Truthseeker

by RB_

Endgame 2

“Agh!”

Vinyl stumbled back. Hollyleaf, while Vinyl had been distracted, had squirmed loose just enough to plant a hoof into her gut.

“Stop her!” Lyra cried, lunging forwards, Bon Bon doing the same, but neither were fast enough. With one quick motion, Hollyleaf leapt onto the railing of the open-air car.

“Goodbye again, Lyra!” she said.

And then she jumped off the side.

Lyra ran forward, put her hooves on the railing, and leaned over. She could see Hollyleaf’s body, plummeting down, past the edge of the bridge and into the canyon below.

“No!” Lyra shouted. “She’ll get away!”

“I’ve got her! I’ve got her!” Pinkie yelled. She took a step back, then ran to the edge and swan-dove over the railing.

Lyra watched, words stricken from her throat as Pinkie fell, keeping her legs tucked in and quickly catching up to Hollyleaf’s body. The eldritch abomination in pony’s clothing wrapped her hooves around the mare’s body, spread her tiny, leathery wings, and rolled forwards in the air—only to disappear, seeming to spin forward into herself until nothing remained.

“What on Equis,” Bon Bon murmured, having come up beside Lyra—and then a clanging sound behind them caught their attentions.

Pinkie lay sprawled across the floor of the carriage. She rolled to the side, revealing Hollyleaf’s body, lying face-down, which had been underneath her. She wasn’t moving.

Bon Bon stepped over to Hollyleaf, held her down. She knocked her hoof against the side of the mare’s head.

Nothing.

“Is she… dead?” Lyra asked. Bon Bon leant down, pressed her ear to the mare’s chest.

Vinyl, meanwhile, had picked up the glass vial, which had fallen to the floor of the carriage in the confusion. She held it up to her eyes and peered at the few scraps of plant inside, then held the open end of the thing up to her nose and sniffed. Her eyes widened.

This is johnsongrass, she said. It’s poisonous after a frost—Bon Bon, see if her breath smells like almonds.

“No need,” Bon Bon said, standing up. “She’s dead.”

Pinkie shivered. “Shower later,” she whispered, getting to her hooves. “Shower later.”

She must have taken it when she saw we were coming, Vinyl said.

“Well, she was certainly thorough,” Bon Bon said. “But why did she do it?”

Lyra didn’t say anything, not at first. She was busy watching the body.

A curious thing was happeneing: before her eyes, the image of Hollyleaf was fading. Her white mane grew darker, taking on a more blonde shade as it lengthened and curled. The same happened with her tail. Her coat changed too, Hollyleaf’s green being replaced with an earthy brown.

And she looked familiar.

“Because that’s how she switches bodies,” Lyra said. She turned around and headed for the door.

“Then why all this?” Bon Bon asked. “Why run out here? Why throw herself off?”

“To distract us.”

“But why?” Pinkie asked.

“Because,” Lyra said, flinging open the door to the next car, “she’s still on the train.”

She jumped ahead to the next car. Ditzy was there, having just come through the door.

“Lyra? What’s—”

“No time, follow me,” Lyra said, picking up speed. She reached the next door, opened it, ran to the next, again, the next door, the next, passing by a group of passengers, shoving some out of the way, and finally she reached the caboose.

It was filled with ponies, those who, frightened and aimless, had heeded Lyra’s earlier instructions. And in the middle of them, facing towards the entrance, grinning…

Hollyleaf’s white mane had just finished replacing the stallion’s silver one. A ring of bloodleaf already encircled her horn.

She pulled open the folds of the jacket the stallion had been wearing, and that now she was wearing, and withdrew a faded cloth coinpurse, levitating it into the air and waggling it at Lyra.

“Too late,” Hollyleaf said. Her eyes darted to the window, just for a moment. “And it looks like this is my stop.”

“No!” Lyra shouted, lunging forwards just as Hollyleaf’s horn began to glow.

With a flash of light, Hollyleaf, and the coinpurse, disappeared, leaving Lyra to fall onto the open floor of the caboose.

Bon Bon was quickly by her side, helping her up. “What happened? Was that Hollyleaf?”

Lyra nodded. “The stallion she was sitting next to… must have been her host’s brother. Maybe twins. She must have brought him along as a backup, in case we followed her…”

She stomped her hoof against the floor of the car.

“So close! And she still has Bell!”

Pinkie slid past them, heading for the back door. “Well, don’t stop now!” she said. “We have to go after her!”

“How are we going to do that?” Lyra said. “She teleported! She could be anywhere!”

“Well, by getting off this train, for one thing!”

Pinkie slid open the caboose’s back door and tilted her head up. “Octy!” she called out. “Time to go!”

“Right!” came Octavia’s rumbling reply.

Pinkie turned around, as Octavia leapt over her and landed, skidding, on the ground behind the train.

“Sorry folks,” she said, raising her voice so everypony in the car could hear, “just a little publicity stunt! Buy war bonds!”

“But… we’re not at war!” someone said.

“Exactly! That’s why we need new bonds! The old ones are getting loose!” She turned back to Lyra, Bon Bon, and the rest of the group. “Come on! We’ll miss our stop!”

─────

Lyra shivered. The sun had just about slipped beneath the horizon, now, and the wind was beginning to pick up.

Which only made walking across a bridge over a deep chasm, hundreds of feet above the ground, all the worse.

"Hurry!” Pinkie pie cried from the front of the pack. “We’re nearly there!”

“Nearly where?” Lyra asked. She and Bon Bon were standing side-by-side, each pressing into the other slightly in an attempt to stay clear of the edge.

“Well,” Pinkie said, “being the crazy eldritch-spawn that I am, I have more senses than you do. Nine of them, actually!”

“Nine?”

“Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing, adventure, Pinkie, extra-spatial, and fleem!”

“Fleem?” Bon Bon said. “What’s ‘fleem’?”

“Unimportant as long as you aren’t one!” Pinkie replied. “But it’s my eighth sense that’s important right now!”

She stopped abruptly, and seemingly for no reason.

“Found it!” she sing-songed. She immediately got to work chanting, doing an elaborate dance clockwise around a seemingly arbitrary spot on the bridge, half polka, half can-can. Lyra worried for a moment that she might slip off, but then remembered that that would likely not be more than a minor inconvenience for her.

Bon Bon looked at Lyra. “Do you have any idea what she’s doing?”

“Not a clue,” Lyra said. “Ditzy? Octavia? Vinyl?”

They all shook their heads, save for Octavia, who had reverted to her half-shifted form.

“I suspect she’s figuring out where Hollyleaf went,” she said. "...Somehow."

“A bit more than that, Octy!” Pinkie said. “I’m opening up a way to get us to her!”

She kept moving and chanting as she spoke.

“This is the exact spot where Hollyleaf teleported from! Or, well, it is relative to the planet, it’s complicated and we don’t have time for that! I can tell because it smells like cinnamon!”

“It smells like…” Bon Bon mouthed. Lyra nudged her with her elbow.

“Just roll with it,” she said.

“But teleportation leaves little wrinkles in space-time!” Pinkie said. “Folds that take a little while to ‘heal’! And I can smell them, follow them, and—”

Pinkie stopped, stomped on the rungs of the train tracks, a metallic ring filling the air. Above her, the air warped, bent, and peeled back, revealing an image of rocks and dirt.

“—reopen them!” Pinkie said, satisfied smiles settling over her many mouths. "Ta-da!"

Lyra stepped forward and reached out towards the rip in space, stopping with her hoof only a foot away from it. She turned her head to look at Pinkie.

“And this will take us to Hollyleaf?”

“It’ll take us to where she teleported to,” Pinkie said. She peered into the rift herself. “Looks like it’s somewhere in the ravine, below us!”

Vinyl stepped forwards too, and she was frowning. She took a pull of air in through her nose, her nostrils expanding and contracting. Her frown only deepened.

Guys, I’m smelling blood, she said.

Everyone’s heads turned sharply to look at her.

“…It’s not…?” Ditzy asked, voicing the same question that was on everyone’s minds.

I don’t think it’s the kid’s, Vinyl said. Lyra let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding. It’s faint, but…

Vinyl took in another breath. There’s too much of it. ‘Tavi, you smelling anything?

“Just rocks and dirt,” Octavia said. “And pony.”

Recognition sparked in Lyra’s brain. “It’s the bloodleaf,” she said.

“It’s called ‘bloodleaf’,” Vinyl had said. “Grown normally, it has green leaves, and it’s a great cure for hornrot.”

“It isn’t named for its leaves. If you grow it in soil suffused with the right ingredient, it turns red and becomes a magical amplifier.”

“Pony blood. And for a plant that size, plus several more, you’d need a lot of it. A full stallion’s worth, even.”

“Hollyleaf said this was her ‘stop’,” Lyra said. “She planned to get off here. This must be where she’s been hiding out, where she’s been growing her bloodleaf, where she’s been storing the artifacts she’s stolen!”

“That would explain why she disappeared halfway between Canterlot and Ponyville last time we were on her trail,” Bon Bon said. “We’d figured she’d just hopped off at some point to confuse us, but really—”

“She’s been hiding out here all this time!” Lyra finished.

“And she’s taking Winter Bell there, now!” Ditzy said.

“Then there’s no time to waste!” Pinkie said. She took a few steps back. “Everypony! Follow me!”

Pinkie ran forward, leapt, forelegs outstretched, and dove through the portal.

Ditzy was the next to go through, flying in under her own power, followed by Vinyl, then Octavia.

Bon Bon turned to look at Lyra. “Are you ready for this?”

“Bon Bon, I’ve been ready for this for ages,” she said.

And with that said, she ran forward, Bon Bon following at her side, and leapt into the tear in space.

─────

As far as jumping through random portals went, this one wasn’t very exciting, especially in comparison to recent events in Lyra’s life.

Lyra landed on her hooves on the rocky floor of the canyon, Bon Bon setting down beside her. Their hooffalls echoed off the walls.

It was dark, down in the base of the ravine. What little light had been left at the top didn’t spill down this far. Luckily, there was still a light source: Vinyl’s horn, casting a dim blue light over everything. Lyra followed suit, lighting her own horn and adding a golden glow to the area.

Vinyl herself had her nose in the air. She turned, sniffed, turned, sniffed again.

That way, she said, horn-light pointing down the western length of the canyon. Less than a hundred meters. Pretty sure, anyway.

“I’ve got them too,” Octavia said. She stepped forward, and as she did so she began to take on her more lupine appearance once again.

“Then let’s go,” Lyra said.

They began to move, Octavia and Vinyl leading the way, Lyra, Bon bon, Pinkie and Ditzy following behind.

And as she walked, Lyra began to think.

“You still don’t know my name.”

Lyra frowned.

“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” Hollyleaf had said. “Things you don’t know. Things you know you don’t know.”

The worst part was that she was proving right. Not just her name, but everything about Hollyleaf—her motive, her ability to cheat death, her plans—all were mysteries to Lyra, and it was burning her up inside.

That and something else.

“It’s called ‘bloodleaf’. Grown normally, it has green leaves, and it’s a great cure for horn rot. It isn’t named for its leaves. If you grow it in soil suffused with the right ingredient, it turns red and becomes a magical amplifier.”

That memory, something in that memory… Lyra couldn’t quite put her hoof on it, but there was something about that that was nagging at her, something familiar.

What is it? What about that—

You okay? Bon Bon’s thoughts rang in her head. What about what?

I’m fine, Lyra thought back. Just thinking about Hollyleaf. What she’s planning. Who she is.

Don’t let yourself get distracted. We’re in danger here, and so is Winter Bell.

I know, Lyra replied.

Just be cautious.

Lyra tried to refocus. The light of Vinyl’s horn ahead of her covered the walls of the cavern in blue, but only for a few feet. Still, in the darkness, Lyra could just make out the outlines of small openings in the walls above them.

She’s probably in a cave, she realized. Anything else would be visible from above.

But what did she need a cave for? Well, growing bloodleaf, for one—and there was that nagging feeling again; Lyra set it aside for the moment—and two, for storing supplies, like the artifacts she’d stolen. Bagatelle the Bard’s Flask of Song Storage, Mage Meadowbrook’s Emerald of Equine Enchantment, Purse Snatcher’s Pouch of Pilfering, and the last remaining journal of Clover the Clever.

Well, if her suspicions were correct, the flask was involved with Winter Bell somehow. And the purse had already served its purpose, twice over.

What about the emerald? Lyra had looked into it after they’d returned from Canterlot, but most of what she’d found could be summed up with what that odd mage had told them:

“…the Emerald is perfectly shaped in such a way that it can redirect spells such that they entangle with a pony’s own leylines, essentially incorporating the spell into the pony’s own thaumic being.”

Something so broad in purpose could be used for anything, Lyra thought, though the implications were grim.

Which left only Clover the Clever’s journal—which was possibly the strangest part of the puzzle to Lyra. If it had been a spellbook, she could have understood, but a journal?

Perhaps, she thought, there was something in there, something important—but that didn’t make sense; hundreds of scholars had pored over it and found nothing. Unless…

“The later chapters are written in code, however, and no scholar has yet succeeded in deciphering them. They remain one of the greatest mysteries in all of magical history.”

What if there was something in the encoded parts of the journal? But that wouldn’t make any sense, nopony had ever managed to break the code. Why would Hollyleaf steal a book she couldn’t even read?

Octavia’s ears flicked up.

“I can hear her,” she said. “Up ahead, on the left.”

Lyra strained her ears, but she couldn’t hear anything other than the sound of the wind gently whistling through the top of the chasm.

“Hollyleaf?” Ditzy asked. “Or Winter Bell?”

“Hollyleaf,” Octavia replied. “Just Hollyleaf. Walking around, moving things.”

“Then we need to hurry,” Bon Bon said. They all picked up their pace, going as fast as they dared without alerting their prey.

And Lyra continued mulling over the problem.

The last remaining journal of Clover the Clever. Why? Why take that?

“It’s called ‘bloodleaf’. Grown normally, it has green leaves, and it’s a great cure for horn rot. It isn’t named for its leaves. If you grow it in soil suffused with the right ingredient, it turns red and becomes a magical amplifier.”

Perhaps it wasn’t the contents of the journal that was important, but something else about it?

“It’s called ‘bloodleaf’. Grown normally, it has green leaves, and it’s a great cure for horn rot.”

But the only other notable thing about it was its author—

“Grown normally, it has green leaves, and it’s a great cure for horn rot.”

Like a flash of lightning, realization struck Lyra. She stumbled slightly from the sheer weight of it.

It came in the form of a passing line, spoken to her by Starswirl in front of his tower only hours before. Why would you steal a book in a code that no one knew how to read? The answer appeared to Lyra then.

Lyra? Are you alright?

Bon Bon’s query went unanswered, as more and more pieces began to fit into place.

“This is some of the most intricate spellwork any of us have ever seen—I swear, some of it even looks pre-Starswirl in construction!”

The mage from the museum—but it hadn’t been pre-Starswirl at all.

“If I could not cure her of the disease, then I would take away its ability to harm her! I would give her immortal life!”

Starswirl himself—his last chance at saving his student.

“I just want what was denied to me, that’s all.”

“And what would that be?”

“Life.”

Hollyleaf, then Zigzag—and the cryptic nature of her single desire.

“Immortal life—in the body of an alicorn!”

They came upon the entrance to a cave. Its front was blocked by a grey curtain, hung just inside the entrance. Small rivulets of light dribbled out around its sides.

“Perception filter over the entrance,” Pinkie whispered. She stuck her tongue out, licked the empty air, smacked her gums a few times. “Everything-is-normal-move-along flavoured. This is it.”

“Lyra?” Bon Bon whispered. “Did you figure something out?”

“That notebook belonged to Starswirl the Bearded, and that spell? It was the one that gave Twilight her wings! Twilight thinks Hollyleaf was trying to become an alicorn!”

“I will get that which was meant to be mine. No matter how long it takes.”

“For Clover, at last my promise is fulfilled.”

“You bet your fine flanks I did,” Lyra whispered back. She turned to Pinkie. “We going in or what?”

“I’m ready if everyone else is,” she said. “Octy?”

“Ready to lead the charge,” she said. “Vinyl?”

Vinyl opened the satchel at her side. Dozens of packs of crimson liquid sloshed around inside. She withdrew one, held it up to her mouth, tore the top open with her teeth, and drank it down in two gulps.

Ready as I’ll ever be. Ditzy?

“You know me,” Ditzy said, taking to the air. “I’m always ready. Bon Bon?”

“Ready and able.”

Bon Bon turned to Lyra.

“You good to go?”

“I’m ready for this to finally be over,” Lyra said. “Let’s do this.”

They all nodded.

Octavia knocked aside the curtain, light flooding out into the dark canyon, and so began the charge.

The cavern they found themselves in was large and vaguely circular. The walls were smooth, unnaturally smooth; signs they had been carved out with magic.

These details only vaguely registered to Lyra. Her attention was drawn more towards the center of the room, and its two occupants.

The first was Winter Bell. She lay, still unconscious (Lyra hoped) on the floor of the cavern. A geometric pattern surrounded her on all sides, lines crossing over circles contained within a hexagon. The lines burned bright, like phosphor, and it was from them that the cave’s illumination came.

The other was Hollyleaf, standing over Winter Bell.

Her head whipped up towards them. “What—”

“Sorry to keep you waiting!” Lyra yelled out as she dashed across the floor.

You would only steal an indecipherable book…

An almost manic grin took over her features as she spoke the next word.

…If you were the one who had written it in the first place.

“Clover!”

Comments

[FireheartThePone]

Ooo! Plot twist!

[RB_]

...And now that that secret is out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifolium_gymnocarpon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifolium_bifidum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifolium_medium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifolium_monanthum

[WanderingPony]

"Clover!"

i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/591/318/822.jpg

[Undeadking243]

Yes! I was right!

[Dusty Tome]

8762120
SONUVA(really?)! I shoulda seen this coming, botanist by trade, but I thought it was too deep for the Bloodleaf to mean anything special. Every pony she jumped to was named after a strain of CLOVER. You clever bastard.

[Flod]

*fist pump* YYYYEEEEEESSSSS!!
Ah! This story is awesome!

[Inthretis]

I know this chapter had a great reveal (although I suspected the past arc would be connected to Hollyleaf in some fashion), but Pinkie really made the first half of the chapter.

just a little publicity stunt! Buy war bonds!”

“But… we’re not at war!” someone said.

“Exactly! That’s why we need new bonds! The old ones are getting loose!

This joke cracked me up.

“Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing, adventure, Pinkie, extra-spatial, and fleem!”

A sense of adventure, but what, no sense of humor?

[Fancy Fox]

oh my god the twist. i just... i... WOW WHAT A TWIST. really well kept too! in most stories it sorta becomes obvious what a twist might be but i had no idea and thinking back there were definitely clues! just really well done author!

[FanOfMostEverything]

Yup, as I suspected. Star Swirl's project and the timing of Lyra's retrieval made your intentions clear. Still, you kept me guessing for a good, long while, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the showdown. Especially since you're doing a great job of making sure every member of the team has a chance to shine.

[EnderHooves]

I bloody called it! Yes!! Fusing herself with whale-mom's power? That's one way to do it.

[SIGAWESOME]

8762783

A sense of adventure, but what, no sense of humor?

I believe that is a subset of fleem

[Tallow and Port]

🤯 😲 🤪 ahAhAHahaHA! It all makes SENSE now!