Chapter 26: The Seed of Giving
It had been three days.
Foxfire slammed the backdoor of Iron Heart’s house shut with a back kick that rattled the door frame and shook the windows. Curious as to the cause of the disturbance, Foxfire’s husband lifted his head from the cup of coffee he had been drinking in the living room. His wife was known for fully embracing her emotions, and was definitely not a mare, or previously a woman, who had a reputation for a lack of passion.
The unicorn’s burning gaze fell full upon those of her beloved, and to his credit, Iron Heart did not shrink or flinch from what should have burned him down on the spot, but the shared look did keep him from moving his eyes down further, until his wife-to-be turned away to open the fridge and the movement caused the end of the rope around her neck to sway back and forth.
“What the hell?” Iron Hoof demanded with a start, getting off the couch, before the twin laser turrets of Foxfire’s eyes speared him once again.
“Don’t,” Foxfire commanded, holding up a hoof and stopping her husband cold. The slim unicorn took a deep breath, nodded in satisfaction at the stallion’s obedience, and then without taking her eyes away from him drank down a full liter of milk. She drank in slow, even gulps, her ivory neck fur rubbing against the dark braided cord of the lariat whose snapped off end had been what had drawn Iron Heart’s eye.
Iron Heart took those moments to visually examine his wife. Her fur on one side was matted and dirty, as if she had lain or more likely been pushed into the ground, but beyond that Foxfire appeared to be physically fine. That and the remains of the rope on the unicorn told the massive earth pony all he needed to know, and he felt a matching fury begin to rise in his breast.
“You were attacked,” Iron Heart stated, as the last of the milk slid down Foxfire’s throat.
“I was attacked,” Foxfire confirmed, crushing the milk container in the normally weak grip of her magic, the only other sign of her distress was a tail that would simply not stop lashing back and forth. “Some yahoo thought he could get away with some unicorn rustling.”
“Where is he?” was all that Iron Heart asked, with a voice that reminded Foxfire of how a mountain sounded right at the beginning of an avalanche, gaining her mate a grim smile of approval.
“Arrested, and in jail by now,” Foxfire said, putting down what was left of her drink and idly noting that she was starting to shake a bit. “It all happened so fast.”
“Come to the couch, and let me get that… thing, off of you,” Iron Heart said, worry slowly replacing anger.
“What thing?” Foxfire asked, confused before following Iron Heart’s pointing hoof. “Oh… I didn’t even realize it was there.”
“Dear, c’mon. Let’s get you to the couch,” Iron Heart repeated, and he couldn’t help but flinch as Foxfire’s bronze falchion appeared, slicing the braided noose in half so it could fall free, along with a few drops of blood brought into being by the unicorn’s haste to free herself.
Foxfire’s shaking was becoming full body spasms by now, and her blade clattered to the kitchen floor. Iron Heart sprang into action, half-nudging and half-carrying his wife to the nearby couch where he wrapped her in a throw blanket and lay beside her, letting the warmth of his body and his presence reassure her as he endlessly reminded her that she was safe, protected, and loved.
Even so, it was long, long minutes of quiet nuzzles and soft words before the last of the tremors subsided, and as the trickle of blood slowed and stopped Foxfire found herself able to speak and think coherently again.
“It was just so fast,” she said, almost absently. “One minute I was walking back with some bread from the store, the next I was flying backwards.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it,” Iron Heart said, laying his head against her shoulder.
“I remember lying on my side wondering why a man I had never seen before was doing something to my legs,” Foxfire continued, as if Iron Heart had never spoken. “And then the sword was there, and I could move again.”
The unicorn’s head turned and two pairs of eyes met eyes again.
“My sword was there, and there was fire in my heart, and the ropes fell away. I was on my hooves again, and he was begging for mercy,” Foxfire said, and Iron Heart could see an echo of flames in her eyes. “You were there with me, through the sword, and then the soldiers came, and I left them to come home. And you know the rest.”
“I’m here,” Iron Heart confirmed. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” Foxfire replied, ears flat. “Sorry, just needed to get it all out.”
“It’s okay,” Iron Heart was saying, as the front doorbell rang.
“Iron Heart! Are you home? Is Foxfire with you?” came the tense voice of Captain Malinski through the door.
“We’re both here,” Iron Heart called back.
“Can I come in?” Malinski asked.
“Just you,” Foxfire yelled back. “I’m not up to seeing anyone else.”
“Okay, just me then,” Malinski stated loudly, following a muffled byplay on the other side of the entrance.
A moment later the door opened, and the tall form of Captain Malinski entered. Neither Foxfire nor Iron Heart had seen him in days and the pair exchanged a puzzled look as the man’s forward movement betrayed the swishing motion of green and gold hair behind his thighs.
“Are you okay?” Malinski asked, stopping a few feet away from the couple. “My people told me what happened and said you ran off before they could check on you.”
“Just shaken up a bit. It just… happened so fast. I’m supposed to be this big scary unicorn and I got taken down by a cowboy with a rope,” Foxfire answered, punctuating her statement with a mirthless chuckle.
“Foxfire… For all that you and your family have done, all of you are still civilians. You aren’t supposed to have combat reactions, you aren’t supposed to need them.” Malinski said, voice apologetic.
“Who are they?” Iron Heart asked, his own backswept ears punctuating the hard bunches of muscles under his night black fur.
“American. Supposedly accredited as a pedologist here to study the soil around Brightly and especially that around the Tree,” both ponies could hear the capital letter in the captain’s words. “He’s in RCMP custody now, charged with assault and attempted kidnapping. Or at least he will be, once Medevac finishes treating him for his burns.”
“Burns?” Foxfire asked, the word poking a half memory into being. “But I didn’t… did I?”
“According to witnesses your sword lit up like a miniature sun when you fended him off, and the heat from it resulted in first degree burns over most of the part of his body that was facing you,” the captain sighed. “And this was the third and worst incident today.”
“I thought your people were supposed to keep us safe?” Iron Heart growled.
“We’re… we’re being overwhelmed,” Malinski admitted, spreading his hands. “Ever since Trudeau’s speech people of every scientific discipline have been pouring in, with more on their way and my people are warfighters. We’re special forces, not guards, and much as it pains me to say it, we aren’t trained for this.”
“I’m going to ask Darrell to call for a session of the BAZ council,” Foxfire decided, turning to action as a way to dispel the hold of the attack on her mind. “We’ve got to close the border, or at least set some kind of limit on the number of people coming into town.”
“You’ll have my support,” Malinski answered, fervently. “Especially if we can include some sort of screening criteria. We’ve got to do something before we really do lose someone.”
“Somepony,” Iron Heart corrected, adding, “Thunder told me that’s how Equestrian ponies refer to themselves.”
“Captain, can I ask you a question?” Foxfire asked, seizing on another diversion.
“Of course,” answered Malinski.
“Why do you have a tail?” Foxfire asked, with a small smirk. “And a rather nice tail at that.”
“Noticed it did you?” sighed the captain. “After Pumpkin Spice—”
“Who?” both ponies asked in unison.
“Warrant Officer Ram, officially aka ‘Recon’, but her callsign is ‘Pumpkin Spice’ due to her colouring and an accident with a drink. Callsigns usually come from embarrassing moments and Ram’s is no exception,” explained the captain with a small chuckle. “Anyway, she gave me the remains of the apple that transformed her, and while doing some things with it I was an idiot and licked some of its juice off my fingers.”
“This is the start of what happened,” Malinksi finished, standing and turning to show his green tail with its gold accents.
“Start?” Foxfire pushed, catching the important word.
“I thought a tail was all that was going to happen, as every previous transformation has been over and done in instants, but it seems I was wrong,” sitting down on a recliner across from the pony pair, he swept out his tail beside him in an automatic gesture to make sure he didn’t sit on it.
As the couple watched, the soldier who was the commander of their protectors carefully unlaced a regulation boot and slid out a foot that was covered in a combination of duct tape and multiple socks. The whole of it looking somewhat boneless. Reaching down and pulling with a flourish, the covering of socks tore free to reveal not a foot, but a hoof. From where the ankle bone should have been there extended a perfectly formed fetlock, pastern and hoof.
“I woke up to a pair of these this morning,” Captain Malinski said in a controlled voice. “I really could use some advice on what comes next.”
It had been three days.
Three days of everypony… everyone clustering around the three castaways. Three days of sympathy and gifts and too many bodies. Thunder and Windweaver did their best to shield the Cutie Mark Crusaders, but on the third day Apple Bloom just found herself having to move, to find somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t a cluster of people.
“Look Recon, Ah know yer just doing yer job, but Ah just wanna be alone right now,” stated the earth pony to the pegasus who had immediately swung in behind her as she left the house.
“There’s been some incidents and my job is to keep you safe, not happy,” Recon replied, standing firm. A stance that began to wither under the baleful gaze of a pair of sad eyes and a trembling lip. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Please Recon? Ah just need some space is all. There’s too many folks in there and it’s like Ah cain’t breathe,” begged the small yellow pony.
“I get that Apple Bloom, and I can give you some space… just not as much as I would like to,” admitted the brown coated pegasus, ears drooping slightly.
“What’s wrong?” asked Apple Bloom, concerned.
“Can’t fly,” answered the pegasus with a calm voice that gave the lie to the sadness in her yellow eyes. ”The magic from the apple wore off around dawn the next day. I’m still a pony, and I can glide and even fly in short hops. But soaring like I did that first day? Gone.”
“Guess that explains why Skylark an’ Darter are so mopey too. It’ll come back, it just might take awhile,” the little pony assured her, closing in for a quick hug. “And if you cain’t fly, you may as well come along.”
“Thank you,” Recon replied, clearing her throat. “Any idea where we’re going?”
The small Crusader took a moment to think, rubbing her chin in thought as she did so.
“The tree, Ah think,” Apple Bloom answered. “It’s the closest thing around to Equestria, and Ah wanna feel something from home. Besides, Seeker said she was gonna be there.”
“Sounds good, let me just call this in so they know where we are,” stated the pegasus, tapping the key of the microphone attached to her radio. “This is… this is Pumpkin Spice. Show me enroute from Rohan to Isengard with Scarlet. We expect to meet Gypsy there.”
“Roger that. Be advised there is a disturbance on the main street. Suggest you head straight up the road from your current position,” crackled a quick reply.
“Understood. Pumpkin Spice out,” replied Recon, releasing the key with a growl.
“Whose Scarlet, and Eye-sin-what?” Apple Bloom asked, as the pair started walking up the street.
The sun was high, and the day was warm without even a breath of wind while several seconds passed with only the clopping of hooves and the distant roar of a lawnmower to interrupt the quiet. Apple Bloom was about to ask her question again when Recon spoke up.
“Those are call-signs and code names,” Recon finally replied, taking a moment to shake herself from mane to tail. Even her wings fluffed out for a moment, and afterwards the pegasus seemed more in control of herself. “Just in case someone breaks the encryption on our comms, everyone and every place in town has been given a code name or a call sign. Something we can easily recognize and say on a radio, but a stranger would have no idea what we were talking about.”
“So Ah’m… ‘Scarlet’?” came the question. Apple Bloom having parsed at least that much of Recon’s transmission.
“Because of that red bow you always have in your mane,” Recon informed the little pony at her side. “Seeker is ‘Gypsy’ because she sees things like a gypsy fortune teller with a crystal ball and I’m ‘Pumpkin Spice’ because of how I look.”
“And the other name?” continued the earth pony, unwilling to try her tongue on the odd name again.
“Captain Malinski is a big fan of ‘Lord of the Rings’, so he changed all the important place names around here to have names from that,” Recon answered, pausing for a moment to look both ways before she crossed a small intersection. There was some sort of disturbance visible a few blocks toward Brightly’s main street, so Recon made sure to hustle her charge away at right angles to whatever was going on.
“Your place has the code name ‘Rohan’, the Tree is ‘Isengard’, Foxfire’s house is Lothlorien and Iron Heart’s is ‘Moria’,” Recon continued, finishing with, “Oh, and the town itself is ‘Mordor’.”
“More doors? What kinda name is that?” Apple Bloom asked, tilting her head in curiosity.
“Something English, I think,” Recon responded, continuing up the street and breathing a small sigh of relief at seeing the beginning of the open scrubland that marked the end of the built up section of town and the start of “old” Brightly.
Apple Bloom, in search of quiet, did her best to avoid the now dozen or so archaeological digs in the old part of Brightly. Every university and scholarly institute that could have sent, or was sending, teams to try to find more magical treasures that had been lost in the great fire that had signalled the death knell of the town’s industrial economy.
More than once the earth pony might have lost her way to her destination, only for Recon to point out the right direction with the aid of a military GPS unit. It took the duo some time, but eventually they found the secluded sylvan glade that held the magical apple tree, only to be immediately accosted by an armed soldier and his partner.
“What are you doing here?” Apple Bloom asked, curious.
“Making sure no one tried anything stupid. Again,” replied the armed man, the small smirk on his face aimed toward his fellow soldier.
“Last I knew, I outranked you, Hicks,” Ram said evenly to the lead man of the guard detail.
“Yes Ma’am,” responded Hicks, bracing to attention. “I meant more stupid. Like the idiots who showed up yesterday trying to breach the tree’s dome with a crude demolition device.”
“They did what?!” shouted Ram, incredulous.
“Didn’t even scratch the ground,” replied the soldier. “If anything, I’d say the shield is stronger than it was, and we arrested the idiots. They’re on a flight back to Europe. Passports revoked and everything.”
“Tree’s scared,” came the quiet voice of Seeker, sitting off to one side just at the edge of the treeline. “Real scared.”
“What’s wrong?” Apple Bloom asked.
Together Apple Bloom and Recon trotted over toward the small red pony and as they approached both of them could see that Seeker’s eyes were fixed on the tree behind them and continually shifting in the manner that Recon knew marked when the pony was using her powers to see far beyond the normal visual spectrum.
“Thomething scared the tree. More than once,” Seeker said, and as the approaching pair reached Seeker they could see that not only were her eyes in motion, but the gladius at her side was filled with rippling waves of light.
“What are you seeing, Seeker?” Recon asked softly, settling down on the same side of Seeker that the gladius was on, while Apple Bloom took the opposite side.
“Threes,” answered the pony distantly, eyes fixed forward.
“Command, be advised we may have a Code Gandalf underway at Isengard with Gypsy and Scarlet,” Recon transmitted, in a tight, controlled voice.
“Oh shit,” replied the guard and his partner, hearing the radio call. The pair began to back away from the tree, their eyes scanning for threats in every direction.
“What threes, Seeker?” prodded Apple Bloom. “You kin tell us, unless it’s a secret. Cause ya gotta keep secrets.”
“Three diamonds, three balloons, three butterflies, and three apples,” Seeker said absently, squinting a bit. “And there’s a lightning bolt with them, and a big star behind them all.”
“Those are cutie marks!” Apple Bloom nearly shouted, wide eyes going even wider, until Recon thought that they would cover the young pony’s eyes entire face. “That’s Applejack’s cutie mark, an’ Rarity’s, an’ the others, an’ I bet that’s Twilight’s cutie mark behind ‘em all.”
“And now they’re gone back into a tree behind the tree. A tree made out of glass,” Seeker continued. “The apple tree wants to be like the glass tree. I can see it. But it needs thomething.”
“What does it need, Seeker?” Recon asked, locking her mic key open so that everyone could hear what was going on. “What does the tree need?”
“More magic,” Seeker said, words tumbling out. “It’s scared ‘cause cold hurt it, and people keep trying to hurt it, and it’s using all it’s got just to stay safe, but it misses the birds and squirrels and ponies and wind and rain and…”
“Hey, it’s okay. We’re gonna help. The Cutie Mark Crusaders always help out,” Apple Bloom stated, pride in her voice. “How do we get more magic for the tree?”
“Me,” Seeker stated, getting up to her hooves, and without a word, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, the sword rose up beside her. “The tree needs me and my magic.”
“All points, Code Gandalf confirmed at my position. Get 'Tempest' here now,” Recon said into her mic; While doing her best to avoid the preternatural blade, the pegasus moved to stand in front of the small earth pony. “Hold up, Seeker. Let’s wait until your mother gets here.”
“No, the tree needs me now,” declared Seeker, walking straight toward Recon.
Recon was nearly twice Seeker’s height and despite the lightness of pegasus bones in relation to those of an earth pony, also outmassed the filly by a large margin as well. So it was with a shock straight to her core that Recon found herself being simply pushed back by Seeker’s deliberate pace forward. Bracing her hooves did nothing. Flaring then pumping her wings did even less.
The power of an earth pony was in full evidence, made even more frightening by the fact that Seeker still had her eyes focused on the tree, not even looking at Recon in spite of their head to chest contact.
“Don’t make me hurt you Seeker,” pleaded Recon, using a wing to pull out a stun gun. “I don’t want to do this.”
The earth pony made no reply except to continue to push Recon backwards, who in desperation, swung the stun gun forward…
And the sword moved.
Pieces of metal and plastic fell sparking to the ground, along with the tips of a few green feathers as the distance from the tree’s shield to the pair closed to within a few meters.
“Fine, we do this the hard way,” Recon stated in a firm voice.
The combat veteran jumped back as far as she could, to the point where the strands of her tail were touching the rainbow shield that Seeker was inexorably walking towards in that maddeningly deliberate pace. Now with just enough space to gain momentum, Recon leaped back toward Seeker in a spinning front kick that had a speed even Rainbow Dash would have been proud of.
Recon flew through the air, only to find herself batted sideways by the flat of the gladius, and the combined energies of her kick and the sword’s impact caused her to land almost back at the treeline where it had all started. Apple Bloom helped pull a shaken Recon back to her hooves as Seeker’s sword sliced open a gap in the mystic barrier around the tree.
“Tell Mom and Rowey I love them,” Seeker asked, passing through the barrier which promptly closed up behind her.
To Be Continued...
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It's painfully obvious the codeword for the CMC's have to be hobbits. Because reasons.
Darn! It's gone on hiatus just when we were building up to something. Nice chapter.
Have fun with every one of your projects.