Cold Wind Blowing

by Rambling Writer

9 - Very Bad Things

Mistral stared at the sign of the inn.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

How had she gone in a circle? She’d been going as straight as possible. Whenever she’d been turned aside by the wind, she’d made sure to straighten out as much as she could, and she’d been blown in both directions. Her course was a bit jagged, but it was straight. Ish.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

Right?

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

But although her blood was this close to freezing, she didn’t enter the inn. In fact, she avoided entering the inn with all her might. If there was… something keeping her from leaving, there was no way she was going to go back in. Not without one last try.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

Mistral began pacing to keep her blood flowing as she thought. Her joints ached and her head kept pounding, but she needed to keep moving. If she stopped moving, she might never start up again.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

Okay. She needed to go. Where, though? South was a bust. West was a bust. She could try them again, but she wasn’t feeling optimistic. If she couldn’t get away by simply heading straight, where could she go? Even if she went east or north, she’d probably only get a repeat of her last trip. No, walking almost definitely wasn’t an option.

But that left…

An especially violent burst of wind made Mistral stagger, forcing her to brace herself against the inn’s wall.

No. She wasn’t going to fly in this weather. She was not going to fly in this weather. It was idiotic. It was beyond idiotic. She was an endurance flier, not a hazardous conditions flier. The winds were far too strong for her to keep a course. She’d be dashed against the ground in minutes, and that was at best. That wasn’t even getting into the near-complete lack of visibility from the snow in the air. She wouldn’t be able to tell which way was up, which was rather important in flight.

She looked at the door. But if the alternative was going back in there…

She looked up at the sky. Or tried to. The sky was completely obscured by the haze of snow, a dim, uniform gray. She couldn’t even see the tops of the trees. There was no way of knowing how high the blizzard was. But it was her only option.

Cringing, Mistral freed her wings from under her cloak. What little heat they still had was stolen by the snow almost immediately as the wind tugged violently at her feathers. She shivered, flapped them a few times to get the stiffness out. It froze them even more, but she’d rather have capable wings than warm ones.

She spread her wings and kneaded the ground once, twice, trying to psych herself up. Not flying in bad weather had been the lesson her mother had drilled into her when she was just a filly. But her she was, about to fly into some of the worst weather she’d ever seen. That didn’t portend well.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Mistral crouched, took one last breath, and leapt into the air, beating her wings furiously to climb as fast as she could. The wind howled and screamed, pulling her this way and that and throwing off her sense of direction; she grit her teeth and persevered, doing her best to just go up. Her route was cooked and messy, but it was definitely up.

For one second, maybe two, Mistral let herself grin. It was hard, but she could do it. She could keep climbing. It wouldn’t even be long before she’d be above the trees. She could do this. She was going to get away.

Then another gust of wind came suddenly from above, slamming her in the face with frozen air. Mistral instinctively put up a hoof to block it and twisted away from the wind, but in that moment, her dedication to her straight path faltered. The blizzard grabbed her, and soon she was tumbling through the air, completely and utterly lost in the haze of snow.

---

Griselda reacted before Facet could, swinging her bow around and drawing another arrow, aimed straight at Cassandra. “You…” she whispered, “needed her… alive?” She drew the bow an inch further. “You got ten seconds to explain yourself.”

“The bounty! On her head!” yelled Cassandra. “It was only good if she was alive!”

“What’re you talking about? What bounty?”

“She’s-” For a second, Cassandra looked like she was choking on her words, then she exploded. “She’s a former royal guard because she got dishonorably discharged after killing two other soldiers a few moons back. She managed to escape before they could arrest her and she’s been on the lam ever since. She had a fifty thousand bit bounty on her head!”

Griselda didn’t slacken the bow at all. “And you?”

“I’m a bounty hunter. I’ve been tracking her for over ten weeks, and then- then you- Son of a bitch!” Cassandra screamed and hurled a chair across the room. It shattered against the wall. “All that work, fucking wasted because you wanted to indulge yourself!”

“Careful, now,” said Griselda quietly. “I’ve still got this bow and a will to use it.”

“I had her!” bellowed Cassandra, not listening at all. “Fifty thousand bits! Fifty thousand sunblasted bits! All of that, gone, because of you!”

Griselda blinked and slowly released the tension in the string. Facet figured, with some disgust, that the large amount of money must’ve gotten to her, being a treasure hunter. “Fifty… thousand…” she muttered. She sounded almost apologetic. Almost. She looked at Desmoda’s body. “Can’t you bring her in dead or alive?”

“I wish,” said Cassandra. “That just means I was allowed to kill her. I don’t get a bounty if I turn in her body.” She groaned. “Motherfucker.”

“Ah.” Griselda twanged her bow, looked awkwardly at Facet, and collapsed back onto her front legs. After a second, she walked over to Desmoda’s body, pulled out her arrows, and began patting the corpse down.

“Really?” Facet asked flatly. “I know you’re a tomb raider, but… really?”

“She owed me ten bits,” Griselda said. She pulled out a small bag from the folds of Desmoda’s cloak and began counting out coins. After she had the amount she needed, she threw the bag at Cassandra. She had plenty of time to dodge, but she kept glaring at Griselda; it hit her in the face with no change in expression. “Sorry,” said Griselda. “Hope that begins to make up for it.” She looked between Cassandra, Facet, and Clarity for another moment, then scurried up the stairs.

Cassandra blew a lock of hair from her eyes. “Bitch,” she mumbled.

“Yyyep,” said Facet. She fixed her eyes on Cassandra. “So. Bounty hunter.”

“Yeah.”

“If y-you don’t mind,” Clarity suddenly said, as if nothing had happened, “I n-need to go downstairs. I have t-to check on the furnace. I’d hate for it to die on us while we can’t l-leave.” Without glancing at Desmoda’s body, she vanished down into the cellar.

Facet paid her no attention. “Why didn’t you tell us? About you? About Desmoda? Knowing she’d already killed somepony would’ve been nice to know.” Her voice was this close to dripping with contempt.

“I didn’t want to cause a panic,” Cassandra. “Can you imagine? ‘Hey, you know that batpony? Totally a killer.’ I thought she’d lie low. I didn’t think she’d go and kill somepony now, because- Well, look at what happened to her! Because of that!”

It might’ve been the fact that Cassandra had already spent the entire stay lying, but Facet wasn’t buying it. She suspected Cassandra had her own reasons, maybe just not thinking of it, to keep those secrets. Unfortunately, she had no way to prove that. “And why didn’t you enlist us to help us restrain her?”

“Because keeping somepony secured is harder than you think. Especially a batpony. Do you know how fast they can gnaw through ropes? And before you say hoofcuffs, I lost mine somewhere along the line. I had them, but-” Cassandra groaned, flicked her tail, and ruffled her mane. “Look. It was a mistake. I know it was. Can we just drop it?”

Facet thought dropping it had less to do with guilt and more Cassandra not wanting to answer questions. But if Cassandra wasn’t going to answer questions, this wasn’t going to go anywhere. “Whatever.” She rolled her eyes and did her best to go back to her book while Cassandra retreated to the bar.

But out of the corner of her eye, she could still see Desmoda’s body. It bugged her, got under her skin. She couldn’t focus. She couldn’t concentrate. She tried moving, but the idea that a body was right there still stayed in her mind.

Eventually, she grunted and pushed away from the table. “You’re helping me take the body out,” she said to Cassandra.

“Wh-what?” protested Cassandra. “But I-”

“-neglected to tell us about the psychopath we were sharing an inn with,” snapped Facet. “This is your fault. Help me.”

“I-”

“Help me.”

Cassandra glanced at the door. “Do we need to go outside? I don’t think we’d make it ten feet.”

Facet almost pointed out that Clarity had done just fine. “Then where do you want to put it? And I’m telling everypony that this was your idea.”

Cassandra chewed her lip, then her ears went up. “She has meat. There’s gotta be a freezer or something in the kitchen. That’ll at least keep the body from rotting until the blizzard clears up.”

There were many, many reasons that was a terrible, terrible idea. Facet didn’t care. She just wanted Desmoda’s body gone. “Fine. Come on.”

Cassandra bit on Desmoda’s mane, Facet on Desmoda’s tail. Between the two of them, the body moved easily. Cassandra nudged open the door behind the bar and they tugged the body into the kitchen. It wasn’t much, a small room with mostly cabinets, cutting surfaces, a stove, and some food still lying out. An unmarked door was at the back. Perfectly serviceable, but not much else. Unfortunately, it was missing something important.

“Don’ see any freeser,” Facet garbled around the tail.

“In de bag,” said Cassandra. “Frew da’ door.” She nudged it open; a blast of cold air hit both ponies in the face. Cassandra brushed aside something Facet couldn’t see and peered through the doorway.

“OH, FUCKING CELESTIA!” she screamed, dropping her half of Desmoda. She scrambled away from the door and pressed herself against the wall, muttering, “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit…”

“What?” Facet dropped Desmoda and looked through the doorway. “What’s-”

She saw what. Revulsion overcame her and she fell away from the door, retching.

A skinned pony was hanging from a meathook.

---

The world spun wildly as Mistral corkscrewed through the air. She flailed her wings, her legs, her tail, trying to hit something to orient herself.

She hit something. Hard.

She slammed into a tree trunk, knocking the wind out of her as her body twisted around it. She scrabbled at the trunk with her hooves, but the wind had already whipped her away again. And by the time she’d registered that she was in the air, she smashed into another tree trunk.

Mistral managed to wrap her hooves around a branch, clinging to it before the storm yanked her away. The world reeled around her. Her breathing was strained and ragged. Her entire body ached. Her heart pounded in her head. She clamped her wings close to her body; she was not going to open them again.

Flying in this weather: bad idea. Good to know. Good to verify. Not wanting to fly again and desperate for some respite, Mistral stayed clamped on the branch, no matter how much the wind grabbed at her, waiting for the aches in her body to die down.

But in her desperate grab for the trunk, the front sleeves on Mistral’s traveling cloak had gotten bunched up, exposing her legs to the elements. As she stayed right where she was, her legs began cramping up. Sooner or later, she’d have to go down.

Not wanting to open her wings and get thrown away again, Mistral decided to climb down rather than fall down. She peeked down. Only a few feet below her was another branch, perfect for her to brace on. She swallowed and cautiously lowered one of her hooves onto the branch. It held. She put weight on it. It held. She lowered another hoof onto the branch. It held. She slowly unwrapped her front legs from around the upper branch.

Her hoof slipped. She dropped like a stone.

Mistral twisted and tried to throw herself over the bough. It hit her hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her as she slid off it. She plummeted to the ground, more and more branches snapping as she fell through them. Some of them poked through her robes, nicking the skin below, even drawing blood. She didn’t even have time to open her wings.

One of her wings was beneath her when she landed. The bones snapped like twigs and Mistral screamed. She quickly rolled off it, but the blizzard chewed at her broken wings and even more pain lanced through her body. Biting her lip and terrified of she might see, Mistral looked over her shoulder at her wing. Luckily, no bones were sticking out, but her wing hung at a disgustingly limp angle.

She might not’ve been able to help Thistledown, but Mistral knew a thing or two about this sort of first aid. She needed to splint the wing. Luckily, she had the supplies for it. Breathing painfully through clenched teeth, she slowly removed her saddlebags and opened up one of them, the one with the spartan first aid kit. It had enough supplies for a primitive splint, at least until she got out of the blizzard. Mistral dug the box out, opened it-

-and immediately slammed the lid shut again, just in time to prevent the storm from whisking her supplies away. She was almost too late; a long bandage, caught in the lid and trailing away, whipped around the wind. Mistral almost screamed in frustration. She couldn’t do any work, not in this weather. She replaced the first aid kit and put her saddlebags back on.

Her whole body ached, from mane to hoof. Her head felt like it was getting compressed in a vise. Her wing burned and throbbed. And to top it all off, every single remote scrap of warmth she’d ever had was gone, and she felt sure it wasn’t long before her body just shut down from the cold. She needed to walk.

She didn’t know which way she needed to go, but Mistral walked. She knew it was pointless, but Mistral walked. She knew where she’d end up, but Mistral walked.

It was only a few minutes before she saw it slide out of the snow. And with that, Mistral simply stopped caring. It was pointless. She’d never get away. No matter which way she went, she’d always wind up back here. She was doomed. Thistledown was right.

Well, might as well die warm.

By now, she wasn’t walking so much as putting one hoof in front of the other, she was so tired. It seemed to take way too long, but eventually Mistral staggered up the steps, opened the door, and entered the room beyond, leaving behind nothing but a sign swinging in the howling wind.

Please Stop Inn.

---

Facet was definitely not looking into the back. Nope. Her stomach was still churning, and if she had to look back, she knew she’d vomit.

“Oh, Celestia,” muttered Cassandra, “it’s dry, it’s been here a whi-”

“Stop poking-” Facet gagged. “Stop poking the body!”

“And it’s got chunks cut out of it, like-”

Facet heaved and clapped a hoof to her mouth. A few drops of bile crept up her throat before she forced them down. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to figure out why the fuck there’s a dead pony hanging like a slab of meat in here! I’m trying to examine it!”

“Do you need to think out loud?”

“It helps!”

Facet shuddered and shielded her eyes. She wanted to know what in Celestia’s name was going on, too, but that would require looking at the- thing.

Her mind turned over and over as question after question came and went. Why? Why would Clarity have a dead pony hanging like this? Who were they? What was wrong with Clarity? How long had she been doing this? The idea that she’d been lodging under the roof of a killer — perhaps worse — made Facet sick to her stomach. She didn’t want to spend another second in this building, but the only other option was heading out into the storm. That other pony, what was her name, Mistral, had probably frozen to death already.

“Oh, geez,” muttered Cassandra, “she’s got stuff carved into-”

Facet lunged out and slapped Cassandra on the back of the head. “Shut up! Just- shut up! We need to get Desmoda into- Shit, if we dump Desmoda’s body back there, Clarity’ll know we were here and- Shit shit shit…” She started pacing. “We need to take her outside. If, if we don’t, Clarity’ll know and- Sun blast it!” She kicked at a table, took up Desmoda’s tail in her mouth, and did her best to drag the body. “Help me, dammit!”

“Where’re we gonna-?”

“Right outside!” Facet said, dropping Desmoda’s tail. “Just a few feet from the door! And if Clarity cares about it, she can move the body herself!” She grabbed the tail again and went back to pulling. After a moment’s hesitation, Cassandra joined her.

The blizzard was like a nail-filled slap to the face once they got the door open. Facet and Cassandra rolled the body to one side of the door and quickly shut it, but Facet was already feeling too cold. Forget freezing. Out there, it was probably fifty below, maybe more. If she tried to run away, she wouldn’t make it twenty feet.

“Cold,” muttered Cassandra, shaking. “Cold. Cold.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Facet. “Cold. Duh.”

“Look, at least we won’t have to go out there again. Desmoda’s gone, right?”

With a grunt, Facet indicated that she wasn’t in the mood for debates.

Griselda stuck her head down the staircase. She was looking moody. “Hey. I thought I heard someone scream a while back. Everything okay down here?”

Facet opened her mouth, but Cassandra quickly said, “Nothing’s wrong. Just venting my frustrations. Bitch.”

Griselda’s mouth tightened and she disappeared back upstairs without another word.

Facet folded her ears back and stared at Cassandra. “I don’t want her to panic,” Cassandra whispered. “If she heard there was a dead pony being carved up in the back, she’d freak. She’s already killed somepony, who’s to say she won’t kill somepony else when she starts going nuts?”

“Do you really think-”

“Yes I really think!” hissed Cassandra. “Things are tense enough in here as it is! Do you really want to add in her knowing that Clarity’s a killer? Look, I can keep quiet if you can. Just to keep everything less violent. Okay?”

Facet tightened her jaw. Cassandra kind of had a point. But it was still keeping quiet about something important, and keeping quiet about something important had already gotten Thistledown killed. (And, arguably, Desmoda, but Facet didn’t care about her.) It all felt wrong to her. But between her only company being a murderous innkeeper, an impulsive grave robber, and a lying bounty hunter, she had no one she could say anything to.

She was as good as on her own.

“Okay,” she said eventually. She mimed zipping her mouth shut. Cassandra looked suspicious, but evidently decided that was good enough; she turned away from Facet and shuffled towards the fire.

The door to the cellar banged open and a grimy-looking Clarity exited. “All set!” she said cheerfully. “Good thing I-I’m good with furnaces. S-sorry about that, but I-I needed to check the fuel supply and c-couldn’t leave it for much longer. If I did, it might just s-stop running one night. I’d never forgive m-myself if I let one of my patrons die from the cold!”

Yeah, right. Facet examined Clarity through new eyes, but still had a hard time imagining her as the one who’d killed the pony in the meat locker. She just seemed so… unassuming, if you discounted her earlier non-reactions. But then, that probably helped her kill the pony in the first place. Who’d imagine that kind of pony as the sort who’d kill you in your sleep?

“And…” Clarity quickly glanced around. “Did you move that batpony out? Thank you! Was it bad outside? Where’d you put her?”

“Yeah, we were fine,” said Cassandra from her spot next to the fire. “We moved her a ways out.” Not at all, but Facet wasn’t in the mood to correct her.

There was a blanket draped over the back of the couch. Facet stumbled over, lay down on the couch, and wrapped herself in the blanket. She bunched up some slack in her ears, trying to shut out the storm. It didn’t work, and the storm’s howling drilled incessantly into her skull.

Facet suspected it would be one of the last sounds she’d ever hear.

Comments

[Thought Prism]

Yep, that's what I thought. Griselda has been eating pony flesh this whole time.

[CommanderBigMac]

Riveting story. Need more

[FOXTrot2]

A skinned pony was hanging from a meathook.

By this point I'm not even surprised anymore.

Well, might as well die warm.

Choose the bed you sleep in.

Facet suspected it would be one of the last sounds she’d ever hear.

Well that's assuming she's killed in her sleep. Much more likely she'll die fully alert.