XXII
Chestnut’s Journal, 8 June, 979:
I did it. I’m in the Guard! I passed the last trial!
Well, technically, I didn’t particularly do anything in the last trial, besides follow my squad around. We rose with the sun, ate the leftovers from the eggs Canto found last night, and left camp following Dog. He led us deeper and deeper into the forest, until finally we came to a small, dilapidated house nestled between two greatwoods.
We rummaged through the inside, but found little besides dust and cobwebs. Bea would have been crushed by a section of roof that collapsed above her, but fortunately Vili was standing right beside her. He caught a load of timber and plywood as big as he was with one foreleg. I need to stick around him. That colt is going places.
Finally, in the shambles of what was once a dresser, we found what Dog had been smelling—an old jacket, covered in dust. Somehow, Canto told him that wasn’t what we were looking for, and he set off again, barreling through the doorway, long black tail swinging through the air. We followed him, headed still deeper into the woods.
The trees got larger and larger as we went, the forest, darker and darker. As far as we went, we still saw few animals. Every now and again, we would catch a glimpse of a deer, fox, or bear before the sounds of our hoofsteps sent them scurrying back into cover. We did see a lot of opteryx roosting on the limbs of the giant trees, and every now and again one would swoop through the air above us. I’d never seen one before, I’d only heard stories. My grandmother used to tell me about them. “Like a mix between a giant lizard and a bird,” she’d say. “Four legged, bigger than a pony, with wings on each leg. They’ve got heads like lizards, but beaks like hawks, and they’re some of the most intelligent animals in the world.”
I don’t think she was wrong. Whenever we would pass beneath one of their nests, their heads, covered in neat rows of spines, would peer down at us, watching with sharp red eyes. I made eye contact with a few, and it gave me a strange feeling. They don’t watch like predators watch, with cold gazes sizing you up, looking to see if you’d make a good meal. It’s more like when you see ponies at a zoo, just looking at the animals. They were curious. They wanted to learn. So they stared at us. It was strange.
Vili loved it. He would wave up at them whenever he caught them watching. Once, one of the lizards lifted a clawed hand and waved back. He beamed, tugged at Dante’s mane, pointed, and shouted, but the older unicorn never looked. He had a new book today, “The Racial Consciousness of Pegasi”, and he was more interested in that than the opteryx. I thought he was missing out.
As we trekked deeper and deeper into the forest, the ground steepened into an incline. The leaves on the trees above us changed in color, from dark green to bright yellow. As we climbed higher and higher, I realized we were making our way up the eponymous Goldridge. I hadn’t realized the name was so literal.
Finally, we came to the top of the ridge, where the ground abruptly dropped off at a 90 degree angle, giving us a breathtaking view out over the rest of the forest. The tips of the giant trees swayed just below us, and only when I saw them did I understand how high up we were. But we weren’t here to admire the view. I didn’t look for long. This was a timed trial, after all.
So, we made our way along the ridge, following Dog, until finally we came to a greatwood much larger than all the others, growing off the tip of the ridge so that it towered above the rest of the forest. I peered over the edge of the cliff and saw that its massive roots ran all the way to the ground below, gripping the whole length of the ridge.
Dog turned to Canto, and looked at him, head cocked sideways, and the two stared at each other for a moment. Then the unicorn turned to us, and told us that this was it, the instructor should be here. He guided us closer, and we saw that a spiraling series of steps had been meticulously carved into the tree, created by removing a series of eight foot strips from its trunk. They began where the trunk met the ground, and spiraled sideways out of view. I looked up and saw they came back around to our side of the trunk about forty meters up, then ended just below a pony-sized hole in the tree. When I looked closely, I could see a flickering light coming from somewhere inside the hole. I pointed it out to my squadmates, and they agreed that this was where the instructor must be.
We made our way over to the tree and started climbing, our pegasus comrades hovering along beside us, on the off chance that anypony lost their balance. When we circled around to the side facing away from the ridge, looking out on the forest below, I made the mistake of peering out over the precipitous drop that awaited me off the side of the steps. It was a longer fall than I’d ever seen in my life. My stomach sank to my flanks, my heart leapt into my throat, and I became faintly dizzy, a horrible tingling in the bottoms of my hooves. The Goddess never intended for earth ponies to be that high up. It’s just not natural.
I concealed my fear from my squadmates. None of them noticed but Vili, who had the presence of mind not to say anything. When we finally came to the hole in the trunk, I silently thanked Celestia. I’ve never been afraid of anypony, but you can’t overpower gravity.
One by one, we entered the hole. Vili walked in easily, but I barely squeezed through. We emerged into a massive, hollowed out cavern in the trunk, forty meters across, forty meters high in some places. It was a miracle the tree was still alive. I suspected some magic was at play.
Across the hollow sat the mare we assumed was our instructor, in front of a small jar that contained a flickering yellow light. I couldn’t tell what was inside, but it was no candle. I didn’t really care. That was unicorn business.
As we crossed the floor, the instructor looked up at us and I saw she was wearing a horned, silver mask with a pointed nose, its face contorted into a wide smile. She stood and approached us. Dante didn’t even look up from his book.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m your instructor, congratulations on finding me. My name is Aurora Rhythm. Call me Rhythm. Nice to meet you.”
“You too! I’m Vili, and this is Dante, Chestnut, Bea, Thane, Canto, and Dog. So,” Vili asked. “What’s the next trial?”
“Just take my mask,” she said. She reached up, grabbed it by one of its three horns, and tugged gently. “It comes right off.” It lifted from her face, and I saw that there were no straps or twine fixed to its sides; the only thing keeping it on was magic. “Assuming it takes you a day to return to headquarters, you have about six hours. Take the mask, return to Canterlot, and you’re in the Guard.”
Beside me, Dante snickered. I couldn’t figure out why.
“In order to pass the trial, you may have to attack me with deadly force. Don’t be afraid, or pull your punches. It would be nearly impossible for you to kill me—and if you did, you’d probably get a promotion. And regardless of what you do, I won’t harm you or attack back in any way.”
Thane let out a loud laugh. “That’s it?I thought the Guard exam was supposed to be hard!”
With a beat of his dark blue wings, he propelled himself across the room, reaching Rhythm before any of the rest of us had the chance to join him. She didn’t move until he was almost on top of her, when he stretched his hoof out to grasp one of the mask’s horns. Then, in a rapid movement, she sidestepped him.
Thane, turning with the level of control that characterized well-trained pegasi, grabbed at the mask again while she was off-balance. Without moving another step, she bent forwards, balancing on one foreleg so that his hoof passed just behind the tip of the mask’s horns. Thane adjusted, and tried again. Rhythm evaded him once more. The two became locked in a fluid, intricate dance, Thane a flurry of grasping limbs, Rhythm avoiding him with fluid, minimalistic movements.
Finally, Thane, panting, gave up. He turned to the rest of us. “Okay, I might need some help.” The rest of the squad, save Dante, did not need any further invitation; we had been riveted by the pair’s display. Vili moved first, charging forwards, and then we were all galloping, converging on Rhythm. All but Dante who, still reading, walked calmly over to the jar of light and sat down beside it.
As I approached Rhythm I heard his voice ring out from somewhere behind me. “All of you can go on without me. It would be over too quickly if I got involved now. Have some fun.”
At the time, I fumed. There was a quiet arrogance about Dante; he looked at everything with the same bored expression, as though he had seen it all before and it did not amuse him. As though he were above everything the squad was doing. It ticked me off. It seemed like he was mocking the fact that we were even trying to pass the exam.
I channeled my frustration into my assault on Rhythm. It didn’t do much good. She was faster than any of us, even the pegasi, and seemed to have eyes in the back of her head. For instance, if Bea advanced from her front and I from her side, she’d sidestep the pegasus, bumping into me, and duck under my outstretched foreleg (from her perspective, I was moving in slow-motion). If Canto and Dog attacked from behind, Vili from the front, and Thane from the side while Bea and I recovered, she would leap all the way over Vili, away from Thane, then land and roll past Canto and Dog. There was just no touching her.
Our uncoordinated frenzy went on for a solid twenty minutes, until we were all left exhausted and thoroughly humiliated. Rhythm didn’t appear to have broken a sweat. As we rested, we huddled together and came up with a plan. We would charge her all at once, and cover every angle. Dog from the left, Canto the right, Vili the front, and me behind, with Thane and Bea hovering overhead if she leapt above us. If we timed it perfectly, she wouldn’t have anywhere to go.
It took us two tries to get the timing right. On the third, we closed in on her, all at once, and she had nowhere to go. I was sure this was it. Then, with a small pop she disappeared leaving us staring at the place where she had been. Dog growled, and I turned to see Rhythm was now standing behind me.
“Good job,” she said. “You forced me to teleport.”
The group let out a collective groan. How were we supposed to get a hold of that mask if she could teleport anywhere, anytime?
Vili had the presence of mind to ask Canto if he knew any dueling spells. He shook his head, and informed us that his only magical talent lay in communicating with Dog.
“I can also play the harp using only telekinesis,” he told us. “But I don’t think that would help much.”
“Dante knows a couple of spells that could probably help,” he said in a hushed tone, keeping a wary eye on Rhythm. She didn’t appear to be listening, so he went on. “He knows a tether spell that would be perfect for right now.”
Thane snorted. “Too bad he isn’t helping. He’s too good for the guard exam.” He looked up stared right at Dante, who was still reading, and sent a few choice epithets his way.
Bea nudged him. “Don’t be an asshole.”
I didn’t say anything, but this time I was with Thane.
“It’s not like that! He’ll get involved when he needs to,” Vili told us. “Trust me. We’ve got five more hours to do this ourselves. He’ll help us when we really need him, don’t worry.”
Thane murmured something about being ready to be “done with the whole thing,” and the group went back to planning. Over the next two hours, we came up with a series of increasingly complex attack patterns. Feints, diversions, sneak attacks, anything we could come up with, we put into action. At one point, we even had Canto telekinetically toss Vili into the air towards Rhythm after she teleported out of a particularly well-executed assault. It didn’t work.
Nothing ever did. Every time we got anywhere close to removing the mask, she just teleported away. I read somewhere once that teleportation was supposed to be one of the most energy and time consuming spells a unicorn could use. They say it can take up to a full minute to gather the focus necessary to cast those spells, but I watched Rhythm’s horn—it would light only a split second before she disappeared. And over those two hours, she must have teleported over forty times. I don’t know how that’s possible.
What I have come to realize is that I’m in the right place. Guards are freaks of nature. Just like me.
What finally did work on Rhythm took us all by surprise. A particularly ambitious strategy involving Thane air-dropping a terrified Dog onto Rhythm’s head, the instructor was forced, off balance, to step past Dante and the light jar. Lightning fast, without even taking his eyes off the page, his right foreleg shot out and tapped her on the calf, horn alight with a silver glow.
He looked up at us. “Alright,” he said. “That’s it. Well done, all of you.” He flipped his book closed and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Well, let’s head back to Canterlot, then, shall we?”
The rest of us just stared at him. He turned to Rhythm.
“I tagged you with a tether spell. You can’t move more than four meters away from me until I end the spell. You might as well just give us your mask.”
“A four meter tether?” Rhythm replied. I swear I heard a smile in her voice. “That leaves me a hundred cubic meters to work with. That’s more than enough.”
Dante shook his head, and gestured to the room around us. “These walls are far more than four meters thick. If I walk into a corner, I can cut your space down to around fifty cubic meters meters. Actually, you’re tethered to my right forehoof specifically, so if I had to, I could use a strength enhancement to ram my whole leg into the wall cutting your room down even more, down to around forty cubic meters. And if you hadn’t noticed, the ceiling slopes around the edges, too. You wouldn’t be able to evade us by air, so you’d have been better off calculating square meters, of which you’d have around fifteen. In which case you’d hardly be able to teleport at all—you can’t teleport anywhere where there’s already solid matter. If the squad disperses evenly around your remaining range, there won’t be much of anywhere for you to go.
“So, will you give us your mask, or do we have to go to all that trouble?”
Rhythm took of the mask and tossed it to the ground at Dante’s hooves. I saw that she actually was smiling after all. I also saw that her face was covered in a mass of burn scars. I wonder what happened to her. I wonder if a similar fate is in store for me.
She glanced over to the rest of us. “Congratulations,” she said. “Assuming you make it back to Canterlot all in one piece, you’re in the Guard.”
Dante spoke up again. I was starting to get tired of the sound of his voice. The way he talked down to our superequine instructor. His ability to sound somehow disinterested and arrogant at the same time. It all bothered me. “Actually,” he said, “I’m willing to bet that we’ve all been in the Guard since yesterday.”
“How’d you know that?” Rhythm asked, eyebrows raised.
“Well, mostly because you just told me. But I’ve had a hunch this entire time that something was... off with the Guard exam. It’s too unconventional. Equestria doesn’t maintain a standing military in peacetime, so the Guard fills that role, and that of the military police. That takes a lot of people, more than you could ever expect to pass tests like these.
“And besides, do you really expect us to believe that you would base your acceptances into the institution that maintains civil order and national defense based on stupid tests like the one with the cage and trap-door? Or stealing your mask? There’s no reason for most Guards to be able to do any of that; all they need to be is fit and disciplined. They don’t need the dueling spells necessary to pass a test like this. There’s no way the Guards stamping tickets into Bantham Village are all potential duelists.
“And you really showed your hoof by including the intelligence tests, the endurance tests, and the obstacle course. I’m willing to bet that’s all that factored into whether we got in or not. You probably even let the recruits who couldn’t make it through the first trial out of the cages and told them not to tell anypony.
“This exam obviously wasn’t just to look for new Guards. You’re looking for something else, too. Duelists. It has to be. There’s no way anypony could pass a trial like this one without dueling knowledge, and the cage trial, at least for the unicorns, was obviously looking to coax out the kind of resourcefulness that characterizes a dueling mindset.
But what I don’t understand is why it was all so ‘covert’. Why not have separate exams for Guards and duelists? Why don’t you want anypony knowing the Guard is looking for duelists, and more importantly, what do you want with all these duelists in the first place? Given that we’re all Guards now, you might as well explain what’s going on here.”
When he finally closed his mouth a heavy silence hung in the air. Thane and I just stared.
“Who the hell does he think he is?” the pegasus murmured to me. “And why does he talk in speeches?”
Rhythm’s smile cooled a bit, but did not fade. She held an expression I couldn’t quite place. “Good questions,” she said. “Acquire Grade A-5 security clearances and I’m sure you can all have them answered. For now, though, you should just be content with entry into the Guard. I’ll see you all in Canterlot. Oh, and Dante?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll put in a good word about you for our dueling program.”
And then she was gone. Silence settled over the room. No one moved.
It was Thane who broke the pause. “What the hell, Dante?!”
“What?”
“Why did you tell us that’s what you were doing? We would have forced her over to you sooner.”
“I couldn’t. As soon as she mentioned taking the mask, I knew the tether spell would be the deciding factor—assuming you guys didn’t get it first—and I figured it would be better for me to see what Rhythm was capable of rather than show my hoof too early. And when I saw her move, I knew I was right, there was no way I would be fast enough to even touch her. So I waited for her to make a mistake and come to me, rather than the other way around. I knew if it looked like I was conspiring with the rest of you, she would never let her guard down around me.
In case you didn’t notice, for the most part, she still didn’t. She was avoiding coming anywhere near me at first. But eventually all of you wore her down, tired her out, and she lost focus. That’s why I congratulated you. If you hadn’t figured out how to press her so hard, I never could have caught her. So, good job. Not that it ever mattered anyway. Now let’s get back to Canterlot.”
And then he fell silent, took out his book, and walked out of the room, the rest of us staring after him. His flattery worked. No one gave him a hard time after that. We followed after him, and traveled until nightfall, stopping on the outskirts of the Canterlot hills to sleep.
Dante didn’t say another word the entire time. I preferred it that way. I was sick of hearing his arrogant voice.
I swear, someday I’m going to fight him, and win. And he’ll never be able to talk down to me again.
XXII
“Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
Pablo Neruda, Nothing But Death
No matter how much his captors had pressed him, Chief had never admitted to having a partner. To the Guard, that seemed plausible enough. Absorbed in their own fear, they had overestimated his capabilities. They had bought into the lie, and circulated it among themselves. There was no way Minos could have anticipated the explosive bolt that was speeding towards his back.
At four hundred and fifty feet per second, the arrow closed the seven and a half meter gap between Hena and Minos in a twentieth of a second. Minos did not see it coming. But still, moving faster than should have been possible for a stallion his age, he stepped to the side, dodging the projectile. Despite his single-minded rage, he hadn’t let Chief get the better of him. He had paid attention to his ley field, and when the oncoming silver head of the quarrel entered it, the field was ever-so-slightly disrupted. Minos had sensed that disruption, and acted accordingly.
But he forgot about the rocks.
The bolt dug itself into a stone that had been passing just in front of Minos’ neck. The spring behind the arrowhead compressed. The explosive mixture inside the shaft ignited half a foot from Minos’ right ear.
Chief closed his eyes as a burst of light and smoke erupted on the other side of the roof. He pressed his head to the ground, covering it with a foreleg, and prayed that he wouldn’t be hit by any shrapnel. Something lodged itself in his shoulder anyway, sending a wet, hot pain across his right shoulder. Somehow, it had penetrated all the way through the ringmail.
A second passed. Chief’s ears were ringing. The whole block had gone silent. He looked up to see Minos’ body, sprawled across the ground, smoking and headless. Standing, still staring at what had been his old mentor, he tossed Charon over his good shoulder. He looked over to Hena. Her eyes were fixed on the corpse.
Then she met his gaze. A moment passed between the two, the grim, solemn sharing of moral responsibility for the death of their fellow pony.
Then she reared with a whoop. “Yes!” she cried. “It is perfect! I knew it! Hah! This is wonderful, I was not exploding anypony for years!”
Or not. Chief laughed. To anypony else, it would have sounded like a grunt. But he and Hena both knew. He walked over and clapped a hoof to her shoulder. “Save it,” he said. “Gotta get out of here.”
Hena nodded. The blast was sure to bring unwanted attention. Lots of it. Not from the Guard, perhaps, but in the Underbelly, as everywhere else, it was best to keep your murders to yourself.
Chief swung open the door and the two hurried down the stairs of the tenement building.
“Is she alive?” Hena asked.
“Yeah.”
“Is she wounded?”
“Dunno. We’ll find out when we’re somewhere safe.”
Hena nodded, and the two exited the stairwell into the lobby. Fortunately, there was no one there save one semi-conscious drunk. He looked up at them from atop a shabby couch, eyes bleary. “Whossere? Who’re—d’ja heara noise jussnow?”
Chief and Hena glanced at each other.
“It was nothing,” Hena said. “Go back to sleep.”
The earth pony blinked, eyebrows furrowed. “But... I knnnow Iheard—” Then he vomited, and the pair swept past him. By the time they reached the door he was already asleep again. They stepped out into the street and found themselves face to face with a growing crowd. Hena shrank behind him, one foreleg over her face, keeping it out of their view. He realized he was still wearing the mask.
They stared at him, wide-eyed, every race, age, and gender among them, just quietly watching. For a second, he stared back. A quiet tension grew among the crowd.
And then he took a step. Like a unified living thing, a massive, many eyed amoeba, they recoiled away from him, and as he walked forward they averted their eyes and parted to make way for him. They were smart, these ponies, smarter than they were curious. As much as they wanted to know what happened on the roof, they did not forget the rules of Underbelly survival. Those who lived down here saw nothing, knew nothing, got in no one’s way, took nothing from anypony. Don’t get involved. It was the cardinal rule for those who prized survival. Those who prized money, power, or knowledge lived by a very different code. Fortunately, none of those ponies were here.
And so the crowd parted.
Chief passed through them, walking authoritatively, Hena clutching at his cloak and trying to stay out of sight. These ponies could be questioned later, by any number of forces. It was best they get few details.
And then, the last row parted, and they were clear.
The pair ducked down a side street, and slipped out of sight from the road. Chief moved quickly, glancing over his shoulder every so often to make sure they weren’t being followed. They moved quickly, erratically, through canals and alleyways, doubling back as was necessary, until Chief was sure no one was tailing them. There was still the possibility of an Oracle tagging Hena—Chief was so magical-resistant that no Oracle could track him—but she had stayed mostly out of the crowd’s sight, and besides, the possibility that a fully trained Oracle had been present were slim as a slip of parchment.
Finally, they returned to the alchemy shop. Hena cleared the clerk’s desk and Chief lay Charon down on it. As he set her down, Hena caught sight of blood running down his foreleg.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“It’s nothing.”
She reached over and pulled his cloak and mail away, bringing to light a shoulder caked in half-congealed blood that ran the entire length of his leg.
“Gods,” she swore. “You have been losing a lot of blood.”
“I’ve got a lot of blood.”
“Take off your mail. I’ll be finding a potion for this.”
“No time. We’ve gotta get her awake.”
Chief gestured down to the pegasus between them. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was faint. There were no signs of injury that they could see. In fact, there was hardly a scratch on her. They peeled the dense spiderweb from her wing, hoping to find something there, but there was nothing. Then Chief noticed a tiny puncture in her shirt, a quarter of the width of his muzzle, tinged with blood. He ripped her shirt away. A putrid stench filled the air. Hena drew a sharp breath.
The assassin’s side was rotting away. The skin around her ribcage was blackened, like a massive bruise. In the center, the skin had sloughed off, revealing bloody, yellowed flesh, blackened at the edges and covered in a thin film of pus.
“Gods,” Hena breathed.
“Venom,” Chief said. “I’ve seen Nephis’ work before. He sent dozens of the cult’s enemies to the coroner’s with ‘spider bites.’ Combination necrotoxin and neurotoxin, the doctors said. Have anything for it here?”
Hena shook her head. “I could make something, maybe, if I knew specifically which venoms it was. And had a few hours. It is not looking like we have either. Look,” she said, pointing to the weeping wound on Charon’s ribs. It had already grown since they took her shirt off. They were running out of time.
“Hold on,” she said, and scurried upstairs. Thirty seconds later, she was back, syringe full of a deep red elixir, tipped with a hypodermic needle. Pushing Chief aside, she took Charon’s left foreleg and jabbed the needle into a vein on the inside of her elbow. She emptied the syringe.
“There,” she said. “This is a healing aid. It is helping the body repair damaged tissues. What would take a week to heal is taking two days. I give her a double dose, I think maybe it will slow the venom down.”
“We don’t have to save her,” Chief said. “Just wake her up. An interrogation takes minutes, can you get her awake for that long?”
Hena waved him away, one hoof pressed to her forehead, eyes closed, thinking aloud. “No, no, no... could maybe use adrenaline—but her ion channels are still being blocked... There is only antivenom...”
Chief cursed. “Even if we could get some, we don’t know what kind—”
Hena held up a hoof. “Wait,” she said. “There is an elixir, a very potent elixir—all-purpose antivenom. We get her some of that, maybe she wakes up. Maybe.”
“Can you make some?”
“The ingredients are costing almost as much as my shop, and the alchemy is taking days. We cannot make it, we cannot buy it—but maybe we can steal it.”
“From whom?”
“There is only one place in Canterlot that keeps something of that potency on hoof. The Royal Hospital. They keep it for assassination attempts. Someone is always trying to poison food. If you can get me onto the Castle Grounds, I can get us the antivenom.”
“How do we get into the hospital?” Chief asked.
Hena drummed her hooves on the desk, a grim expression on her face. “Well...” she said slowly. “How do you feel about necromantic alchemy?”
Chief shrugged. “I don’t.”
“Killing innocents?”
Another shrug.
“Okay. I may have a plan. One moment,” she said, heading upstairs once more, leaving Chief with Charon. He glanced at her wound. It had gotten larger. The healing aid wasn’t working very well.
The door in the corner swung open once more, and Hena stepped through them carrying five flasks, two filled with inky black liquid, two with clear liquid, one with yellow liquid. She set them on the counter.
“Okay,” she said. “How much do you know about necromancy?”
“Not much.”
She exhaled. “I was fearing this when you were so nonchalant. Listen... you will not be liking this plan. Maybe we find some other way to get this information. Maybe we track down the other assassin.”
“Too late for that. What’s the plan?”
Hena rested her elbows on the table and put her hooves together. “Well...” she started. “These are impersonation potions. Very effective, makes you somepony else. You look like them, smell like them, talk like them, everything. Lasts until you take the antidote,” she said, gesturing to the clear elixirs. “This is very effective for spying, why I have a half liter pre-brewed. I often give it to my informants for tough jobs. But there is—I think the Equestrians call it—a catch.”
“You have to kill the pony?” Chief guessed.
Hena scratcher her head. “Well... yes, you do kill the pony, but this is not the end. My informants are more unscrupulous than me, if you can believe it. ”
“What else?”
“You are really not liking it. In fact, it is a bad plan, we should come up with—”
“What else?” Chief growled.
“Well... you are having to... you are having to eat the heart.”
Chief blinked. “What?”
“The heart. You must eat it.”
Chief had seen many things in his days as a Guard, things that would drive lesser stallions into asylums. He had personally witnessed the aftermath of nearly every heinous crime imaginable. He had been certain, up until now, that there was nothing left in the world gruesome enough to shock him. He was wrong. His jaw dropped.
“Is this a joke?”
“You think this is time for games? I do not joke. This is the price of necromancy. It is necessary for potion to work. First you drink the elixir, then you... you know...”
“Eat the heart?”
“Yes. You eat the heart.”
A heavy silence filled the air. Chief rested his forehooves on the table and leaned forward, exhaling. He had done a lot of things that were morally dubious—no, morally wrong, but this... This was different. This was gruesome. Disgusting. Revolting.
Cannibalism? His stomach turned at the thought of him eating—eating!—part of another pony. He could kill, sure. He could kill without thinking. But this was on another level entirely.
He stared up at Hena. “Why? Why the heart?”
Hena shrugged. “I am no expert of necromancy. I merely... dabble. This magic... it is bad for the soul. Bad for the mind. The necromancers, they are saying that the heart is the nexus of the soul. The center of the spiritual form, they call it. They are always using euphemisms. Makes them feel better. They say by consuming the center, you ingest part of the soul, and this is what fuels and directs the potion’s magic. I suppose they are correct. The magic does not work otherwise. I have seen it.”
Chief closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose, thinking. Could he do this? Could he become as horrible as the cultists he was hunting? An image floated through his head, from his days working with the sheriff in his home town.
A fur trapper who had spent years in the Equestrian mountains came to town, and stabbed a stallion outside the local bar. The pair had tracked him to a filthy camp at the edge of the woods, where they found him sleeping on the ground, still half covered in blood. When they arrested him, he put up a fight, and dislocated the sheriff’s jaw. Chief beat him half to death and they hauled him back to town and threw him in jail. The entire time, the stallion never said a word. When Chief had asked what was wrong with him, the sheriff just shrugged.
“Maybe he was born that way, or maybe it was the mountains that did it to ‘im. You gotta think like animals to hunt ‘em. Spend too long doin’ that an’ it’ll turn you wild. When a pony hunts wild animals long enough, he starts to become one. Don’t you firget that, boy.”
That was the price of hunting animals. This was the price of hunting necromancers. He would have to pay it. That’s just the way it was. He didn’t have enough time left in this world to track down another lead.
Bang.
This wasn’t the way he wanted to go out. But since when was he ever given what he wanted? All his life, had he wanted something, he had to take it. Why should now be any different?
He opened his eyes, meeting Hena’s.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
She heaved a grave sigh. “Here,” she said, tossing a huge black bag onto the counter. “Put her in there. To carry a body around in the open is not smart outside of the Underbelly.”
Chief maneuvered the pegasus into the sack as gently as he could, tossed it over his back, and the two made their way out of the shop, heading to into the center of the Underbelly, towards the Hullman Center. Ten minutes later, they stood before the sprawling, multistorey facility dedicated to the maintenance of a series of huge lifts that provided quick transport between central shipping docks and the outer gates of Bantham Village.
They were used primarily for moving large shipments of raw material and manufactured goods to their buyers in the Overcity, but there were also a few lifts for personnel. These provided a speedy commute for the managers and owners of Underbelly industries, who invariably lived in either Bantham or the Commerce Section. At this time of night, the personnel lifts would be shut down—unlike the workers, the executives didn’t work through the night. Those responsibilities were delegated to the night managers, who weren’t paid much more than the laborers they supervised.
Fortunately, the industrial lifts ran around the clock, for bits held the same value whether earned day or night. Even more fortunately, Hena had extensive connections within the Hullman Center, as it wasn’t difficult for her to double the paychecks of lift operators who made next to nothing to begin with. A pony who can’t afford a doctor and is surrounded at every turn by death and disease is easy to buy out. The pair approached the tall fence that kept the operators in and the Underbelly civilians out.
Because this was the most direct route from the Underbelly to the Village, a lot of money from a lot of paranoid pockets went into the maintenance of the fence, and the security guards who patrolled it. Unfortunately for the more restless Overcity civilians, whose children feared no bogeymen, but checked under their beds at night for the poor, no one seemed to realize that the easiest way for criminals like Chief and Hena to reach Bantham was not to go over the wall, but through the operators.
One such operator, who tonight manned the rear gate, spotted the two and waved them over happily.
“Hena!” the pudgy pegasus beamed, “How’s my favorite patron tonight?” He smiled, exposing large, spotless teeth.
“Well, thanks,” Hena said, a hint of exhaustion creeping into her voice.
“Ah,” he said, his eyes flickering to Chief. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep the gleam of curiosity off of his wide, flat face. “Another visitor. Who’s this?”
“He’s no one,” she said, handing him a ten-bit coin through the gap in the gate. “You were not seeing him.”
“Seeing whom?” he asked, opening the gate for them.
“Exactly.”
Glancing around for security guards, he piped up as they slunk through the gate. “Unfortunately, we’ve already shut down the personnel lifts for tonight, but if you head to industrial seven, Silver Spring should be sending up some lumber shipments, and I’m sure you can hitch a ride with them.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
And then they had moved beyond him, down a gravel path to a rusted iron door on the backside of the main building, a large rectangular structure with eight long, symmetrical offshoots. Each one housed the massive, mechanomagical engines that powered its respective industrial lift, with one smaller engine reserved for the personnel lift in the center of the main building.
Altogether, the building took up two city blocks. After all, it was the Underbelly. Space was cheap, and the lifts provided so much service to so many industries, it paid for a year of operations every two weeks. Had the eponymous Hullman not been dead for the past five years, he’d have been enjoying one of the most lucrative businesses in the city.
Given that Hena and Chief, who had now entered the main building, were using it to further their necromantic ends, the industrialist was probably rolling in his grave right now. Unhappily for him, Hena and Chief were able to make their way down to “industrial number seven” unmolested, despite passing numerous guards and workers on their way.
As it turned out, walking with purpose, as if they were supposed to be there, rendered them all but invisible to the ponies around them. Of course, they probably could have been dragging Charon’s bloodied body in plain sight across the concrete floors and still have had no trouble; no one was awake enough or being paid enough to invest much energy in what went on during a graveyard shift.
And so they reached lift seven, and the mustachioed, broad shouldered earth pony Chief presumed was Silver Spring, without incident. As soon as he saw Hena, he stopped the trolley of dark-stained hardwood bundles he had been pushing and ushered the pair into the lift without a word. As he guided them behind a particularly large stack of lumber at the far corner of the lift, Chief noticed deep bags beneath his glassy, bloodshot eyes. Some folks just never got used to night shifts—even down here, where the word “night” had no meaning.
And so Chief and Hena huddled against the wall, out of sight from any bypassers, and waited until Silver Spring wordlessly loaded the last lumber onto the lift. Finished, he surveyed the chamber, then slid the doors closed. A moment later, a loud rumbling filled the tiny room as somewhere in the distance a great engine roared to life, slowly dragging them towards the surface.
It took twenty minutes, and by the time they reached the Overcity, Chief was sure Charon was already dead. But no, after they slipped passed the operator at the top of the lifts, and out of the other, much smaller section of the Hullman Center, he set her down and slid the top of the bag down below her head to find that she was still breathing, if barely. He stared at Hena.
“How is she still alive?”
“I am thinking Nephis did not give her enough neurotoxin to kill her. Which means the necrotoxin will have to shut down the major organs before she is going to die. Or maybe my healing aids are better than expected. Who knows? I am no doctor.”
With a grunt, he slid the bag back up over her head and picked it up once more. The duo headed up the mountain a short ways, until they came to the Bantham Village gate. By now, there was no one manning the entrance—all that was left was a skeleton crew of guards patrolling the top of the walls.
“Hello!” Hena shouted, waving to one of them as he passed. “I need to be let in, I will be having urgent business on the Castle Grounds!”
The tall, heavily bearded guard peered down from atop the wall, reddened cheeks pouting at them. “What, now?” he called. “It’s a quarter past eleven, there’s hardly anypony awake in there—and just who are you, anyway?”
“My name is Hena Porfiry, I designed half your equipment, I am late for a business meeting with the Guard, and if I lose my next design contract because of you, I will be seeing your head on a pike!”
The guard scratched his head. “Porfiry... As in Porfiry Armaments?”
“No, that’s a different weapons designer named Porfiry! I thought there was an intelligence exam required to join the Guard?”
“Alright, alright, I’ll be right down.”
The pegasus stepped off the back of the back of the wall and landed behind the gate.
“Can I see some ID?” he asked, sticking his hoof through the slats.
Hena rifled through her pockets, found her identification cards, and handed them over. The guard looked through them.
“All right,” he said. “Looks good. And who’s this?” he asked gesturing to Chief.
“Rhodion. My assistant. Don’t bother with him, he’s a deaf-mute.”
Chief tried his best to adopt the expression of a ‘deaf-mute.’ Did they look any different from anypony else? He hadn’t a clue.
The guard’s eyebrows furrowed. “Have I seen him somewhere? I feel like I’ve seen that face before...”
Trying hard not to look as though he were inspecting the pegasus, Chief tried to study his face. Had he run into this stallion before...? Judging by his age, it was certainly possible.
Then Chief realized. The pegasus had once worked security at the main entrance of the Guard headquarters. He had seen this stallion before, hundreds of times, though only in passing. He silently prayed that the guard wouldn’t remember him. Surely he couldn’t remember every face that passed him by on the average day. And besides, that was years ago. Surely...
Hena spoke up again. “I’m sure you have. He has come to the Castle many times, he is the one who is carrying all of my prototypes. It has to be him, they are all classified, no one else can see them.”
The guard nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s right. I remember now, I saw him come through here a couple of times before.”
Chief suddenly remembered a study he’d been shown in the Guard a long time ago about false memory implantation. Get a pony in a position of authority to tell someone they remember something, and they’ll invent a memory, even going so far as to supply their own false details. If they sufficiently lack skepticism. Apparently it was easier for some to trust an authority figure than their own brains.
“So,” the guard said. “Is that what’s in the bag, then?”
“I can’t comment on the contents of the bag. That would be treason.”
The guard nodded obligingly. “Of course, of course,” he said, as he opened the gate for them. “Off you go, then.” And he returned Hena her ID as she passed by him.
“Thanks,” she said.
Chief looked at him blankly.
She chuckled to him once they were safely out of earshot. “I guess if you act entitled enough to something, ponies are believing you’re actually supposed to have it.”
“Hm,” came Chief’s only reply.
He was more focused on the task ahead of them. Bluffing wouldn’t get them through the Castle walls. Especially not at this time of night. Security was tight enough there that someone would have to actually check up on Hena’s claims, at least without an explicit entry pass signed by some official or another. No, they would have to circle around to the area near the Skydocks, and slip in through the hole in the wall he had left for himself.
He relayed as much to Hena as they came to the area where Bantham met the Castle. So the pair ascended to the base of the wall, and began making their way counterclockwise around its circumference. As they left the confines of Bantham, walking out to where the cliff faces were too steep for construction, they hugged closer and closer to the wall, hoping not to be spotted by Castle guards. The flat terrain builders had cut into the mountain in order to build the wall grew thinner and thinner. Chief had to fight a sense of dizziness and vertigo as the ground to his right gave way to nothing but the void.
Eventually, though, as the edges of the longest of the Skydocks came into view, and the ground began to widen around the base of the wall, their progress was halted by a voice.
“You there!” Somepony cried from the air. “Stop! What are you doing?!”
Immediately Chief hunched over, in one fluid motion removing the bag from Charon’s body and setting her down on the ground.
“Help! Help!” He cried, faking hysterics. He stepped over the body so that the Guard, a passing pegasus, could see it as he flew down to meet them. “This mare—we found this mare—you have to help us!” He crouched over the body, pressing here and there as though he were trying to give medical attention.
He looked pleadingly up at the guard as he, a heavily built, muscular pegasus, sword already drawn, landed beside them. “I don’t know what to do, she’s gonna—”
“What are you talking about? What are you doing out here?!” There was an edge of alarm in the guard’s voice. He knew something was amiss.
“Look!” Hena cried, tugging at his cloak. “Look what happened to—”
As she spoke, the guard took a step closer. Too close. In an instant, Chief slammed him against the wall with one foreleg, stepping in close so that he could not draw his blade for a counter attack. With the other foreleg, he drew his dagger, embedding it in the guard’s windpipe so that he could not cry out. He then cut sideways, through the jugular, then down the front of the throat, all the while pinning him against the wall as he bled out. The guard thrashed against him, spilling blood across Chief’s front, a gurgling coming from deep within his throat.
Finally, his spasms came to an end, his eyes closed, and he went limp. Chief seized him by the front of the shirt, and tossed him casually over the side of the chasm beside them. The pair peered over the drop, watching the body disappear into the trees hundreds of feet below them.
They glanced at each other.
“Better get going,” Hena said.
Chief nodded gruffly and they set off again. He glanced over his shoulder as they went, looking at the spot where the guard had gone over the edge. He wondered if the guard had a family off somewhere, waiting for him. Had he a wife? Kids? Pets? Was there anypony out in the city who loved him? Who would miss him?
Chief tried to make himself care about the guard, tried to muster up some empathy. Little came. His atrophied conscience barely prickled. The rush from the killing was much stronger. Had there really been a time when murder had really, deeply troubled him? When he was young, he supposed. Back when he was still equine.
And what of his own mortality? Would anypony miss him in a year, when he was gone? Hena? Doubtful. She wouldn’t miss him, if she were even still alive by then. She’d lost too many people over the years. She’d calloused over completely. One more dead friend wouldn’t phase her.
And Summer? Would she grieve over him? Yes, probably. She wanted to be like Hena, for sure, impervious and invulnerable, but she hadn’t managed it yet. She would be upset when he died.
Something in him stirred, at that. What little fragments of emotions he had left, besides anger and disdain, were roused at the thought of Honey Dew’s kin remembering him. At least he wouldn’t be forgotten. Of course, he wouldn’t care then, nothing would matter to him then—but some part of him cared now.
He couldn’t quite figure out why. He shouldn’t be bothered. He must have been getting sentimental in his own age. A pity. Sentimentality was a form of weakness, and he intended to die strong.
So be it. He turned his mind away, stamping out the thoughts. There were more urgent things to focus on. The hole in the Castle’s outer wall, for instance, which was coming up just before them. He tapped Hena’s shoulder as they passed the first Skydock and came to it, then reached down to pry the rock away.
Hena stepped through first, passing effortlessly through the gap. She barely had to duck. Chief passed her the bag, then followed, wriggling through with some difficulty. Finally, he emerged into the bushes on the other side, now covered in dirt in addition to blood.
He picked up the bag again, now carrying it under the formless cloak. It was more uncomfortable this way, but far more inconspicuous. Passing the side of the huge granite building that housed the High Court, they stepped out into the open, on the pavement beneath a lamppost. They were now standing at the end of one of the two short paths in the Castle Grounds, Millin Avenue. Millan ran perpendicular to the last segment of the Fioran Way, at the very end of which was the entrance to the Castle itself.
The hospital they needed was at the far end of Millin Avenue. Chief had worried that this would mean they would need to cross through the intersection, which was usually be busiest part of the Grounds, yet tonight it looked all but deserted. He decided he had the weather to thank for that, as somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled through the sky.
The pair made their way down the street, then took refuge in the shadows between the hospital and the building adjacent to it, one of the lesser parliamentary houses. Between the two, somepony had cultivated some neatly trimmed bushes and a few trees. They squatted down among them, Chief laid down the body, and Hena drew out her potions.
She gazed up at him, scanning his face. “Okay,” she said. “You are ready?”
He nodded. He wasn’t actually ready, not for the necromancy, but he wasn’t going to get any more comfortable with it.
“You will stay hidden, and I will draw them over here,” she said. “Do them quickly, then we are drinking the potions, and... well, you know.”
He nodded, and she left. When she was out in the light of the streetlamps again, where she could be seen through the glass door of the hospital, she began to walk more quickly, and more stiffly, like a mare much older than she. She pushed open the door, crying out for a doctor, then went inside, out of his view.
Moments later, she emerged again, a doctor and two nurses in tow, one a stallion, one a mare. She was talking to them, gesturing wildly, pointing over to the bushes where Chief was lurking. “Out for a walk, for a perfectly good walk, and then there she was! Lying there, blood everywhere! God, so beastly, it was frightening me to death.”
They came closer, stepping into the shadows, just a few yards from Chief. He drew his blade silently. He had been hoping there wouldn’t be so many ponies; three was a lot for only one man, if everything had to be quiet and fast.
“Look here, look here, right over here!” Hena led them just past where Chief was hiding, and as soon as their backs were turned he stepped out of his hiding place and beheaded the nearest one, the male nurse, in an instant. By the time the body hit the ground, making enough noise to alert the other two, Chief’s blade was already up again. His next blow embedded the sword in the skull of the female nurse, and she dropped like a stone.
By now the doctor had turned and seen what was happening and he started to cry out, but Hena was upon him before he could, clamping a foreleg over his mouth. Before he could shake her off, Chief, whose sword was too firmly lodged for quick retrieval, stepped forward and slipped his dagger into . He died in seconds, heart pierced.
Quickly, the two murderers dragged the bodies off into the bushes, where they were virtually impossible to see from the road or the air. They crouched down around the bodies, inspecting the three of them.
“I will be taking this one,” Hena said, gesturing to the mare.
“I’ll be the doctor, then,” Chief grumbled.
He rolled the body over, and to his astonishment saw that it was Healer Wormwood. He took a sharp intake of breath.
“It is someone you know?” Hena asked.
“He saved one of my comrades. He’s the one who told me I was going to die.”
Chief put a hoof over his eyes. This was worse than expected. This hurt him. This, he actually felt bad about.
Dammit.
Out of all the doctors in that hospital, he only knew one. And it had to be this one. A feeling of shame, the first in a long time, settled in his stomach. His breathing came fast and shallow.
Dammit!
Chief didn’t know what was worse, the fact that he’d killed Wormwood, or the fact that he felt guilty over it. He really was getting sentimental in his old age after all. He was starting to crack. His mind was breaking down along with his body. Damn it all. Maybe he should have let himself die in that nexus...
There was a cracking sound beside him. He looked over to see Hena already at work breaking through the chest cavity of her body. There was a rueful, disgusted look on her face. Damn it all. She was feeling it too. There had been a time, once, when the greatest strength of the pair was their utter ruthlessness. They had been capable of anything back then.
Well, look at them now. Simultaneously at their most depraved and at their weakest. So this was what happened when monsters got old.
Hena handed him a gore splattered bottle filled with a yellow liquid. “Put this on your blade. It’ll help you cut through the bone faster.”
He did as he was instructed, silently. Chief removed Wormwood’s cloak, shirt, and pants, and set them on the ground beside him. He would need them, after the transformation was complete. Somehow, there were only a few flecks of blood on them
Then, grimacing at the healer’s bare chest, he set to work.
Chief could hardly look at what he was doing. Over the course of his long career, he had produced many bodies, for certain, and wasn’t squeamish. But never in his life had he so defiled one of his victims. Not so coldly. Not intentionally. There had been once or twice when, in a rage, he had continued chopping away at an opponent after they had already died, but this... this was different. It was purposeful. It was brutal. It made him sick.
He had thought, when he woke up this morning, that he was above nothing, that there were no lines left that he would not cross, but when he drew out the poor stallion’s “center” and held it in his hoof, he knew he was wrong. There was never a time when he put much stock in morality, but this violated something deep within him, something that he could not rationalize away. He could not think that this was necessary, for the greater good of himself, or anypony else. At that moment, he realized that after the cult was over and done with, after he had hunted them all down, the last, worst necromancer to kill would be himself. If the advanced aging didn’t get him first.
He turned to Hena, and saw that she, too, had finished working on the body.
“Do...” he started to say, then his throat caught. He tried again. “Do we have to eat the whole thing?” He could hardly believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. Now there was a question he had never expected to ask. Like a damn child asking if he had to clean his plate. Horrible.
“One good bite should do it,” she replied.
At the same time, they looked down at the grisly lumps of flesh in their trembling hooves. They both wore the same expression, a mixture of contempt, disgust, and utter shame.
“So...”
“So...”
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Neither could bring themselves to even move their forelegs.
“Maybe if we were closing our eyes...”
“Yeah.”
“And if we did it at the same time...”
“Yeah.”
They both closed their eyes. A knot of anxiety gathered in Chief’s stomach. Goddess, was he really about to do this? There was no coming back from this. Every cell in his body cried out for him to stop, to turn back now. Could any information ever be worth this?
“Three...” Hena murmured beside him.
At the same time those thoughts passed through his head, and he listened to Hena speak, some other part of his brain, detached from the rest, seemed to shrink away from the rest. No, it thought, this can’t be happening. It can’t be. It’s ridiculous. Over-the-top. Absurd. How did you ever end up here? How did things go this wrong?
“Two...”
This is impossible. This is impossible. You’re not going to do it, you can’t do it. You can’t. You cant!
“One...” His shoulder muscles tensed.
Goddess. Goddess, no. You’re really going to do it. How could you? How could you?!
“Go.”
He raised his foreleg. He opened his mouth. He chewed. He swallowed. Tilting his leg, he let the awful, slippery thing in his hoof drop to the ground.
How could you...
Monster.
He opened his eyes and looked at Hena. There was no longer any anxiety or disgust on her face. It had been replaced by a gaze as empty and sorrowful as the northern tundras. Something in both ponies had snapped. Chief’s entire body felt numb.
No...
Hena mutely handed him the potion. He took it. They drank. The black concoction was vile, it tasted and smelled of rot. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care. Not any more. Not after this.
Princess help me, for I am lost...
And then the transformation began.
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Yay! Update!
Mmmmm, deliciously dark. I love it.
I think book 2 of the story (the first being the whole island adventure thing) should be its own story submission. I feels completely different and whereas the first part is correctly tagged as Adventure, I feel a Dark tag is needed here.
4669044
While I will agree the story has taken a darker turn as of late, and definitely merits the "dark" tag (I think I will actually add it), I'm not sure I want to submit it as its own story, for a few reasons, the first being that while the most recent chapters have been some of the darkest, this most recent one concludes this larger plot arc, and I'm hoping to get the story back on track with more of an "action-adventure" feel pretty soon. The second is that while I admit book two is certainly darker than the first, I'm not sure that the difference is significant enough to merit a total separation, as the first book starts with recollection of child abuse and really doesn't get any better from there. While the first few chapters are certainly much more lighthearted than what's going on now, it does concluding with me burning Chief down to a living skeleton and having Roads trek through the dead, mutilated bodies of soldiers after a bloody coup. Third, a divided second book would essentially be starting in media res, given the large number of plot threads left unresolved, and the fact that book two picks up mere hours after the last chapter of the first.
Lastly, and this is much more minor, I feel it's easiest to keep everything consolidated as one story, so that I do not have to resubmit to EqD, have all my readers re-follow everything, etc. Definitely do agree about the dark tag though. I've been kind of reluctant to add it because I feel it tends to dissuade new readers, but at this point, it would be straight-up misleading to leave it off, and that just feels wrong.
Edit: Forgot to post this as a reply instead of its own comment at first.
A very interesting choice overall here. And where it goes, it goes. I can see why you view it this way, and where you can worry, with plausible reasons too.
4669797 I think at the very least after you have finished Chief's arc, you should split this up into two different books, because the last 82,132 words have had nothing to do with
Also, I would like to make a request for updated cover art as the mild picture of an island never once fit with the intense mood of the story.
4711055
Yeah, I had intended to change the synopsis to something else after I finished the first "book," but my editor advised me against it. I'm thinking I'll go ahead and change it soon to something more fitting. And I agree, a new picture would certainly be appropriate, I just don't have anything good to use at the moment. As to splitting the story up, I'm still averse to the idea, but given that it appears to a concern for several readers, I'm certainly starting to rethink my decision.
4711925 I like the synopsis of the first book, so I say keep it, but for the long description, you should at least point out that that is for book one and write a new one for book two. As for pictures, can you not commission one from a pony artist? If you don't have the money now, you could start up a donation based fund to commission the new pics.
4712628
Thanks to my summer job, I actually do have some disposable income for a change. Are there any artists you recommend?
4713089 I have a friend or two who would love to be recommended to you, but I don't think their styles of art match up with your style of writing. I am leaning toward Chatoyance, but she might still say no as she can be quite busy. I don't know any exclusively pony artists, but I do know many Furry artists if you want me to have a look for you?
4714530
"She is quite busy"
"1,115,000 words and counting."
Jesus Christ. Yeah, you weren't kidding about her being busy. Though her insane number of fics are readily available, I can't seem to find any of her artwork, so I have no way of knowing if I'd like a commission by her or not. As for your other artist friends, if they're decent at drawing ponies, feel free to send them my email, I'd love to get in touch.
4743035 That makes me laugh... She draws her own cover art.
4714530
young PeachClover
Do my ears burn for a reason?