• Published 2nd Jan 2012
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Jericho - Crushric



If you came to hear a story, I'm sorry to disappoint. I suspect this'll just end up as one big confession, really. Still, with enough wit, some Prussian ingenuity, a droll sense of humor, and wanton murder, I might just be able to survive.

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Chapter 19 — Mirage

Chapter 19: Mirage

“Did you even read that book I gave you about obscure unicorn history?”

“Whore.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

The pink unicorn dismissively waved her hoof and fluttered her lashes. “Oh, but enough about why the the bastard eloped with some lowborn whore when we were betrothed—” she moved in uncomfortably close to me “—tell me about yourself, Mister Carolean Stallion.”

Something in my head felt as though it was suddenly slammed like a door. Rubbing my eyes, I stepped away from the mare. Despite the wide space here in the foyer of the local Comte’s manor, I didn’t feel like there was enough room for all three of us.

Felicitat looked over to me with a hesitant look. “Something just changed.”

This had been entirely avoidable. I didn’t know how, but I was sure it was. Felicitat had suggested that perhaps the local Comte could assist me, since he had ties to Songnam. Heck, his son was now in Songnam alongside Médge Lothaire’s son, a soon-to-be Carolean.

Now I was here in the Comte’s manor house, and the Comte’s daughter wouldn’t shut up. Normally, I’d take that as a challenge. I’d ask her something like, “You ever wonder what it’d be like to masturbate with a lobster claws?”, make a violent masturbatory motion, and then scream, “Ah, it’s more bruised than a banana!” That was literally my first thought when I saw her, her cutesy-wootsy freckles, and her well-styled mane of peach.

Of course, the little way she put her hoof up to her mouth and gave an unreasonably innocent single shake of her hips when she asked if I was a Carolean destroyed those thoughts with a rubber garden hose. Only it wasn’t a hose; it was a hammer! Don’t ask how I got those two things confused. Just like that one time I found a magical sword in the stone, except that it was a hammer, and that’s really where that story ended. Point is, I didn’t trust her.

Also, her story about the Comtessa on the other side of the valley was off. It was about how she was betrothed to the Comtessa’s son, and how the Cometessa’s son had left her on the altar when he ran off with some “lowborn whore”. I was pretty sure that this was not literally the second thing you said to a stranger.

Keeping a puzzled frown on my face, I said in a level yet critical tone as I put a hoof on her chest, “No.” I pushed her a foot back, sliding her. “Yes,” I said in a more excited tone. “You are very good there. The floor here is a no-go,” I said, gesturing to the wooden floor.

She looked down at her hooves with a frown. “You’re right, this floor is dirty. I should yell at the maid. Always wanted a whip, but Daddy always just gave me horrified looks of silence when I said that. Never understood why.”

“Probably because whipping a disobedient slave doesn’t occur in civilized countries,” I offered, glancing down to Felicitat.

The empath mouthed, “What are you looking at me for?”

“Hey!” the Comte’s daughter snapped. “He is a Carolean; he can look where he pleases.” She cocked a brow and giggled, “And, in all honesty he probably pleases where he looks, too.”

I looked past her to the staircase leading to the second story. There was a window at the top of the stairs, which I knew had a pool below it because I’d seen it when coming to this place. I didn’t know why I noted that, exactly, but it probably had something to do with a skittish urge to plan and note every possible escape route. “I don’t get why ponies say ‘in all honesty’. Isn’t that just to be assumed? I mean, I’ve never said ‘In all falsehood, your mother is a disreputable harlot’.”

“I… I—what?”

“Ah, so you are the Carolean I heard about, òc?” a stallion asked from behind, and I spun around before his second syllable. I presumed he had come in through the large front door, since he was closing it. He looked like his daughter except not at all. “Funny. I thought you’d be shorter.”

“I thought you’d be less pink,” I replied. “See? We all ended with disappointment and limpy dicks.”

The Comte blinked. “Right, then, Carolean.” He held out a hoof. Something about his smile felt forced, a lie. I didn’t think he really wanted me here. “Jo sui Gluepony; I’m Comte around these parts.”

I gave him a firm hoofshake. It was all I could do to not giggle like mad at his terribad name. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the Comte’s daughter glaring at the back of Felicitat’s head.

“I presume you’re here,” Gluepony went on, “about the little problem we’ve been having.”

Hello, hello, what was this? “I’m unfamiliar with the details.”

Gluepony sighed, massaging his temples. “Please, then, let us discuss this matter somewhere else.”

The Comte led Felicitat and I up the stairs and into a room with a fancy throne behind a mahogany desk. I noted dusty bookshelves filled with all manner of things, the least of which were actual books. Sitting down in a chair he offered alongside Felicitat, I watched him take his seat and look down at his desk. Frowning, he pulled out a knife—a letter opener, I realized, just before I drew my steel on him—and used it to open an envelope on his desk. Seeming to remember that I did in fact exist, much to the chagrin of many mares and stallions, he put the envelope down and looked at me.

“It’s not that I’m entirely ungrateful that Duke Elkington sent you to help out, just that many of my peers in the valley are… ” He shook his head. “Ever since the last full moon, we’ve been having problems with a certain thing. It’s been running amok in my comté. The peasants have taken to calling it a mirage-pony.”

I leaned forwards, trying to ignoring the stare of the comte’s daughter. It was the kind of the stare that said “I want to cut off your nipples and stick a banana into the new hole because I think it’s hot”. Maybe I was reading into it too much. Mayhap it was the way the awe-filled look flickered to a spiteful glare when her eyes tottered over to Felicitat.

“A mirage-pony?” I asked.

He nodded. “I, for one, just call it that accursed shimmer that’s been stealing things and terrorizing ponies. From afar, it’s invisible. Get really close to it—and I do mean rather close—and they say you can see it shimmer like a mirage, and the mirage almost seems to resemble a pony. Hence, ‘mirage-pony’.”

I blinked. “Eine Spiegelgestalt?”

“I’m sorry?” he asked, but in my mind I was no longer there.

Instead, I was deep in my mind’s eye like a monkey being eaten by a flock of termites because he tried to eat from the wrong termite mound. Termites come in flocks now. Shut up. Here in the mind, the wind was howling the blizzard’s warcry at the dawn of the night. As the snowstorm raged, two ponies in coats galloped through the paved streets of Esztergom after a third pony. Or rather, after floating mass of hot pink paint that just so happened to partially outline a pony in full sprint.

“Ever stop to wonder if—just if—it would be fun to set a firehouse on fire?” I asked loudly, trying not to trample the various ponies in the street. “You know, just so that you could shout ‘who is defended now against the fire?’ as they run around on fire?”

“Could you maybe ask this at a better time?” the stallion besides me said between heavy breaths.

“Not really, Agent Hirte,” I replied. “Scheiße, this whoreson is fast!”

The paint-covered Spiegelgestalt darted past a gaggle of young mares who were probably discussing penises because that’s what I’d be doing, and Agent Hirte and I followed. But as it spun to the right, it was stopped by the roar of a startled mammoth. The thick-brown-furred elephantine creature blew a loud eroooh sound from its trunk, the pony driving it shouting and holding onto his hat. A pony screamed, pointing at the floating paint. Waves of reality washed over everybody as they came to realize that there was an invisible pony being chased by two Reichskriminalamt agents.

By some miracle—phobia of shaggy carpets, I’d figured—the Spiegalgestalt just stood there, staring up at the mammoth. It spun around to face us too late. I saw it try to make itself scarce, and I also saw myself tackling it to the ground, and Agent Hirte help me bind it.

“Worry not!” I commanded as the entire city around me seemed to grind to a halt. Pulling out my badge, I shouted, “Reichskriminalamt!” Wiping my brow of sweat, I smiled at Agent Hirte. “You know, I think today’s been a good day, think’st thou not?”

In a moment, the memory faded. Next I was standing in the Esztergom city square, watching an invisible pony being hanged. The whole damn city had turned out for this event, like a gaggle of goldfish staging a public stoning. That is, when everyone’s goldfish escapes their fishbowls for a night of whoring and drugging. The Spiegelgestalt never spoke a single word when it was tried for its crimes.

When I came back to the present, I found the Comte and his daughter exchanging nervous glances. “It’s called a Spiegelgestalt,” I said to them. “At least, that was what it was where I’m from. So, tell me, Comte Gluepony, where most often does your mirage-pony strike?” And suddenly I had a fancy new sidequest.

|— ☩ —|

“So, you know what those things are, then?” Felicitat asked as we left the Comte’s manorhouse. The town of Caval, I noticed, was bigger than I’d first thought. Not a city, but still a large town.

“Not really, but people says things,” I replied. “The Reich once caught and hanged one for its crimes. After that, we dissected it. Never once did it become visible from the outside, but its internal organs were very red. On the inside, it was like a pony, except that it had no sex organs and seemed to lack any of the decidedly male or feminine features that ponies develop during puberty. We call them Spiegelgestalten—literally, ‘mirror figures’, although our word for mirage is die Luftspiegelung, air mirroring, so I… don’t know where I’m going with that.” I looked at her. “Hey, are there any places to get a fruit smoothie? I’d murder somepony for one. Of course, then it’d turn out that they had a tragic backstory, and so killing them was wrong and then the Kodex will break and then everything will be terrible. Still better than being a raped by a mare-knight.”

“What?”

I picked a rock up, attempted to skip it across a pond, and instead killed a frog. I was about to bury it with full military honors when Honkers swooped it and ate the frog’s corpse. This struck me as odd because I was pretty sure that geese didn’t eat meat at all. That led to the question: What kind of demons goose was Honkers?

“Oh, which reminds me.” I sidled up to her and put my arm over her shoulder. “I promise never to rape you.”

“Um.”

“Most mares live in constant fear of being raped,” I said with a sagely nod. “That’s why, over the years, I’ve learned that the best way to befriend a mare whom you do not know is to slide up to her, put an arm around her shoulders, and state clearly your intent never to forcibly fornicate her. This will put her at ease and ensure the start of a beautiful relationship.” I pointed at a little earther who was walking by and screamed, “I promise not to savagely rape you to death!”

The strange mare looked at me, performed with her hoof what I thought was some gesture to ward off the evil eye, and scampered down an alley shouting something in Occitan.

“See?” I said with a nod. “She’s going to tell all her friends about how I won’t brutally, savagely rape her.”

“P-please don’t touch me,” Felicitat said, squirming under my arm.

Letting her go, I said, “Now come on. Gluepony said that the mirage-pony likes to steal things from the market square area.”

With sure step I led my party through the streets of Caval. Although, I only had a vague idea of where I was going. “Hey, Felicitat,” I prodded as the number of ponies doing things on the streets thickened out.

“Òc?”

“That means ‘yes’, right?” I glanced at the signs, written seemingly all in Occitan.

“Um, aye, aye it does.”

“What do you keep saying ‘aye’ instead of ‘yes’?”

“I dunno,” she said with a shrug.

“Right, so…” I stopped and made eye contact with some random stallion. Narrowing my eye, I conspiratorially nodded at him. When he didn’t nod back, I nodded harder until he just nodded back at me. “Exactly. Tonight, the revolution comes. Bring all your swords and hide the mares. Punch and queso will be served in that exact order,” I told him, and sauntered off with Felicitat in tow. “Right, so, I was wondering: since you have those, er… those nippunaises, those Nippöner, do you understand the concept of tentacle-themed pornography?”

She jerked to a halt. “Huh—bu—wha’?”

Watching Honkers land on a nearby rooftop and glare murderously at me, I said, “Yeah, I mean… for you ponies, it’d probably involve a mare wearing socks whose limbs are being forcibly splayed apart by tentacles whilst other tentacles forcefully enter her every orifice. In my country, it’s a common stereotypical joke that all Nippöner are really into it, and so I wondered if, since there were a bunch in Equestria, you had the same song.”

The specific look on her horrified face said it all.

“Oh my God, you do!” A thought dawned on me. “God my oh, you didn’t pack a dirty tentacle magazine with you, did you?”

She shrunk away from me and said in a weak voice, “No.”

“You so totally do! Wow! Hey, is it full of mares or… ah, it’s one of stallions, isn’t it?” I laughed. “You know, where I’m from, it’s commonly believed that females never gander at such dirty magazines, but I’ve met two in Equestria in as many weeks that seem to do so. Are such things more acceptable for mares in Equestria?”

Felicitat shrunk so small that she was now standing about as tall as Cards did when she was trying to act all big and scary.

“Huh. So that’s a no?” I shook my head. “Equestria is so sexually repressed, it seems to me. Why is that? I mean, look at everypony.” I gestured over to a mare who looked like she’d just single-hoofedly fought her way through Hell with nothing but a toothbrush and the fundamental belief in brushing her teeth. “Seriously, everypony’s naughty bits are just there. If not for your long tails, I literally could not walk behind any of you. That was literally the first thing I noticed about you Equestrians, thou unclothed, uncivilized barbarian.”

A stallion carrying a chimney sweeper wandered a little too close to me. I jerked my head towards him and growled a uvular R. He looked at me like a mother looks at her ugly baby, thinking how nopony would know if she smothered it, and she could always just make another baby. A better baby! One with wings, even. Then he went back to his business.

“Have you ever wanted to just stab a baby monkey?” I asked a mare opening her front door. When I asked, she stared at me and slowly, very slowly, closed her door and decided that today was a good day to stay indoors.

“You know, you’re really freaking ponies out,” Felicitat said, “least of which being me.”

“Yeah, it’s what happens when I get antsy.” I fiddled with my sword so that my duster no longer hid it. The proud blade in its leather sheath immediately drew everypony’s eye.

Ponies talked and whispered. I didn’t understand most of what they said, but what I did understand made me feel special. “Is that a sword?” “Look at that outfit.” “He must be a Carolean!” “Is he here about the mirage-pony?”

I smirked at Felicitat in the way an evil toddler stares at a triple-scoop ice cream cone. Coffee flavored. “My lady, allow us to go into the market square.”

|— ☩ —|

Mongers marketed their wares. Peddlers plied their trades. Harlots hawked for weird things. One pony had a booth where you could rent a reptile for the day, and “trade-ins” were negotiable. Sadly, the vendor mare did not rent out rideable dragons. In fact, looking at the sign, I realized that it had nothing to do with reptiles. How I’d read it that wrong, I didn’t know, but I did.

I trotted out to the center of the large marketplace and all of its stalls and vendors and just looked around. Taking Felicitat with me, I went to the far end of the market. Nothing interesting. “Hey, Felicitat. How come nopony here recognizes you, since you’re apparently famous here?”

She pawed at the dirt. “Well… I don’t really like other ponies, probably a result of being ostracised for being a weirdo when I was a filly. Crowds make me hyperventilate. I like to keep to myself. Mostly Médge Lothaire and his son and wife, really. Uh, that is, they were with whom I talked to mostly.” Felicitat smiled a little, looking to the side.

“So. You wanted Lothaire’s son—what was his name? Péire?—so you wanted Péire inside you?”

Felicitat took a step back, flushing. She stuttered out something, but settled for silence and a red face.

A hoof to my chin, I said, “So. Have you heard of the Songnam Slaughter?” Smiling at her, I saw the hilarious look of dread on her face. “I wonder if the Butcher of Songnam killed him. Boy, would that be funny. Your Sénher Right dead, your livelihood destroyed, and all…” …by the same pony whose hooves you’ve put your life into. I shook my head and smiled. “Ah, the mass murder of tens of ponies. Funny, really. Now you’ll never get laid.” Her ears pressed into her head, and I ruffled her mane. “God, I think I have a problem; making mares act all like you are now just fills me with joy.”

I looked into her eyes and spun around, grabbing the hoof of a stallion reaching out to touch me. “Whoa there, friend, what’s your game?” I looked the black buck over, from his gray eyes to his toned but shorter-than-me build, to the… oh, what the Scheiße? No! Just… no! Only I was allowed to wear a duster and hat as sexy as mine! I didn’t know nor care who he was, but I wanted to put the tip of his penis in one of those things that cuts the edges off cigars, and then we’d just see where that took us.

“’Scuse me, sir,” he said calmly. His voice sounded like the kind of gravel road that was guaranteed to make you slip and gash your leg upon until you bled to death where no one but the undesirable ethnic minorities could hear. “It is most rude to speak ill of Songnam, and intolerable to do what you’re doing to a lady.”

“No.”

“No?” He cocked a brow.

I nodded. “Last time somebody tried being virtuous for the sake of a mare in my company, he turned out to be a monstrous bastard who threatened her with painful, magical death if she didn't sleep with him.” My blood burned as I glared at him. Mostly because my blood was infected, not because of my fiery teutsche passion, mind you, but still. “Precedent shows that I must protect her from you!”

“And you’re clearly not her father,” he replied evenly.

“And your mother clearly was a reputable lady and I can but offer her my respects in raising such a lovely son as you, but your father was a whore and left your mother alone, and so she worked her hardest to raise a good, honest colt who wouldn’t cheat on his wife, but instead her love created a child with a throbbing oedipus complex!” I snapped.

He tried to take his arm from my grip, but I didn’t let him. “Let go.”

“No.”

The stallion’s expression remained neutral. “How did you even see me coming?”

“I saw your reflection in the mare’s eyes,” I replied curtly.

“Impressive,” he commented.

“It’s all about position,” I said. “I like to be on top. My first girlfriend liked to be on top, too. That didn’t mix very well. She was fightier than me. Und ein Höllenstürmer. Real badass. But enough about me and my pet turtle.”

“Ma’am,” he said, not looking at me, “who is this stallion to you?”

“Um…” she went.

“Way to stand up for the team, Felicitat,” I groaned, rolling my eyes—eye! Rolling my eye. God, that just sounded wrong.

In a swift spin, the stallion freed himself from my grip. He took a step around me and put a hoof to Felicitat’s shoulder. “Ma’am, are you well?”

“Hey!” I snapped. “Touch not the Felicitat.” I craned my neck and licked her side. Felicitat shivered, squealed, and jumped all in the same moment. She tasted of regret, tears, and not nearly enough hair conditioner. “There. See? I’m the kind of pony who licks things to claim them as his own. I licked her so she is mine. Are we in agreement?”

He tugged on her shoulder. “Ma’am, I believe—”

“No,” I said, putting a hoof on her other shoulder and tugging. “I licked her. Under Article C of the Space Constitution, section number El Numero, she is now legally held in bondage by me.”

We two tugged over the mare, each tug getting harder and harder until he tugged hard enough that I released my grip of Feliciat and let her tumble to the ground, her bag opening up and its contents spilling.

“What the hell?” he sputtered, looking down at the ground.

I stepped up to his side, bent forwards, and looked at the picture displayed in the magazine. “I like his socks, but I’m… I’m pretty sure stallions don’t have that much room in their…” At my comment, Felicitat screamed and tried to rapidly collect up all her fallen items.

“Just… what in Celestia’s name did I…” The stallion just flustered. “That’s simply… simply horrific! What kind of mare reads something like—”

I jabbed a hoof hard at his chest, not caring that everyone was staring at us. “Hey! If she can only have an orgasm while looking at pictures of Neighponease stallions getting a thousand tentacles forcibly shoved up their bleeding assholes and urethras—who are you to judge her?! God, I wish you were a mare so I could hit you…” I grabbed a large wooden box of soap from a nearby soap vendor and dragged it into the street. Standing up it, I shouted. “In this world of ours, ponies can have all sorts of creepy fetishes. And do you know what? That’s okay.”

I pointed at Felicitat. “If this young mare gets her genitals all hot at the sight of tentacled monster slithering up their nostrils, down their throats, and into their assholes—that’s okay, too! How dare you have the audacity to judge her. How dare you! So long as it is safe, sane, and consensual, you cannot judge a pony for whatever unholy things get their dicks up and their vaginas moistened.” I swept my hoof around, gesturing to the whole market. “Let this be a lesson to all of you, friends, Equestrians, weird ponies who are into tentacle bondage pornography—we can all live happily together in a world without judgement, but first you have to understand, love, and tolerate!”

Smiling, I hopped off the box, gave it back to the vendor, and tossed him a gold coin. Back to where I was standing, I noticed that everypony was just staring at me with slacked jaws. Even the birds were doing it. “No, no, everypony, that’s all I had for today. I’m done. Nothing more. Go about your business. You’ve all learned a valuable lesson today in why you shouldn’t judge this young mare for being into ‘weird’ pornography, nor anypony else for that matter.”

My damn right arm was burning, and I could feel sweat on my brow. It wasn’t a sweat of exertion but the sweat of fever. The sweat, der Schweiß, of mice, a bird. I scratched at my burning, itching arm along the rock-hard, red veins. God, how I wished that healing potions could heal infections on top of just mending holes in flesh. As I itched, I looked down at Felicitat, who was trying uselessly to dig a hole in the ground and bury herself. I had no idea that Equestrians were apparently some sort of color-changing octopus/chameleons, but as I looked at her, I learned that they must have been. Although I considered telling her that red camouflage did not work in this environment and would doubtlessly lead to her being eaten by a pack of shrews, I didn’t.

Instead of dealing with her, I found myself staring at the soap merchant’s stall. Why? Well, because the gold coin was floating in the air. And no, it was not being picked up a unicorn. Even Felicitat gasped, jerking her head up to look at it. It was close enough that I saw the mirage-like shimmer.

Without hesitation, I whipped out my sword. I shouted something that was totally cool and awesome and explained everything, but since I was holding a sword in my teeth, it came out as a weird slurping noise. Immediately, the black buck barked that I had a weapon and tackled me to the ground.

Landing on my back, my weapon clattering across the ground, I watched the shimmer dart between stalls. Within a second, the shimmer was gone, and the coin vanished behind a corner. Blood boiling from something other than the infection for once, I snapped up at the buck atop me, “You unreasonable idiot! Thou hole that is filled with dick! Thou’st the mirage-pony get away let!”

“Pardon me, pardner?” he asked.

“You heard me!”

He stepped back, and I sprang to my feet. “Where did the mirage-pony go?” he demanded.

I rolled my eye. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t be able to catch it. It’s too fast.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because,” I chuckled, “I’m the closest thing to an expert on them in this country.”

He stamped a hoof, both us ignoring how everypony was still staring. “By what grounds?”

Again, I chuckled. “Well, you see—your alphabet only has twenty-six letters; mine has thirty. We got Ä, Ö, Ü, ẞ,” I sang, swinging my hips side-to-side. “So you can just suck my… vowels! Ä, Ö, Ü! You have not the Ä, Ö, Ü!” I sidled up to him and said, “Because it’s a matter. Of. Size. Ergo, I am the default master of all the topics. And if you disagree…” I took a breath and yelled, “I’ll ẞ, Ä, Ö, Ü all over your face!”

Sliding backwards, I said, “Okay, Felicitat, let’s blow this…” I looked the black buck and his bamboozled countenance. Then there was his duster, hat, and the sword at his side. The mental clockwork in my head ticked and tocked as if made of oranges. “You’re a Carolean.”

“Yes,” he replied.

“See, Felicitat?” I said. “He can say yes. Why can you valley ponies say yes? All you say is aye and òc.” I looked back at the Carolean. It was then that I noticed the black iron symbol hanging from his necklace: a left-facing equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, the cross itself tilted at an angle.

I recognized it as an old nippönisches symbol for good luck, eine Swastika. As I recalled, after the Reich conquered Nippön, we immediately freed all of Nippön’s slaves. Thanks to good old fashioned vengeance against abusive former-masters, having already formed forty-percent of the population, catastrophic death tolls of native Nippöner during the war, and all those Nippöner who fled the island, those former slaves quickly formed the majority of Nippön’s population. Accordingly, they rejected the Swastika in favor of the Iron Cross used by their liberators, the same cross I wore, an altogether superior symbol. So seeing it reminded me of an old board game centered around that war.

“Hey, what’s with that Swastika?” I asked, pointing to his necklace. Somewhere, a bird decided I wasn’t worth gawking at any longer. At the same time, Honkers flew down and nuzzled Felicitat.

“Huh? You mean, the manji?”

“Mahn-jee?” I shook my head. “Whatever. Why are you wearing one?”

He cocked a brow. “It’s a symbol of fortune and good luck. Not to mention it’s House Elkington’s coat-of-arms, and thus the symbol of we Caroleans.”

“Wait. Why is it House Elkington’s coat of arms?”

“Because,” he said slowly, “Lord Elkington’s great-grandmother was the last Princess and member of the royal family of Neighpon?”

I cocked my head to side. “Really? Also, Lord Elkington?”

“You know, this really isn’t the time or place to discuss the royal bloodline of Lord Elkington,” he replied in an annoyed drawl.

Casting my eyes over to where Honkers was trying to comfort Felicitat by shielding her from everypony’s judgmental eyes via his wings, I decided not to kill the goose out of pure spite. Instead, I put a hoof on the Carolean’s breast and said in a breathy voice, “Tell me all your secrets. All of them. Especially the dirty.”

“No,” he said, and casually brushed me off.

I sighed. “You know, you’re worse than getting a cyst on your eyeball.”

“I’ll take that into consideration and reflect upon it,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Proud.” He gave me a hard look

My ears drooped. “Aw, your name is actually rather cool. I was hoping for a ridiculous name, like Gluepony or Pudge Farks.”

“It’s my Carolean name,” he said simply.

“Excuse me?”

Proud shook his head. “Look, we’re wasting valuable time. Who are you and why are you looking for the mirage-pony? This is actually important.”

“I’m—” the Butcher of Songnam, Killer of Kids “—just a concerned citizen, and I’m looking for the mirage-pony because I had nothing better to do this day. Sidequests were my bread and butter back in the day.”

“I… literally do not understand your last sentence.”

“You know what?” I asked. “You are going to work with me because of reasons. We’re both after the mirage-pony: you because of your Duke, I because it seemed like fun. As the pony with the ẞ, Ä, Ö, Ü, I am the leader of our party. Question is, how are we going to catch this Spiegelgestalt? Er, that is, this mirage-pony.”

“Um,” Felicitat voiced.

I pointed at and admonished, “Felicitat, quiet—stallions are speaking.” I waited a second. “Okay, now you can speak, Felicitat. I needed to sexistly shoosh you because that would guarantee what you had to say was crucial to something. I know how things work.”

She blinked. “Well, when that thing showed up, I could feel it.”

“Of course!” I exclaimed. “Ah, you’re bloody brilliant. You can be like a bloodhound. I’ll just put a leash on you and make you wear a red or black thong—sexy colors—and walk you around town as you feel up everything in search of the mirage-pony.”

“What?” Proud ejaculated.

I frowned at him. “Well, I’m sorry you have no imagination.”

His upper lip curled up like a dog. Against the rest of his blank face, the sneer almost looked unconsciously done. The expression quickly vanished as he rubbed the bridge of his nose and groaned. “Uncreative? Sure. And pigs would dance on two legs under the unswotel Nightmare Moon of Winterfulth.”

“Winterfulth,” I said. “There’s the word again. What does it mean?”

“October,” Felicitat offered helpfully. “It’s another name for October.”

“Er, and ‘unswotel’?”

“Obscure.”

I frowned. “Your language is stupid.”

Proud shrugged. “It’s nar how it’s spake.’Tis cwethle, nay?”

“Okay, now you’re just screwing with me.”

“Actually, it’s just a northern dialect. I usually suppress the hell outta it in order to be understandable to ponyfolks.”

“Are you Scoltish?” Felicitat asked, perking an ear. Honkers, sitting on her back, glared murderously at me.

“Aye, I am,” Proud replied.

“No, Proud!” I whined. “You were the one good pony who didn’t say ‘aye’ around here. And what happened to being the serious pony around here? While you were busy thinking dirty thoughts about touching a thoroughly violated and underage filly, I was coming up with a plan to save the day. So stop hitting on that which I have claimed via licking and help me kill this mirage-pony for its inherently evil existence.”

|— ☩ —|

Duke Elkington plays for keeps, apparently, I thought, looking over the Carolean’s weapon of choice. The earther’s gear included an overly complicated-looking crossbow rig attached via some kind of harness. He fired the crossbow by means of some weird thing mounted to his jaw; he bit down to fire, but when not trying to fire it let him speak perfectly well. A set of cables set around a leg brace allowed him to kick his leg to reload his crossbow up to four times before he needed to load up more arrows. If he was to be trusted, there wasn’t a pony alive as accurate a shot as he. Sure. If I had my horn, I’d take out my dual heavenly weapons and show him a thing or two about love.

Along with his hat and duster, he reminded me of an old vampire hunter. Of course, he was nowhere near as cool as the vampire-hunter-come-king known as Jan Makkabäer Pendergast. Jan Makkabäer used an axe and once killed an entire army of undead, so the legend goes, just because he had nothing better to do that day. My kind of hero, really.

Stop itching, stupid arm! I nodded at the Carolean, but Proud only stared back at me. “This plan is fullproof.”

“Foolproof,” he said. “It’s pronounced foolproof.”

At that I frowned. “Never underestimate the sheer tenacity and genius ingenuity of a fool.” I scattered several gold coins in a neat little pile on the ground, mindful of the buildings around me, which could provide cover.

Proud whistled. “You’re no lowborn, I take it.”

“I’d take being lowborn anyday over being a self-serving, inbred noble.” I shook my head. “You think backwater countryfolk have it rough? Trust me, nobleponies take inbreeding to new and innovative heights. Who’s up for having a son whose father is also his grandfather and brother? Because I once totally managed to do that in this once feudal-based board game I once played. I was actually doing an experiment to see how depraved I could get. I ended up with flipper babies! Because hooves are overrated. Welcome to the world of blue blood, jackass.

“But the point I’m trying to make,” I said, nodding, “is that nobleponies, highborn ponies, are a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.” At that exact moment in time, my Jerichosenses tingled. “Somewhere in the cosmos,” I reasoned, “an encyclopedia from a thousand years into the future has just fallen into the present. Its entry on the Equestria nobility, I know, reads: ‘A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first up against the wall when the revolution came.’”

He rolled his eyes and groaned, “Oh, Fiddler play thee.”

“Since when have I been an instrument?” I asked. “I’d suggest that I’d be flute, but penis jokes are very childish and no one has ever liked them.”

What.

“Don’t be a smartass; you know what the phrase means.”

“Actually,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck, “I do not.”

“Um,” Felicitat voiced. “Why am I tied up, again?”

I looked down at the little mare tied up on the ground. “You’re doing great, Felicitat. Don’t go ruining that mojo with stupid questions. Remember to scream bloody murder if the mirage-pony tries to touch you in a no-no place. Otherwise, just squirm pathetically if you begin to sense it. The gold is sure to lure it in.” I made sure that the coins I’d scattered on the ground were nestled up against Felicitat.

“And may the Fiddler fiddle his fiddle for thee,” Proud said, “if this doesn’t work.”

“Ah, so the other version of the phrase translates as Fiedler dir spielen, not Fiedler dich spielen. Dative case, not accusative. Understood.”

A part of me wondered briefly if it would have been a much smarter idea to have tried to use Felicitat as a bloodhound rather than a sensor. Of course, it was much more fun to have just trussed her up and peppered her blue fur with shiny coins. “Okay, Felicitat, now look pathetic and—perfect. Just try giving bedroom eyes at stuff and you’re sure to attract our monster. Pure fetish fuel. Naked girl trussed up, bedroom eyes, sprinkled with gold, and totally weak.”

“I didn’t sign up for this,” she whined. “I signed up because my life was ruined.”

“You were drafted and you know it.” I nudged Proud. “Come on, you hide over in this empty stall. When the mirage-pony picks up the coins, shoot at it and try to herd it down the street where I’ll be hiding in wait with these.” I pulled them out.

“Where did you…? Why do you have a pair of hoofcuffs?”

I shrugged. “I’m into the weird shit.”

He just stood there.

“Do I have to remind you why I have the plan and am in charge, Carolean? Because it starts with an Ä.”

Proud sighed. “Whatever. Except for how idiotically it’s been assembled, it is not exactly a terrible plan.”

“Good. Now then, to work!”

|— ☩ —|

“What are we hiding from?” a voice whispered, and I had to swallow my tongue not to scream.

“The hell are you doing here?” I snapped at the smiling countenance of the Comte’s daughter. This almost claustrophobic hiding place hardly had the room for us. And how in God’s name she got here so silently while wearing a dress was a question so terrifying in implication to me that I utterly forgot about it.

“Well, Daddy is Comte, so I do technically have the right to be anywhere in town I want,” she giggled. “But what are we hiding from?”

“Nothing!” I hissed. “I’m laying in ambush for the mirage-pony.” I poked a hoof at the wooden barrels and crates demonstratively. What it proved, though, I had no idea.

“Oh,” she said as if coming to an orgasmic realization. “So that’s why you tied up that little bitch out there, right? Suits her. But, what’s with all that gold?” Her eyes lit up with little stars. “Is that yours?”

“Yes!”

She gasped. “I knew it! After you left, Daddy said you had the noble features of a highborn pony—”

“An inbred freak?”

“—which is why he was puzzled by… wait, what?”

I looked at her like a wolf looks at a toddler covered in honey and swimming in gravy, except that the wolf is so full that it might just vomit. “Oh, nothing. Es war nichts.”

The Comte’s daughter tilted her head to the side, making a slight jingling noise from her fancy earrings. Were I a cat, I would have swatted them until her ears were all gory and missing pieces—like Cards! “I don’t… what?”

“Look, first research the concepts of Volkssouveränität and, more importantly, Vertragstheorie, then we can talk of nobles and inherited rule.”

She nodded. “Ah, so you’re educated, too!”

“One cannot fight for his country unless one understands why he fights for his country. Hail to public education.”

The mare frowned. “I never really saw the point in public education. It’s not like lowborns really care or will ever make use of higher education. Except for the rich ones, that is. Bourgeoise and whatnot.”

I narrowed my eyes, glaring. Putting a hoof on her, I pushed her a few inches back. It was about as far aways as she could be from me in this little nook. “There. You have your side, I have mine.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, I’m just contractually obliged to be brooding and to always look angry,” I said evenly.

“Oh. That makes sense, I guess.” She glanced to the wall, then over the barrels to the street where Felicitat was bound. When she blinked, I noticed her fake lashes and all the little makeup she was wearing that she hadn’t been wearing only an hour or so ago. She looked at me expectantly, and I just kept glaring. “Um. Aren’t you going to ask my name?”

The peasants will crucify and probably rape you to death, mark my words. You mark them, alright.

“Because my name is Biche.” She took a step towards me and smiled

I know it means ‘doe’ and is pronounced ‘beesch’, but her father had to have realized that it looked like ‘bitch’. Or maybe that’s on purpose. Psychic ponies… “Hmm,” I hummed.

Biche was looking into my eye with a sort of hopeless fascination. “You know, for years, I’ve heard about Duke Elkington’s Caroleans.” She glanced over to where Felicitat was still on the ground like a pig. “Rather hard to tell myth from fact, all the stories they tell of them. Still never thought I’d ever get the chance to meet one.”

“Yes, yes, that’s dandy,” I replied.

She opened her mouth, pawing at the ground, when Felicitat screamed. I spun my head to face her and saw golden coins floating. Proud bellowed, jumped out from hiding, and fired a bolt straight for the center of the floating mass of coins above the flailing mare.

The bolt sailed straight on through and broke upon a wall. In an instant, two things happened: the coin dropped and Felicitat was lifted, screaming into the air by her ropes as if she were a package. I tensed up as Proud fired another bolt and missed. While the Carolean reloaded, Felicitat, still being carried, flailed uselessly as she was rapidly spirited down the streets

Biche gasped. “The mirage-pony!”

I stayed where I was like an old stallion who’s glued himself to his granddaughter. The invisible entity got closer, I could see from the mare it had. Closer… and closer… and just a little more… I vaulted over the crates and grabbed a pre-placed bucket of flamboyant pink paint. Natural twenties on my dice rolls. Critical hit. As I had done years ago, I covered the Spiegelgestalt in the paint.

It was carrying the mare in its mouth via the ropes. Then, with absolutely herculean force, the Spiegelgestalt threw Felicitat at me, its whole body seeming to twist as it launched her. Throwing myself to the side, I dodged the blue ball of fur and screams, and I didn’t look as I heard her impact smash and break what were actually rather sturdy boxes. Her scream went from terrified to agonized.

Rather than run, the mirage-pony just stood there, staring at me. I knew it was staring at me because I saw its eyes, and I saw that it wasn’t entirely invisible. There in the centers of its too small and too beady eyes, were tiny black dots, like the period at the end of this sentence. Were it not for the contrasting paint and the sun glaring hatefully into its flat, ungendered countenance, I would never have seen it. Of course, that made sense; if his pupils were invisible, he’d be blind; some light needed to filter through his eyes in order to allow vision. To me, it was proof that even magic obeyed science, proof that science was master over magic.

“Halt!” the Carolean bellowed, grinding to a halt behind the mirage-pony, but the mirage-pony only stared at me.

From the way the paint was moving, I could tell that the beast was smiling at me in the way that a pedophile smiles at a little girl with a lollipop who’s gotten lost from her parents. Only, my lollipop was a pair of hoofcuffs. Slowly, very slowly, it twisted its neck back to look at Proud.

I sprang forwards, cuffs at the ready, as Proud fired his bolt. At once, the Spiegelgestalt jumped and tumbled, the arrow striking… Oh dear God, what is this? So, yeah, it turned out that Proud’s bolts weren’t exactly very sharp nor likely meant to kill ponies. No, that’d make sense, and we can’t be having that, now can we? His bolt tips were, in fact, more-or-less balls of metal whose goal was to likely cause intense pain and incapacitate.

Really, though, I couldn’t complain too much. Proud’s bolt made the mirage-pony bark doglike and tumble to the ground. Or, scratch that. I could complain. The Spiegelgestalt sprang up, though limping. With the speed of a fangirl stalking her beloved superstar, I lunged for it, my hoof to his jaw and—oh God! Ow! Ow! Scheiße! My right arm and its poisoned veins and broken hoof throbbed.

The mirage-pony took my moment of agony to dart around me and dash to the crates behind which I’d been hiding. Proud fired another one of his bolts and hit the thing’s chest, yet the mirage-pony seemed to ignore it. Instead, he reached into a the crate he’d broken with Felicitat, and pulled out the screaming mare herself. I could see a nasty gash on her leg.

“Not this again!” I groaned, and the mirage-pony threw her at me. When she hit me, I twisted myself to deflect as much of the blow as possible, and the bleeding mare went tumbling across the ground. Without thinking—sometimes the best plans were the ones formulated by instinct—I threw myself forwards and tackled the mirage-pony.

I thanked God for just how supernaturally quick the paint on him had dried, although I’d probably be picking and removing bits of pink paint from my duster for weeks. Its body felt dry and leathery, not like the fur of a pony. As I struggled to hold the Spiegelgestalt, I saw the flash of a pink mare in a blue dress vault over the crates. Running, of course. Because elitist noble bitches were absolutely good for noth—I blinked.

Biche’d slid to a halt by Felicitat. The noble had looked down at the empath’s bleeding leg, biting her lip. But what thunderstruck me was how Biche reached down to her rather expensive-looking dress and tore a huge strip from it. In seconds, she was on her knees, quickly dressing Felcitat’s wound with her own dress, covering her hooves in foreign blood.

It was so strange to watch that I allowed the mirage-pony to punch my chest. Sadly for it, that reminded me that it existed, and I quickly cuffed it. Proud galloped over and tossed me a bit of rope he had, too. I’ll admit, it was harder to tie knots without telekinesis, but I was a determined pony, I was, and soon the mirage-pony’s legs were bound. For what it’d done to the mare in my protection, I wanted to strangle the thing to death, but I had to see to that mare first.

Getting off its body, my infected arm throbbing, sweat of fever and exertion on my brow, I went over to the mares. “Felicitat, is there food in your stomach? Tell me! Have you eaten in the last few hours?”

She nodded weakly, and the Comte’s daughter looked up questioningly at me.

I knelt down and pulled out a pink vial from my bag. “Here,” I said, and poured a potion directly into and over the gushing furrow. Felicitat screamed, but, to the noble’s credit, Biche held her down and sussurrated calming noises to her. She’d spoken true, and the flesh curled and twisted as it grew with an utterly unnatural speed beneath the blood-soaked blue bandages.

And then it was all over. Felicitat lay panting on her back. Biche sat on her haunches, back propped against a crate that hadn’t broken. She wiped sweat off her brow, not noticing the streak of blood she rubbed onto herself.

“Celestia, that was scary,” Biche sighed. “Is everypony alright?”

Nopony replied. Felicitat was too busy on the ground, I was just staring, and Proud was tending to the mirage-pony.

“Well, don’t everypony answer at once,” she groused.

“Why did you help her?” I asked.

Biche blinked. “I… don’t understand the question.”

“You went out of your way to help her, tore you own dress for bandages, even though you stated a dislike for her. She’s not even a noble.”

She looked at me and said, “No matter who your parents were, every life is precious.”

My mouth went dry. I had nothing to say to that at all. Of course, Biche le Bitch was correct… and in a weird way, despite her fantastic elitism, a part of me couldn’t help but think that she was still a better pony than me. Would I have ruined my own clothes, gotten myself bloodied, to save the life of a pony I hated?

Then she said, “There’s no need for you to be such an elitist.”

Screw you, bitch! “It was the right thing to do, just that you didn’t strike me as the kind of mare who would ever do that. You said that you didn’t like her, too. All combined, I’m baffled.”

She uttered a low chuckle. “Yeah, well… I always wanted to go into medicine. When I was a little filly, I dreamt of being a nurse, even.”

“Dreamt? What happened?”

Biche sighed. “Family happened. Daddy said that he needed me at home, needed me to marry that bastard from down the valley… and so I didn’t go to a university… and then that bastard broke the betrothal to marry some slut… and so—” she shrugged “—here I am.”

“And your problem with Felicitat?” I prodded.

“Well…” Her ears drooped. “I don’t like the way that harlot you’re traveling with looks at you. How can you stand it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, it’s a…” She made a circling gestures with her hooves, as if trying to magically conjure the word out of the aether. Or a thesaurus. I glanced back to Felicitat as Biche went on. Something felt off. “It’s not a respectful or nice look, I guess. Me? Unlike that witch, I see your scars—your eye, hooves, et al—as being rather awesome, like… signs of respect.”

I adjusted the brim of my hat and gathered up the ropes from Felicitat, putting them into my pack. “What are you getting at?”

Biche bit her lip. “Just that… I think they’re really respectable, signs of all you’ve sacrificed for your lord and country, and, uh… kinda hot, and… stuff.”

Before I could say anything, Proud shouted, “No!”

Jerking to look, I saw Proud tackling a standing mirage-pony back to the ground. Die Spiegelgestalt had not been trying to run; it was facing the wall, working at something. I squinted at what it had done, and the squint turned into wide eyes. Slowly, I walked over to the wall it’d been at. There was a single word written on the wall in blood. Glancing down, I saw it was its own blood.

I looked down at the mirage-pony’s stupid Backpfeifengesicht. Backpfeifengesicht, neuter gender, was a very lovely teutsches word that Equestrian lacked a direct translation for. In short, Backpfeifengesicht meant “a face that makes you want to punch it”. Even though its face was invisible, it still made me want to punch it.

“What is that?” Proud asked, the mirage-pony not struggling under him. He was, of course, referring to what the Spiegelgestalt had written.

“Κῶρβαἴτ.”

It was not in the alphabet the Reich used, but it was still the alphabet wherein I signed my name. Sometimes, being pretentious had its advantages. This was the dead language of ancient Solonien, probably spelt “Solonia” by Equestrian reckoning. The language was certainly thus Solonisch.

“Korweit,” I said, my blood chilling as I read the name, which was actually a godsend because of how hot I was. “It says Korweit.”

“Kor-vite?” he asked. Unlike me, he pronounced his R. In the language the name was writing, the R was trilled; in mine, it was dropped like they did in Northern Equestrian accents.

I spoke softly, but not to him, recounting ancient lines from a story. “Curse me, hate me, hurt me, kill me.”

“I’m sorry?” Proud probed.

Slowly, I turned to the mirage-pony. “How do you know of Korweit?”

It didn’t reply.

“How?!” I demanded, stomping on his chest. “There’s no way you should know of Korweit! Dienst du ihm? Sag mir, du Hurensohn! Woher kennst du die Stimme in der Finsternis? Los sag schon, Miststück!”

It didn’t reply.

“Woher weißt du von der Stimme in der Finsternis?!”

“What are you talking about?” Proud asked. “Who is Korweit?”

Trying to get ahold of myself, I affixed the Carolean with a hard look. “Korweit is…. is not something to concern yourself with. What’s more pressing is what we’re going to do about the mirage-pony. Are we going to just, like, kill it, or…?”

He didn’t seem very convinced by my forced change of topic. Neverless, he replied, “Lord Elkington sent me here for a reason, you know.”

|— ☩ —|

In the musky tavern, I looked between Proud, Felicitat, and Biche. As the Comte’s daughter, she offered to essentially deal with him for us, reporting back the results of this little meeting. Upon learning that Proud was a Carolean, Biche hadn’t stopped fighting herself over which of us to ogle more. Speaking of whom, the Carolean took a swig of liquor. It turned out he’d arrived in town with a wagon that, strangely, he himself had pulled into town. The mirage-pony was “safely” tied and tucked away in the cart.

“So, you’re going to just leave a dangerous monster in your cart, then take it back to Duke Elkington?” I asked.

Oh, wait. I forget about Felicitat. She wasn’t allowed to do anything but sit there because she was too young to be drinking, in my opinion. But I ordered her a plate of so-called “hay fries” to keep her happy.

“Yes, as I just spent the last minute explaining,” Proud replied.

“You realize it will escape, right?”

“It will not,” he said with a confidence that I knew it’d be pointless to argue with. It was the confidence not of a pony who’d made up their mind but one whose mind had been made up for them.

I sighed. “It’ll come back to bite you, but have it your way, Proud.” I poked at my glass of water, trying to ignore the feverish sweat on my brow. It was a bit like trying to teach a spider the ways of the pony: it only worked if you were extremely unlucky. “But, Proud, there is another matter.”

“And that would be?”

My eyes went to Felicitat eating her hay fries. She picked one up and tried to toss it into the air and catch it. The fry hit her in the eye with all its salt, and she yelped and began furiously rubbing her agitated eye.

I nodded my head at Felicitat. “The girl.”

“What of her?” he asked.

Leaning forward, I said, “You will take the girl to Songnam, take her personally to Duke Elkington.”

For a moment, Felicitat looked horrified, almost betrayed. But she swallowed, rubbed her eye, and solemnly nodded.

Proud leaned back, cocking a brow. “I will?”

“You will.”

“Why?”

“Because the Duke owes me a favor.”

Proud chuckled. “For what?”

Allowing myself to sit back in my chair, I flashed him a ‘checkmate’ grin. “Do you know of the Devil’s Backbone?”

He blinked. “How—”

“Whom do you think Duke Elkington sent to defeat the Devil’s Backbone?”

There was almost silence for a moment here in the bar. Although the table wasn’t exactly at the center of the tavern, I could get a good look at the myriad of ponies here with us, and the lone fiddler playing up on the stage. She, the fiddler, wore black robes and played her somber music without the use of telekinesis. I’d once tried to learn to play the guitar. That had ended with a pet shelter burning down and one poor mare needing surgery to remove the parakeet lodged in her stomach.

“Th-that was not you,” he said.

“You sound less-than sure of thyself, good sir Carolean,” I said with a cocked brow. “Tell me, where were you when the Butcher of Songnam made his rounds, singing his own version of the Smile Song?”

The Carolean stared at me. “Lord Elkington did not release that information to the public…”

“I’m not the public, now am I?” I asked with a shrug.

“How did you come by this information?”

I dismissively waved my hoof at him. “Oh, you can tell by my equicidal demeanor, incoherence, and plethora of weapons that I, in fact, am the Butcher of Songnam.”

“That’s not funny,” he said sternly.

“Oh, but it is,” I chuckled. “So when you bring this little girl to Duke Elkington, you will tell him that Special Agent Faust sent her. Do I make myself clear? Trust me; he wants what skills she’s capable of bringing to his table. I’ve done enough sin recently. I think it’s time I do something nice for niceness’ sake, hmm?”

Proud continued staring at me. “Fiddler play thee…”

“Can the Fiddler play me Kraftmetall? Power metal?” I asked, and he just looked at me. “Because I really don’t understand just who this ‘Fiddler’ fellow is.”

“He’s being honest, I feel,” Felicitat voiced, and everypony glanced at her.

The Carolean stood up. “I’m going to step outside and get a breath of air. Carolean’s honor, I’m not running away.”

“Don’t get eaten by a tortoise,” I said with a wave as he left.

When he was gone, Biche looked at me. Her look told me everything I needed to know, and I answered before she could ask. “I’m who Elkington sends when he doesn’t believe his Caroleans have what it takes, his warrior from somewhere far beyond.”

“Far beyond?” she mouthed.

“Yes. I came from far beyond your little world, for all that it feels.” I took a sip of water. “I lost my eye to defend and protect Equestria, nonetheless, even though it’s not my home, simply because I believed—and still believe—that it was the right thing to do.”

“I… I see.”

I brought a hoof up and adjusted the brim of my hat, then wiped the sweat of my brow. A part of me really wanted to touch the place where my horn was, where now there was a bony scar. “So. Who is this Fiddler fellow? I honestly know not.”

The mares looked between themselves, but it was Felicitat who took the initiative. “The Fiddler… well, the Fiddler on the Green is, like…” She looked to Biche for help.

“The Fiddler,” Biche picked up, “is the one who guides the souls of the dead to Fiddler’s Green.”

“The Fiddler’s Green?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No ‘the’, only ‘Fiddler’s Green’.” I nodded for her to continue. Biche sucked on her lip for a moment. “Do you know what Elysium is?” I nodded. “It’s basically that. They say that the good receive a life free from toil, not scraping with the strength of their legs the earth, nor the water of the sea, for the sake of a poor sustenance. Good ponies, those with friendship and love in their hearts, are to be found there. And they are guided there by the Fiddler on the Green, the… the Reaper of Souls.”

Like Gevatter Tod. “You seem uncomfortable.”

She looked vaguely considerate of my remark. “Well, it’s sort of just one of those things that… that you know, but don’t really talk about.”

“The Fiddler’s Green?” Scheiße. Said ‘the’ again.

“No,” Felicitat said. “Death.” She licked her lips. “It’s just… it happens to all of us, b-but you just don’t think about it or talk about it. Make the most of your life, y’know?”

“I can see that,” I said. “Though perhaps not my countrymen. The faith of my home is all about death. After all, religion exists to explain the unexplainable, like what happens after you die.”

“Yours must be a very sad land,” Biche said, looking around the tavern. She noticed the bartender eying her, gave him a glare, and the stallion went back to pretending not to look at us.

I smiled, then chuckled as she returned her gaze to me. “Well, you worry about that, I’ll worry about dying a hero or living long enough to see myself become a villain. In the first way, I get my sins absolved and am taken straight to the Halls of Walhalla in Heaven, the Archangel Thor there to greet me and honor my sacrifice. As a wise mare, the Mare Laurentia, said, ‘Once you’re hardened in battle, there’s no coming back’.” I sighed. “But in the other way, I have to kill myself, because me becoming a monster is…”

The broken hymen of the Kodex lays heavy upon my chest. I let out a single laugh. “And I take it that ‘Fiddler play thee’ implies that the speaker hopes that ‘thee’ is killed?”

“Òc, in a manner of speaking,” Biche said. “It’s like when ponies swear ‘fiddlesticks’; they’re invoking the name of the Fiddler, of death.”

“Huh.” I licked my lips. “So that explains that really weird phrase.”

“Reminds me of a scary little story about the Fiddler of the Green,” Felicitat commented. She shoved a hooffull of hay fries into her maw before she see me looking. “Hwa?” the empath asked through the mouthful. She chewed, chewed some more, and swallowed.

“Aren’t you going to tell it?”

Felicitat looked up at me. “I guess, i-if you want.”

“I do,” I replied with a nod. A mare walked by with a mug of some odd brown liquid that reminded me of coffee except worse in every single way imaginable. I considered asking for her thoughts about vampires, but Felicitat began speaking before I could inquire.

“The story goes that once there was a little colt whose life the Fiddler took,” Felicitat said slowly. “But in Fiddler’s Green the colt become sad and lonely. To his horror, the Fiddler realized that he’d taken the colt’s life too early. The Fiddler, distraught and wracked with guilt, tried to right his wrong, but even the Fiddler cannot bring the dead back to life. So he did the only thing he could think of.”

“Òc,” Biche picked up. “And there was a beautiful little filly. She woke up that morning, Daddy’s little girl, and went outside to play. Last night, she’d dreamt of sad little colt on a lush, green field, and she could see a fiddler on that field. In her dream, the Fiddler had come up to her and said, ‘I took him too early. Would you mind… would you mind… would you mind… if I take you?’ But still outside she went.”

Felicitat nodded, taking a sip of her water. “That’s right. For you see, she was no ordinary little filly. She was the little colt’s soulmate. If the Fiddler hadn’t taken the colt’s life, she would have grown up to marry him. They were destined to be together. And the Fiddler knew this, and so he played his fiddle. His song made her cross a street, and then…” The empath swallowed, rubbing her eye. “Her face was pale, her body smashed, and her beauty… gone.”

I looked over at the Fiddler playing her fiddle on the stage and wondered. If the fiddle was the instrument of the spirit of death, did that make the fiddle their instrument of death? And if so, did that make all fiddlers utter badasses in Equestria?

The empath sniffled, and, tentatively, Biche reached out a hoof and patted her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, it’s just that this story brings such sad memories for me,” Felicitat explained.

Oh my sweet dicks in a hotdog! What’s with all the sob stories in this country? Can nopony be normal? I tried not to roll my eyes. Why was it that I couldn’t go a single step without stumbling across someone’s tragic, teary past? But do you know the real tragedy of this? If I didn’t show sympathy, I was the bad guy. Ridiculous.

She swallowed, getting a hold of herself. “Where was I? Oh, right. There.” She cleared her throat. “And so the Fiddler came up to her and spoke softly about why he had killed her. She didn’t agree with him, didn’t think it was right. ‘Isn’t it a shame,’ the Reaper said. ‘He is still quite alone here, and he’s waiting for you.’

“But the filly was horrified; she was still in agony over what happened to her, and it wasn’t her time. She was unconvinced by her killer. He was taken aback. Slackjawed, even. ‘Oh, I really did fail for the first time,’ spoke the poor old Fiddler on the Green. She was suffering because of him, and she refused to let him end her suffering. Finally, the Fiddler broke down and begged.” She rubbed her watery eye. “The Fiddler begs the little filly to just take his hoof. ‘Just take my hoof, please!’ he pleads. ‘I’ll take you there, to the Green. I promise, you pain will go away, and you will be happy forever with the boy you were destined to love… Please, just… please, take my hoof…’ A-and—” She tried to continue, but she broke out into quite, personal little sobs. Yet through them, she said, “Nopony knows how that story ended, if she accepted him or suffered because of him.”

I nodded. “Why are you crying, Felicitat?”

“Yeah,” Biche added. “I know that the story’s a bit heart-wrenching, but it’s not exactly something to cry over.”

Felicitat took several deep breaths, trying to calm herself. “Wh-when I was a little filly, I had a big brother.” Biche and I exchanged glances. “One day, when I… one day, Mommy came home crying. Daddy was already home, but he talked to Mommy and ran outside. I asked Mommy what was wrong, she only kissed me, hugged me. She told me how much she—” the empath choked up “—how much she loved me… a-and then she told me that story…”

Instantly, I understood both why she was crying and why the story existed. They were the same reason. Recalling Equitologie class, I knew how all myths had a purpose. This myth, based off the Fiddler on the Green, seemed to me like a story told to help cope with the death of foals, especially in a society that seemed to like not to think that death was a thing. Like how it was said in Teustchland that mares who died in labor were honored in Heaven by going to Walhalla, for their sacrifice was just as heroic as, if not more heroic than, dying for king and country.

Meh. You’ll be out of my hair in an hour or so. No need to get all sad. Now then, to ask about the Equestrian mythology surrounding the hymen. I frowned and sighed. But first… I grabbed a napkin and helped dry Felicitat’s tears. “There you are.”

“Thanks,” she said with a sniffle.

“It’s what I do.” When I’m not busy murdering children, of course…

My God! Are you ever going to let that one go?

Not really, no.

I went to sigh, realized that only I heard the voice in my head, and thought it best to hold the sigh in. No need to make them think I was sighing at Felicitat. Still, I gave the whole debacle about Felictat’s dead family a moment of feverish thought. Wait, no, not feverish thought. That was literally just the fever I had. In any case, wondering about her dead family logically led me to wondering what Felicitat would do if she suddenly had an eagle for a face.

“Alright, everypony,” the strong voice of Proud said as he sat back down at the table.

I turned my head to him and said in a suspicious tone, “Somepony.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Are you going to finish that thought?” Biche prodded.

“No,” I replied in a conclusive tone.

Proud sighed. “What would we do without you?”

“Probably die of an eye infection,” I said. “Just imagine a tiny Princess Celestia dying of being terribly inbred, a clubfoot, a quadruple chin, and just being so fat that she cannot walk. You can thank me for not letting that happen.”

“Well.” Proud looked at me. “That was a mental image that I could have lived without ever having.”

Felicitat looked up at me. “Can you buy me a chocolate chip cookie while you’re at it? I mean, I want one of the super big ones that taste awesome and last me a minute of solid eating. Pretty please with cherries on top?”

I shot her a look that could freeze seas into a frothy substance not unlike a bad smoothie. “The nigh identical appearances of oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies is the reason I have trust and daddy issues.” I blinked tears from my… oh God! Tears from an eye without an eyeball did not feel normal! No, no, no, no! “Daddy always told me they were my favorites, but in reality they were always chocolate chip!”

“Oatmeal?” Felicitat asked with a wince. “Well, I guess I can’t fault you for that. I mean, I might disagree, but I can’t call you, like, crazy for liking what you like—”

“Just like I won’t judge you for all that crazy tentacle porn you’ve got on you,” I offered.

She let out a squeak, cheeks going red, but my attention was already to Proud. “Does your face ever get heavy? Your face looks kind of heavy. Maybe if you smiled for once, you’d look less like a pug.”

“I so want to beat you half-dead with a rake while you’re asleep.” Proud sighed.

“So, did you decide to help my young associate here?” I asked. “Because—”

“Yes, yes, I’ll take her to Lord Elkington when I leave. I will, indeed.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, drooping my ears. “Because I had this really creative threat lined up against you if you didn’t help.” I shot him a hard look. “It was going to be worse for you than it was for me that time I got laid at my high school prom.” I looked at the mares and, with a blank expression of utter horror, said softly, “I was homeschooled… by my father…”

Felicitat tilted her head to the side. “So… does this mean I don’t get a cookie?”

“No,” I replied curtly, and she frowned, flattening her ears. “You get a shoe. You can just lay there and chew on a shoe. Like a dog. Or like a meridian vase.” I briefly took out my bottle of Wodka, thirsty, and downed a thick sip. The burning ichor mixed well in my gut with the burning, itching blood. Because the first thing I needed now was a blood-alcohol level. “I can just picture you there, laying on the ground and gnawing on it as dogs do. Then you see me looking, stop, glare at me, and slowly go back to gnawing.”

“I don’t want a shoe,” she said, frown deepening.

I shot her a puzzled frowned. “No. You will be the shoe. So has life been ever since Ragnarök, when King Aloysius Pendergast, wielding the sword of Kaledfulch—” I adjusted the sword at my hip, because swords were awesome, and so was the Ach-Laut at the end of Kaledfulch “—led his Huskarler and Ritterbrüder against the White Queen and into Anderwelt to defeat the Dark Lady.” I nodded, a bit of drool dripping from my mouth as my head spun.

Biche looked at me, out of countenance. “Are you okay? You’re acting really weird all of the sudden.”

With a woozy shake of my head, I said, “No. I think it’s the infection and my newfound blood-alcohol level. Hey, does anypony got change for, like, a million pieces of gold? I-I still want to know the exact exchange rate…”

“Uh, do you need to see a doctor?”

“I can’t hit Proud to see if I can make him smile that way,” I said with a huff, a sense of vertigo bitch-smacking me like a mother slaps her newborn due to capricious and vague reasons, “because according to the law, one more case of assault and it’s technically a spree. And would you all stop spinning!?” I blinked. “You know, that reminds me of my father again. He once told me that one of the most important things in life is love, so he tried to cut off and sell my leg to a warlord in exchange for his hot daughter. That happen to anypony else? From the looks on your faces, I get the feeling that most dads don’t do that.”

The table jumped up and bodychecked my face. Oooh, drool! Wait, no, no, no, no. I fell face-first onto the table. That made sense. I reached out to grip the table and hold myself steady, and—ew, someone had put gum under the table. I hoped very much that their firstborn son was born with syphilis of the inner ear.

As I laid my head above the wooden table, I saw a distant part of the room where ponies were playing cards. Sitting there was a younger me, the boyhood forcefully slapped out of his face, looking at a card I somehow knew read “The Fool”. With a nervous look, he showed the card to the dealer mare, a mare with a dark jacket belted at the waist, jeans, and a plague mask. She took out the Hanged Stallion, looked at it, and shook her head at me. The Blue-Eyed Mare suddenly tore the Hanged Stallion apart, grabbed the Fool, and impaled the whole card upon the buck’s horn.

The masked mare turned to face me. She gestured a hoof to the Fool. With a tantalizing slowness, she lifted part of her mask, enough for me to see her lips. They were the kind of lips that most mares would kill for. The Blue-Eyed Mare blew me a solicitous little kiss and mouthed “Le Mat” at me.

I blinked, once, twice, and did not blink thrice. Sweet fever dreams embraced me. Fever dreams smelled like a place that lacked any penis jokes, and that made me sad as consciousness left me.

Author's Note:

Footnote: 25% to next level.
Companion Perk Lost: Empathic Link

(So, Amacita says this chapter’s amount of dick jokes has reached critical mass. Can Jericho be blamed for his strange obsession with genitals? Probably. Oh, hey, and look what Pawndidater2 drew for us: More fanart! Muhahaha! Soon all the art shall be mine ours Ron Burgundy of Jericho!)

(Remember: no matter what it is, I live your for feedback, positive or negative, short or long, written or drawn—and I love it all!)

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