H A Z E

by Bandy

Chapter 43

It took Hypha and the gang three days to truly escape Derecho. Legionnaire patrols were incessant, but the real danger came from the civilians. Hundreds of dissidents and refugees fled the violence, spreading out across the plain in every direction. Virtually none of them knew how to disguise their movements. Some couldn’t let go of old grudges and fought with each other. They made easy targets for passing patrols.

The way the flood of fleeing ponies thinned to a trickle gnawed at Hypha. His heart ached to help them. He wanted to throw up a light to guide them away from danger, or a shield to stop the falling arrows—something.

Each time he was about to dash off, Celiah somehow read his mind and held him back. “Take stock of what you have on your back before you go adding more,” she said.

Only once an entire day had passed without a single patrol sighting could Hypha fully relax. When they stopped to make camp that evening, he noticed Celiah was shifting her weight awkwardly from one side to the other. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Celiah chuckled. “As good as an old zebra can be.”

“If you need some help tomorrow—”

“I can pull my weight just fine, thank you very much.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He slid his saddlebag off his back and plopped down beside her. “If you’d like, we can all partake in a mushroom ritual tomorrow morning. It’ll help with the pain and increase your stamina for the walk.”

Celiah considered his offer. “Depends. Where are you leading us, exactly?”

Her question stopped Hypha short. He didn’t realize he’d been leading them. He thought they were just collectively getting away from Derecho. But now they were away. The future loomed over Hypha’s head, larger and darker than a cloud city.

“I—” He froze. Red and Blue were looking at him, too. He cleared his throat before he spoke again. “I want to go east. Back to the Stonewood mountains.”

“Back to your monastery?” Celiah asked. Hypha nodded. “Is there a chance somepony’s still there?”

“No.” His eyes fell. “No, there’s probably no monks left.”

“Child, that’s an awful long way to walk just to see a cemetery.”

“It’s not just graves.” Renewed energy filled his voice. “I saw all the loot Romulus took from the monasteries. He only got a fraction of what’s really there. There could be scrolls left. Histories. Spellbooks. Precious gems. Mother sky.” He stood up. “We need to chart a new path for the order. It’s our duty as monks.”

“Well, good for you all. But I’m not walking halfway across the world for—”

Celiah stopped short. Hypha stared into her eyes with a near-breathless enthusiasm. She turned around and found Red and Blue boxing her in.

“Celiah,” Hypha breathed.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Celiah, you’re already given time to the order by traveling with us. You helped harvest mother sky, more or less.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You did enough. You partook in a mushroom ritual and interpreted its meaning.”

Celiah scooted back. “We—no, that was just one night. That didn’t mean anything.”

“All that’s left is to swear an oath.”

Celiah looked from Hypha to the two mares. “I’m too old.”

“It’s never too late to join the order.”

“I don’t know anything about your order.”

He motioned to Red and Blue. “Neither did they. We can teach you.”

“I can’t even read. What kind of lessons could you possibly teach an old broken cow like me?”

“One of them is empathy.”

A long, slow frown settled across Celiah’s face. She motioned for Hypha to come closer and leaned in to examine the mushrooms. “If I take them, and say the thing, that’s it? I’m in?”

“Yup.” Hypha smiled and held out a hooffull of caps. “Also, you don’t take them.”

Red and Blue rolled their eyes in unison.

---

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the ancient skeleton of the Stonewood mountains rose from the eastern horizon. The grass and soil grew scant, revealing mineral deposits pressed into solid stone. The path rose sharply. Clouds rolled over their heads, an ancient haze obscuring the full extent of the range from view.

A steep chasm cut through the earth, separating the floating mountains from the rest of the continent. The gang crossed a swaying rope bridge one by one. The three mares tested the ground experimentally, not quite believing what they were feeling.

“It doesn’t move,” Celiah remarked. “Shouldn’t it move?”

“These mountains don’t move,” Hypha replied. “They float.”

As they wound their way deeper into the range, the fog broke. Hypha saw a rise domed with glittering white snow. His breath caught in his throat. He tipped forwards. Every part of him yearned to be closer. He rose nearly a hundred yards in the air before he even noticed he was flying. When he finally realized what was happening, he let out a triumphant holler and surged higher. He looped and spun until he ran out of breath, then went into a freefall. His heart pounded as the ground neared. At the last possible second, he pulled up. His hooves brushed the ground.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, but his muscles felt fresh. The normal headache of magical exertion was nowhere to be found. All the weight in his heart and pain in his hooves disappeared. He could feel magic permeating the air, permeating him. He was flying. He was alive. He was home.

The group soon came across a dried-up riverbed leading deeper into the mountains. It widened into a cart path, then a full fledged road. Several miles in, they saw wisps of smoke rising from beyond a bend.

Tucked away at the base of a mountain overhang, surrounded on all sides by sheer rises, they found a little earth pony mining town. Several dozen squat shale and mortar homes, along with trade shops and a tavern, lined the street.

Hypha made a beeline for the provisions store. As he roamed the aisles of canned goods, the stout mare behind the counter struck up a conversation. “Looking for anything in particular?”

“Nope,” Hypha replied. “Just need enough provisions for about four weeks.”

“That’s doable.” The shopkeep came out from behind the counter to help Hypha. “We haven’t had traders around here for some time.”

Her voice struck a note of familiarity to Hypha. “We’re not really traders,” he said. “Just passing through.”

“Into the mountains?” The shopkeep frowned. “You don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

She eyed him up and down cautiously. “Are you some kind of treasure hunter? Whatever you’re looking for up there is gone.”

“Maybe. But I have to see for myself.”

“I can’t stop you if you intend to go up there. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. There’s an awful lotta ghosts in those mountains.”

Hypha played with a can of lentils as he turned the mare’s face over in his mind. She looked so familiar. Where had he seen her before? “Have you ever been up there?”

“I have, actually. And can I say, I don’t like the idea of outsiders sticking their noses where they don’t belong.” The mare stacked two cans of corn with enough force to make Hypha’s ears ring.

Outsider. The irony brought a sad smile to his face. Even if that word had carried the same weight it used to, Hypha couldn’t disagree with the shopkeep. He was a different pony than the one who’d left Roseroot all those months ago. His past self would throw a fit if he knew what his future self was up to. He wondered if elder Cumulus would even recognize him.

Just then, the pieces clicked together, and Hypha remembered where he’d seen this shopkeep before. “Did you ever visit a monastery named Roseroot?”

A line of confusion creased the mare’s forehead. “Yes. How did you know—”

“You were in the farming detail!” A broad smile bloomed on his face. “How did the barley turn out?”

The mare finally recognized him. Hey eyes went wide. An excited little, “Ooh!” escaped her lips. “You’re that colt! The acola, acoline, uh--”

“Acolyte. You’re Squeeze, right?”

Squeeze ran right through a display of tinned tuna and wrapped Hypha up in a bone-crushing hug. He felt his hooves leave the ground as she spun him around and around.

“It was the leg,” she laughed. “Barely recognized you with that thing on.”

---

Squeeze insisted Hypha and the gang have dinner with her family. From the outside, the single-room thatched roof bump beside the road that served as their home didn’t look particularly homey. But inside there was a warm fire and a rack full of spices and breads and twelve young fillies and colts who all wanted to meet the strange monk with the metal leg.

After a dinner of vegetable stew and barley bread, Squeeze produced several bottles of imported cider. The kids carefully unwrapped rolls of faded confetti and placed kindling soaked with special oil into the fire. When the kindling lit, it burned with the colors of the rainbow.

Another foal started playing a drum. In no time at all Hypha and Celiah were leading the kids in a dance line around the room. Blue joined in too.

Red took a little persuading. After watching her sulk on the sidelines for the first round of dances, Blue rolled her eyes and dragged Red into the center of the chaos. Red’s scowl intensified, but Blue didn’t relent. She bumped her flank in time with the music, goading Red on. When that didn’t work, she gave Red a kiss on the nose. Then she leaned in and nibbled Red’s ear.

That was enough motivation for Red. She double checked her bandages to make sure they were secure, then started to dance, slowly at first, flowing in a clumsy doubletime take on her meditation dance. Blue joined the fray. The rhythm of the drums sped up. Hypha surrendered to the joy of the moment.

When Hypha paused to take a break and drink some cider, Sifter came up to him and reintroduced himself.

“That’s a Derechan leg, right?” he asked.

“Right now it’s my leg. But it was made in Derecho.”

Sifter chuckled. “Right, sorry. I do all the town’s metallurgy. I recognize the welds.”

“I didn’t know welds had that sort of character to them.”

“You’d be surprised!” His smile radiated excitement. Hypha obliged and held up his leg for him to examine. “Incredible. The hydraulics are so precise. And the gimbal at the baseplate! Genius work.”

“I can’t say the Derechans never did anything for me.”

Sifter laughed. He gestured to one of the blank metal plates on the leg’s exterior. “Have you considered decorating the side plates?”

“I haven’t given it much thought, no.”

“Well, if you’re interested, I’ve done plenty of embossing work in the past. I’ve got my metallurgy shed out back behind the house. I could whip something up in just a few hours.” He set Hypha’s leg back down. “If you wanted to, of course. It’s your leg.”

Hypha considered the offer. “Could you do something traditional?”

Sifter’s eyes lit up. “I know just the thing.”

---

Hypha woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and only three legs.

Red and Blue were cuddled up beside each other in one corner. Celiah snored softly a few paces away. Squeeze slept on the bed. The kids waterfalled off the mattress and onto a set of cushy floor mats.

A bittersweet memory of late-night acolyte study sessions in Roseroot surfaced in Hypha’s mind. Everyone looked so peaceful.

An intrusive thought flashed through his tired mind. Should he really take Red and Blue and Celiah up to Roseroot? After barely escaping Derecho, was it right to ask them to bear witness to more suffering? The thought of them touching the bones of his elders made his skin crawl.

But the truth was, he needed them up there as much as they needed him. If he shut them out, the already-daunting task before him would become insurmountable. The survival of the order depended on all of them. They may have been made monks under strange circumstances, but they spoke the words, same as him. They fought for mother sky. They sacrificed. They bled. They were linked. They always had been. The bones up in those monasteries were their elders too. Their friends. They needed to see. They needed to learn.

After a quick limp around, he found Sifter, along with the missing leg, in the metallurgy shed out back. A fire crackled away in a modest kiln. The chimney puffed little clouds of grey smoke. The leg sat on a table, partially disassembled.

Sifter stood on his rear two legs beside an anvil. One hoof clutched a pair of long pliers with which he rotated one of the leg’s exterior plates. The other hoof held a fine-pointed chisel. His teeth bit around the grip of a small hammer. He worked at a methodical pace. Appraise the metal. Turn it. Set the chisel. Hammer hammer hammer.

He looked up as Hypha approached and smiled around the hammer.

“Mind if I watch?” Hypha asked.

Sifter nodded, then turned back to his work. “So what are you gonna do up there?” Hammer hammer hammer. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Take care of the remains. Salvage what we can. Seal the temples.”

“Seal them?” Hammer hammer hammer. “Are you calling it quits?”

“No. But there are fourteen monasteries in total. It would be impossible for the four of us to take care of them all. We’re going to seal the temples until there are enough monks to take care of them all.”

“Where are you gonna find that many monks?” Sifter’s eyes flickered to the house, where the mares were sleeping. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna make them.”

Hypha’s face flushed red. “The order has a strong tradition of taking in orphans.”

“Right, right,” Sifter laughed. “I was just teasing.”

When he was done half an hour later, he spat out the hammer and wiped the dust and sweat off his brow.

“Give the plates another hour or so to cool,” he said. “Then I’ll refit them, and you’ll be good to go.”

Arranged next to each other on Sifter’s work bench, Hypha could see Sifter’s elaborate idea play out across the metal. Hundreds of triangular snow leopard teeth intertwined like jagged rocks to form a mountain range that flowed seamlessly from one plate to the next.

“What do you think?” Sifter asked.

Hypha leaned in close. Heat radiated off the metal, kissing his face. “It’s perfect.”

---

The goodbyes were long and plentiful, and dragged along into another farewell meal. For all the gifts she gave the group, Squeeze seemed genuinely surprised when Hypha slipped his entire coinpurse into her hooves.

“I’m not taking this,” she said bluntly. “No offense. But you need this a lot more than me.”

“It’s Derechan gold,” Hypha replied. “I don’t want to bring it back to Roseroot.”

Squeeze took the coins with a reluctant nod. Without warning, she scooped Hypha up in a crushing hug. “Please come visit us sometime. Anytime. Our door’s always open.”

Hypha hesitated, then finally relaxed into the hug. “I will.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” He squeezed Squeeze back. “Thank you.”

The family followed them as far as the dried-up riverbank, then left the gang to continue on their own.

---

The longer they walked, the more Hypha got the feeling they were no longer going in the right direction. He wasn’t even certain they were still going up. The riverdeep deepened. The walls grew steeper, until they were nearly vertical. The four were reduced to scrambling over boulders and weaving through ancient rockfalls. Between Red’s wounds, Celiah’s age, and the stuffed packs on their backs, progress was glacial.

Several miles into their trek, they came to a choke point in the riverbed. The steep walls had caved in some time ago, filling in the riverbed with rocks and debris. The hoofholds were few and far between. The rocks were jagged as teeth. A low mist rolled in, coating them and their path in dew.

Celiah made it about five steps before she stopped and announced, “I think it would be best if I flew.”

Hypha nodded. He shrugged off his pack and helped Celiah position herself across his back. The weight would be difficult to balance, but he didn’t need to fly the whole rockfall in one go. He could fly from perch to perch and stop to catch his breath along the way. Easy.

He was just bracing himself for the first flight when he saw something move in the corner of his vision.

He craned his neck to see around Celiah and saw a shape rounding the corner some twenty yards away. It glided along the ground like pre-dawn mist. Two jade-green eyes locked onto his.

Snow leopard.

For a split second, Hypha was frozen. This was the same snow leopard that had almost eaten him that fateful day in the mountains. He had no way of telling for sure. Somehow, he just knew. It had never stopped hunting him. It had lied in wait, nose upturned to catch his scent, belly on the ground, feeling for the familiar rumble of hoofsteps.

Hypha found his voice. “Blue!”

Blue saw the snow leopard and nearly jumped out of her skin. Red’s eyes went wide. Celiah let out an ear-splitting scream and swatted Hypha’s hindquarters. “Fly, idiot! Fly!”

The snow leopard’s ears flicked. Hypha saw each and every scar criss-crossing its face, a lifetime of violence. It took a step towards him.

Then it lunged.

Hypha panicked. He tried to push off the ground, but his legs slipped on the wet stone and went out from under him. Celiah rolled off his back, wailing curses as she went down. Red started hopping through the rockfall. Blue threw herself into a nearby pool of shadows and disappeared.

A thought flashed through Hypha’s mind. He had to distract the animal. If it went after Celiah, she was a goner.

He shot to his hooves and issued a challenging roar. Let it come to him first.

The snow leopard adjusted course and closed on Hypha. All the bravado turned to ash in his mouth. He turned tail and tried to flee, but he only made it about two steps before the snow leopard closed the distance. With a deafening snarl, it leapt onto his back.

The weight of the monster forced Hypha to the ground. Rough stones cut his back. The snow leopard scrambled blindly on top of him. Fur and jagged teeth filled his vision. The smell of death choked his nostrils.

The snow leopard swiped at his head. The claws missed their killing mark by inches, but the padded palm of its paw connected with the side of his head. Stars exploded in his vision. His hind legs turned to jelly.

The snow leopard leaned all its weight onto him and tried to bite his neck. Hypha barely managed to wrench a foreleg free from underneath it and push it away.

Feel it. Receive it. Let it go. He drew magic to his hoof and drew a rune circle on the animal’s exposed chest. As it reared back to strike again, Hypha kicked it with his prosthetic leg. The hydraulics slammed back, absorbing the recoil. A shockwave raced up the riverbed walls, kicking up bits of rock and dust. The snow leopard flew backwards with an ear-splitting howl.

Hypha scrambled to his hooves and raced towards the two mares. Red was already a quarter of the way through the outflow, but Celiah was frozen, unable to make the first long leap between rocks.

Celiah first. Then Red. He scooped Celiah up and took off across the outflow. The magical overstress of carrying twice his normal weight made his muscles burn like signal fires, but he kept his mind focused. He flew from hoofhold to hoofhold, landing for a split second before pushing off to the next one.

He cleared the outflow and landed to catch his breath one final time before flying up the steep walls of the riverbank. There he found Blue waiting for him atop the ledge, a look of helpless worry on her face. He slid Celiah off his back, then immediately turned to find Red.

What he saw made his heart drop. The snow leopard was picking its way over the rocks at a terrifying pace. Red was moving as fast as her legs could carry her, but for every jump she landed, the snow leopard landed two. At this rate, even if she could beat the beast across the rocks, it would make up the time on the flat riverbed. Hypha had to do something, and fast.

He forced himself back into the air. His head exploded in deafening bells of pain, but the fear was louder. After all this, after all the suffering, all the pain, all the victory—he couldn’t lose another monk. Not like this. He angled down. Faster. The rockflow loomed like thousands of sharpened teeth. No time to slow down. No time to think.

Red saw the snow leopard closing in and poured on the speed. It seemed for a second that she might actually beat the beast out of the outflow. But just as she neared the end, her hoof slipped on a wet piece of stone.

It happened in an instant. There was no time for her to react. Her legs went out from underneath her. She tumbled headfirst forward towards the jagged rocks. The snow leopard pounced.

Red never hit the ground.

Magical momentum surged through her body, carrying her forward in a long arc. She cleared the last fifteen yards of the outflow and angled up in a wild, uncontrolled spin. Gravity took hold. She hovered in mid-air for a split second. Then she started to fall.

Hypha was so stunned that he almost forgot to pull up. Jagged rocks cut his hooves and pinged against his metal leg. He turned around and surged through the air to catch up with Red.

Their eyes locked. Her face was pale with shock and fear. She reached out for him.

His hoof found hers. They embraced mid-air. “I got you,” Hypha panted. He grit his teeth and pitched up, rising to the high ground where Blue and Celiah had taken shelter.

His magic gave out just as they cleared the edge. Momentum carried them the last few yards to safety. The two landed in a heap, bruised, terrified, but alive.

The snow leopard looked up at them. Frustration creased its face. Hypha dragged himself to the lip of the ledge and locked eyes with it. He roared with a voice that shook the very mountains to their core.

Not today, he thought.

The snow leopard snorted once through its nose, then turned around and slunk off into the mountains.

He turned around to find Red was already back on her hooves. She barely seemed to notice the bruises and the blood pouring from her skinned knees. In fact, she practically buzzed with elation. Fire blazed behind her eyes.

“Red...” Her fire was infectious. Hypha felt his heart catch. “You just—”

Celiah howled with relief and threw her forelegs around Red. “I saw the whole thing!” she sang, practically crying. “Miracle child, miracle child.”

Though the bandages squished Red’s face into a frown, Hypha could tell that she was beaming. When Celiah finally let go, she looked at Hypha and motioned to the edge of the outcropping.

Hypha understood. He knew the look in Red’s eye. She had to try again. To make sure it was really real.

He took up a perch at the edge of the outcropping, ready to catch Red if she fell. A safety net for his sister.

Red took a running start and leapt into the air. Flight at last embraced her.

Author's Note:

mountains wear down
clouds crumble
silence speaks love eternally

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for coming along for the ride. After action blog out now.

Comments

[Animal]

What a ride, glad I was along for it!

[SirCarrot]

Nice!

[hehelover]

All’s well that ends well. “And so they lived happily ever after” sounds appropriate here. Thanks for the wild ride!

[Jarvy Jared]

Some people might find this ending either weirdly anti-climactic, perhaps even a little too open-ended but I dunno - it makes sense. Really the finality of the story was the fall of Derecho. Everything else is just pointing towards the next direction, whatever that may mean.

Kudos on this. I'm happy to have been able to quietly read along.

[Pen and Paper]

11562678
420 blaze it

[Bandy]

11739049
static.manebooru.art/img/view/2020/9/21/1274112.gif

[The Hat Man]

So, I read this story nearly a year ago and hadn't left a more detailed review, but a friend and I were discussing it and I was compelled to write a longer review for it, and here it is! I hope it's informative.

Thanks for the read!