XXXI - Hellfire
XXXI
Hellfire
“Master Coil, if I may be so bold, why are we not on a boat out of River Rock right now?” Angel floated up to eye level beside me as I made my way back through the increasingly familiar halls of Burning Hearth.
“We don’t have any money to charter a ship. We don’t have any supplies to eat. We don’t even have clothes warm enough for the weather unless I get those furs we had back.” I sighed. “But mostly, we don’t have Blizzard.”
Angel actually sighed, or as close as his magical speech could come to the sound. “Surely you aren’t considering yet another daring escape from authority to rescue a mare.”
I shook my head. “No, I was just going to go talk to Cyclone about it.”
“On second thought, daring escape may be the better part of valor.”
I groaned. “Look, it’ll be fine.”
“Master, Cyclone was quite furious with you before you left River Rock.”
“That’s true,” I replied with a nod. “But now he feels like he owes me for falsely accusing me of murder. And he’s very religiously devoted to Celestia, who took my side.”
“Morty no make fire pony make fire,” Graargh noted. “Graargh not like. Green fire bad, but red fire bad too.”
“It’s more of an orange color for the most part, but I understand where you’re coming from Graargh. I promise, everything will be alright.”
When we arrived at the throne room of Burning Hearth a few minutes later, however, things were most definitely not alright.
The warped metal doors weren’t guarded, and they sat slightly ajar—though given the fire damage they’d endured and the stallion-sized hole in their center, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference if they were completely shut. Looking through the gap, I saw Blizzard standing in front of Cyclone’s throne. Her father, however, was not seated in the chair. Instead, he stood upright on his hind legs so that he loomed over the room. His good wing was extended, and roaring flames already covered from its leading feather to his opposite shoulder. His forelegs were balanced on the guard of an enormous almost rust-colored greatsword, whose blade was as long as its owner’s body. I took worrying note of the fact that where its tip touched the ground, a small but noticeable ring of the stone floor had melted into glowing lava.
“What difference does it make, Father?” Blizzard yelled. “They’re my siblings, not my foals!”
“They are your family!” Cyclone roared. “You may be too young to understand why that matters, but I won’t watch you make the same mistakes I made.”
“It may surprise you, Father, but I’m not planning a coup, and I have no interest in fighting griffons!”
“If that is what you think I meant—” Cyclone caught a glimpse of me as he looked up from his daughter, and I noticed the fire on his back get notably taller. “What are you still doing here, Morty? You have your freedom!”
“That certainly does me a lot of good when there are a hundred miles of tundra and a sea between here and Equestria. I do still need supplies. And more importantly, I want to take Blizzard with me.”
The flames covering the gigantic pony extinguished themselves with a sudden, soft ‘pop’ as I spoke. I can only assume that my statement was such a shock to him that he momentarily forgot how to be angry. Cyclone fell backwards onto his rump before rolling his neck and bringing his massive sword into a better position. All the better to decapitate you with, my dear. When he spoke again a moment later, his voice was alarmingly smooth and soft. His wing began to smolder again. “Are you that determined to die here?”
“See! Even he can see what’s going on!” Blizzard’s shout masked my hooves as I walked once more into the throne room of Burning Hearth Castle. Her wings flared out. “If you want to talk about family, father, what about Typhoon? Or Grandfather? I’ve barely met most of my family!” Clearly she was less affected by my statement.
Blizzard’s words brought the flames on Cyclone’s wings to new heights, but when he spoke again, his tone was subdued. “Your grandfather is the reason I don’t want you going to…” Cyclone winced, catching himself far too late in the thought. “Your grandfather is not family to us.”
“I never did anything to him! I’m tired of being punished for your mistake, Father!”
“If your mother were here she would be able to explain…” The mighty red-coated stallion released a tired sigh, though whatever thought he was saving never escaped his lips.
“Care to take that bet?” I asked, glancing to Blizzard.
Blizzard blinked. “What? What bet?”
I glanced toward the throne, where Cyclone’s narrowed gaze was once more silently preparing to sign my death warrant. “You seem to think Blizzard’s mother could convince her to stay. Now, forgive me if I’m making a logical leap here, but I’m assuming the mare in question has… left us?”
Cyclone nodded, and then frowned. “You intend to raise her? It won’t work.”
“Oh, no! No, no, no!” I waved my hooves emphatically. “Raising the dead is extremely dangerous! I was just going to seance her.”
“Perhaps I fail to understand the difference,” Cyclone observed dryly.
“Raising the dead means taking a soul from its resting place and putting it back into a body. If that’s an actual pony corpse, I would also have to animate it, and we would wind up with an undead. If the body were a statue or a ponyquin or something, we would call that a golem. Either way, we don’t want to do that. It can inflict severe damage on the soul if the body is damaged, or even if the soul in question is just left in that form too long.
“Better not to risk it if we only want information. A seance, like what you saw Lady Celestia do with Wintershimmer, doesn’t put the soul back into a body. It just makes the soul visible in space, so we can talk. As long as you have an experienced necromancer, that process is totally safe, and afterwards the soul goes right back to where it came from.” I extended a hoof to my side and bowed. “And as I believe I’ve mentioned, I am currently the greatest necromancer alive. I don’t even need to have met the mare. All I need is a name.”
Cyclone scowled. “Your magic will fail.”
Blizzard walked over to my side and shook her head. “Do it, Morty. Her name was Aestas Celsus.”
“Aystus?” I asked, cocking my head.
“Old Cirran for Summer… noble? Or lofty…?”
“‘High Summer’, Cyclone explained bitterly from his throne. “I always just called her Summer though.”
“Just you?” I asked. At Cyclone’s raised brow, I continued. “There’s nothing magic about the name your parents pick for you when you’re born, despite all the stories you might hear about not telling spirits your ‘real name’. What matters in identifying a soul is how a pony thought of themselves. If everypony called her ‘Summer’, that’s probably the name of her soul.”
With a bit of telekinesis, far lighter than any risk of flaring up my horn, I rolled up my sleeves. I had no intention of powdering bone or gemstones for this seance, but I did take a candle from a wall-mounted stand and dribble wax into the shape of a septacle. Shortly after, I placed candles on the intersections of the shape. “That should do it. Now…” And with that, I let my horn flare to life. The flames of the candles turned blue and a ghostly wind swept through my coat—far warmer than the chilly ambience of the massive empty hall. My magic felt the heat and the light of the Summer Lands, on the other side of a thin veil that I could neither see nor touch.
But after near a minute of searching, Summer wasn’t there.
I pulled my magic back, but maintained the spell. If Summer had not landed herself in Celestia and Luna’s restricted-entry paradise, there was one other option.
Necromancy is unique amongst the schools of magic in that it shares a certain reputation with professions like gong farmer and lawyer for being slimy and unpleasant. While I firmly dispute the claim that necromancy requires the same moral bankruptcy as the practice of law, the job does have its less pleasant parts. Worst amongst them, by far, is seancing from Tartarus.
The candles turned a blood red. The room darkened. The slight wind in my coat died, giving way to what was somehow a colder sinking chill than even the eternal blizzard outside the walls of the castle.
“What… what’s happening?” Blizzard watched the candles with unease, her wings halfway tensed as if ready to fly away at a moment’s notice.
“Do I really need to explain?” I frowned. “She wasn’t in the Summer Lands.”
Cyclone scowled, but not in my direction. His hatred, it seemed, was directed at the sky.
At least, that’s what I hoped. But it took me nearly a minute of searching to settle on another uncomfortable realization. The candles flared out. Cyclone and Blizzard stared at my circle. But nopony appeared.
“Cyclone… You knew my spell was going to fail. Are you certain Summer is dead?”
“What?” Blizzard demanded. “Morty, do you mean she’s still alive? Father, why keep that secret?”
“I…” Cyclone growled, and then his eyes ran away from mine. “She is dead, Blizzard. I helped to bury her myself.” His expression fell utterly as he continued. “She fought for me against my father. The blade went clear through her breast and out her back.” He set his sights on me, and tongues of flame danced against his seat. “Do you enjoy forcing me to remember these things?”
I swallowed, and hesitated. “Well, no, but… How do I put this gently? There’s only three reasons for a seance to fail. One is if the soul has dispersed, either through long enough spent in death to be forgotten by the living and fade away, or by magical violence. I feel like we can safely rule that out, since you still remember her. The second... Ehh…”
“Spit it out, necromancer.”
I coughed. “I doubt it applies here, Cyclone, but a mage like myself could have captured, or even outright destroyed her soul. The third option, however, is that the soul is still in the living world. Obviously, that can happen if somepony is still alive, but… ”
Blizzard stepped closer to me, her wings half-raised in some mixture of disbelief and worry. “Are you saying somepony raised Mother from the dead? Like you said earlier?”
“Possible, but unlikely. Even Wintershimmer didn’t make undead frequently, and they were always ponies who had wronged him personally. Star Swirl and I might be the only ponies alive who even know that magic now…”
“And Lady Luna,” Cyclone added.
I stopped, glancing over at the old soldier. “I’m going to go out on a limb here, and guess she isn’t doing something that evil. Frankly, I don’t think anypony raised Summer. Look, there’s no gentle way to say this, so I’m sorry in advance. When a pony dies with a lot of unresolved trauma or baggage, they can sometimes slip out of the Summer Lands or Tartarus into a place called the Between. It’s… well, it’s pretty much exactly what the name says. The Between is filled with hungry, tortured, lost spirits, and it’s much harder and more dangerous to seance from.
“Spirits there fight and feed on one another for magical energy, losing bits of their identity until they cease to be recognizable as the souls they once were. What you’re left with is a spirit: an embodiment of some abstract idea that caused the soul in question to break free of its rest in the first place. When they gather enough mana, a spirit can break back into the world of the living and feed on the experiences of the living to grow even stronger.
“Take the windigo that’s giving us the eternal storm. It grew strong because of the hatred between the three races, and it tried to use the storm to further that hatred.” I looked the soldier square in the eyes. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve seen Summer’s ghost, haven’t you, Cyclone?”
“Hhmph.” Cyclone’s lips curled back from his teeth ever so slightly in scorn. “We’ve discussed this enough. Get out of my sight, Mortal Coil.”
“Father! Mother might be out there somewhere! And he’s only telling the truth—”
“I know. That is why I am giving him the chance to leave unharmed.”
I swallowed and turned away, ready to get away from the potentially literal volcano of Cyclone’s rage.
Blizzard stopped me with a wing. I stood, waiting, as she built up the courage to speak. “I’m going to Everfree with Morty, Father. We’re going to find Mother.”
Fires erupted above Cyclone’s face, lifting up and dancing between the pitch black of his mane. “Now is not the time to test me, Blizzard.”
I cowed back at his hatred, but Blizzard stepped forward. She’d seen something in his face, heard it in his growling, crackling voice. “You know something more, don’t you, Father? What’s so secret?”
Cyclone opened his mouth to snap back a response, but it never came. Slowly, the fires on his head grew smaller, and vanished with a hiss. “Blizzard, you aren’t ready for this. I can’t protect you in Everfree.”
“I don’t need protection.”
In response, the traitor king hung his head. “Blizzard… That world won’t accept you. Your grandfather won’t help you. You have no family there.”
“Then it’s no different from here,” Blizzard shot back. Small shards of frost fled from the mare’s hooves, forming tiny shards on the stone floor, spreading from her hooves.
Cyclone rubbed a wing across his brow, refusing to meet his daughter’s gaze. “Father once told me this was how it felt when I went off to war. I cannot convince you. I cannot intimidate you. I cannot even accompany you. Please, Blizzard… just be safe. I love you.” Cyclone stood from his throne, extending a wing in some offer of a hug or a parting embrace.
Living up to her name with a chill I had almost believed impossible for the caring mare I knew, Blizzard turned toward the door without answering the motion. Halfway through the doors she spoke to him, not even looking back. “Farewell, Father.”
Despite the finality of those words, it took us most of the rest of the day to arrange our departure. Blizzard offered her goodbyes to her siblings, the younger of whom collectively cried and clung to her legs trying to weigh her down. Blizzard, however, was determined.
Her experience with the snow and the map of what had once been the Diamond Kingdoms served far better than my limited travel experience. She and I each carried heavy saddlebags and furs for warmth, laden with as much food and cookery as Burning Hearth could spare us. She also gathered for us a small bag of silver coins, which she said would serve to charter us a trip down the Volgallop to Trotsylvania and then across the sea to Platinum’s Landing.
We burnt the first few of those coins in River Rock itself, though, renting a room at an inn near the river’s extensive docks. Blizzard was determined not to spend another night under the roof of her father’s stolen castle.
No sooner had we dropped the bulk and weight of our provisions on the beds than Blizzard turned around and pulled me out of the room again. I saw enough insistence in her tight lipped expression not to question her. As we walked, many of the common ponies of River Rock avoided her. Unlike Gale’s provocative appearance and sometimes violent approach to attention, Blizzard somehow repelled a circle of other ponies, who nevertheless watched her from the corners of their eyes with a notable amount of… concern? Or perhaps it was fear? Sometimes their expressions even bordered on vitriol. The whispered conversations were loud enough to be noticed, but quiet enough not to actually be understood.
Finally, we came to the stout wooden door of a squat shop that smelled of honey and bread. Blizzard stepped aside, gesturing for Graargh, Angel and I to go first. We made our way into the restaurant, where an earth pony mare who couldn’t have been much older than Blizzard used a wide flat wooden board to move lumps of dough into a set of small brick ovens stacked into the wall. The heat of their fires was welcome, and the smell was intoxicating.
“Take a seat, and I’ll be with you in a moment,” the mare said without turning back. Only when she said those words did I realize that the majority of the room, removed from the ovens, was set up as more of a restaurant than a bakery.
“Lefse, it’s me,” Blizzard announced, finally breaking her silence.
The baker mare turned around with a wide grin. “Blizzard—!” Something about the pegasus’ expression quieted Lefse instantly. “Take your usual spot. I’ll get you something soon.”
The usual spot turned out to be a table near the back of the room, underneath a window set high into the wall. The space was as well lit as anything could be through River Rock’s perpetually snowy skies, but without any actual vision of the streets outside.
It was there, sitting with Graargh and Angel and I, that the callous mask she’d put up to deal with her father finally crumbled away. As her shoulders and wings drooped and her eyes sunk to tracing the grain of our table, Blizzard opened. “Thank you, Morty.”
I shrugged. “I did promise you. It’s not a big deal.”
“You stood up to Father,” she answered shaking her head. “And I don’t know if I could have convinced him without your magic.”
“Seances are cheap. You convinced him. Give yourself some credit, Blizzard. I’m not the only pony who ever saves the day. I just do it most of the time.” Blizzard chuckled at that.
When my blatant display of ego settled, I leaned forward onto the table, resting my forelegs. “I imagine this is hard for you.”
That earned a look of curiosity from the mare across the table. “I thought you’d be able to tell me what to expect. Isn’t this like how you left the Crystal Union?”
“Not exactly.” I laughed a bit at that. “I was less fighting for permission to leave, and more just trying not to get hung. That, and at the time, I was still under the delusion that my father-figure was actually a decent pony.”
At that comment, Blizzard’s face sourced, to which I winced. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s alright. And you’re right. Father is…” The rest of her thought refused to emerge.
Perhaps to Blizzard’s benefit, Lefse chose that moment to appear with a steaming plate of bread and roasted carrots. “Here you go, Blizzard. Who’s your cute friend? I haven’t seen him around town before.”
Yes, really. I must admit that the blatantly lascivious way she looked me over wasn’t entirely unwelcome, given everything I’d endured in the recent weeks, either.
With a bit of magic, I pulled some bread and vegetables for Graargh, and as he happily munched them down a seemingly unfillable void in his gut, I took the opportunity to answer the baker’s question.
“Mortal Coil, though you can call me Morty. All my friends do. This little cub is Graargh, and the flying rock is Angel.”
Lefse raised a brow. “Where did Blizzard dig you out of?”
Blizzard chose that moment to speak up. “Morty’s from the Crystal Union. He and I are headed to Everfree City.”
“Wait, what?” Lefse rose up on her hind legs to free her forehooves for a short burst of applause. “You finally got your old stallion to let you get out of this place? How long are you going to be gone? A week? Two?”
“I don’t know…”
Lefse smiled, tossing a foreleg over Blizzard’s shoulders.
“I don’t know if I’m coming back. I’m sorry.”
“Typical Blizzard.” Lefse massaged the other mare’s shoulders with her hooves. “You finally got what you wanted, and you’re worrying about how I’ll feel? I’ll be fine! I’m happy for you!”
Then a warm brown leg wrapped over Blizzard’s shoulders, which seemed to cheer her a bit, and she answered it with a wing of her own.
“I’ll miss you, Lefse.”
“Don’t waste your time feeling down,” the baker mare told her, stepping away from the table. “Sorry, I’ve got to get back to the ovens; one of your dad’s marshals is having a party tonight.” Stepping away from the table, Lefse spoke quite audibly to herself. “Imagine that. Blizzard leaving and with a hot coltfriend in the same day.”
You know I’m not making that up, because if I were, I would have used a more elegant description.
“I’m not…” I called after her, before giving up and shrugging. “Forget it. She seems nice.”
“I’ve known Lefse for a long time; she and her grandfather used to make bread for us up in the castle, before the wheat prices got too high. Speaking of which…” Blizzard’s muzzle ducked into a bag on her side, producing a few silver coins which she placed on the table. “That should cover it.” She took a hesitant bite of her bread, and then barely found the will to chew it. It was obvious her thoughts were elsewhere.
“You… okay, Blizzard?”
“Huh?” She shook her head. “Oh. Morty, are you excited for Everfree? Or are you worried?”
I scratched at the back of my mane. “I have no idea. Celestia said some things—”
“You spoke to Lady Celeste?”
I blinked at the sudden interest, caught completely off guard. “Oh, well, yes. She came to help me with Queen Jade and your father.” I coughed into my hoof. “The point is, apparently I’m going to have to study with this archmage ‘Diadem’ if I want to stay in Equestria. I don’t really know what to do there.” I picked up a carrot, and paused before biting into it. “You’re excited, I assume?”
“Not really.” I crunched into my carrot, and was left only able to raise an eyebrow as a sign of my curiosity. She seemed to catch the clue. “What Father said about Grandfather… now I’m worried. What if Grandfather really does hate me?”
“Because of your Dad? Or your mother?”
“I don’t know why he would. I’ve never really had a good chance to speak to him. Grandfather comes to visit sometimes, but it’s always very short. He talks to Father, and then his soldiers fly him off on his chariot. He’s never even spent the night with us. I wonder if maybe he doesn’t want anything to do with us.”
Graargh shook head. “Is family! Family important! He love!”
Blizzard smiled at the little colt. “I hope so, Graargh.”
The little bear cub might not have appreciated the fear I heard in her voice, but it hung in my mind long after the actual words had faded.
Stats
Page generated in 0.021 seconds
Total duration
1,040 users online
1,726,982 hits today, 2,818,023 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I'm still apprehensive about Diadem. It's not like, having mentioned that she's very powerful magically, but not actually that intelligent a mage, and having shown Coil's reluctance to study under her, you can just turn round and say "But she was actually really great and none of the problems with her ended up being problems.", however eloquently you say it.
8792011
Just recall that Morty's objection isn't about her intelligence or her magical power. It's about the application of those things.
If you want to know more about Diadem, you'll find some of her story (many many years before this) in Snow and Shadows (assuming you haven't already seen that).
8792057
I haven't. This is the first Price of Loyalty story I've found, and I'm very glad I did.
8792057
When I mentioned the thing about her not being that intelligent a mage, I wasn't talking about Coil's objections to her, rather about her being a likeable character whom we the readers would view as being a worthy teacher to Coil.
8792085
Oh! Awesome! Glad you're enjoying it!
For the sake of being clear, Snow and Shadows that I linked is the sequel to Of Skies Long Forgotten. There's a group for PoL, since the fics aren't necessarily linked between one another obviously, save the obvious directly sequel I just mentioned.
8792093
Just to be clear, is Price of Loyalty like Final Fantasy, where, apart from the rare sequel, you won't miss out on anything apart from references, in-jokes, and the like, if you miss a story out or read them 'out of order', so to speak?
8792163
I think we've been pretty good about keeping things separated that way, yes. Take for example all that you've already read about Cyclone and his rebellion or Clover and the Windogoes. Both those events are part of the core story of Snow and Shadows, though BGH has given you enough information to (hopefully) know what you need to understand without having read the other fics first.
Barnes Courtney's Hellfire seems apropos here
WELP.
8794805
I think Ruirik enjoyed this almost as much as I did; thank you from both of us.
Now you have something to look forward to when Wind & Stone starts updating again soon.
All strong arguments.
Blizzard, nooooo, don't light yourself on fire as a dramatic gesture of independence!
Ahh, Summer, in eternal competition with Luna at who can make a larger mess.
It seems unlikely that it will really play out that way. At the very least Gale will probably be friendly, unless she gets jealous over Morty or something. Same for Tempest.
Geeze, Blizzard, at least hug him goodbye. It's a free gesture, and you may someday live to regret not making a better farewell.