes locked onto it. Still, she said nothing. “Sorry. I’ll just tell you plainly. I need a new mentor.”

“So that’s why you came to Clover?”

I shook my head. “I came to Clover because Wintershimmer wanted me to kill her.”

Blizzard gasped, and all I could bring myself to offer was a short sigh. “I didn’t hurt her. Well, beyond maybe some singed fur from the lava or a few cuts from the volcanic rock. The point is, she’s fine. We’re all fine. Everything’s peachy.”

“But why would you want to kill her?”

That garnered a sigh. “Wintershimmer told me she that she was the reason one of the windigos from the long winter survived. Hurricane was going to kill it, but she stopped him. Wintershimmer said Clover let the windigo go on purpose. And he was… convincing.”

The pegasus mare beside me shivered despite the volcanic heat. “Had he made a mistake, or—?”

I scoffed at the idea. “Wintershimmer had every intention of getting me to kill Clover. He wanted that a long time before I was even born. As for the claim about the windigo… He’s right about that. It’s absolutely true she spared it. But on her side, it was on honest mistake. Or rather, mercy. I have no idea if Wintershimmer actually knows that. Honestly, I doubt he cared. Saying she’d made a deliberate choice was just his way of convincing me.”

“You’re sure?” I nodded. “Why would he want something like that?”

“Because he’s evil!” I snapped.

To her credit, though she recoiled, Blizzard stayed seated beside me. “Did he hurt you? Did he… take advantage of you?”

I waved away the question with a hoof. “Nothing like that. Wintershimmer was amoral. I think that was the problem. He always used to tell me that the idea of ‘evil’ was the monster under an adult’s bed. That the idea of being ‘good’ or ‘evil’ was just a way that ponies tried to scare other ponies into acting the way society wanted.”

“I don’t understand…” Blizzard told me. “You said he was evil, but that just sounds like stuff a grumpy old pony would say.”

I swallowed back the bitter words that first came to mind. “Let me tell you a story, Blizzard. A long time ago, way before either of us was born, Wintershimmer got kicked out of the Diamond Kingdoms for trying to turn an earth pony into a unicorn.”

“Why would they kick him out for that? Couldn’t he just wave his horn and undo it?”

“He didn’t use a spell,” I explained. “Magic doesn’t work that way. He snapped the horn off of his teacher’s corpse when she died and used some thread and a small saw—”

I stopped when Blizzard cringed next to me, squeezing her eyes closed. “Why would he do something like that?!”

I turned to stare off into space again. “The way he tells it, he wanted to cure the unicorn king’s disease. Queen Platinum’s father had the Scourge of Kings. ‘Horn Rot’. It runs in the unicorn royal family.”

“So Gale…” Just her name stung in that moment, and Blizzard’s seemingly preternatural empathy stopped her thought in its tracks.

I carried on before my mind had a chance to dwell further. “Wintershimmer thought that if he could get a new horn onto the king, that might save him before the disease moved down into his skull. Or, failing that, an earth pony might be able to use a horn to take their magic that makes them healthier and slower aging, and give it to the king.” I shrugged. “The method is horrible, but he didn’t just get off on torturing random ponies. But the important point is that he was banished.”

Blizzard nodded. “And?”

“At that point, Commander Hurricane and the pegasi hadn’t come across the ocean yet. So after being exiled, the only civilization Wintershimmer could go to was the crystal ponies, who at the time were a bunch of barbarian tribes trying to conquer the Diamond Kingdoms.”

I cast my gaze a little bit northward, knowing that somewhere on the far side of mountain and sea, my old home was still sitting in the snow.

“Everypony treated Wintershimmer like he was ‘the evil wizard’. Star Swirl, Archmage Mistmane, the Diamond Guard… so he decided to embrace it. He was spiteful, cruel, and nasty to anypony who happened to inconvenience him. He ripped out some poor dragon’s spine to use as a staff, as much for how it made him frightening as for how the dragon’s bones made his magic stronger. And he used his magic to torment and kill anypony who crossed him… not because he liked it, but because eventually ponies stopped crossing him at all. Nopony was brave enough to get in his way. He could do whatever he wanted.”

“He was evil… on purpose? For its own sake?”

“For the sake of reputation. That’s how everypony looked at him… except me.”

I blinked twice, fighting back the threat of tears. I felt Blizzard’s wing tighten its embrace on my back.

“My father was a unicorn soldier who got taken captive by the crystal barbarians. My mother was the pony who captured him. She split father’s horn—” at Blizzard’s shock, I sighed. “That’s what the Crystals used to do, before Queen Jade. Capture unicorns of the other sex, maim them so they couldn’t escape…” I let my voice trail off for a few seconds, sure that Blizzard’s imagination would fill in for me. “The foals were almost always crystals, like my brother and sister.”

“You have siblings?”

“No,” I snapped. “But my parents do have other foals. I was born last, and as you can see from looking at me, I’m a perfectly normal unicorn. No crystal. The old crystals say that’s embarrassing. It means your blood is weaker than the unicorn parent. So mother hated me. My father ran away from the Union when I was a foal, when Warlord Halite died, and Queen Jade stopped the barbarian raids and the maimings. He’s somewhere in Equestria, I’d guess. But I didn’t have any support from either of them. And with my horn the way it’s shaped—”

“What do you mean?”

I sighed, and then lowered my head. “Look at it. See the way it coils? How does it compare to other unicorns?”

“It’s very… tight.”

I nodded, and lifted my head. It felt heavy. “It’s a birth defect. My magic is very strong, but I use too much when I cast. I’m wasteful, and I can’t fix it. If I use three spells without sleeping, I’ll pass out.”

“Is that not very many?”

“Most unicorns can use telekinesis all day. Most wizards my age can do twenty or thirty really powerful spells. And somepony like Star Swirl or Wintershimmer… Well, hundreds aren’t out of the question. Nopony thought I was ever going to be anything. But when I was a foal, Wintershimmer chose me for a student.

“He took me in—literally; I lived in a spare room in his quarters of the palace. I always thought of him as more family than my parents or my sister or anypony else in the Crystal Union. He taught me magic. He gave me this…” I swiped a hoof over my jacket.

“The jacket?”

“My life,” I answered her bitterly. “The jacket, the title that goes with it. The duties it implies. Protecting ponies with my magic. He was the one standing there, guiding me the day I got my cutie mark. And it matched his more than anything my family ever had.”

“That must mean a lot to you.”

“It did before yesterday.” I found myself staring at the ground, avoiding Blizzard’s gaze. “I took him at his word when he told me it was all an act. I took him on faith that being ‘evil’ was a means to an end. I just decided a long time ago I was going to do the opposite.” I scoffed. “I used to tell him I was going to be a ‘hero’ instead. I was going to have statues, and ponies would write down the things I said and quote them, and…”

Blizzard held me while I cried. Her wings held back the searing wind until I found my words again. I don’t know how long I sat there before I spoke.

“He betrayed me, Blizzard. He said killing Clover would make me a hero. He just wanted to use me to murder a mare he knew was innocent, to get revenge for what happened to him seventy years ago. And I trusted him enough that almost did it.”

“Mortal Coil, you are not Wintershimmer.” Blizzard held me close.

I buried my eyes in her shoulder and asked what was weighing on my heart. “But who am I going to be without him?”

---

The journey back to River Rock was… harder. I had thought in my travels over the icy plains that the return trip would be devoid of overbearing existential malaise, once I had finished my business with Clover. Instead, in every passing moment, I found myself wondering what I was going to do. As much as I lied to myself—a practice that was beginning to border on pathological—deep down I knew that I wasn’t yet ready to call myself a trained wizard. For all the power and the theory I’d gained from Wintershimmer, and for all my own cunning, I had put my skills to virtually no actual practice. Even if I didn’t need a lecturer or a teacher in the classroom sense, I still needed a mentor. And having been turned down by Clover, the number of eligible ponies in the world had grown very small indeed.

Thankfully, at least, the journey was less quiet than it had been traveling the opposite direction. Blizzard shared stories of her siblings, and I entertained our little group with the more interesting of my little ‘duels’ with Silhouette and her goons in the streets of Union City. Graargh exhibited the remarkable insight to try and have me explain what Angel actually was, though I confess that the explanation I provided mostly served to put the bear cub to sleep. Most interesting to me, though, were Blizzard’s memories of meeting the goddess Luna, who by Blizzard’s account would openly visit River Rock just for the sake of stretching her wings and getting out of the business and hubbub of Everfree City.

Despite my interrogations, unfortunately, the goddess had not spent much time talking to my traveling companion. At most, Luna spent a few hours each visit talking to Cyclone before flitting off on some trip, and usually, those discussions were about how best to keep a population fed in constant snow and winter.

Though it would take a miracle, I dared to dream that the goddess might let me accompany her on her journeys. I mean that former phrase literally; on the first night after we crossed the mountains and reach the snow drifts of the former Diamond Kingdoms, lying in a cave burrowed in the snow, I dozed off to sleep dreaming of the goddess.

---

If you, knowing more of Luna’s powers than I did at the time, assumed that this paragraph was the beginning of a powerful dream sequence, I have only two words for you.

Got ya.

I had heard rumors of Luna’s dreamwalking, but despite my active attempts, she deigned not to visit me in the nights of that frigid journey. I slept peacefully only by virtue of the fact that spending every waking hour on hoof for weeks on end tends to wear one out extremely efficiently.

As we neared River Rock, I set about a task that I had been postponing for too long.

“Graargh, come here.”

“Morty? What want?”

“Ah. Today, Graargh, I’m going to teach you something. It’s a new word.”

“New word?’

“Yes. A very helpful word. Repeat after me. ‘Do.’”

“Do?” Graargh asked. When I gave him a nod, he smiled. “What ‘do’?”

“It’s…” My error came crashing down around my ears. “Um… Well, you see, ‘do’ is a word we use between other words to indicate that—”

“Indicate?”

I briefly bit my lip, thinking. “To tell somepony else that—?”

“So bear not ‘do’?”

“No, sorry, not just somepony; any someone.”

“Okay. So bear is do. Good.”

“No, you aren’t ‘do’. It’s not a ‘thing’ you can hold in your hooves.”

“Claws?”

“Yes, claws, whatever. Look, ‘do’ is an action. Like running, or walking.”

“So, Graargh do?” The little bear cub pantomimed an exaggerated walking motion.

I nodded. “Yes, but you can ‘do’ any action.”

Graargh seemed to think about this for several seconds before smiling. “Understand! Graargh do do!”

Blizzard snickered and I barely resisted the urge to groan.

“Yes, Graargh. I’ll tell you what; you can ignore that word. Just do you.”

“Do you?” Graargh cocked his head. “‘You’ action?”

My subsequent scream echoed over the plains.

---

River Rock came into view at precious last, and though it signaled the warmth of physical walls against the wind, and maybe even food that hadn’t been kept in a bag for weeks on end, it was also a site of not inconsiderable risk. Blizzard stopped our walking with a raised hoof.

“Alright, let’s figure this out for a minute, Morty.”

I shrugged, almost apathetic. “You’re the one who knows the city. Sneak us past the guards.”

Blizzard shook her head. “Father doesn’t keep the guards on a very reliable rotation, exactly so that doesn’t work.”

“Then we try and sneak in, and if something goes wrong, I’ll teleport us out.”

My calm (and admittedly disinterested) demeanor seemed to put worry on Blizzard’s face. “Morty, when you first showed up here, Gale told me all about the kinds of things you did in Lübuck. With the guards and stuff. I really don’t want to get Father involved in this. Can you do some sort of magic? Please?”

I gave myself a few moments, before answering with a tired sigh. “Graargh, please build the biggest snowpony you can.”

Blizzard looked at me like I had gone completely unhinged, but being a reasonably young foal/cub/whatever, Graargh hardly needed to be asked twice.

“Blizzard, your father is going to escort you back into the castle. Once there, you and he will gather whatever supplies you need and meet Graargh and I at the docks. Angel, could you join us?”

“I’ve been well within hearing distance this entire time, Master Coil. What can I do?”

“Just a bit of acting. I know it was unfair of me to put you on the spot with Clover, and my wit probably makes that a difficult role. Cyclone should be easier. Gruff, direct, short-spoken. Do you think you can do that?”

Graargh turned back from the first ball of what would soon be a ‘snow warlord’. “Ooh! I play pretend fire pony?”

I glanced over to the young bear-thing, confused. “Graargh, first off, Cyclone speaks in complete Equiish sentences. Probably more importantly, you playing this role would kill you. I would have to literally rip out your soul.”

Graargh hung his head slightly and went back to the process of building a snowpony replica of Cyclone.

Once that discussion was handled, my golem spoke up. “I suppose I can try to emulate Cyclone, Master, but I’m hardly a good match.” Angel spun in place, still hovering at about head level. “He is quite a large stallion, and as you are so quick to remind those around us, I am a flying rock.”

I tilted my horn in Graargh’s direction. “That can be fixed easily.”

“I… see.”

Blizzard wasn’t quite so trusting. “You’re going to turn Angel and a snowpony into my dad?!”

I answered with a short nod. “Angel is an ‘animus’, which is a fancy way of saying an artificial soul. But whether a soul is from a living creature or made by magic, they act mostly the same. If I bind a soul to a body that’s capable of movement, the result is what we call a ‘golem’. I have to do a little bit of magic to make inanimate snow into a valid ‘body’, but that’s a basic part of necromancy, and I’m the best necromancer alive. To answer the inevitable question, if the ‘body’ is a literal corpse, you get a zombie or something similar. Do you follow?”

“I think so…” Blizzard nodded. “That might work on the guards, but what happens if we actually run into my father?”

I shrugged. “Fly away. His wing doesn’t work, right?”

“But if he can’t fly, the snowpony body can’t either.”

I nodded. “If you get caught, there won’t be much point maintaining the body. Plus, it’s still going to be made of snow. Transforming it into flesh would be… well, to say the very least, I believe Star Swirl the Bearded is the only pony able to do something like that. So if you run into Cyclone, it’s probably going to melt fairly quickly.”

“Won’t that be dangerous for Angel?”

I shook my head. “We’ll put his core—the rock—inside the snow. If it melts, he can just fly away.”

Blizzard was quiet for a very long time, and then cocked her head. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but is that your whole plan?”

“I’m worried Gale may have given you the wrong impression, Blizzard. If you hadn’t asked for a plan, I probably would have just walked into the city and figured things out on the fly.”

To this day, I’m not sure whether to be happy or offended that she responded to my final observation with a silent stare.

Comments

[RoboRed]

Time to adapt to life unchained from Wintershimmer.

[djthomp]

Blizzard gasped, and all I could bring myself to offer was a short sigh. “I didn’t hurt her. Well, beyond maybe some singed fur from the lava or a few cuts from the volcanic rock. The point is, she’s fine. We’re all fine. Everything’s peachy.”

*narrator's voice*
"Everything was not fine."

I buried my eyes in her shoulder and asked what was weighing on my heart. “But who am I going to be without him?”

Better.