Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Revw

"What?"

Firecracker propped themself up with a leg. "There's someone on top of the Behemoth," they repeated, then they coughed into a wing.

The doctor approached them. "Please, try to relax," he said. "You should lay down and not exert yourself right now, we need to make sure you're okay."

"I'll be fine," the pegasus said, then they coughed again. "I'll be fine. Let me talk to Twilight." They waved their other wing, as if to shoo the stallion.

"He's right," said Twilight, lowering herself towards the pegasus. "We don't know what happened to you and you should lay down. You can talk to me, but please don't do anything reckless. We still don't know what falling through the Weave might have done to you, much less being so close to the Behemoth." A part of her wanted to shake answers out of the pony. A louder and much more reasonable one knew that their safety was more important.

Firecracker seemed to accept the idea, and lay back down. "It'll pass," they said. "I'm already feeling better. And falling through was fine." They looked to the other pegasus in the room, who'd been quietly and worriedly watching them. "It took a bit before all of me made it through, but it didn't hurt me. He said it was like I wasn't fully there at the start."

"Who said that?" Twilight asked, unable to hold back her curiosity that far.

Firecracker silently looked to the ceiling for a moment. "He called himself the Charioteer, or something else, too. He was... He looked like an earth pony, a regular stallion. He said he's been there all along. He's the one who's telling the Behemoth where to go." The pegasus looked back towards Twilight. "He said he was waiting for someone to find him. I think he's waiting for you to go to him, now."

Twilight bit the corner of her lower lip, as thoughts rushed through her head. "How does he tell that thing where to go?" she asked, while her brain worked through all the information.

Firecracker gave a small smile at that. "Reins," they simply replied.

All of Twilight's thoughts screeched to a brief halt just so she could allow herself a bewildered chuckle. "Of course. Why not. Giant potentially extradimensional creature that breaks all laws of physics and magic that arrived out of nowhere and has drastically warped the world since then, and it's driven by a pony using reins. I've seen weirder."

"You have?" asked the other mare.

"You know what? I've been around Discord for a while and Pinkie Pie for longer. And another Pinkie Pie, on occasion. I probably have."

Firecracker swallowed, their breath sharper for a moment, then they seemed to relax again. "If it makes it less weird, those reins looked a lot like the Behemoth itself. And going by how hard they hit I'd say they were way heavier than they looked."

Twilight still had a number of questions swirling around in her head. But looking at Firecracker, and hearing what they had just said, she decided those could wait until they were sure the pegasus had fully recovered. She sighed. "We'll continue this conversation later. Now excuse me, there's a new protective spell I need to design. It's about time I figured how to get close to the Behemoth, anyway."