H A Z E

by Bandy

Chapter 11

“It was like a face made of faces,” Hypha said to Red and Blue. “Every face of every ancestor I’d ever had came together into one. And they were all glaring at me.”

Red horked down a third piece of sweet bread. “That’s crazy.”

Blue, who sat next to her, nodded in agreement before bringing her bowl of beet soup to her lips and slurping the whole thing down.

Listening to them chew made Hypha feel nauseous. He looked down at the lump of cold white rice sitting before him. He wanted to eat, but the Canary’s Cage variant of mother sky had completely ruined his appetite.

“Did you find anything in those documents you took from Median?” he asked.

Red scrunched up her nose. “Nah. We were hoping there’d be more court logs and travel records, but it was mostly birth certificates. And we already knew Blue’s dad wasn’t born in that backwater. If he was, he wouldn’t be who he is.”

“Who is he, anyway?”

Red gauged the look on Blue’s face, and sensing some hesitation from her marefriend, went back to eating without answering.

After a while, Hypha cleared his throat. “I think... I think it’s over. I don’t know where I’m gonna go next, but you don’t have to help me anymore.”

“Cool, that was always the plan.” Red noticed the sullen look on his face. “Hey, c’mon, don’t get so down. Ponies die all the time.” Blue elbowed Red in the ribs. Red hacked up the last bite of her sweet bread and flashed an annoyed look at her companion. “What I’m trying to say is, we’re sorry things didn’t work out. At least you tried.”

Blue nodded and went over to the food line to get another place. When she got back, she placed a piece of sweet bread in front of Hypha and motioned for him to eat. It stuck to the roof of his dry mouth, but he didn’t puke it up after the first bite. Baby steps.

As they left the cafeteria, Red pulled him aside.

A big group of travelers had just emerged from one of the big buildings opposite them—the group therapy building, Prairie Sky called it. Orange-vested workers moved between them, balancing water glasses on big plastic trays. Their conversation floated by on a faint breeze. The few puffy clouds overhead stool perfectly still. A hint of baking bread emanated from the mess hall.

“Is there a celibacy thing here?” Red asked.

Her question took Hypha by surprise. “A what?”

“A celibacy thing. You know.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I dunno. There’s no spell barrier or something, where if we—you know—” She bumped her hooves together. “I’m not gonna like, magically explode or anything. Am I?”

“Who’s we?”

“Not you, idiot.”

Hypha furrowed his brow. “Well, monks are only allowed to breed during full moons—”

“But I’m not a monk. So will I explode or not?”

Hypha considered Red’s question for a long time. “No,” he finally said, “I don’t think you’ll explode. But it would probably be prudent to abstain from doing anything that might be seen as disresp—”

Red grabbed Blue’s hoof. The two galloped towards the dormitory building at breakneck pace.

---

Prairie Sky found Hypha sitting atop the temple dome, lying on his back and staring into space with half-lidded eyes.

“You okay?” Prairie Sky called from the lip of the dome.

Hypha rolled his head slowly. “Yeah.” He paused. “Should I get down from here?”

“No, that’s fine. Most ponies choose not to sit on the temple, but it’s not forbidden.”

Nothing’s forbidden, Hypha thought to himself. Not here.

“Can I join you?”

Hypha shrugged. “Sure.”

Prairie Sky settled down beside Hypha. “I have a somewhat personal question. If you don’t want to answer, I understand.”

“Sure.”

“Did you partake in the mushroom ritual back in the mountains? Before...”

Hypha rolled a few responses around in his head before settling on a curt, “I did. It was a horrible mistake.”

Prairie Sky attempted to conceal a smile. “But you did it.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“A quarter of a gram. Maybe more. They weren’t dried, so it’s hard to say for sure what the actual dosage was.”

“How did my mother sky compare to the real deal?”

Hypha’s snout wrinkled. “What?”

“Were the visuals similar? Was the feeling the same? I’ve been using my own crop for so long, I’ve forgotten what the original feels like.”

Hypha considered getting up and leaving. Mother sky wasn’t a party drug. It wasn’t ergotized wine or hash. It was a sacred moment. But Prairie Sky had shown him nothing but kindness since the moment he arrived. Maybe information could repay that kindness.

“With yours, the visuals were stronger. It felt like I died, and everything was just gone, and I was moving around in the middle of the night with no lights. I felt hollow.” Prairie Sky nodded, silently urging him on. “With the mountain mushrooms, the visuals were less intense, but my whole body felt full of magic. Yours didn’t do that.”

“Yes. Wow. That’s significant.” Prairie Sky could no longer contain his excitement. “Thank you for your candor, Hypha.”

“Why’s that significant?”

“It confirms what I’ve been feeling for years. There are discreet differences between the mushrooms I cultivate and the originals. Mine produce a stronger sensory experience, but they don’t enhance magic as much.”

Hypha scoffed. “There’s no magic in them at all.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of magic. You wouldn’t believe the power in these things. They’ve cured addictions, released terminal patients from their suffering, forged bonds between strangers—that’s magic.”

Prairie Sky took one of Hypha’s front hooves and held it up to get a better look at it. Hypha flinched, but didn’t withdraw.

“How’d it happen?” Prairie Sky asked.

“Crash landing.” Hypha almost told him about the botched rune spell too, but he held that detail back.

“Have they shown any sign of improvement?”

“Why do you care?”

“My calling in this life is to ease the pain of others.” He glanced at the bare muscle fibers where Hypha’s hoof used to be. “That looks painful.”

Hypha sighed. “It’s not that bad. I don’t know if the right one will ever grow back. The left one—” He examined the spiderweb of cracks in the keratin. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll fix itself.”

“We have something that might accelerate the healing.”

Hypha lifted an eyebrow. “You know healing magic?”

“The spells I know aren’t powerful enough to heal injuries this severe. But there are other ways.”

“Like what?”

“I want to try putting you in one of our mineral baths.” Perhaps sensing Hypha’s hesitation, he continued, “They’re meant to treat minor aches and pains, but I think if we combine the spells I know with the restorative magic of the bath, we might see some good results.”

Hypha considered the offer. He didn’t want outsider help if it could be avoided. But right now, he could barely hold a cup, let alone exact revenge. Perhaps in this case, a compromise needed to be made.

Another compromise, he reminded himself bitterly.

---

The seamless integration of white tiling into tan rocks gave the impression that the spa room had been here since the beginning of time. As Hypha watched, two orange-vested ponies filled a basin with steaming hot water, then stirred in several cups of sparkling blue mineral salts. The water frothed, hissed, then turned cloudy.

His hooves went numb the instant they touched the water. There was a faint throb of pain further up his arm, then nothing.

“It’s dangerous how much you idolize the order,” Prairie Sky said. He knelt before Hypha and started drawing a rune on top of the water. “I can’t lie though, it’s also inspiring.”

Hypha nodded. “Some things demand our entire being.”

“Agreed.” He finished drawing the rune. The water glowed white. He placed his hooves on the surface and started to agitate the mixture back and forth. “When I started this temple, I was worried the lack of tradition was going to strip away the spiritual value of the mushroom experience.”

Hypha pressed his lips together until they turned white. Little ripples formed where his hooves tapped the bottom of the basin. Don’t say anything, he thought to himself. Just shut up for five seconds.

“That must seem rich coming from me. But please believe me. I want this place to be legitimate.” Hypha let out a little sigh. “Sorry, did you want to say something—”

“No,” Hypha muttered. “No, go ahead.”

“I want this to be a legitimate operation, but I never had a deep theoretical knowledge of our order’s doctrine. I was never a good student, and the monks didn’t let me take any scrolls with me when I...” He trailed off. “I want to be upfront with you. I need you. Functionally, this place is a well-oiled machine. But spiritually, there’s a lack.”

Hypha nodded. At least they saw eye to eye on one thing.

Prairie Sky’s hooves sped up. The water sloshed gently from one side of the basin to the other. “Your knowledge of the order could be just what we need to turn this place into a true successor to the order. It might not be exactly the same—”

“It’ll never be the same,” Hypha snapped. He lifted his hooves out of the basin. The pain returned in an instant. Water splashed up Prairie Sky’s forelegs.

“Put them back,” Prairie Sky said.

Hypha set his hooves back into the water. “If you don't treat the mushrooms like a religious experience, then they’re not. You might as well just give them wine. It’ll taste better.”

“Promise me you’ll think about it. If you’re really so convinced that this place is sacrilegious, then help me fix it.”

“You already know how to fix it. Get rid of the outsiders.”

The water in the basin turned black. Hypha withdrew his right hoof and found it covered in a sticky black film. As it dried, it hardened into a thick carapace-like shell.

“The hooves still have to heal themselves,” Prairie Sky said, “but the spell set the minerals in a cast of sorts. It’ll last about a month. Two if you’re careful. It’ll be enough to protect them while the healing process begins.”

“Thanks,” Hypha said, still fixated on his hooves.

“I could teach you the spell. The rune is easy. The difficulty comes in sourcing the right rocks for the powder. A lot of rune magic intertwines with geology.” He smiled. “There’s so much we could learn from each other.”

“Maybe,” Hypha said. In truth, the whole process fascinated him. But a part of him dared not show his interest. Interest felt a little too close to validation. And he didn’t dare validate any of this.

Prairie Sky got to his hooves. “Your friends are in the guest dorm. Room 316. Have a little compassion for them. For everyone here. They didn’t come all this way by accident. They’re searching for something, too.”

---

Hypha thought about Prairie Sky’s words as he walked back to the dormitory building. His head still felt scattered from the mushrooms, but with the mineral spell protecting his hooves, he felt his confidence finally start to come back bit by bit. He decided that now would be a good time to get a little flying practice in. If in a month the mineral spell wore off and he had to go back to hovering all day, then he needed to be properly conditioned to take that punishment.

His pushed himself away from the earth. The first attempt was awkward and slow and ended with him pitching into the ground. The second try went much better however. He rose at a steady pace until he reached the roof of the dorm, where he paused to catch his breath. Four stories. Not great. Not terrible, either.

The rooftop was a mess, a scattered nest of deck chairs, sunning blankets, and a charcoal grill. A scattering of multicolored pegasi feathers were strewn around one blanket. The results of a mutual preen, by the looks of it.

A ghost of a smile appeared on his face. Even here, pegasi still refused to clean up after themselves.

From his perch, he could see all the way past the lip of the steppe, down to the grasslands three hundred lengths below. Broad waves of wind passed through the grass, turning their reflective sides towards the sun so they glowed yellowish white. In the mountains, the earth was immovable. Here, it danced.

The thick air slowed his takeoffs, and climbing was murder, but he managed six strong ascents in thirty minutes. Each time he made it a little higher, until at the apex of the sixth climb the headache returned. Six was good enough, he decided. Tomorrow, and every day going forward, he’d try to do one more practice ascent than the day before.

Hypha stayed on the roof until he heard the flapping wings of approaching pegasi. Without turning around, he hopped over the lip of the roof and glided down to ground level. No sense making friends here.

---

When Hypha knocked on the door to room 316, no one answered. The door wasn’t locked, so he inched his way inside.

“Hello?” He stuck his snout through the doorway. The single large bed in the center of the room was empty. The half-dresser and desk were undisturbed, as was the bookshelf beside the doorway. He sighed a little breath of relief and pushed the door open all the way. “Anyone here?”

“Hey Hypha.”

Hypha jumped in surprise and looked up. Red had wedged herself into the space between the bookshelf and the ceiling. She met his gaze with casual disinterest. She held something sharp in her hoof.

“What’s that?” he asked.

She put her hoof behind her. When she brought it back into view, it was empty. “Nothing.”

Blue emerged from underneath the bed. The two mares sat down on the floor. Hypha took this as his cue to enter and sat across from them.

“So when are you leaving?” Red asked.

“I don’t know. Soon. This place isn’t what it says it is. I can’t stay here.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Where will you two go?”

Red frowned. “You can’t come with us.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to.”

“Right. But you still can’t come with us. You’ll slow us down.”

“Fine. But before we go our separate ways, you might be able to help me with one last thing.”

“Nah, we’re good.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

Red tossed her mane back with a smile. “If we’re being honest, this whole ‘help me find my tribe’ thing isn’t really worth our time. We got bigger fish to fry.”

“Just hear me out. I got us here, didn’t I? I got you fed and massaged.” Red and Blue didn’t instantly shut him down, so he continued, “This place is a sham. The elder stole my order’s sacred mushrooms, and now he’s selling them for profit. I’m gonna stop him, and I need your help.”

“Nah.”

“Nah? But you love stealing.”

“No we don’t. We stole food in Median cuz we were starving. We stole the book from the courthouse cuz we gotta find Blue’s dad. We haven’t stolen anything here. That elder guy’s been really nice to us, and you wanna steal his stuff? That’s pretty messed up, Hypha.”

Hypha blinked. He hadn’t been expecting this kind of pushback from Red of all ponies. “There are records in the temple. Lots of rich ponies come through here. Maybe Blue’s dad was here.”

That got their attention. The two mares sat bolt upright, sharing an unspoken conversation in a moment’s glance. “Show us,” Red said.

Comments

[hehelover]

Well, he could’ve asked the elder for the records, I don’t see why he would refuse. Or was Hypha hoping that the lovers would get angry and tear the whole place down for serving Blue’s dad?