Old Wounds 5
It was raining when we went out to confront Golden. Not that it should’ve been a surprise; the city usually averaged somewhere around three thousand millimeters of rain a year. We all threw on our raincloaks, and I reluctantly left my armor and Chainbreaker behind. Wearing a bunch of metal around my body when I was going to see a ferromancer just seemed like a bad idea, and carrying the sword might set a bit too hostile of a tone. I wanted to at least try to keep things diplomatic. Plus, if I needed Chainbreaker I could call it up in half a second anyway.
My leg was another issue. There wasn’t much I could do for it other than layer a bunch of extra wards on it and hope for the best. Worst case, I could always hit the quick release on it and just make a quick-and-ditry ice prosthetic to replace it. I’d put a fair bit of practice into that just in case.
Puzzle led us to a pretty dingy-looking dockside tavern, probably the sort of place where nobody asked questions. Sure enough, Golden was sitting at one of the outside tables, underneath a rather tattered-looking awning. At a guess, she was outside so she had an excuse to keep on that heavy rain cloak that did a pretty good job of hiding her features, even if the eyepatch gave her away. Though I suppose that metal eye with the nasty dark magic veins would’ve done the same thing, and looked a lot weirder to boot. From the way she was tapping her hoof on the table and looking around, she was probably waiting on someone.
If that was the case, I would just have to interrupt her. I plopped myself into the seat across from her, and only barely resisted the urge to smirk when she twitched in shock. “This seat taken?”
Golden slowly untensed after several seconds. “Considering you’re sitting down at a table instead of ambushing me, I guess you want to talk?”
“Yeah, I do.” I suppose it shouldn’t have been a shock she was going around maskless. I’d already suggested she might do that to fly under the radar, and it’s not like there was anyone in Freeport who would recognize her. At least now I could get a good look at her: her coat was still the same golden yellow I vaguely remembered, though her one remaining grey eye looked a lot duller than I recalled. She’d also cut her black mane pretty short, aside from a long fringe down the side of her face that partially concealed the scars around her eye. Even with hair and the eyepatch covering the worst of it, I could tell it had been a nasty, ragged wound.
Though maybe part of that was from everything else she’d been through since then. From the dark circles under her remaining eyes (both remaining and fake) and the slightly disheveled state of her mane, I wouldn’t be shocked if she told me she hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in years. Not really a surprise, considering all the stress and dark magic.
I decided to get straight to the point. “Solar told me what happened, or at least his version of it. Considering he’s been telling me you were dead for over a decade ... well, I figured I should give you a chance to tell your side of the story.”
Puzzle set himself down in one of the seats to the side of us. “Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time to cover all the details. The ship you've booked passage with has been unavoidably delayed. Customs selected them at random for a thorough inspection. They’re certain to miss the tide, which will probably delay their departure until tomorrow morning.”
Puzzle was a really useful friend to have.
Golden drew her cloak up tighter around herself, tugging the hood down to cover as much of the damaged side of her face as possible. “Sunset, I ... I don't know what Solar might have told you, but I don’t want this to turn into a fight. You’re my goddaughter. When you were a little filly you used to call me Aunt Goldy. If circumstances had been different...” She grimaced and looked to the side, unable to meet my eyes.
“But they’re not.” I sighed and shook my head. “So I know from my own memories and a little common sense that most of the early stuff he told me was probably true. You lost the eye taking on Talonrend, you took it really hard, and you started looking for any way you could find to get it back. Guess you eventually succeeded.”
One of her hooves went up to the eyepatch. “You need to understand, I just wanted to fix this. That’s all I ever wanted to do. After Talonrend I just … I wasn’t the same. Nothing felt the same. I only wanted my eye back, to fix the damage so things could finally go back to normal. You don’t know what it’s like to lose a part of yourself that way, to have part of my own body ripped away and know I’ll never get it back.”
A pang of empathy shot through me. “I probably understand more than you realize.” I set my foreleg on the table, then carefully peeled back the covering I kept over it—just enough so Golden could clearly see it, then covered it back up. Judging by the frown Puzzle shot my way, he thought that was a dumb move. I would end up regretting it if this got violent, but if I could get through to her...
Golden flinched back, one hoof flying up to cover her mouth. “Oh Sunset ... I’m so sorry that happened to you. I suppose you know exactly what it’s like then, don’t you? Trying to keep going despite losing something so important. Thinking you can move on, only to wake up every morning and realize there’s a part of yourself missing you can never get back.”
“Yeah, I know.” I took a deep breath. “I was lucky, I had the skills and resources to make a good replacement. Eyes are ... a lot harder than legs.”
“They’re just so complicated,” Golden groaned. “Some of the best minds in Equestria have tried to create replacement eyes, but no one’s ever come up with something that actually works. I just wanted something like what I have, to be whole again. That’s why I was doing my research—to find a solution, to fix myself.”
I was with her so far. “So how did you go from doing research to ... this?”
“Ginger just didn’t understand what I was doing.” Her remaining eye dropped down to the table, and her shoulders slumped as she weakly shook her head. “You need to understand, I didn’t want to fight him. I just needed to do my research. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. But he was going to stop me, end my research for no damned reason. I couldn’t let him do that when I was so close to a breakthrough...”
“‘For no reason’?” I pressed. “So you weren't looking into dark and forbidden magic?”
Golden slammed a hoof down on the table, making me and Puzzle jump. “There’s nothing wrong with merely looking! There might have been a solution in the Sealed Repository that somepony had overlooked, it’s happened before! Ponies have researched forbidden materials, but found legitimate ways to use it, or found knowledge they could use to help ponies. I wanted to do the same for my eye. I asked Solar for permission every time I needed something, and every single time he signed off on it. I’m a research magus—I’m allowed to have access to material like that!”
She snarled and shook her head. “But that wasn’t good enough for Ginger. He just had to keep pressing me, like he knew more about what I needed to recover than I did. He was always that way, even back in school—telling me I should get out more, not spend all my time in books ... but then he always came back to me when he needed help on the big test.”
I was tempted to change the subject considering how worked up she was getting, but maybe she needed to vent. And in any case, she was telling me what I wanted to hear. “So how did it go from a disagreement to a fight?”
“It was Ginger’s fault!” she snapped, half-standing up and planting her forelegs on the table. “I didn’t want to fight, I just wanted him to leave me alone to do my work. He’s the one who wouldn’t back off when I told him to. He wanted—no, he demanded to know what I was researching. So I showed him, and then he blew up on me! Said I’d gone too far, and he was going to take all my research away and have me committed. Like … like I was some criminal who’d done something wrong!”
“And from there it escalated?” I asked.
“Yes.” Golden scoffed. “He grabbed me, Sunset. Tried to force a ring onto my horn like I was a common warlock. I’m a magus, and he was was assaulting me, at best. Who knows what he would have done if I was at his mercy?” She sat back down, throwing her hooves up in the air. “He was already convinced I was a warlock. Next thing he was bound to do was kill me for 'resisting arrest', or some other horseapples.”
“So you fought back,” I concluded. “And he died.”
“I never wanted to kill him!” she screamed, loud enough to make everyone on the street stop and stare. After a long awkward moment, they all got back to whatever they were doing before, most of them picking up the pace to get further away. Golden didn’t seem to notice, just drawing her hooves back to cover her chest, practically hugging herself for comfort. “It … what I did was textbook self-defense, I swear. I only tried to disable him, but then he started whipping out the nasty stuff to stop me, and then it was fight or die.” She started shivering. “Even if he could be insufferable sometimes, he was my friend! You have to know that I never wanted to hurt him. Please, you have to believe me!”
“Okay, okay. I believe you,” I didn’t, but considering how worked up she was getting, I figured any other answer would make things worse. “So why did you run?”
Golden let out a loud sniff, pulling her cloak tighter around herself. “Why do you think? You’ve been on the run as a suspected warlock before, right? You know what it’s like, how ponies will just make assumptions when things look bad. The Magus Corps would send ponies to investigate the matter, and they would see all the books I’d checked out from the Sealed Repository, a burned-down house, and whatever was left of Ginger and...” She let out a low whimper, rocking back and forth in her seat. “You’re a magus. If you see that set of facts in front of you, what would you assume?”
She had a point, but there were a couple big things she was overlooking. “Solar would've backed you up. He could’ve told everyone you were allowed to have those books—hay, he even gave you a head start to find a good lawyer and turn yourself in.”
Golden let out a harsh, joyless laugh. “And who would have believed him? Every magus and their mother would have demanded he recuse himself from the matter, and let someone else more ‘neutral’ take over. If he tried to help me, it just would have made it worse for both of us. You can bet there were those in the Magus Corps who would’ve loved to drag Solar's reputation through the mud over this. If he tried to help me then faster than you can say the word ‘suspicious,’ and you can bet your cutie mark there would have been calls for him to retire as archmagus. After all, if he had such terrible judgement to have a warlock as a friend who murdered his other friend, then obviously he has bad judgment and isn’t fit for his office.”
Something dark and ugly flickered across her face. “And that’s assuming your mother would’ve let him try helping me. I’m sure you know she didn’t like me.” She scoffed and shook her head. “Did she think that I was going to steal Solar away from her? Please. I knew him when he was a hormonal college colt. If I’d wanted him, all I would’ve had to do is ask. He already abandoned me once because of her, and I guarantee you that a careerist like Scarlett would tell him to drop me like I had the plague and put as much distance between us as possible to save his post.”
I didn’t like it, but she probably had a point. If there was one thing the cavalcade of bad decisions Solar made had proved, it was that he was too close to the case. As for Scarlett ... yeah, I could certainly buy she’d try to push Solar away from helping Golden. However, that didn’t mean running was the logical move. “You had to know that running would just make you look guilty.”
Golden let out an exasperated sigh. “What’s the right thing to do in a situation like that?! What’s the point of worrying about making myself look more guilty when if I’d stayed I would’ve been convicted anyway?! My only choices were to spend the rest of my life in jail for murdering a fellow magus and using black magic or to run and spend the rest of my life as a renegade! I was injured! All I wanted to do was fix my eye! Nothing more! It wasn’t fair to put me on trial when it was an accident that never would’ve happened if Ginger hadn’t been so ... so...” She trailed off, her voice clogging up with emotion.
I took a deep breath, then tried to keep my voice as level and calm as I could. It was really starting to look like Golden was a hair-trigger mess when it came to discussing her past. “Yeah, I understand how crazy it all is. Still, now it’s even worse.”
“You think I don’t know that?!” Golden snapped. “Do you have any idea what my life has been like since I ran? I’m always on the run, always scraping by with what’s in my bitpurse, only being able to keep what I can carry on my back. It’s not like I can hold property or keep a bank account open when I’ve been legally dead for years. I don’t have any friends or a job or a home. My parents died, and I couldn’t even go to their funerals! Sometimes...” Her ears wilted and sniffled, wiping at her eye. “Sometimes I just wanted to end it, Sunset. I’m ashamed of it, but sometimes I’ve wondered what’s the point of ... it’s not like I have anything to live for.”
I saw an opening. “Maybe you should you turn yourself in? At least then you’ll have a roof over your head, hot meals every day, and security.”
She didn’t answer me for a while, gasping for breath as she tried to regain her composure. When she finally spoke again, her voice was still shaking. “I’ve ... please, hear me out, but... During this last decade I’ve learned so much.” She took my flesh-and-blood foreleg, giving it a gentle squeeze. “There are so many things...” She let out a high-pitched giggle. “Now that I’m getting to explain it, I’m having trouble finding the words. I think I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. Several breakthroughs. If I could just have a bit more time to do more work and gather up some more resources ... I think this could be revolutionary.”
I frowned at her. “Like your efforts at making Bloodsteel?”
Golden hissed, and her grip on my hoof tightened. “It’s not what it looks like. There’s just so much potential in bloodsteel. Just—just if it’s used right. I don’t know if the Quinametzin didn't see the potential, or something got lost over time, but there are properties to it...” She flipped up the eyepatch, letting me see her metal eye. “I can’t see much more than shapes and colors out of this. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not enough. If I made a new eye out of bloodsteel it might be as good as the one I lost. Maybe even better.”
Puzzle scowled at her. “And how many were you willing to kill just to get a new eye?”
Golden shook her head, squeezing my hoof so hard it was starting to hurt. “I wasn’t going to kill anyone. I just needed a little bit of blood from several individuals, like a blood drive. I even paid them to volunteer. I just needed to get a donation, and then I’d let them go when I was done.
I tried to pull my hoof free, but her grip was too tight for me to get loose without using far too much force to maintain a pretense of civility. Not that we would be keeping up the diplomatic efforts if she kept going down this road. “They didn’t look like paid volunteers to me, and your goons were perfectly willing to use them as hostages.”
A distant look clouded her eyes. “I couldn’t just let them go wandering around. What if they talked? Solar’s always chasing after me, and if any of them talked and it got back to you, you would’ve investigated. I only needed to buy enough time to let me learn what I wanted and then go. The others were...” She shook her head. “I couldn’t just go and hire mercenaries from the more reputable companies, you know that. I can’t afford them, and if they learned who I was they would have tried to capture me and turn me in for the bounty for my head.”
She was getting more and more out of it. “There isn’t a bounty on your head, Golden.”
That got an immediate reaction out of her, with her one eye snapping back into focus and fixing itself on me. “Don’t call me that!” She finally let go of my hoof, only so she could slam both her hooves down on the table. “My name is Steel. Rose! Golden is dead!”
I quickly scrambled back to buy a little breathing room, readying my spells in case she turned violent. “What does that even mean?”
She turned to me with a snarl. “Golden was weak, pathetic! I hate her! She was always standing back, doing all the work and research for Solar, only for him to take all the credit! And Golden was always smiling in the background—happy to help, never speaking up or taking the credit that was hers, because she wanted to be a team player and to do what was right for Equestria!” Her horn lit up with a nasty, oily glow, and every last piece of metal on the patio started trembling. “And look what happened to her! She was mutilated and humiliated! Cast off by her friends when she was no longer useful to them!”
I decided to indulge her, if only to try and calm things down. “Okay, sorry. Steel Rose, you’re making everyone nervous. Could you please calm down?”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” She flung the smashed table to the side, nearly hitting Puzzle in the process. “You’re just like your stupid father, always trying to tell me what to do! Well let me tell you what I tell him: buck off and leave me alone! You both think you’re so much better than me, trying to ‘save’ those stupid warlocks in Manehattan! When we’re outnumbered ten to one, we can’t afford to let them get back up when a stunbolt wears off or gets countered. And you...” Her one eye narrowed in a hateful glare. “It’s your fault I need Bloodsteel anyway! If Blackfyre were still alive he would’ve fixed my eye! I could’ve traded what I learned from the Warpsmith Foundries to him! Solar never would have abandoned me if he didn’t have a daughter! If it wasn’t for you, none of this would have happened! Why would you do that to me?!”
Okay, if she was talking about how she wished she could have teamed up with Blackfyre and blaming me for things that happened when I was eight years old, we were officially past the point of reasonable discussion. I tripped all my protective spells over to active, and put forth the mental effort to call up Chainbreaker. “Steel! Stop this right now!”
“Go away!” I felt a pulse of nasty dark magic that shot straight at Chainbreaker. Much to my relief, the spell bounced off it with no effect. I’d been pretty sure the sword wouldn’t let her do as she pleased with it, but getting a little confirmation was nice. It certainly got her attention. “What is that sword?! Give it to me!”
I was seriously tempted to give it to her blade-first, but I wanted to give her one last chance to stop this from turning into a fight. “I’m going to have to take you into custody for a full investigation. Please don’t make this worse than it needs to be.”
The black veins running through her steel eye pulsed, and she snarled at me like a half-mad beast. “You have no idea how much worse it can get. I can do so much with all those rare metals in that stupid leg of yours, let alone that sword!”
A second later she struck out at my prosthetic, trying to seize control of it. The protective spells I put on it were holding for now, but I wasn’t optimistic about how long they’d hold if I let her just pound away at them.
There was nothing for it now: I had to fight her. “I dealt with Blackfyre. I know levels of bad you couldn’t imagine in your worst nightmares.” I fired off a stunbolt at her, mostly aiming to force her onto the defensive.
I’d been expecting her to use a shield spell, but instead several metal spheres shot out from beneath her rain cloak. One flattened itself into a wide flat plane that easily blocked my bolt while another narrowed itself deadly point before shooting straight at my throat. I tried a force shield to block it, only for the spike to tear straight through. I barely managed to teleport clear before it would’ve buried itself in my throat. “Cold iron?! But that’s—”
“Anathema to unicorn magic,” Steel agreed. “But I’ve long since moved past such a limited view of the magical arts.”
While Steel was busy gloating, Strumming made her move, hurling her special-made throwing spike at the warlock’s back. One of the metal orbs intercepted it, despite Steel never seeing it coming. The orb then immediately shot at Strumming, moving fast enough that it triggered her charm necklace that had been designed to protect against firearms.
“Careful, Strumming!” That amulet Puzzle had gotten her would need a while to recharge, and I wasn’t eager to put it to the test. I needed to keep Steel’s attention on me. Puzzle and Strumming could certainly help in the fight, but they didn’t have all the magical defenses I could conjure up. I hurled a column of solid fire straight at the mad warlock, which did do a pretty good job of keeping her attention squarely on me.
Steel metal orbs swung around and flattened out into shields to deflect and disperse the fire blast. “Go away!” she shrieked, snapping a hoof out and snapping the balls towards me as they narrowed into thin, needle-like points.
I blocked them, this time using chunks of solid ice instead of relying on a purely magical shield. Ice wasn’t as tough as metal, but with the rain I had plenty of moisture to work with. All I needed to do was make the ice thick enough that her attack couldn’t penetrate. I quickly sealed up the holes her attacks punched into my ice wall, aiming to trap her metal spheres so she wouldn’t be able to use them anymore. Ferromancers were a lot easier to handle when they didn’t have any metal to work with.
I took a quick moment to scan the area to make sure we didn’t need to worry about collateral damage. Fortunately, it had already been a rainy day, so the streets weren’t as busy as they normally were. Most of the locals had cleared out as soon as the fight started, and the few whose curiosity overrode their common sense had at least retreated to a safe distance behind cover. I threw a quick ice wall over the tavern, just to make sure everything there stayed in cover and kept their heads down.
That seemed to really set Steel off. “Oh, please! Acting like I’m some kind of monster who’d go around slaughtering bystanders if I don’t protect them.” My ice block shattered, and the metallic spears came hurtling towards me again. This time she spread them out so I wouldn’t be able to catch all of them with a single shield, let alone dodge them. “You’re just like your stupid father!”
“I’m really not.” I teleported clear as the attack came crashing in. Instead of falling back for distance and maneuvering room, I closed in on her and brought Chainbreaker to bear. If I could get in a good hit on her horn I could end this now.
Before I could land the hit, some sort of liquid metal seemed to flow over her, quickly forming itself into the armor and helmet she’d been in the last time I saw her. Chainbreaker left a deep cut into the armor around her horn, but it didn’t go through. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?!” Her orbs came back and formed themselves into four razor-thin blades, and she promptly sent four of them straight at me.
I probably wouldn’t have lasted five seconds in the blade fight that followed if not for using lots of magic and having Chainbreaker. Ice shields blocked any attack that slipped past my defenses, and every time I landed a good parry, Chainbreaker broke or heavily damaged the blade it hit. Steel reformed them in a matter of seconds, but that still bought me a little breathing room. “I’m just trying to get you the help you need!
“I didn’t need Ginger’s help and I didn’t need Solar’s!” She picked up the pace, and I had to block one of the incoming blades with my prosthetic. The adamantium and mithril held up just fine, but it cut clean through the covering. “And I certainly don’t need your help!”
I faked a stagger, pretending that my prosthetic had been damaged by the hit and wasn’t working properly. Steel’s one eye lit up with mad glee, and she sent all four of her blades in to stab me while I was vulnerable. Exactly what I’d been hoping she’d do: now that they were all together, I managed to snag them in an ice block again. This time I promptly teleported it as far away as I could, about a quarter mile out into the harbor.
Steel clenched her teeth. “Clever. But not clever enough.” She punched out at me, the armor around her hoof reshaping itself into a series of brutal spikes. I could’ve intercepted with Chainbreaker, but that might have taken off her hoof in the process. Instead I took the hit on my prosthetic again, leaving several obvious tears in the covering and sending a jolt up my stump.
I growled in pain and countered, hurling a fireball at her from point-blank range. Her armor should keep it from frying her, at least as long as I didn’t keep the heat on her for too long.
Despite being pretty damp, her rain cloak still caught on fire. Steel let out a panicked screech and dropped to the ground, rolling out from underneath the awning and into the rain so she could use that to help put out the fire as well.
For a moment I was tempted to press the attack, but I didn’t want to pound her to a pulp. From the way she’d been acting, she needed a secure mental ward and a daily dose of antipsychotics, not a beating. “Please—just let it stop here. I don’t want to hurt you, but you’re making it very hard to avoid that.”
Her one visible eye narrowed, and she let out a snarl of pure hate. “Don’t lie to me. You think I’m stupid?! I’m not stupid, you’re stupid, just like Solar! You don't want to help me! You just want to throw me in jail, or hang me!” She tossed her head back and let out an especially loud and high-pitched laugh. “Oh yes, I know exactly what your game is! You just want to take down the big bad warlock, the one your father's failed to capture for a decade. That way you can get all the glory for yourself! You looking to become a archmagus too?!”
That was so bafflingly paranoid I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to it. “For the love of—I beat Blackfyre, I don't need to beat you up to prove anything when it comes to being worthy of an Archmagus seat.”
“Then leave me alone!” Steel roared. I heard a loud metallic screech, and a second later, something punched a hole through the ice wall I’d put up over the tavern. From the looks of it, she’d grabbed every single piece of cutlery and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. Also, there were quite a few nails in the mix too. “This is your last warning. Get out of here before I do something we both regret!”
I wasn’t budging. I crossed my forelegs over my chest. “If you’d regret doing it, then don’t do it. I never wanted this fight. All you have to do is just stop, and it’ll be over.”
“No it won’t!” Steel snapped. “They’d lock me up! They wouldn’t let me finish fixing my eye! No—worse, they’d take away the eye I already have! I won’t let you do that to me!” She hurled the mass of sharp, point bits of scrap metal at me. Even if none of them were as razor-sharp as the metal she’d spent more time working, there was a lot of it.
I teleported clear rather than try to block it all. I saw a flash of movement from her, and quickly teleported again before whatever she was trying could hit me. It turned out to be a very smart move, because she’d just tossed the throwing spike Strumming had tried to use on her earlier in the fight. Considering how hard that had dropped Starlight when it hit her, I was very happy not to be on the receiving end of it.
I didn’t have very long to enjoy that near miss, because a second later I saw several metallic blurs zipping in from the harbor. Apparently half a kilometer hadn’t been far enough away. I threw up an ice wall just in time to intercept them, but each impact left massive craters in the ice, and I wasn’t confident I’d be able to hold them off in time.
Diplomacy was almost certainly a lost cause, but it felt wrong to break out my hard-hitting spells without giving her one last chance. “Steel, if you don’t stop this right now I’m going to have to hurt you to make you stop!”
“Stop acting like Solar!” she roared. “Stop it, stop it, stop it! Don’t talk down to me like I’m an unruly foal. I’m your godmother!” She hurled her collection of metal junk at the back side of my ice wall, doing more damage to it. The wall wouldn’t hold much longer against all that pressure from two sides.
Nothing for it then. “Fine! If that’s how it has to be, then that’s how it is!” I teleported to a clear space, started channeling some anima and mixing it with Blightfire for another annihilation blast. This one wasn’t going to be a gentle tap like the one I’d thrown at Solar; I was planning to hit her hard enough to put her down for the count.
A stronger attack would take a bit longer to prepare, which might have been a problem if Steel tried to stop me. However, right now her attention was completely focused on me, which made it the perfect time for Strumming to make a move. Several throwing spikes smacked into her back, and when Steel whirled around to face her one of them bounced off the noseguard right next to her eye hole. That got an enraged and terrified shriek out of her. “How did you do that?!”
Strumming smirked and held up one of her spikes. “Wood-tipped with obsidian. Didn’t see that coming, didja?”
“You threw that at my eye!” Steel screamed. “YOU THREW THAT AT MY EYE!”
“And that’s my cue to run for it.” Strumming bolted a second before a hundred kilos or so of metal slammed into her position. She took to the skies, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and Steel’s four metal orbs, which were all hot on her tail. She pulled a tight dive to buy a little space, but only barely managed to avoid getting a wing clipped in the process. She risked a glance my way. “Little help here Bacon?!”
“I got her!” I fired off the blast, the rippling dark energy of blightfire and pure gold light of anima spiraling around each other as they headed straight for Steel Rose. The warlock spotted the attack coming at the last second and quickly redirected everything away from chasing Strumming to form as much of a barrier between the two of us as she could.
That was fine by me. A direct hit from this had more of a chance of killing her than I was comfortable with. The two conflicting energies slammed into her metal barrier, the impact breaking the careful balance between them and forcing them to mingle. Anima and Blightfire immediately annihilated one another, and the resulting explosion tore her shield to pieces. Most of it was simply gone, and the rest turned into a rain of shrapnel that would’ve been deadly for anyone in the blast radius. Or at least, anyone who wasn’t wearing full body armor. As it was, she still got smacked around and battered pretty badly, and one of the tavern’s forks found a gap in her armor and buried itself into her.
“Way to take the phrase ‘Stick a fork in her’ literally, Bacon,” Strumming commented from her vantage point.
Steel certainly seemed to be struggling to recover from the spell. Her first try at getting back up ended with a pained groan once she realized there was a fork in her legpit. If I’d been out for blood, I could’ve killed her pretty easily.
Instead, I went with a spell I’d seen in action and had been on the receiving end of enough times to know how to use it. I conjured up several chains of pure golden light and sent them in to lock Steel down and finish it.
In hindsight, that was probably not the best spell to use. Steel’s eye snapped back into focus, and she pulled the fork out herself. Evidently her own blood played some part in making those metal orbs of her because she quickly shaped the fork into a new orb and used it to smash the chains to bits far too easily. “Exactly like Solar, you even use his spells!” She reached into her robes and threw out three small objects I recognized all too well after the way my last encounter with her ended: thunderflash stones.
I threw three quick ice domes over the stones before they could go off. Between that and the fact that she was using them outdoors, the blasts were bright and loud instead of blinding and deafening. “No. I’m a lot of things, but I’m definitely not like Solar. I never lied to those I care about, and I’m not half as hung up on you as he is.”
I could hear the snarl in Steel’s voice. “Maybe you’re right. You’re just a ladder climber like your selfish nag of a mother!”
I scoffed. “You don’t even know me, you lunatic!” After all, Scarlett had never been much of a mother to me. Though I suppose she didn’t have the best frame of reference to compare me to Celestia. I hadn’t even started learning under her when Golden snapped, and in any case I was pretty sure Celestia couldn’t use the spell I was planning to break out next. Not that I’d ever used it before, outside of training. I never would’ve tried something like this before Northmarch. Getting an infusion of external magic had opened a few new avenues to explore.
As Steel finally staggered back onto her hooves, I saw a flash of green fire out of the corner of my eye. A second later something impossible happened. Gingersnap rushed past me, looking exactly like he did in the fifteen year old photos. “Golden! Stop!”
Every last piece of metal Steel had been working with hit the ground, and even her helmet and armor faded away as she stared at him in shock. “G—Ginger?! W—wh—what? I—but I...” She stared at him in mute shock, struggling to make any sense of the sight before her.
Ginger—or rather, Puzzle—came to a stop in front of her. “This isn’t you! You’re better than this, you always were! I know what happened was an accident, and you never meant to hurt me. But what you’re doing now ... it’s your choice to do this.”
Steel frantically shook her head. “No, no I—they’re forcing me to do this! I don’t want to hurt anyone, but they aren’t giving me any choice!”
“There’s always a choice,” Puzzle insisted.
Maybe Puzzle could’ve gotten through to her, but I wasn’t going to take that chance. Sooner or later she’d get over the shock of seeing Gingersnap alive again and remember that one of my best friends and my apprentice were both changelings. And even if she didn’t, she wasn’t all that stable to begin with.
I made my move, and shadowy purple bands of energy shot out towards her. One wrapped around each of her limbs and pinned her down, while the last tendril went after her horn. Steel let out a feral screech and started desperately thrashed around like a caged beast, trying to free herself from her bonds.
She tried to pull together a spell, but Puzzle rushed in with a horn ring, slamming it onto her before she could finish whatever spell she was trying. That set her off even harder, one of her flailing limbs smacking Puzzle aside. “No!” she howled. “Nononono! Not again! Not again! Getoffgetoffgetoff!”
“Get clear, bug boy!” Strumming shouted. A second later her other enchanted spike sank into Steel’s now-unarmored flank, sending pulsating crackles of electricity into her. Steel’s screams took on a higher pained pitch, her struggles replaced with the wild convulsions.
While she was completely disabled, I sent the tendrils in to completely lock her down, then sent an extra pulse of power into them so they’d start siphoning off her magic and a very small and carefully measured bit of life energy. I didn’t want to hurt her; just keep her too drained to do anything to fight back.
By the time the charge in Strumming’s throwing spike had spent itself, all the fight had gone out of Steel. She just lay there on the ground, whimpering and trembling. After a couple seconds I realized she was slowly rocking back and forth, tears leaking out of her one eye. “Just let me go. Just let me go, please just let me go...”
“Sorry, but I can’t do that. I'm not Solar.” Normally I would’ve felt some sort of triumph over beating a dangerous warlock, but this just made me feel ... dirty. Steel had done some horrible things, but she wasn’t a monster. Just a sad, broken mare who belonged in a psych ward, getting the treatment she clearly needed to cope with everything she’d been through. Beating a pony like that made me feel more like a bully than a hero, no matter how much I told myself it was the right thing to do. Which it obviously was. Steel—Golden was plainly a danger to both herself and everyone else around her. Still....
Golden continued rocking back and forth along the ground, crying to herself. “Please ... I didn’t mean it Ginger, I didn’t mean it...”
Puzzle dropped the disguise, shifting back to his natural form. “Heartstrings-mare, Shimmer-mare, are you two okay?
“Had a couple close calls, but she never got a solid hit on me,” Strumming answered as she came in for a landing, collecting her weapons.
I nodded. “A little shaken up, but I’m okay.”
“Nice spell to lock her down.” Strumming gave me a quick pat on the back. “That’s a new one.”
“Yeah, I learned it...” I frowned, trailing off. “Can’t remember where I learned it off the top of my head.”
“For the last couple months you’ve had your nose in a book pretty much anytime you weren’t tinkering with the leg.” Strumming shrugged. “Probably in one of them.”
Puzzle ignored our chatter, looking down at the broken shell of a mare we’d just defeated. “Almost hard to believe she’s caused so much trouble for over a decade.”
“Yeah...” I tugged at the bonds, trying to get her back on her hooves. “She’s ... I think Ginger had the right idea. She belongs in a secure psych ward, and on medication. Who knows? Maybe a few years of therapy and a lot of antipsychotics can get her back to her old self. It’ll certainly do a lot more good for her than getting chased around by Solar.”
“This one is inclined to agree.” Puzzle grimaced. “Something is very wrong with her. This one isn’t a doctor, but if it had to guess we're dealing with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, possibly with some bipolar disorder as well.” He shrugged. “But that’s for a professional to decide. This one’s knowledge of psychology is limited to what it’s gleaned from reading psych profiles its sources have obtained.”
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised Puzzle had gone through a few psych profiles. The only question was if he stole them from a doctor’s office, or had someone he hired to make them. Probably both. And he almost certainly had one on me.
I finally managed to get Golden standing up, even if she was barely more than a puppet dangling from her bonds. “At least now we can get her the help she needs.”
“At least that.” Puzzle sighed, then nodded off to the side. A quick glance confirmed that some of the dock guards had come to investigate now that all the noise had stopped. A few years ago, I probably would’ve been annoyed at them for sitting the fight out, but honestly that was the smart thing to do under the circumstances. “This one will talk with the condottieri to explain to them what happened.” Puzzle offered. “Can you get her back to the tower without this one?”
“Yeah, it should be fine for the moment, though I do I need to get her back to my tower for a more permanent lockdown.” The spell I had on her was a pretty good one, but once she pulled herself together enough to start thinking ... well she’d been one of the top researchers of her generation of magi, and was good enough to keep away from an Archmage. I wouldn’t count on any spell holding her indefinitely, and she could swing from docile to fighting with no warning.
“Might be a good idea to hire some guards for her and dear old dad,” Strumming suggested. “Not saying your spells aren’t good, but Solar’s an Archmagus, and I’m pretty sure she’s at about that level when all the neurons fire the right way. I’d want someone keeping an eye on them all day, every day until the Equestrian magi come pick them up.”
“Probably a good idea,” I agreed. Capturing her once had been hard enough, even if the mare in front of me now was a far cry from the one who’d been fighting like a demon a few minutes ago. I gently started guiding her towards my tower. “It’s over now, Golden.”
She tried to rub away some of her tears onto her shoulder since she couldn’t use her limbs while they were all bound. Her eyes flicked down to my prosthetic; quite a bit of the metal was showing after all the damage it had taken during the fight. I quickly tugged my cloak around to hide it from any casual passers-by. “How do you live with it, Sunset?” she asked, her voice a quiet, broken thing. “How do you ... You're as hurt as I am. How do you keep going?”
I thought about my answer. “It wasn’t easy. I definitely made some bad decisions.” That sounded like a gross understatement, considering I’d assigned myself a mission that was pretty much a suicide attempt dressed up as heroic martyrdom. “I guess ... I suppose I had good friends to help get me back on track whenever I lost my way.”
“Oh.” Golden’s ears wilted. “That ... I had a friend who tried to help me once. I killed him.”
“There’s still Solar.” I let out a soft snort. “He spent over a decade of his life on this, abandoned his family, destroyed his career, and is probably going to end up going to jail all because he wanted to do whatever it took to help you. I can’t say much for his judgment or sense of priorities, but that sounds like a very good friend to me.”
Golden didn’t say anything else for the rest of the walk back to my tower. I’d like to think that I’d given her something to hold onto, maybe even the first step in a very long road to recovery. Maybe that was just wishful thinking, but I wanted to believe it was true.
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Okay I won't lie I listened to The Stains of Time from Metal Gear Rising Revengeance the whole time I was reading this chapter. I kinda feel sorry for the poor broken mare, but yeah, Solar really messed up by not getting help to bring her in.
OOooooOOOoooo...... interesting.
Golden has a point. Would she haven gotten a fair trial in the past? We saw what Scarlet was willing to go to to get Sunset back. Magi politics prevented her getting the help she needed
9798348
Definitely, getting cought by Sunset might be the best thing to happen to her in a long while. As Sunset is the magus from a different country, and one with a direct line to Celestia, Golden should be able to bypass the politics and get help.
Though, if Solar is going to brake himself and Golden out, it's going to be after that exchange happens on the way back to Equestria.
9798383
Yeah. We will see
Is it wrong that I kind of want to see Sunset lose badly sometime soon?
There is only so many times I see "I beat Blackfyre" before I get tired of it.
I hope she recovers. Early on I was thinking there might be a way for her to stay here as a prisoner and eventually be a magus of freeport under Sunset. I suppose that can still happen in the future. I'm curious where you take her and Sunset's father in any case. Keep it up. Great story.
9798449
Its been one story.
Wow, Golden is really not sane. Even if most or all of the backstory she is selling here is true, she's still quite possibly unrecoverable.
Yeah, she's nuts.
Huh.
Hey, maybe.
It was probably best that Sunset be the one to take Golden Aster/Steel Rose into custody. She is and never was a Equestrian Magus, so she doesn't have those politics effecting her judgement. I'd see most of them wanting to avenge a dead colleague, whether they knew Ginger or not. Even though her father was involved, even though Golden was her godmother, Sunset was far more impartial than anyone currently involved.
I hope they don't try and send both prisoners out on the same ship. Just a hunch that Golden would find some way of sinking the ship as a desperate move. There's one way to tie up that loose end.
I like to see just how much Sunset has evolved over the Venture series. She was a hot headed arrogant filly, now a far more mature mare with a few problems here and there that she is willing to admit she has. Here she acted exactly as a magus should; go for the capture, but be ready to end it if needed.
So that's Golden's side of the story. She's a lot more broken that I thought she might be. Hoping Sunset can actually keep her and Solar contained in her tower until it's time to hand them over to Equestria. I doubt Solar is going to try anything considering he surrendered, but if Steel recovers it could be messy.
This is why I like you, Strumming.
Maybe getting a power boost from Torch and Ushabti came with new knowledge of spells too?
9798478
It's still considered a country by Equestria so that's a thing.
And now to make things really screwed up, the Archmagi that comes to pick these two up? Its gotta be Sunsets own mother. Or Celestia.
I'm not sure if Sunset should have just had someone try to snipe Golden from the start but fortunately this was still a relatively contained battle. Golden says she wasn't going to kill anyone for her dark magic ritual but its clear she has serious issues, not to mention even saying her name sets her off. Golden doesn't seem completely too far gone but refusing blame for everything she's done? Politics aside, she (and Solar) need rest.
Doesn't help that Sunset's mere existence sets off a few of her buttons. She still sees herself as Sunset's godmother but as Scarlett's daughter, yeah. And a life-draining spell? Maybe she got more than just a boost to her magic from Chainbreaker.
I like it when Sunset has backup for her battles. Annoying personality aside, Strumming is definitely competent at that at least. I hope the story wraps up soon, the whole situation is already pretty tragic.
9798757
Can't be Scarlett, she would be far, far to invested. Also I think she is still helping fix things up north.
Could be one of Twi's though, right?
9798846
To invested is a garuntee but she would have one advantage to a magus from Canterlot. She is a lot closer as she is working much closer. And at this point speed might be essential in getting the prisoners to Canterlot.
So, Golden turned out to be Starlight 2.0. I seriously doubt a mare so unstable could have got away for so long without Solar's help.
9798932
Closer? Scarlett should still be in Northmarch, isn't that in the other side of Equestria from Freeport?
9798976
From the previous series and the first story it seems like that you go through Northmarch to get Equestria. Sunset left Equestria proper and went to Northmarch before going to Freeport. Doesnt make sense but we would and really need a map to figure it out.
9799029
9798976
Northmarch is to the North of Equestria, while Freeport is about halfway across the ocean to the east. Sunset was in Northmarch before going to Freeport because she was pretty much just wandering aimlessly; if her goal was to get to Freeport she could’ve gotten a ship out of Manehattan or Baltimare quite easily, and the journey would’ve been a bit shorter since Freeport’s quite a bit further south than Northmarch.
**MISSION CLEAR**
Void tendrils seem like a Torch thing to me. Good to see that having some extra people in her head is working out for her.
I'm torn between thinking we only have some resolution to go, or that this is only the end of act 2.
That's rarely a good sign. If I had to guess, I'd say she picked it up from one of her headmates. Not Sunset's first brush with necromancy.
In any case... yeah, this is a tragedy right here. Golden's obsession and paranoia were likely there even before she started delving into dark magic, and Solar's enabling didn't help. Now it's a question of what will go wrong before the two can be extradited. My money's on Solar attempting a twofold jailbreak.
Sunset really did her best to do right by Golden, even when she had every excuse to just charge in there and arrest her or even kill her as no one would have blamed her for 'stopping a deadly warlock'. Instead, she heard her out, understood that Golden had gone off the mental deep end since she lost her eye, (and probably had undiagnosed problems before that), and tried everything she could to incapacitate her so that she could be sent to a psych ward for some proper help. I understand how Sunset felt like a bully doing so considering the lengths she had to go to put her on lock down, but it was the best thing she could do in a bad situation.
I'm so proud of Sunset, she's matured so much. I'm not crying, a rogue piece of onion hit one of my remaining eyes.
That is concerning ....
So Golden is obsessed with regaining her eye, and quite possibly bi-polar, paranoid and suffering from PTSD. Doesn't mean her take on her chances of a fair trial were wrong, but it also doesn't excuse her crimes as a warlock.
9798846
IIRC wasn't Velvet an archmagus by the present time of the show? Not sure if she'll be the one to pick him up, but I wouldn't be surprised if Solar Shimmer's disgrace was what cleared the way for her to ascend to his office.
9806569
I think she used to be the Archmagus of Canterlot, but she eventually retired and took over the Sealed Repository to spend more time with her family.
9801523
I also notice another detail I don't think anyone's picked up on - she absently sets that spell to draining her magic, sure, okay - and a 'small bit of life energy'.
It could just be me, but 'life energy' is just one of those things that, say, necromancy tends to wield. And not something I recall Sunset or anypony wielding before.
Extra word here.