H A Z E

by Bandy

Chapter 33

The runes in the spell book reminded Red of the mandalas in Canary’s cage. The notes were mostly incomprehensible, but she found it fun to copy the diagrams.

She spent whatever time she wasn’t working or tending to Blue drawing circles on the floor of their hideaway and filling them with every combination of rune in the book, until it all became one big incomprehensible blob. When she ran out of space, she started over.

Blue ignored it at first, spending most of her time sleeping and stretching her wounded muscles. But when Red graduated from the floor to one of the walls, Blue finally started paying attention.

Red was mostly through one of these wall runes when she felt Blue’s muzzle brush against her shoulder.

“Hey,” Red murmured, her attention still locked on her half-finished creation. “Need anything?”

Blue shook her head but made no effort to move.

Red gestured to Hypha’s book of rune spells sitting propped against the wall. “See that?”

The book was open to a page entitled, Lightning and its Nonviolent Applications. A dense geometric rune covered the lower half of the page.

“There’s just enough room at the top to add—hang on.” She hopped over to the book and flipped to an earlier page with a much simpler rune, a diamond shape made up of two triangles sharing a long edge in the middle. “If I add it to the middle like I’m supposed to, it looks like chicken scratch.” She pointed to the top of the wall rune. “But if I squeeze it in there...”

She let herself get absorbed back into her work. When her rune was done, she took a step back to admire her work.

“Hypha would hate this,” she said. A faint smile passed over her face. “Wanna help me trash it?”

Blue’s face lit up. They attacked the wall together, dashing the last four hours of effort in a matter of moments.

---

Feel it. Receive it. Let it go. The mantra lingered in Red’s mind long after the mandala was gone. The words were a blank monolith, a tile of perfectly smooth cloudstone. Somewhere beneath those words was a deeper idea she couldn’t access. She wanted in.

She decided to dedicate the next morning’s meditation to figuring the mantra out. Without Hypha to fly them out, they had to settle for meditating on the edge of the city. The difference was subtle, but noticeable. Red felt the spin as another factor to add into the precise geometry of her movements.

Of course, all her calculations didn’t account for Blue. While Red poured all of her focus into a difficult one-legged flamingo pose, Blue took a deep breath and let out an omnic, “Hmmm.” Smoke curled from her lips. She blew the cloud directly into Red’s face.

“Hey!” Red wobbled in place. The smoke tasted like ozone and crystal batteries. “Quit it.”

Blue smirked at her. A minute later, she blew another puff of smoke in her face. Red unfolded herself from her pose long enough to shove Blue’s face into the clouds before resuming her pose.

Blue wiped the condensation from her face and whispered into her cupped hooves. Glowing fog pooled at her hooves, then spilled out over the clouds. Red felt the cool chill creep over her.

“Quit it,” she said. “I’m trying to be a good monk.”

Blue thought, up a little, just a little, and raised the fog in a neat box around Red, a slow and steady climb up the mare’s legs. She saw goosebumps erupt on Red’s legs.

Red did her best to ignore it. Not like saying stop would work anyway. If Blue was going to tease her, then the only course of action was to ignore it until she got bored. She placed all her weight on one rear leg and lifted the other three off the ground. Then she bent forward until her torso was parallel to the ground.

Blue got impatient. She lifted the smokescreen all at once. Red disappeared in a perfect cube of clouds. The shift in pressure messed up Red’s mane and made her eardrums ache.

But beside the mild pain and the goosebumps and the annoyance, Red felt something else. Something new. The air moved around her, charged with an energy she’d never felt before. Maybe this was some sort of lightning cloud? But this was different than static charge. It didn’t cling to her skin the way static did. It went deeper, way deeper, all the way through her.

Falling out of the pose meant Blue won, but the charge in the air was impossible to ignore. Red thought, Whatever, just reel it in, and drew her forelegs in close to her chest.

Ripples shot through the fog. Invisible lightning danced up Red’s legs. Blue orbs of light coalesced on her hooftips.

Red screamed and pitched forwards.

She landed with her front hooves dangling off the edge of the city. The vast empty space between herself and the ground overwhelmed her. The orbs fizzled and vanished.

Red was back on her hooves in a flash. Blue dropped the smoke and rushed to Red’s side, fully expecting Red to throw her off the city in a fit of rage.

What she wasn’t expecting was to be tackled in a crushing hug.

“I can do magic!” Red cackled with laughter. “I can do magic!”

She peppered Blue up and down with frantic happy kisses. Blue’s face slowly unscrewed itself from the flinch it was frozen in. Maybe she wasn’t mad after all.

“Still gonna kill you,” Red murmured. The kisses moved lower, to Blue’s neck. Then her collarbone. Then the bandages over her heart. Then lower still.

Blue smiled.

---

Bit by bit, the wound on Blue’s chest scarred over. The mushrooms accelerated the healing process, but the musculature remained damaged. Red noticed Blue wincing when she made sharp turns or stopped short.

At night, they created elaborate race courses over the local rooftops. For Blue, it was a great way to rehabilitate. For Red, the courses served as a way to train her primary gift from mother sky. She could summon orbs and play artist, but at the end of the day she was still just a magically enhanced packmule.

Don’t look a gift-pony in the mouth, she thought to herself. Better than nothing.

That night, their course took them towards the palaces on the north side of the city. Blue took shortcuts through shadows, swimming from rooftop to rooftop. Red simply leapt over the gaps She might not have had Blue’s ability to walk through shadows, but the mushrooms gave her the speed and agility of a superathlete.

They came to a stop at the edge of the neighborhood, where a wide thoroughfare separated the palace borough from the slums. Red paused for a moment to catch her breath. Then she turned around.

“Again,” she said, and ran back the way she came.

They ran the route three more times over the next hour. The jumping was the most difficult part. She could leap higher and farther with the help of the mushrooms, but that meant she had to relearn her limits. An overly enthusiastic leap could result in her overshooting her target and falling all the way down to street level. Mother sky could raise her up, but it wouldn’t do her any good if she fell on her head and split her skull in half. She had to go back to basics.

After the third run, the two mares paused for a breather on a nameless rooftop in the quiet northern estates. Below them, Derecho glittered, a singular pegasi monument of polished stone. The height filled Red with a giddy dizziness, like she was flying. What she wouldn’t give to sprout wings.

She turned to Blue and checked her chest. The wound looked angry, inflamed a moonlit shade of pink. But the edges weren’t bleeding like they had last night. No tearing anywhere.

“Looking good,” she said.

Blue’s lips met hers. Red’s stomach flipped. She hoped the shock of Blue’s kiss never went away. Then Blue took Red’s hoof and pointed towards the palace district of Derecho, and her stomach crashed back down like a flightless pony plunging off a rooftop.

Red’s lips parted, but no sound came out. She shook her head. Maybe she was just misunderstanding. Blue couldln’t possibly want to go back. Not now. Not so soon.

But Blue’s eyes spoke far more eloquently than most ponies could with words. They were unmistakable. And right now, the only thing in her eyes was silver moonlit murder. Giesu.

Red prodded Blue’s wound. It wouldn’t hurt badly, but she hoped the ache would serve as a reminder. It didn’t. Blue pushed her hoof away and pointed at the palace district.

“No.” Blue looked surprised. Red capitalized. “We can’t do it again.”

Blue shook her head.

“Do you wanna die?” The faintest bit of doubt flashed in Blue’s eyes. Red latched onto it. “We tried. We blew it. It’s over.”

Blue shook her head vigorously.

“They know we’re out here. We’d be sticking our hooves in a bear trap. Did you like getting shot? Is that it?” Blue took a step back. Red pressed forward. “We got Hypha killed.” Blue didn’t respond. “We killed him, Blue!”

Blue hit her. Red hit her back. The two locked limbs and tumbled across the rooftop. Moonlight made the sweat on their faces glitter like diamonds. Blue wound up on top, but Red used her size advantage and threw her off. Blue fell into a pool of shadows at the edge of the rooftop.

Red realized her mistake and dove after her. But Blue was a hair faster. Just as Red grabbed Blue’s shoulder, she melted into the shadows. Red’s hooves slammed into the tile, unable to follow.

A scream bubbled up from Red’s throat. She clamped her lips shut and shadow-boxed the air until the rage subsided. Then she started back towards the hideaway at a dead sprint. One more round with the route.

Blue wasn’t at the hideaway when Red got back. Fine. If Blue wanted time to herself, then so be it. With her shadowsteppinng ability back to full form, there wasn’t anything anypony, even Red, could do to find her. Sleep was out of the question, too. Too many thoughts swirling around in her head.

Red attacked the wall instead, scrawling massive incomprehensible rune combinations into the clouds.

How could Blue want to try again? Hypha was the first friend they’d made in years, and they’d left him to die. How did Blue have this much hate inside her? How did she keep rebuilding the bridge between her and her past? Red could barely remember when she was six years old. No one had cut out her tongue and plucked all her teeth. But no one had shown her any particular kindness, either. She was an orphan. Street trash. No one loved her. No one cared. But she got over that. She was fine.

Her hoof slashed the wall viciously, dislodging a whole chunk of cloud. No, she wasn’t fine. She was trapped between Blue’s impossible desires and a shield wall of legionaries. She’d let herself get pushed into place like a pawn, and sooner or later she’d let herself get pushed into a sword. It was just how the world was. Blue was all she had. Where she pointed, Red ran.

Tiredness crept up on her like a bandit, pouncing as she stepped away from her canvas. She left her mandala half-finished and collapsed into her bedroll. Deep, dreamless sleep consumed her.

Too soon, someone shook Red awake.

She swam in the haze of an evaporating dream. Without thinking, she batted the hoof away and went for her knife.

The hoof squeezed her shoulder softly. Blue’s face came into view. She was smiling.

Red paused. Slowly, she gave up digging for the knife. It was near morning. What stars could be seen through the city’s light pollution were going out, one by one.

“Lemme sleep.” Red burrowed into her bedroll, more to keep Blue out than keep the warmth in. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

Blue went for the strap on her bedroll, meaning to dump Red out all at once. But Red knew this trick. She grabbed Blue’s foreleg and squeezed it as hard as she could. She hissed right into Blue’s face, all spit and venom, “You don’t know when to quit, don’t you.”

That finally got Blue’s attention. She let go of the strap and sat down beside Red. There was an expectant look on her face. No violence. No frustration. Just space for Red to speak.

“I can’t do this anymore. We should get outta town. Find someplace quiet and settle down for awhile.” Blue went to hug her. Red put a hoof on her chest. “Wait. Let me finish. I just...” She waved her hooves to summon the right words, to no avail. “We had a chance to kill Giesu. We failed. Now we have a chance to do something else. Something better.”

The no in Blue’s eyes was plainer than speech.

“Yes. I’m serious. We have everything we need to start fresh. We have each other, and the mushrooms, and the book. We could travel the world. Or settle down somewhere. I don’t care.” Her eyes were watering again. “But if we go back to the palace district and look for Giesu, someone’s gonna get killed. I just know it.”

Blue jabbed a hoof at the palace. Red heard, Yeah, him.

“What if it’s us? What if it’s only one of us? Ever think of that? If we both die up there, that’d be horrible, but if you die, and I’m stuck here without you, I have no idea what I’d do. No idea.”

Only once the familiar silence of their camp settled back around them did she realize she was crying. She dug up a hunk of cloud from the ground and blew her nose on it before setting it back into the ground, snot-side down.

Blue put her hoof under Red’s chin and brought their gazes together. Smoke spilled out from between her lips. In a toothless, tongueless, tantalizing voice, she whispered, “Hypha.”

---

Red and Blue were far from a perfect couple. They’d spent as much time making up as they’d spent falling out. They’d argued, snarled, spat, bit, thrown, and kicked each other halfway across the greater Equestrian subcontinent.

But giving Red hope that Hypha might still be alive—that was a new low.

They took the same route they’d practiced just a few hours before to get to the north side of town. Blue took the lead, pulling her at a breakneck pace over rooftops, past the thoroughfare that marked the turnaround point on their old route, and into the luxurious palace district.

The mansions got larger and larger, until it seemed the city could no longer contain them. Blue halted her on a rooftop ledge overlooking one of these truly gargantuan complexes. Unlike its neighbors, this one flew the red banners of a Derechan general.

Blue pointed to a glinting spot of metal all the way on the other side of the complex. Then she pointed to the complex walls. Two legionaries in black armor shuffled along the palisade. Hints of a hushed conversation carried over the rooftops.

Blue nodded to the roof. Red shook her head. Blue nodded again, a little more intently. Red shook her head harder. Blue whispered, “Hypha,” this time without any of the smoke.

“What do you mean, Hypha? Hypha’s dead.”

Blue jabbed her hoof wildly at the complex. Her eyes implored trust.

A glimmer of light pierced the veil of Red’s mind—not quite hope, but something close. Hypha had to be dead. She saw him go down. She knew who had taken him captive. How he could have wound up the prisoner of a general, much less be alive at all, was beyond her. Blue was wrong. She had to be. If Red unmade her peace, and Blue was wrong, she didn’t know how to remake it again.

But that glimmer of light refused to go away. It lanced her. It made her skin crawl. She had to see.

Blue pulled a knife from out of nowhere.

“What are you doing?” Red hissed. Blue motioned towards the guards. “No, no, it’s too early. I don’t wanna lug around dead guys right now.” A lightbulb went off in her head. “Let me distract them.”

Blue hardly seemed convinced, but she put away the knife. Red planted her hooves on the roof and thought back to her experiments at the city’s edge.

“Give me some smoke.”

Blue whispered words into her cupped hooves. A cloud of fog rolled out of her mouth, consuming both mares. Red thought, Feel it, receive it, let it go, and drew her hooves into her chest.

The smoke trembled and coalesced. An orb of light danced on her hooftips. She forced down a squeal of joy. The rune was next—a circle on the outside, then a diamond made out of two triangles sharing a long edge in the middle.

She stared at the rune for a moment. It lingered in the air, radiating potential energy.

“Oh, right.” Red pressed her hoof into the center of the rune. It gave way, shrinking into a singular ball of light. Red glanced at Blue. Her eyes were wide. A smile graced her lips.

Red located the two guards on the wall. She stood, wound up, and chucked the orb with all her might.

The light whizzed through the air like a baseball, missing the guards by only a few yards. It bounced off the exterior wall and came to rest on the street some distance away.

The guards cried out. Two more appeared a moment later. Then a third pair on the ground. The light made their armor gleam as they approached it, spears at the ready.

Blue shadowstepped over to the complex rooftop and gestured for Red to jump.

For any other earth pony, the leap was suicidally long. Not for Red. Red had mother sky on her side. She sailed across the gap with room to spare.

The shining mass of metal they’d spied from afar was actually a sunroof, a massive checkerboard of glass panels held in place by a lattice framework of metal. The air on the inside was much warmer than the outside. Condensation built up on the inside of the glass, making it difficult to see what was inside.

Red saw dozens of boulders lined up in rows, with a veritable landfill of cabinets and workbenches and random junk surrounding it. She told herself to be patient and kept her eyes peeled on the entryway.

A few minutes later, two shapes came into the room. They were both earth ponies, both roughly similar colors. One of them had a metal leg.

Red put her nose to the glass. “That’s—” The word fogged the window. She turned away to face Blue, who stood a few paces away, keeping an eye out for guards. “That’s not him.”

Blue just shrugged. Red followed the shapes as they moved from stone to stone. They were doing something to each one. Scrubbing them? She couldn’t be sure.

“Those are just regular workers. Hypha would never work for them.”

The two ponies finished their work. One left the way he’d come in. The other, the one with the metal leg, hopped on top of the closest stone and assumed a cross-legged pose.

Red turned away. “I’m telling you, that’s not him. That’s not possible. He’s dead. This is stupid.”

When Red looked again, the earth pony with the metal leg was floating.

---

Red returned to the hideaway and immediately went to sleep. Her mind raced a million miles a minute. Her dreams manifested as uncertain blobs of color.

She woke to a deep rumble resonating through the ground. She pulled her blanket over her head. “Blue, cut it out.”

Blue yanked the blanket off her. Her eyes screamed danger. Red was on her hooves a moment later, tearing open her bag, ready to pack up her life and flee in ten seconds flat. Blue stopped her and motioned for her to go up to the rooftops.

There, they sat and watched as a jet of flame five stories tall erupted from the palace district.

The city woke up. The air grew thick with the grey shapes of pegasi darting through the air. Most were non-nobles and therefore weren’t allowed in the palace district, so they flocked to the borough border to watch the tragedy unfold. A crowd of the city’s working class earth ponies choked the streets.

The fire burned for perhaps ten minutes. Then the city gave another great rumble. Pegasi displaced, driven into the air. The crowds on the ground murmured uneasily.

The light shifted. The bottom gave way. The flames fell through the city The light shifted, crawling up the walls of nearby buildings. Then there was another great bang somewhere far below them.

The city’s pegasi took flight in droves. The earth ponies shifted direction, moving towards the edge of town. Red and Blue got down from the roof and blended in with the crowd.

At the city’s edge, the source of the fire became clear. Whatever was on fire had burned through the clouds and fell squarely in the middle of the surface caravan. Long shadows of ponies, little more than ants at this height, scrambled at the edge of the fire, darting in and out of the light. Some of the shapes appeared to flicker. Then the smoke shifted, and Red realized some of the little ponies down there on the ground were on fire themselves.

A pony beside the mares muttered, “Are we under attack?”

The thought spread like plague. Within moments the whole crowd started to shuffle closer together. Tails flicked nervously. Ears sprang up. The crowd collectively started to push towards the city’s edge.

Red and Blue slipped away silently.

Back in the coolness of their alley hideaway, they shared a few small mother sky mushrooms and washed it down with water from the nearby fountain. Blue sat still, her eyes cloudy, lost in thought. Red paced the length of the alley with silent steps.

The faint rumble of fire and death lingered well into the morning.

Comments

[hehelover]

Would Hypha feel bad for this, I wonder? “Maybe, but not immediately” would be my guess.

[SirCarrot]

11483225
Idk, on the surface he seems to be a pretty good pony, but he is willing to do some pretty nasty stuff and justify it as being for the mushrooms.