Nightwatch: Catching One's Breath
“Are you ready? I’ve done this before, but…this is going to hurt.”
“Do it.”
“I mean, it’s really going to hurt.”
“Do it.”
“I mean, um…it’s really, really going to hurt.”
“Just do it.”
“I’m…I’m not sure you understand. You see, it’s really, really, really-”
Dash grit her teeth and fumed. “You’re not making it any easier telling me that! Do it now! The faster it’s over the faster it can stop hurting!”
Fluttershy gulped, nervously looking nearby. The Fillydelphian likewise swallowed. She was hanging from a railing over the middle of the trackless engine; her feet positioned on Rainbow Dash’s shoulder. Fluttershy herself was holding Dash’s arm out and steady, and after a moment she closed her eyes and nervous nodded. Taking a deep breath, the Fillydelphian swung back and then drove her feet forward.
A loud snap rang out, and Dash went purple faced as she clenched her teeth so hard it looked like she’d crack them. Even so, she couldn’t stop herself from letting out a scream of pain between them. The Fillydelphian looked at her nervously as she lowered herself, and Fluttershy continued to whimper as she put her hands on her to try and stop the agony. After a time, Dash finally began to breathe stiffly and turned her head away.
“Uh…um…all better?” the Fillydelphian suggested nervously. On seeing her continuing to try stabilize herself, she looked away. “I’ll just, um, help out Applejack over here next.”
As she moved over to her, the other woman emerged from the rear compartment. She looked as uncomfortable as anyone else on seeing the group injured and lying about, which wasn’t helped by the fact she had to step around a sleeping bear in order to get into the main area.
She looked at them apologetically. “I wish I could help more, but we’ve only got a first aid kit and Starlight’s the only one with any field medical experience.” She hoisted up an old satchel. “The only thing I could find was some of this old hardtack I made up five weeks ago I still had left over, and someone would have to be pretty desperate to risk chipping a tooth on-”
Before she could say another word, Rarity reached over, seized the satchel from her, and immediately tore into the bag. As soon as she pulled out one of the near-fossilized crackers, she began to furiously gnaw away at it like a dog with a bone. The woman was left staring dumbfounded.
The Fillydelphian herself continued to look over Applejack’s wounds, particularly on her scalp and her chest. Twilight Sparkle, on her part, was still shaking and didn’t have full use of her hands, but was slowly doing better. Spike had moved over and put his head on her lap, but she couldn’t summon the strength to pet him. Instead, she kept her eyes on their unexpected savior.
After a moment, the Fillydelphian leaned back. “The head wound looks like it’s scabbed over, although it could probably use a cleaning. As for your chest, normally I’d say that needs stitches, but seeing how fast you heal whenever your friend over there holds onto you that will probably do it.”
“What about her?” Applejack spoke up, indicating to Pinkie Pie. Like most of them, she was laid out on the floor. It wasn’t the most comfortable of situations, especially since aside from a few blankets and extra clothes there was nothing for padding or bedding. The other man was just finishing tucking a roll of cloth under her head, and he shook his own at the farmer.
“Don’t worry. Starlight didn’t find anything broken. She’s just sleeping right now.”
The Fillydelphian looked back in her open first-aid kit, which by now was running a little low, and got out the bottle of alcohol and some gauze. She dampened it, gave Applejack a look of regret, and then reached up to dab the wound. She clearly didn’t like it but she bore through it until it was clean. When that was finally done, she exhaled and leaned back. “Alright, I think that’ll do it.” She looked back up front. “How’s the road look?”
“I think we’re in the clear,” the driver shouted back. “The one good thing about this whole mess is it’s really going to keep the authorities busy. The farther away from them we get the less likely they’ll care about stopping us even if they spot us.”
“Great. Keep the engine pumping. We need to get as far away as we can.” She looked back to Twilight. “Great news. We should be in the clear.”
“Um…nice to hear,” Twilight uneasily answered. “Just one question. Who are you again?”
“Oh! Sorry about that… Was kind of in a hurry to get out of Griffonstone… Starlight Glimmer.” She held out a hand. “Nice to meet you…er, again. Didn’t honestly think the second time would be under worse circumstances than before…”
Twilight hesitated but finally reached out and shook. “Um, a pleasure. But that really wasn’t what I was asking… I thought you were working in Fillydelphia?”
She grimaced a little as she pulled her hand back. “Work visa, to be honest… I’m a legal resident of Griffonstone but I’m sure at some point looking around Grifftham City you probably noticed that they’re not really doing that well economically. Fillydelphia was doing a bit better,” she frowned, “and by ‘better’ I mean there were lots of cruddy entry-level jobs that were glorified slave labor that owners could use to cheat migrant workers out of half their pay, but that’s where I was when I ran into you.”
She brightened up a little. “But the real truth of the matter is that was just a side gig. Well…maybe it was a side gig that was ending up in an extended layover that was slowly turning into a dead-end career…but really I ended up taking that job just to pay the bills and get a spot close to the border to Equestria.”
A few of the others began to listen to this conversation while Twilight looked intrigued. “Really?”
She smiled in pride. “The truth is we’re part of the Lunar Discovery Society! I’m the founding member. Over here,” she gestured to the man next to Pinkie Pie, who waved. “Is Party Favor. I met up with him when I resettled. We were kind of in the same boat, uh…figuratively and literally. Nearby,” she gestured to the woman, who smiled back, “we have Sugar Belle, who’s really bailed us out on commodities. You’d be amazed how many different ways she can whip up flour and salt. And up front,” she gestured ahead to the cockpit, “Double Diamond. He’s really helped our financial backing.” She winced. “Um…the fact that the Nighttouched forced his family’s ski lodge to liquidate may have had something to do with that. Anyway…”
She turned back. “We’ve devoted ourselves to discovering the truth about the Lunar Fall, including its origins, nature, and impacts, with the ultimate goal of finding more effective ways to protect humanity and mount countermeasures to halt or even reverse it!”
She rattled off the ‘mission statement’ with quite a bit of admiration. As for the group, they simply stared back in puzzlement.
“Uh, no offense, but…y’all haven’t really done that good of a job,” Applejack spoke up.
“But I’m sure you’ve been trying your best!” Fluttershy quickly threw in, in the voice that a teacher might give to a child who had colored a picture of an apple blue.
Starlight’s face fell. “Uh, yeah… You see, it turns out in order to actually be able to investigate things about the Lunar Fall, you have to be able to gather things like experimental research, evidence, specimens, and samples. And since whenever anyone tries to explore in Equestria or stand their ground the Nighttouched and Light Eaters tend to…you know…leave no survivors, that doesn’t really give much opportunity for that. Doesn’t help that every government we’ve ever gone to for funding has turned us down flat…”
“Hence the whole dead-end job part,” Party Favor spoke up.
Starlight flashed him a look. “Yes, thank you for pointing that out…” She sighed. “At first we managed to find a few scraps here and there, but most of it was things people already knew. Light Eaters are invulnerable to everything…both Light Eaters and Nighttouched are attracted to light…Nighttouched appear to be normal animals that got some sort of infection or corruption on making contact with a Light Eater and surviving…Light Eaters transmit this corruption but Nighttouched do not… Yadda, yadda, yadda. All public knowledge now. We did get a few things that offered new information but none of them were anything we could prove or, in some cases, even understand. It’s been a good four years since we’ve found anything new. All these ‘side gigs’ we did to try and fund the cause ended up becoming permanent jobs and we were starting to lose hope.”
She smiled, leaning in closer to Twilight and causing her to recoil.
“But that was all before I met you.”
“Wha, me?”
“Seeing someone out there who had powers like that? Like magic? And was able to actually kill a Light Eater with it? It was like someone relit a candle inside me. It got my mind churning and in a couple days I had my old spark back from when I first founded the Lunar Discovery Society. And better yet, I just started calling up the old gang when all the rumors and news stories started to pour in.”
“Um…rumors?”
She laughed and waved her hand. “Oh, you don’t have to play innocent with me. By now, we’ve put it all together. All those stories rolling in about being on the lookout for people with symbols on their hands? New forms of weapons or even living weapons? Destruction and chaos in their wake? Trottinghamites potentially invading just to find them? Double Diamond has a pretty good spotting scope he used to use to investigate mountain passes for avalanches, and we’ve got it mounted right on top of the Steel Lion along with a camera. Seeing what happened down there tonight? The six of you taking out that gigantic Light Eater? And then none other than the ‘fire witch’ of Trottingham showing up herself and showing her own stuff? Right before we spotted those Griffonstone citizens running in like a bunch of zombies?”
Twilight suddenly yelped as Starlight ducked even closer and tapped the top of her sigil with her index finger.
“It’s all in these. That’s what the rumors say along with the few eyewitness reports we managed to listen in on. Whatever these sigils are, they’re the key to all of it. Some folks go crazy and some of them end up…well, like you six. All of these people start popping up with these symbols on their hands, and they just happen to be the ones who can kill the Light Eaters. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”
She grimaced before leaning back again. “Although based on what I saw the fire witch do back there, it looks like you’re not all, um, on the same side. Still, you both have one thing in common… You’re the only two people I’ve seen with those emblems so far that do that thing where you draw a symbol on the air to make some of your magic happen.”
Now Twilight really did begin to look uncomfortable, as if she had been caught in an act.
“Which, to me, means you know a bit more about them than the rest of us.” She turned her head a little. “I don’t suppose…you actually come from Equestria, do you?”
Twilight began to sweat all over again. “Well, no, I mean…that is…I, uh… Well, lots of people passed through, but…but, uh… That is to say-”
A cough from Applejack caught her attention. She looked over and saw that the farmer was leveling her gaze and beckoning over with small chin gestures.
She grinned sheepishly at Starlight. “Excuse me a moment.” Immediately, she scooted off of her place and moved over to Applejack. Fluttershy quickly drew herself near as well.
However, no sooner had they huddled up when Rarity suddenly pushed herself in and Dash, in spite of her sore arm, began to drag herself over before forcing herself to sit up in their midst.
“Uh, ‘scuse me. This here’s a private conversation.”
“Like hell it is,” Dash retorted. “You think after risking our necks back there you’re gonna leave us out of the loop?”
“I have no idea what that ‘fire witch’ wanted from you, but Trottingham has been trying to kill us for days. I’d say that means this concerns us just as much as you,” Rarity added indignantly.
Applejack rolled her eyes and sighed. “Fine. I hate all this sneakin’ around private stuff anyway…” She looked at Twilight and lowered her voice. “Why ain’t ya’ talkin’, Twilight?”
“We just met these people!” she whispered loudly back. “We have no idea who they are!”
“Um, didn’t you meet Starlight Glimmer before though?” Fluttershy asked.
“If by ‘met’ you mean I stopped her from getting eaten alive by a couple of Nighttouched and a Light Eater during the last Fillydelphian surge, yeah. But she has to have been looking for us ever since then if she showed up here!” She turned to Applejack. “I already told you what happened to my class and my headmistress! Someone had to have known about that! How do I know these people weren’t involved?”
“Well, this is just my opinion, darling,” Rarity spoke up again, “but I saw how you reacted back in Grifftham City. I’m assuming your headmistress’ name was ‘Celestia’?”
Twilight winced a bit, but nodded back.
“In that case, if I had to wager on anything, I would bet that Sunset Shimmer person has more to do with that than these people. You were talking as if she had something of hers, were you not?”
Twilight hesitated. So much had happened, it looked as if she hadn’t really thought of it until that point.
“And if she was working with Sunset, I don’t think they would have bothered saving us just now,” Dash pointed out. “And if they wanted to turn us in, they’re going the opposite way from all the countries that are interested in us.”
The mage frowned. “Just the same, even if she saved us I don’t feel too comfortable talking to her about all of this. It only took her a few seconds to figure out things that I don’t exactly want becoming public if more countries start acting like Appleloosa and Trottingham.”
“Well,” Applejack shrugged, “I’m pretty sure they ain’t gonna go nuts. Looks like whoever was gonna go off the deep end was in that bunch that attacked us. No symbols on them and not even an itch. ‘Sides, if we had folks from all over Grifftham City comin’ to us before, that probably would have included them.”
“And maybe they do know more about what happened with the Lunar Fall,” Fluttershy suggested. “If we really want to stop this, we need to know more ourselves.”
Twilight looked at her. “We? You’re actually interested in that?”
Fluttershy cringed a little. “Well…everything that happened in Grifftham City was scary… Very…very scary… But ever since I met you and Applejack I’ve been thinking, and I realized if I want to help Angel and the others then I need to know more. Maybe there’s even a chance of helping all the other Nighttouched.”
The mage took a moment to consider everything. She took in a deep breath. Finally, she pushed away from the others. They all went back to their own spots as she turned around and looked back at Starlight.
“I’m actually from Hoofheim,” she finally said. “But…I did spend a lot of time in Equestria. Let’s just say I had a special teacher.”
“Headmistress Celestia?” Fluttershy asked.
“Is this that academy you mentioned before?” Rarity added.
Twilight grimaced that two and two had been put together so quickly. “Yes, but…that academy is gone now and everyone with it. It was all lost the night of the Lunar Fall. In case you’re all wondering, yes, I think that if it was still here it might have been able to do something about all the Light Eaters. That chance is long gone now, though…”
Starlight looked a bit regretful. “Oh, well…I guess that makes sense… I’ve had to search high and low for anyone who survived from Equestria, and most of the ones who I found were people who only made deliveries or ran commerce. I’ve never met anyone who…got out of the interior alive…”
Twilight looked a bit more uncomfortable at the reminder, but Starlight looked up after a moment.
“But that’s alright! We’ll just have to…work with what we have, heh! Um, speaking of which, what exactly were you planning on next?”
Everyone immediately looked to Twilight. Even Spike raised his head. She sat there looking rather put on the spot for a moment. “Well…” she finally answered, “right now I don’t even think I can hold a pen, let alone use another spell, and the last thing I want is to hang around here waiting for Sunset to come back with those airships. That includes being tied down by any of the authorities…”
“Uh, I got news for you,” Dash spoke up uneasily, “There had to have been thousands of people who saw us there. One way or another, this is getting out.”
“Well, most of them weren’t close enough to see our faces,” Twilight shrugged. “Either way, right now I want to get away from here and find a place to hide out and recover.”
“Oh, I have just the place!” Rarity spoke up. “Back to Manehattan! My family’s residence is built right into the Carousel Couture main facility!” After a moment, her enthusiastic look dimmed. “And it will be mine for at least another two months, until the bank forecloses on it…”
“I’m not sure I want to try and go all the way to Manehattan,” Twilight answered uncomfortably. “That’s pretty far and across several other borders.”
“It’s perfect!” Starlight spoke up.
Everyone, including Party Favor and Sugar Belle, turned to her.
“I’ll admit getting there might be hard but if you could stay there it’d probably be for the best. It has a dense population, lots of communication routes, and, best of all, it’s very far away from Appleloosa and Griffonstone. They’ll probably be expecting that you’ll try to hide out in the surrounding countries. They won’t think you’d risk going that far and getting caught.”
That made Twilight uneasy. “But…can we even get that far?”
“Oh, you bet! Just leave it all to us!” Starlight smiled back. She paused, then suddenly turned to the driver’s area. “Uh, Diamond, we can get all the way into Manehattan, right?”
A groan echoed back. “We’re going to have to ditch the Steel Lion at the border and cross over through the garbage wagons, but so long as we stick to the back country, go all night, and outrun the borders being closed, we should make it.”
“Um,” Twilight spoke up, “did you say ‘garbage wagons’?”
“Heh-heh…” Starlight nervously answered. “Well, we don’t really have much in the way of money to be able to afford anything great like a boat or airship. This is Diamond’s father’s old Steel Lion. The wagons we load up with garbage to get around without having to worry too much about customs, papers, or bribes. If you pick the right, uh, materials the stench can get so bad no border authority wants to deal with you.”
All six women gave an uncomfortable moan, but it seemed there was nothing for it. Twilight simply exhaled and leaned back, getting ready to settle in for what would no doubt be a very long trip.
“Say Twilight…”
She glanced up, seeing Applejack looking over to her.
“What do ya’ know ‘bout that Sunset Shimmer?”
Almost immediately, everyone else looked up as well. In the chaos and the struggle to escape to safety, everyone had nearly forgotten about her.
Twilight, however, could only sigh and bow her head. “Nothing, I’m afraid… Right now, I wish I could have asked her a lot more.”
“Nothing to know about her,” Dash snorted from the floor. “She’s a little bitch from Trottingham, and she and her puppies have been going around killing anyone with symbols on their hands. That makes her someone who needs to be taken out.”
“So she was telling the truth?” Rarity spoke up. “She really was the one behind what happened in Flaxonville? And the attack on the train? And the mountains?”
“Not to mention Fort Chestnut…” Applejack grumbled. “And the fact she sent us down the river. First chance I get, I’ll knock that smug block off her head.”
Rarity winced. “That might be a bit difficult; considering what we saw just now. I didn’t have my sewing glasses, but I saw five runes on her own sigil.” She looked up to Twilight again. “You seemed particularly unsettled by that.”
Twilight frowned, inhaling deeply and exhaling. “Five emblems means she has five different Anima Viri, which is incredible enough as it is. The very fact all six of us are here and each of us has their own Anima Viri is, frankly, incredible. That’s not what shook me up, though…” She frowned. “I don’t suppose I’m hurting anything showing you all this now… I don’t think you’re going to act like those people back in Griffonstone did…”
She held up her hand a moment later for all to see.
“This is Starswirl the Bearded. He’s an Anima Viri that died at least a thousand years ago. He wasn’t any relative of mine and I didn’t find any object that had his spirit tied to it. Rather, Headmistress Celestia freely gave him to me from her own Anima Viris right before we left on our summer trip.” Her head bowed. “The last lesson she ever taught me was how to summon him…”
“Er, whatd’ya mean she gave it to you?” Applejack asked.
“One of the only ways to gain an Anima Viri is to freely transfer it to someone else. Otherwise, the Anima Viri either attaches to its original source object again if it can or…disappears completely. That’s another reason why they’re so hard to find. What few ones are out there could disappear before anyone had a chance to gain them.” She looked at her hand. “Celestia told me her family had been passing Starswirl the Bearded down from mother to daughter for at least a thousand years…”
She grew quiet. “But then, for some reason, she passed him to me. And she never got the chance to tell me why…”
“Whoa,” Dash spoke up incredulously, “she had all that power and she just gave it up?”
“Actually,” Twilight exhaled, looking up again, “she had five others.”
The group looked doubly-surprised. “Five?”
“She was the only person I ever met who had a rune for every point on her symbol. But…”
She grimaced, growing increasingly uncomfortable.
“The day she gave me this symbol, she was wearing a bandage around her hand. She kept wearing it through the trip. I thought she had hurt it doing something, or that maybe she injured it giving me the Anima Viri. I’ve thought that for years. But now…” She looked up again. “Tonight, I saw Sunset Shimmer, and she not only had five Anima Viris but two of them were definitely from Celestia. Mistmane and Flash Magnus.”
“Merciful heavens,” Rarity echoed back, sharing Twilight’s uncomfortable look. “Are you saying she gave those Anima Viris to her?”
“It doesn’t make any sense…” Twilight fretted, clearly struggling to think. “I’ve never seen or heard of a ‘Sunset Shimmer’ before. I know I wasn’t the most sociable of students, but that academy wasn’t that big. I knew everyone’s name at least. And yet…there’s no way to steal an Anima Viri from anyone else…”
“Maybe…just no way that you know about?” Fluttershy suggested hopefully.
Twilight frowned. “Even if there was, she knew too much. Whoever she was, she knew Headmistress Celestia when she was alive.”
Applejack frowned. “Then ya’ think, jus’ maybe, she knows somethin’ ‘bout what happened to her in Hoofheim?”
The mage looked the most uncomfortable at this. “I don’t know… But I know this. Until today, I’ve never heard of an Archer role before. I thought there were only the six roles. I don’t think she just has those five. I think she knows how to combine them to bring out even stronger powers.”
“Great…” Dash moaned. “So how do we stop her?”
“We don’t,” Twilight answered. “We stay away from her, which is exactly what we’re doing right now.”
“I don’t understand…”
Twilight looked over to Fluttershy, who’s head was bowed as she was deep in her own thoughts.
“Don’t understand what?”
She looked up. “Why would Sunset be wanting to get rid of everyone with a Promethian Sigil on their hands? She has one too, doesn’t she?”
Rarity grimaced. “Yes, but it sounds like she was after Twilight the whole time, dear.” Even saying that made Twilight more uneasy.
“Yes, but why Twilight? She just said she never heard of Sunset before. And Sunset hadn’t heard of Twilight until tonight either. She didn’t even know her name. Why would she want just her?”
The chamber was silent. No one had an answer for that, including Twilight. It was something new on top of the ever-deepening mystery. Several seconds passed.
Finally, she sighed and shook her head. “This is too much for me to think about right now. I just want to take it easy for a little while…”
“Um, Twilight?”
She tiredly looked back up, finding Fluttershy now staring at her. Like she usually was when nervous, her head was bowed and she was almost hiding under her own hair.
“You kept saying back there that I couldn’t really be a good Healer because I didn’t know any spells. Well…” She looked around the engine. “There’s…a lot of people hurt right here. I was wondering if you could, um, maybe…teach me any? Since you did go to a school for it and everything?”
“Actually,” Rarity spoke up as well, “I’ve been feeling rather like a fifth wheel myself ever since you said that I didn’t know any ‘spells’. I have little love for any pagan superstitions or witchcraft, but I can’t deny that being able to do the sort of things you could do the next time we got into a fight would likely swing things more heavily in our favor.”
Surprisingly enough, Twilight looked even more nervous now. “Um…are you saying you’d like me to teach you magic? I’ve never tried to teach anyone before…”
“Well, darling, considering you’re the only one in this cramped, rusty vehicle that has any experience in the first place…”
“Hey!” came from the front.
“I’d say that makes you the seasoned veteran if not the expert to our novices.”
“And, if you know any healing magic, I’d love to see if it would work on Angel and the others,” Fluttershy added. “Please?”
Twilight looked between the two of them for a moment. Her face showed a mixture of personal hesitation as well as exhaustion from the previous battle. Finally, she sighed. “Fine… It would help us out a lot more if Fluttershy could actually heal people…”
“Um,” Starlight finally spoke up again, looking rather uncomfortable, “if you three start slinging around spells in here, considering what I saw back in Griffonstone…”
“Don’t worry. I’m only going to show them the basics of using magical runes and sigils for spellcasting. I won’t actually have them invoke any.” She paused. “Uh, just the same, nothing in here is flammable, right?”
Starlight let out an unhappy mutter.
“Ooo!”
Everyone looked up at the noise, and found themselves wheeling to Pinkie. She was fully alert with eyes open, but still lying on the ground.
“A slumber party! Neat! But don’t we have to take care of the Tantabus first?”
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9797564
It should come out clearer in later chapters, but Casters are wielders of chaotic magic while Healers are wielders of harmonious magic. Magicians can wield both kinds to a smaller extent and have some enhanced combat abilities; i.e. Jacks-of-All-Trades.
Note that Twilight may use destructive spells but has never healed anyone and Fluttershy has healed people but can't cast destructive spells, but Rarity has had inklings of both--using destructive magic on the Tantabus but also helping Rainbow Dash with accelerated healing.
That should be Flash Magnus.
9797643
Fixed.
The only question I have is if Celestia passed on the Starswirl Anima Viri before meeting Sunset when she stole the other five from her, why was Celestia already wearing a bandage. Why would she have been wearing a bandage before Sunset stabbed her hand?
10504797
Why indeed.