FiM + Stephen King's The Dark Tower. A re-telling of the first two episodes, in a world where the balance of power is in flux, and Celestia charges Twilight Sparkle's protection to a mysterious gunslinging earth pony from another land.
Rated Teen due to limited violence. Currently undergoing revisions.
Inspired by a piece of artwork by Jaaaaaaaz, and Stephen King's magnum opus "The Dark Tower," what follows is an alternate telling of a familiar tale.
For one-thousand years, Princess Celestia has fought a war of attrition against the armies of the Red, but now the rules are about to change, and Celestia must rely on her sheltered prized pupil and a living remnant of a secret order she once believed lost forever.
The one-thousandth anniversary of the Summer Sun Celebration is approaching, a time when Twilight Sparkle believes Equestria's worst nightmare will finally be realised. While she strives to warn the kingdom of impending disaster, the peace of Canterlot is thrown further into disarray by the arrival of an earth pony carrying totems of fierce power, and an even more terrible legacy.
Darker mysteries from Canterlot's past bubble to the surface, as Twilight spins headlong towards a destiny that will mean their salvation, or their damnation.
The black alicorn fled across the desert, and the gun-pony followed.
The ancient princess had seen so in her dreams. The desert was huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless, therefore it was the apotheosis of all deserts, she supposed. During the fleeting moments between waking and wakefulness, she swore that it was the same great desert which stood at the fringes of her domain. It was a place where the all-consuming sand was broken up only by decayed bones and signs like tombstones that had been eroded away by time and the harsh, unforgiving elements. She thought it must be madness – no, it must be suicide to traverse it. The black alicorn and the gun-pony travelled light. They might have been carrying two, if not four water skins between the pair of them, and meagre protection from the brutal heat of the sand and the sun.
Stranger still, where had they been coming from? Beyond that desert there was only the faint, cloudy haze of impassable mountains. Ponies had indeed lived there once, but not since before the founding of the kingdom. It was like a phantom, forsaken by their ancestors. The gun-pony too, was a phantom, the ghost of a history that chilled the princess to remember. Chilled and saddened her.
The princess, Celestia was her name, arose from her bed. She opened the big, ornate double-doors with the barest glimmer of magickal will, and stepped out onto the balcony. Celestia was kin to the Equestrian sun, and it was at her divine beckoning that it rose with her above one horizon and set with her below the other. She watched, her eyes unaffected by its fiery glare, and felt the warming light pour through her like a prism, bathing the fertile countryside which was so many worlds away from the barren landscape of her slumber. It calmed her spirits for the moment, heated the steel which gave her the power needed to decide the course of a civilisation, but even as the rest of her dream slipped away from her into nothingness, Celestia remembered the black alicorn, and as a trembling pit formed in her stomach, she knew.
The world was about to move on.
XXX
The gun-pony had started to suspect he had seen his last hut. It was five days on, perhaps a week. Time seemed funny to him, without solidarity, as was direction since his prey had evaded him. The desert was long behind him, as forgotten as his hat and the torn water skins. All that remained for him was to keep moving along. He crested the last of the rocky foothills, and found himself staring at a path up the side of what he had come to think of as ‘the Blue Heaven.’ There was a hut, and if he was right, smoke from a cooking pot. The gun-pony’s stomach clenched painfully, reminding him that his last meal of any substance had been as unfulfilling as it had been tasteless. He knew what it took to survive on his own, but that was no substitute for being able to actually cook.
The hut looked temporary to his eyes. It was for camping, not for living. The dweller, a striped equine of a species he had only seen once before in his life, was zealously stirring her brew with a long stick. The gun-pony came up the mountainside path slowly. He could see no weapons on the dweller. She looked up, eyes target-centre on him, and she took one forehoof off her stick in a gesture of welcome, an invitation to sit and share with her.
“Long days and pleasant nights, stranger,” she said.
The gun-pony paused. “And may you have twice the number,” he said at last, voice cracking from lack of use. The dweller did not comment on his silence, although he was certain she must have noticed. What surprised him more was that she knew such a phrase. It was one he knew very well, he and his teacher, and by that extension he thought that no other living being should. After all, it was of a dialect which was dead and buried.
“May a poor pilgrim ask where you might be going?” asked the dweller in a tone that was both calm and somehow sing-song. “I hope by extending the hoof of friendship, your quest I am not slowing.”
“It’s fine,” said the gun-pony. He was staring at the pot. “I’m looking for somepony.”
“The other stranger,” said the dweller without hesitation. “From her, I sense great danger. Catch this sorceress, I fear you cannot, for she covers great leagues in each single trot.”
“I’ll catch her,” said the gun-pony.
The dweller reached under the blue robe she wore. He could see that she adorned herself with symbols, talismans and totems the way soldiers might adorn themselves with armour. She drew out two wooden bowls, and filled these with the rich-smelling stew from the pot. The gun-pony accepted one, and sniffed it. The smell was new and exotic to him. It soothed his agonised stomach and filled him more than anything he had eaten in a long time. He swallowed it down without hesitation, and when he was finished, his hostess obliged him with a second helping.
“Thankee, sai,” the gun-pony said, once his hunger had abated enough to allow proper speech. He then asked her, “Are you a sorceress?”
“Mayhap,” she said wryly.
The gun-pony paused again, then amended his previous question, “One of the Mannifolk?”
“Mannifolk,” chuckled the dweller, “a word unheard for a long time, friend. I was with them awhile, but that came to its end.” She spoke the truth. That particular caste of spiritualist nomads had not been seen since their last great pilgrimage to a far-off corner of the world.
“Why?”
The dweller shrugged. “Our paths were no longer bound,” she said, “so a new path had to be found. Many are the ways I’ve learned, and many are the magicks I’ve earned. The Mannifolk, they like to see holes in the world, doors through which universes, like wings, come unfurled.”
The gun-pony simply grunted his acknowledgement. He stared at her silently for several minutes, taking his second course more slowly so as to savour the aromatic taste. Finally, he asked her, “You said you’re a pilgrim? Where are you going?”
“Anywhere, nowhere, somewhere, everywhere,” said the dweller.
The gun-pony snorted at the answer, not because it was intentionally vague, rather because she had just described his own path with surprising accuracy. He had simply gone wherever the black alicorn’s hoof-prints led him, regardless of where that might be. Lacking a clear indicator of where she had gone, he had wandered aimlessly. That was the last either of them said for the next few hours. The warmth of the food not only served to fill the gun-pony, but to lull him into sleep.
He dreamt he was at the edge of a field of roses, greater in size than he could imagine, for the gun-pony was not adept in imagining. His teacher had always told him he was not very bright, and only bright ones had the gift to imagine new futures, therefore he would always live in the time that was, on the wheel that turned. He also dreamt of a white alicorn, one that he recognised, and she was looking at the roses. No, that had been wrong. She was looking through them at a black shape he could not rightly discern. The yellow cores of the roses burned like countless miniature eyes, each holding in them the light of an alien sun.
He awoke the next morning beside the dweller, surprised to find he was feeling much better. He had not slept so soundly in all his life, always with one eye and ear open for danger as his teacher had instructed him, but he had been out completely, and for a brief moment thought he had been locked in a comfortable lifetime of hibernation. He gained his hooves, fast as lickety-split, every nerve going from dormancy to full alert status. His hostess’s sapphire eyes peered into his own, through them, and settled over him like a soft caress.
“You need not spurn what was needed, dear,” she told him. “Whilst you slept, I kept you safe out here.”
“I say thankee twice, sai,” said the gun-pony. “Don’t happen often, but I do.”
“Come. Breakfast is ready,” said the dweller, and smiled. “Hear my advice, if you would not mind,” she said while they ate, “repayment for the food and safety, as is right to your kind.”
“I’ll always repay an act of good will,” he admitted.
“That much, gun-pony, I already know,” the dweller smiled at him again, and she turned her attention up towards the mountain path, “yon road ahead, to Canterlot you’ll go.”
“Canterlot, by all the divines!” he uttered, hit by sharp surprise. “Then this whole time I’ve been in Equestria.” He set his empty bowl to one side and stood up. “I say it thrice, and that I have never done before. Long days and pleasant nights to you.”
“Walk easy. And may you have twice the number,” said the dweller. “If for succour or shelter your need becomes dire, friends will always find room by Zecora’s fire.”
The gun-pony left her.
XXX
It was before dawn when the young acolyte returned to the dormitory common room at Canterlot’s Academy of the White. The school had stood since the city’s founding, according to the official history texts, but there were those who subscribed to the idea that their ancestors had discovered it already hewn from a monolithic tooth of stone, and built up their capital around it. Most today considered this to be mythology, knowing that before the city, there had only been the mountain, referred to in those bygone days as Castle Rock and presently as Mount Canterlot. The acolyte had slipped away the night before to avoid a classmate’s birthday festivities and returned when she suspected the common room was emptied of bodies. Her saddlebags were loaded with books from the library where she had claimed sanctuary.
The short, lavender horn on her forehead glistened with power, and she willed open the common room door. The interior consisted of two tiers, the lower one housing seats, tables and amenities, the upper one a smaller reference library with a large, antique telescope as its centrepiece.
Entering the first tier, she found the only sign of life to be a small bundle waiting for her on a cushion. The bundle was entirely purple save for flashes of brilliant green clustered along its curled body. She felt a brief lapse in her single-mindedness, just long enough to feel a pang of guilt for leaving the sleeping creature to the mercy of her classmates, before nudging it awake with the tip of one hoof.
“Spike,” she said, “come on. I need you awake.”
The scaly mass uncurled and looked up at her, blinking a few times before his emerald eyes were able to focus. The common room was dim, but the glow of those eyes lit it up like a hearth.
“Twilight?” the baby dragon questioned, and rubbed one eye. “Where’ve you been all night?”
“Working, while apparently everypony else was partying,” Twilight Sparkle replied. “I need you to take a letter for Princess Celestia for me.”
“What time is it?” Spike half asked, half yawned. He looked around for a clock to no success. There had been one on the mantelpiece, but it had been removed during the birthday celebrations. Twilight ignored him, already making her way up the stairway. which corkscrewed between the tiers. The boundaries of the common room’s upper section did not reach the walls, and so it was more like a suspended platform than an actual floor. Spike sighed, shook the last of the cobwebs from his brain, and toddled after her as fast as he could.
She had already set out the heavy volumes on the same table where the telescope held pride of place, and magickally opening them to pages she had marked with ribbons. Dust and grit flittered away from them, rolling over the table’s surface and trickling to the floor. Spike peered over the acolyte’s shoulder at the yellowing pages, and was drawn immediately to one of the illustrations. It was a golden, eight-pointed star. Perched at the tips of five of these points, one at the top and four at the sides, were vibrantly hued gems. Red, orange, violet, blue and green, orbiting a sixth gem, magenta, nestled in the star’s heart. Spike was sure that he saw pictures within the picture. He could see marks in those gems, and he was practised at discerning the details, because baby dragons looked at an image of six differently coloured gems the way a pony looked at the photographs on a menu in Canterlot’s finest restaurants. He saw these ghostly images not as distinct imperfections in the way they had been cut, but as evidence of where their real flavour was hidden, like the custard inside a donut.
“Spike, you’re dribbling,” said Twilight Sparkle, and used one hoof to prop his lower jaw shut. He snapped to attention, hunger sharpening his wits. He found his parchment and quill, dipped the latter in an inkwell, and got ready to receive his mistress’s diction.
Twilight Sparkle did not begin right away. Spike correctly guessed she was cross-referencing the open pages. The unicorn was Princess Celestia’s most dedicated pupil in the ways of the White, her most trusted disciple, and she held that trust dear to her heart. Were she to get her information wrong, she would consider it a betrayal.
“The Mare in the Moon,” she mumbled, “Mare in the Moon…sealed by the Ritual of Ka-Tet…darn, what I wouldn’t give for a definite translation, it sounds way too hokey…anyway, compare that to the Nightmare Moon traditions…yes…yes, that should do.”
Once she was satisfied beyond a shadow of a doubt with her findings, she began to pace back and forth, as she always did when she was dictating.
“To my dearest teacher, my continuing studies of the magicks of the White, and my examinations of the Red…”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Spike stopped her. “You’ve been studying dark magick too? Didn’t the princess warn everypony on the first day about how dangerous that is?”
“Spike, don’t be naïve. We can hardly hope to overcome the Red if we don’t understand how it works,” Twilight replied impatiently. “Besides, I’ve only been reading about historical events it’s had a hand in, so it can be recognised. I couldn’t carry out a ritual of that calibre if I tried. None of the grimoires or spell books on it are available anywhere.”
“But you’ve looked,” said Spike.
“As I was saying,” Twilight harrumphed, and continued her dictation, “my examinations of the Red have led me to reassess the cycle of waxing and waning of magickal forces as was taught to us last term during the season of Wide-Earth. Based on the compilation and comparison of data from both your lessons and the calendar system proposed by Star Swirl the Bearded in his journals, page references for which are listed below, the night before the Summer Sun Celebration will see a cosmic alignment matching that of the same date precisely one-thousand years ago. Analysis of particular weather-related omens indicates that we may now stand at the end of what has come to be known by optimists as, ‘Equestria’s Golden Age’…”
When she finally finished, the sun had risen, visible through the common room’s glass, domed ceiling. Spike flexed his aching paw. Typical Twilight, never saying in one word what she could in nine or ten. He rolled the message into a tight scroll, snapped the seal shut, and then breathed a light puff of emerald dragon’s fire over it. The scroll became a cloud of twinkling lights, spiralled up into the air above their heads, and vanished. Delivery via Dragon Breath Express was significantly faster than any castle courier. It would travel through the ether and arrive at the princess’s chambers in precisely three and a half seconds.
“Let’s go, Spike,” said Twilight Sparkle, willing her books into her saddlebag and then moving that across her back.
The baby dragon blinked. “Where are we going now, Twilight?” he asked.
“First I need to drop these back at the library,” she told him, omitting the fact she had technically removed them without alerting the librarian, “and after that, we’re going to see Princess Celestia personally.”
“Why? What about the letter?” Spike asked despairingly, jabbing a clawed digit upwards.
“I’m more than certain she’ll have read it by then,” said Twilight, “but the Summer Sun Celebration is coming up, and she might not have the chance to write back. We’d be doing her a favour by giving her one less thing to worry about.” She lowered herself slightly. Spike resigned himself, shrugged his shoulders, and clambered onto her back. Twilight straightened up and was out of the dormitory like a shot.
She carried out her first task of the day without a problem. It was a weekend, when the library would not be scheduled to open until the afternoon, and she being a sometimes-volunteer-assistant-librarian, had a spare key that allowed her to re-enter and replace the books before the elderly mare who was normally in charge could arrive and take stock. She spent an extra ten minutes trying to decide if two particular books were exactly as they had been before the librarian had locked up and she had let herself in, then threw a little extra dust over them just to be sure of her deception. She stopped by the Star Swirl the Bearded wing to do a cursory search for a grimoire she had been after for weeks, failed to find it, hopped up and down in frustration while making irritated sounds for several moments, then went to look for her teacher.
“You’re going to have to fill me in a little, Twilight,” said Spike, holding onto the unicorn’s neck. “That stuff you were talking about in the letter. It’s all just folksy stories, right? Superstitions? Why’s it got you so worked up?”
“I thought it was that too, Spike,” she informed him, “but I’ve found evidence that suggests otherwise. Didn’t you get any of that the whole time you were writing?”
“I tend to just go on automatic when you really get into it.”
Twilight let out an exasperated sigh. “All right, listen. It’s the one-thousandth year of the Summer Sun Celebration,” she explained, “a commemoration of when Princess Celestia imprisoned the witch Nightmare Moon. It was a significant turning point in the battle between the magick of the White and the Red.”
“But that’s good!”
“Yes, but the spell won’t last forever. I know Nightmare Moon will return, and she’ll be even stronger than before!”
“Okay, that’s pretty bad, but how do you know that’s what’ll happen?”
Twilight seemed unsure of how to answer him. She was not the type to say she simply had a gut feeling, or asked to be trusted without being able to give empirical proof, but truly that was what it came down to. Even the references she had made in her letter to her teacher had not been perfect. Much of her belief, much more than she was comfortable with, stemmed entirely from a sensation of foreboding which had hung over her for days, if not weeks on end. Spike called her name, asking if she was feeling all right. Twilight said nothing and galloped onward.
XXX
The streets of Canterlot were filling with morning activity. Officers of the Royal Guard, whose duties encompassed the protection of the entire capital, were out on patrol in their exquisitely forged armour. Carts containing wares for the upcoming solstice were being led through the streets while ponies played, worked and talked all about her. She passed the town square, where a chattering crowd were gathering around the ornate fountain atop which stood the monument to the three leaders who united the fledgling tribes. The front gates of Canterlot Castle were before her, and up on the hill behind them was the royal residence itself, cast in ivory and shining like a beacon for all to see. The curtains on the balcony of the tallest spire, the monarch’s chambers, flapped in the breeze. Twilight assumed that her mentor had already spotted her approach from that vantage point, and might even now be breathing a sigh of relief to know her student was on the way to discuss the important matters she had spoken of in the letter.
Celestia was not in her tower, nor did she look relieved. She was approaching down the path to the gates, accompanied by two of her personal guards. Her expression was stony. Twilight and Spike winced. Neither of them had seen the princess looking so ill at ease before. She was ordinarily so serene, at peace with the world. The unicorn realised that the guards standing positioned to either side of the outer gate were looking at her, waiting for her to make way. She shrank back, and the gates opened.
“Princess?” she asked meekly.
“We’ll speak in a moment, my student,” the princess told her as she trotted on by. Twilight watched her in confusion as she and her entourage stopped. Another guard came forward from the crowd. Although she had not set eyes on him for many months after his promotion, there was no mistaking the handsome features of her older brother. Shining Armour was Celestia’s Captain of the Guard, and the one with whom the princess had entrusted the responsibility of protecting Canterlot’s citizenry from threats both domestic and foreign. He wore an uncharacteristically grim expression. Twilight had seen him serious, but never once grim. Every muscle in him was tight and tense, like a bundle of wires.
“Captain,” said Celestia, “what has happened?”
“Truth be told, Your Grace,” said Shining Armour, “we aren’t entirely sure. A stranger arrived at the gates a few minutes ago, demanding an audience with you.”
“That’s hardly unusual, Captain,” said Celestia. “Who is he?”
“He refuses to tell anypony his name, save for you,” said Shining Armour. He glanced sidelong at Twilight, then returned to the princess. “I’m not sure this is the right place to speak of this.”
Twilight felt like a criminal being judged in court as both Celestia and her own brother regarded her. She understood that for something to upset Shining Armour this much, it would have to be something big. Not just big, but huge. A matter of literally grave urgency. That knowledge did not make her feel any better.
“She can hear this,” the princess said finally, “so please, Captain, tell me what the matter is.”
“You can see for yourself, dinh of Canterlot,” said a new voice Twilight was not familiar with. It was young, but harsh like gravel. It was the voice of somepony who was far older than his years. She, Shining Armour, Celestia and the guards all turned to face it, and saw the crowd parting like tall grass faced with a gust of wind. The voice had silenced them all.
Approaching them at a deliberate pace was a grey earth-pony with a black mane and tail. He wore a crimson bandanna around his neck, a hide vest, and a belt around his middle from which dangled two brown holsters, one at either side of him, close to the hinges of his hind-legs. Twilight could not see what was in the holsters, but she saw the mark on his flank. Two long, identical blue rods of strange shape, angled up so that the thinner ends crossed. His eyes were also blue, but not a deep or meaningful blue. They were cold like glaciers. Again, Twilight felt herself wince.
“Hile, Celestia-sai,” said the grey earth-pony, and to the mutual surprise of the watchers, he got down on his forelegs in a gesture of respect, bending one beneath him and stretching the other out before him. “I am called Peacemaker.”
It was an omen Twilight Sparkle had not foreseen. It was one Princess Celestia had been waiting for.
The things in the holsters were weapons, Twilight decided. Not a kind of weapon she had ever seen, but that was what they were. Why else, she reasoned, would her brother and the Royal Guard have been so concerned when the owner had arrived at their gates dressed in dirty hides? No, not concerned, she corrected herself. They had been worried. Whoever this pony who called himself Peacemaker was, he represented a fact which the guardians of the imperial capital had grown to distrust. ‘Fear’ was the word floating in her subconscious, but her heart would not allow her to do her brother such a disservice. She had known Shining Armour her whole life, and had seen proof that he feared nothing in all of Equestria.
They were inside the castle now. She had tried to inspect the stranger more closely, but Shining Armour had brushed her away from him with the sweep of one foreleg. She had been able to see that the weapons were very much like the mark on his flank. They were large, imperfectly cylindrical and constructed from blued metal. The curved parts sticking out of the holsters, which she thought might in fact be handles, were fashioned from fragrant, yellow sandalwood. The stranger had curtly said that while he was only a guest, he would not feel comfortable talking – “palavering,” as he put it – with a dozen armed guards training their spears on him. Princess Celestia, ever polite and impossible to refuse, had requested that Shining Armour remain in the hallway with his sister, and that his subordinates should return to their previous duties.
The captain had not liked the idea of leaving the princess alone with the stranger, not one bit, but he had acquiesced all the same, and now the siblings stood together with Twilight’s baby dragon, waiting to find out what happened. Shining Armour, in particular, was waiting for something to go wrong, and for the steel totems the stranger had brought with him to unleash their unspeakable wrath against the beloved monarch.
“What’s going on, Shining Armour?” Twilight asked her brother. “Who is that pony?”
“I’m not sure, Twily,” he replied, “but he shouldn’t be here.”
“I don’t get why this is all such a big deal,” Spike chirped, then immediately covered his mouth with his paws. He had spoken out of turn.
Shining Armour shook his head. “Hopefully it’s not,” he said, “but if it is…” His voice trailed off, then he said, “I shouldn’t really tell either of you any of this.”
“But why not?” asked Twilight, insistently.
“You really want to know?”
Twilight nodded.
“Because ponies like him aren’t meant to exist!” Shining Armour snorted. “They should never have been here in the first place!” Twilight recoiled, confused and just a little bit hurt that he had used an aggressive tone with her. Shining Armour seemed to realise his error, and hung his head in shame. “I’m sorry, Twily. I didn’t think this sort of thing might happen so soon after I got promoted.”
Although she had no idea what he was talking about, she understood the sentiment. Captain of the Royal Guard was a position of not just prestige, but hefty importance. Her brother was still new to the role, the youngest to receive the honour, and that meant a lot of pressure from scrutinising elders and expectant subordinates. Shining Armour, like plenty of his colleagues and predecessors, silently hoped for the chance to prove themselves in some major skirmish, to be the prodigal defender who overcame terrific odds, but those dreams always pitted the hopeful against threats they could understand, or were so strange they could not be understood as anything other than an opponent who needed defeating.
The stranger in the room was not a monster. He was an earth pony, and yet he was somehow all the more bizarre and unknowable despite that, or even because of it. Shining Armour felt his sister nuzzle his side, and he smiled a little.
“I’ll be okay, Twily,” he told her. “I’m sure the princess has everything under control.”
“Of course she does,” she agreed. “I know my teacher well enough to see that, but I want to know if you’ve got everything under control. I can’t remember the last time I saw you get so flustered.”
Shining Armour said nothing, but he did grimace. Twilight Sparkle put on her best stern tone of voice. “Shining Armour, have I ever betrayed your confidence in me before?”
The captain glanced incredulously at her, and then at Spike, who was still perched on the unicorn’s back. The dragon put two claw-tips together and drew them across his mouth, imitating the motion of a zip being pulled shut.
Shining Armour looked like he was seriously reconsidering his silence, quite cowed by the reminder of the promise he and her had made when they were children to be honest with each other, and Twilight’s brief feeling of guilt was quickly overpowered by a jolt of anticipation. The truth was that while she did indeed care deeply for her brother, and she did take anything he told her in the strictest confidence, she had an ache inside of her now. She had become a witness to something she knew nothing about, and she thirsted to fill that gap in her knowledge. If she could not satisfy her need to understand through what information he possessed, then it would drive her mad. Even if it was only meagre, it would mean something which was preferable to nothing.
“I’ve never met his kind. They were gone before our time,” said Shining Armour. “What I know is that they came from outside Equestria’s borders.”
“Outside? Then, they were of the Red?” Twilight asked.
“No,” replied Shining Armour, “no, they stood for the White, but that makes it even worse.”
“How?”
“They were capable of things nopony else ever has been, and because of that they represent one of the worst parts of our kingdom’s history.”
Twilight Sparkle did not press him. She wanted to, she really wanted to, but her brother had just presented two statements which were to her mind complete contradictions. ‘The White’ was their word for the forces of good in the universe, those which brought about light and fullness and understanding of one’s fellow beings. The White was embodied in Princess Celestia, and all those who followed the teachings which had made Equestria strong. ‘The Red’ was its absolute opposite. Disciples of that counteracting, chaotic dogma thrived in the dark, inhospitable corners of the world. Places like the Badlands or the Frozen North, which were as far from the safety and sanctity of Canterlot as you could get without vacating reality altogether. Being as her brother had put it, “capable of things nopony else had ever been,” went with the Red like daisies and daffodils. Only, he had also said they were not Red. They were White.
The conversation died there and then, because the door to the throne room suddenly opened, and Celestia emerged with the grey earth pony. The princess seemed a little more relaxed now, though not enough to drop her guard. Too many years of ruling made that unlikely even at the best of times.
“I’m glad we got all that cleared up,” she said, finishing a sentence she had begun on the other side.
“As am I, Celestia-sai,” the earth pony replied in his flat voice.
“Your Grace?” Shining Armour piped up.
“Captain,” Celestia acknowledged him with a polite tip of her head, which the captain returned. “You need not be so tense. Peacemaker came to Canterlot looking for work. That is all.”
The grey earth pony, Peacemaker, turned to face the siblings properly. His eyes were heavy-hooded, as if he were trying to conserve energy, but still they shimmered like pale desert mirages. There were as many colours for ponies as there were stars in the sky, but Twilight Sparkle had never seen eyes like his. They were coloured as much by intent as his genes. Whatever they had talked about in the throne room, her instincts told her that there was something Princess Celestia was not privy to.
“As I have just explained,” he said, “I have come to Canterlot to continue the services rendered by those who came before me. I grasp that the world has changed since my father and grandfather’s days, but so long as this kingdom still has its dinh…”
“Its what?” Spike asked.
“Its leader,” said the earth pony after a moment’s thought. “So long as this kingdom still has its leader, the one we have always served, then my guns are at her disposal.”
Twilight Sparkle reasoned that ‘guns’ must be the word for the totems he carried, the blue, petering cylinders with the sandalwood points at the thick ends. It was a strong word, but that did not mean it was also pleasant. It was strong in that it was also severe, like a full stop that abruptly cuts off a short sentence.
“With all due respect to Her Highness,” said Shining Armour, the softer side he had displayed to his sister once more overtaken by the persona of authority that was part of his uniform, “guns aren’t what we need. Equestria doesn’t deal in aggression.”
“Stand down, Captain,” said Celestia.
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Shining Armour begrudgingly.
If the grey earth pony was offended by the harsh words, he did not show it. In fact he seemed indifferent. Shining Armour’s nostrils flared, but he held his tongue. “I’ll make myself available when you require me, sai,” said Peacemaker as he made ready to leave.
“Peacemaker, I may have a job for you right now,” said Celestia, and he was still again. “Twilight Sparkle.”
“Yes, Princess?” asked Twilight, standing to attention. She watched the smile curl on her teacher’s lips, but she did not take it as a sign of reassurance. In fact, she suddenly felt a bubble of dread welling up inside her belly, smothering her earlier ache and replacing it with a weight that threatened to make her knees buckle.
XXX
“It’s not so bad, Twilight,” Spike told her for the third time that day. The unicorn disagreed. She had been correct in that Celestia had read her letter before they had arrived at the castle, but the reaction had originated somewhere clearly left of her own expectations. She had wanted her teacher to share her concerns, to say, “Excellently done, my dearest student. Now come, we must make preparations,” but that had not been what happened.
Instead, she had been told not to fuss over everything she read, and when she tried to argue the point, which she rarely did, Celestia had proceeded to disarm her with a look that was both authoritative and serene to the point of being almost patronising. It was a look she herself had used on several first-year students, on the occasion when she took time out of her schedule to earn a few extra gold bits from tutoring, would see their attempts at the most basic enchantments and think to herself how much farther along she had been at their age. At least, she thought she was. Since the difference between them spanned centuries rather than three or four years, Celestia’s version of the expression was vastly more impressive, and it wilted Twilight’s pride considerably. What Celestia could not accomplish with just the tiniest shift of facial muscles you could count on half of one hoof.
The princess had then assigned her to supervise things in the town picked to host the Summer Sun Celebration. Last year it was Trottingham, the year before that Manehattan. The winning town in the lottery this time had been Ponyville, a quaint little hamlet far out in the boonies. Well, that was really it. All Twilight Sparkle wanted was to be taken seriously, but not only had the pony she had come to look up to like a mother denied her that one solitary flake of dignity – and Celestia was the last pony she ever suspected this would come from – she had been more or less banished to the middle of nowhere, to make sure these backwoods ponies knew which end of the mallet you used to put the nails in.
The company on the trip over was far from ideal as well. Spike, much as she loved him, refused to shut up about how good this opportunity would be for her, and reminded her that Celestia had encouraged her to make some friends around the town. Friends were hardly going to help save Equestria from the coming darkness, and blast it she knew she was right about this! The signs were all there, why could Celestia not see that?
Peacemaker, given the task of acting as her bodyguard, in contrast said nothing. He was completely silent, more like a machine than a pony. She had tried to make sense of him, if only because it gave her something to do on their journey, and decided they were roughly the same age. In fact, Twilight wondered if he might not actually be younger than her by a couple of years. If Celestia had entrusted her protection to a foal, that would really be it! The rock bottom lowest point in her life, protected by a foal! Except, she thought, for his eyes. He had old eyes. Not in the sense that they were weakened or ailing, but they were not bright like a foal’s eyes, full of star-shine and wonderment. It was more in the sense that they were experienced. They had seen things.
Things nopony had ever been capable of. Was that why he looked that way, and if so, what did that mean exactly?
“Look on the bright side. At least the princess arranged for you to stay in a library,” said Spike, derailing her train of thought. She was not very good at hiding her discontent. The baby dragon was reaching for things to cheer her up. Admittedly, that thought was a comfort. “Doesn’t that make you happy?”
“Yes it does, Spike,” she said, “so when we arrive, I’ll still have plenty of time to get there and form a strategy.”
“What about the celebration, and making friends like the princess said?”
“I have greater concerns than friends, Spike, and Mister Peacemaker can handle the supervision,” she told him matter-of-factly. “All he has to do is look at a few stalls and nod his head.”
Peacemaker’s ears twitched, lifted, and he seemed to finally remember where he was. “Sorry, filly, but I’m sticking with you,” said the gun-pony in a tone which brokered no argument. A pause, and then, “We’re landing.”
The sky-chariot they were in descended through the clouds, touching down in what looked to be the town square. The two white pegasi hitched to its front landed in perfect synchrony. Twilight Sparkle dealt them a courteous thank you and they snorted proudly in response. Peacemaker allowed a brief grunt of recognition, which the pegasi returned. The square was quiet. Not dead, and not empty. There were plenty of town-ponies out, fewer than the sleepless bustle of the capital city, but there was an air of unusual tranquillity in spite of the activity. Twilight Sparkle immediately thought something was wrong with them. Peacemaker knew it, although he did not believe their peace to be at all fake or forced, just that it was hiding a separate truth. It made him edgy.
“Yo, ’scuse me,” someone said. Peacemaker turned, and suddenly he was reared up on his hindlegs, the guns fixed to his forehooves and pointing into the face of a very surprised chestnut earth pony. He had wide, watery green eyes, and his mane and tail, which waved lazily around him as if they had been moulded by a heavy downpour and dried in that fashion, were a striking shade of cerise. His mark was a jester’s cap, striped scarlet-and-blue, complete with four golden bells. “Hey, whoa, whoa!” he cried, raising his own forehooves above his head in surrender. “Peace, dude!”
Peacemaker flicked the guns back into his holsters and got down on all fours again. “What do you want?”
“Jeez. Just tryin’ to be friendly, guy,” said the earth pony. “I don’t know what those things are, but they don’t look like how you shake hooves in whatever city you come from.”
“You’ll have to forgive him,” said Twilight Sparkle, “he’s our bodyguard.” The word seemed alien to her. It did not sound quite right to her ears. “Is it that obvious we’re from the city?”
“Well, local types tend to be a little less conspicuous, y’know?” replied the chestnut earth-pony. “We get a lot of different folks come through here, ’cause we’re kind of smack-bang on the trade route. You don’t look too much like merchants, though. Not unless it’s exotic pets you’re dealin’ in.”
“Hey! I’m no-one’s pet!” Spike harrumphed. He had hidden himself behind Twilight Sparkle when Peacemaker pulled his weapons, and only now felt suitably prompted to re-emerge.
“Well, wouldja look at that,” the chestnut earth-pony smirked, “the little feller talks, too. Easy there, buddy, I’m just kiddin’.” He patted the dragon’s head with a forehoof, then offered it to Twilight. “The name’s Jack-a-Nape. My friends call me Jackie.”
“Twilight Sparkle,” the unicorn replied, “this is Spike. He’s my assistant.”
“I’m the adorable little brother everypony wishes they had,” the baby dragon chirped with a grin.
“That’s funny, kid,” Jack-a-Nape smiled, “when I lived in Manehattan, my big brother used to tell me the exact opposite.”
“So you’re not from around here?” Twilight asked.
“Not originally, no,” said Jack-a-Nape, “but I guess I’ve gone kinda native. Still, that’s enough about me. You three need help findin’ your way ’round? ’Cause if you are, I’m the pony to see.”
“Well, Twilight was sent here by Princess Celestia to check on how things are going for the Summer Sun Celebration,” said Spike, gesturing to the unicorn, who rolled her eyes. Jack-a-Nape whistled, impressed.
“Hang on, I got a checklist of things here somewhere,” Spike continued, and checked the pouches in his leathery skin. He found nothing, and his expression turned to one of oncoming panic.
“These what you’re after, short-time?” Jack-a-Nape asked with a sardonic smirk. He reached under the paisley-cuffed denim jacket he wore and pulled out a comically oversized pencil and a scroll.
“How did you…?” Spike began, snatching both up in his paws.
“Hey, I might not be no fancy-pants unicorn, but I got tricks of my own,” replied Jack-a-Nape.
“You stole those,” said Peacemaker dryly. “You’re fast, sai, but not so fast I cannot see your hooves moving.”
Jack-a-Nape looked nervous for a moment, then he just shrugged, laughed and said, “There’s always one sourpuss who’s gotta spoil the show for everypony else, huh? So what’s first on your little list there, pal?”
Spike unfurled the scroll and scanned it quickly. “Banquet preparations,” he said, “that’s being handled at somewhere called…Sweet Apple Acres.”
“Cool,” said Jack-a-Nape. “A.J.’s place. I was plannin’ on headin’ up there myself later on. She’s a sweet gal, lets me sneak a little of the produce when her grandma’s not lookin’, ya dig?”
Twilight Sparkle looked appealingly at Spike, who nodded his head a little and winked. Twilight grinned, but it was awkward. “Sure,” she said, “I, uh, dig.”
“Great!” said Jackie exuberantly, bouncing a little as he did. “Come on. It’s a little ways out of town, but I tell ya, the view’s really worth it.”
That was how the gun-pony, the acolyte and the dragon came to meet Jack-a-Nape. It was the beginning of a story that would decide the fate of Equestria and beyond. With the chestnut earth pony as their lead, they walked together, the four of them, all the way past the town’s boundaries and into the hilly fields to the west of Ponyville. All the while, Peacemaker refused to utter a single word. He did not remark on his surroundings in spite of their verdant beauty, or answer their new guide’s questions no matter how much the subject was pushed, always seeming to be thinking of something or somewhere else. Twilight Sparkle was beginning to think this behaviour was par for the course. Had Peacemaker deigned to consider that, he might have been thankful. It meant there would not be two fools distracting his attention.
The gun-pony knew there was wrongness in Ponyville. He saw it in the dark shape that fled him.
It was a good day, Applejack thought, right up until the law decided to pay her a visit. She had been hard at work in her family’s orchard, harvesting the best fruit for the festival. The produce from Sweet Apple Acres had always been in high demand both in and out of season, but never had the family found themselves so busy as they were during that once-in-a-lifetime week. There was a Summer Sun Celebration every year, but when one’s own small town was chosen above every settlement in Equestria, the tradition took on an entirely new meaning, a new gravity. Everybody in Ponyville had work to do, and the family who had run Sweet Apple Acres the past four generations was no different.
The last thing any of them needed were distractions, particularly a distraction with an autumn-red pencil moustache because he was too young to grow a proper one like his boss, and gold-rimmed spectacles which were supposed to give him a look of culture and intelligence, but only succeeded in making his inner sliminess so much more apparent. Had Deputy Tongs been born a slug instead of a unicorn, it still would have been disparaging to the rest of his species.
He let himself in, quite uninvited and because Big McIntosh had not been around to intimidate him, and sauntered up to her, thinking himself so dapper in his blue pinstripes and tin star, and dealt her a whop on the rear with his tail. Perhaps that was considered classy wherever Tongs came from, but in the civilised world it was just plain rude. Applejack felt the sharp sting on her rump, reared up with a startled neigh, knocked over one of her work-baskets, and then rounded on him with a face like thunder. The sight of his smug grin, those two crooked buckteeth at the front so his moustache looked like moss growing around a tombstone, and those irritating glasses that disproportionately magnified the lower halves of his eyes, annihilated her previously happy demeanour in less time than it took for her to blink.
“All right, buster, I know you’re gonna be startin’ with an apology if ya wanna keep that tail a’ yours!” she seethed.
“Careful there, darlin’,” said the smug thing, tapping his star with a forehoof. “You keep that attitude up an’ I might have to get rough with ya. ’Course if that’s what you’re aimin’ for I’m sure I can oblige ya.”
Applejack made a disgusted sound in her throat and set about picking up the basket and its spilt contents. “Go away, Tongs, I ain’t got time for your dumb games today.”
“You think I’m playin’ games here, Applejack?” Tongs snorted. “You know me better than that.”
“You’re right, I do,” said Applejack curtly. “Most games are kinda above that grain a’ sugar ya call a brain.”
“You wound me,” said Tongs, and put his forehoof to his temple in a slightly melodramatic flourish. “But sugar sounds ’bout right. Ya know how sweet I am on ya.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Tongs was suddenly in front of her. He grabbed the apple she had just picked up and took a sizeable bite out of it. “Look, baby girl,” he said around a mouthful of fruit, “you’re gettin’ all worked up ’bout the Summer Sun, but you an’ me, we’re too young for all that worryin’. Why, where I come from, a pretty filly like yourself enjoys life.”
“I was, ’til you wormed your way into my life,” said Applejack, “an’ if the fillies are so pretty where ya come from, why don’t ya just go right on back there?”
“Why, ’cause none of them was you,” replied the deputy.
“Oh! Spare me,” Applejack snapped. “Y’know that line ain’t worked in the history a’ anythin’. Listen to me an’ listen good, Deputy. Only courtin’ we’s gonna do is gonna be in front of a judge an’ jury if ya don’t get off my family’s land in the next five minutes.”
Tongs continued to simper and sneer as Applejack finished putting the fallen basket back together and carried it to an awaiting cart, then went back for the other four. She hitched herself to the front of the cart and headed across the orchard to the farmhouse. She could hear the sound of cheery, horribly off-key singing through the open kitchen window, where Granny Smith, the family’s wise matriarch, was getting the everything ready so that when the day of the celebration came, everypony in town, the natives and the visitors, would be able to enjoy the delights which only the hardworking folks at Sweet Apple Acres could provide. The song was an oldie called ‘Hey Jude.’
“Say, Applejack,” said Tongs, evidently unable to take a hint, “how’s about I come on in an’, like, lend a hoof or two?”
Applejack unhitched herself right outside the back door of the house, which led into the kitchen, then manoeuvred a basket onto her back before grabbing a second one in her mouth by its handle. She set the baskets inside the open doorway, then repeated the process. She only had to carry the fifth on her back, leaving her free to speak.
“Y’know what, Deputy?” she asked. “I think ya could lend me all four of them, if ya really wanna make me happy.”
“Well, just so happens I do, darlin’,” said Tongs hopefully. “So just you tell me what ya need a’ me.”
“Take all four a’ them hooves,” she said with a mean smile, “an’ beat ‘em real hard ’gainst the ground in the direction a’ the gate!” She slammed the door in his face. “Keep goin’ ’til ya see a cliff!” she finished from the other side.
Deputy Tongs decided his patience was quite exhausted with that remark. He started banging angrily on the door. “Now just you look here, ya side-whinnyin’ little bi—!” He felt a sudden, sharp pain as something fell on him from above, cutting him off mid-curse. Tongs looked down while rubbing his head, saw a fallen apple in the grass, then looked up. A window on the second floor, directly above him, was open, and peering out of it was a small, yellow face with a pink hair-ribbon in its strawberry red mane.
“You leave my big sister alone, dirtbag!” the yellow face squeaked at him.
“Apple Bloom!” Tongs snapped. “You get your bony little rump down here an’ apologise to me right now, young lady!”
“Don’t wanna!” Apple Bloom told him matter-of-factly. “Go away or you’ll get another!”
“Good little foals should know to do as their told an’ respect their elders!” snarled Tongs. A second apple stuck on his horn, and juice squirted in his face.
“Yee-haw!” hollered Apple Bloom. “Bullseye!”
Inside, Applejack tried her best to ignore the shouting match going on outside, wishing her hearing was as selective as Granny Smith’s. She arranged her baskets neatly, and asked if she could help out in the kitchen for a while. It was better to say “help” and not to suggest that Granny take a rest and let someone else do the hard work, because everypony in the Apple family learned quickly that such an idea was liable to land them on the wrong end of a rolling pin. It was not because Granny Smith believed in hitting any of her brood, mind you, but she liked to wave the thick old pin in the face of whichever poor idiot had earned themselves a good telling off. She may have been small and more than a little bit saggy, but Applejack would swear her grandmother was a force of nature, spat out by the earth itself to remind you where your place was and how you should be thankful for it.
Unfortunately, Granny had already given Apple Bloom the task of assisting her, and was even now calling the foal from the bottom of the stairs. She could play with the dumb animals later, but right now she was needed, and if she wanted to lick the mixing bowl clean come pastry-making time she had better get her bouncy little britches downstairs toot-sweet, whatever that meant. Applejack decided to see if she could help Big McIntosh in the orchard around the front of the house. Being close to her brother would surely give Tongs ample incentive to leave her alone.
She was passing by the kitchen window when she saw Jack-a-Nape and three strangers trotting up the road from Ponyville. She chewed her bottom lip because she knew Tongs despised Jackie, and while a part of her prayed to all the powers to make the deputy go away or for him to be looking in the opposite direction until the visitors got to the front door, the rational part of her knew things were about to get more complicated. Applejack pushed the window open and called out to Jackie in the loudest whisper she could manage, but when that failed she settled for waving her forelegs to get his attention. Maybe, she thought, they could be sent a signal to stay low until they were out of Tongs’s range.
Her eyes fell on the strangest of the strangers. A grey earth pony, and he seemed to have noticed her. He was looking right at her, or he might have been looking through her, it was hard to discern. What she knew was that he seemed not quite right, and she got this niggling little instinct to find out who he was. Oh, for sure, she had never seen the purple unicorn with the flashy mane around these parts before, and definitely not the baby dragon riding on her back and boy howdy what a story that would make, but they were full blown flesh and blood. The earth pony with the eyes of pure ice, well, it was like she was staring at a ghost. In a way, he spooked her.
“Hey, there’s A.J.!” Jackie cried and pointed straight at her. “She’s wavin’! Yo, A.J.!”
Applejack groaned, and put her hoof to her forehead with so much force she thought it might bruise. Tongs came tearing around the corner of the farmhouse a second later. His face was sticky with trickling rivers of juice because attempting to remove the apple skewered on his horn with unicorn magick had caused the fruit to explode. Pulpy pieces of its skin were glued to his mane like ugly, oversized particles of glitter. He stopped several feet in front of the new arrivals, causing them to grind to a halt themselves.
“Nape, I told you I never wanted to see your face in my town again,” he scowled.
“Yeah, ya did, but I guess I wasn’t listenin’,” replied Jackie with a shrug. “I’m kinda deaf on one side, y’know? What’s that stuff on your face, guy?”
Tongs growled indignantly and tried to brush the fragments and juice off of him, messing up his mane and making him look rather alarming in the process. He did not seem to have noticed, but if he had it would not have changed his mood any.
“No, not that stuff,” said Jackie, “that looked just fine. I’m talkin’ about that thing on your lip. What, did somethin’ die there and ya didn’t notice?”
Applejack snorted as she tried and failed to restrain a laugh. Apple Bloom, who had wandered away from Granny Smith again to come watch, joined with a giggle. Jack-a-Nape beamed at them cheekily. Tongs growled and willed the window to slam shut. The impact rattled the wooden frame, broke one of the panels, and knocked the sisters backwards.
“That was uncalled for!” cried the purple unicorn. “Who do you think you are?”
“I’m the law in these here parts, filly,” said Tongs, his old smugness creeping back onto his face. His grin pushed his cheeks up so high they covered the corners of his eyes and lifted the arms of his spectacles up a bit.
“You’re a bully!” the baby dragon piped up. “That’s what you are!”
Inside, Applejack comforted Apple Bloom. The window had hit the tiny foal dead on the snout and she was trying her hardest not to cry. Granny Smith’s hearing might not have been what it used to be, but she came shambling out of the kitchen as quickly as she was able when she heard the sounds of shattering glass and her youngest granddaughter’s sobbing. She gently brushed Apple Bloom’s tears away, then turned her gaze to the ruined window and the scene occurring outside. She saw the nice young colt whose name she could never remember, as well as two or three others, but her old eyes lit up furiously when she saw Tongs.
“Why, if it ain’t that low-down, dirty law-horse again,” she grumbled. She started for the door, and the two girls followed. “Deputy!” she shrieked as they all stepped out through the front door. “I want words with you, boy!”
She did not see Tongs roll his eyes, or hear him call her something dreadful under his breath, but the newcomers did.
“I’ve been patient with ya, even though ya done disrespected me an’ my kin by comin’ on our land when we’s told ya to keep yer distance!” the elderly mare went on. “I always respected the star, but where d’ya get the gall to strike my girls an’ vandalise my home? Y’know what I’s gonna do, Tongs? March right on up to Sheriff Ramrod’s office an’ see what he makes a’ your bad behaviour!”
She continued on like this for several seconds, not merely threatening the young deputy but promising to see him stripped of his rank and his dignity. That short time was all it took for Tongs to reach the end of his tether. He wheeled on her, and said, “WHY – DON’T – YOU JUST – SHUT – YOUR – DANG – PIE-HOLE – YOU – TOOTHLESS – OL’ BAG!?”
The outburst caught Granny Smith off-guard, but she quickly regained herself. “That does it. Ya got one minute, Deputy. One. Minute. To get off a’ Sweet Apple Acres an’ never pollute my home or my orchard ever again.”
“How’s about I do ya one better, ol’ girl?” sneered Tongs, and he neighed with laughter. “I’ll get me a posse together, we’ll burn this sorry eyesore to the ground, then I won’t be able to ever come back, ‘cause there’ll be nowhere to come back to!”
“You wouldn’t dare!” shouted Applejack.
“Try me, darlin’.”
“Excuse me, sai,” said the grey earth pony in a level tone of voice, and all of them turned to look at him, “but you seem to be outnumbered here. I would recommend you either apologise for your disrespect, or leave.”
“An’ who in the heck are you supposed to be, boy?” Tongs snorted.
“Just an observer from out of town,” said the grey earth pony.
“Well, that’s mighty neighbourly advice, stranger,” sneered Tongs, “but I think you’ll find this star on my chest keeps me quite safe from ol’ biddies, little fillies an’ street punks. Now let me return the favour to ya. I would recommend ya get on outta here ’fore ya get hurt.”
“I am quite comfortable where I am,” said the grey earth pony.
There was a long, pregnant pause as Tongs absorbed the stranger’s defiance. He said nothing in return, only smirked wickedly and super-charged his horn with magick, until it was ablaze with swishing tongues of light. The light shot out and became a fireball.
“PEACEMAKER!” the purple unicorn screamed.
An explosion rang out, and smoke clouded the atmosphere. It stung Applejack’s eyes, but she was unable to turn away from the scene, unable to even move. She had known Tongs was a creep since they had first met, she could have guessed he was a bully with too much lip, especially without his boss to muzzle him, but she had always thought him too cowardly for murder. She reached out a hoof to push Apple Bloom back, fearing what she might see when the smoke finally cleared, and touched thin air.
“Apple Bloom?” she croaked. “Granny, where’s Apple Bloom!?”
Granny Smith tried to respond, but was too busy choking on fumes. Jolting herself into action, Applejack told herself it was better to handle what was happening that she could do something about than worry, and hefted one of the elderly mare’s forelegs across her shoulders, supporting her as she made towards fresh air. Jack-a-Nape emerged from the cloud and darted over to them.
“A.J., you two okay?” he asked, panting heavily.
“Just help me get ‘er inside, quick!” said Applejack.
“Yeah, right, no worries,” replied Jack-a-Nape, and took the other foreleg.
Twilight Sparkle and Spike gazed with shared bewilderment and worry. They could barely make out two black shapes in the smoke, one upright and one fallen, but it was not until Twilight willed the cloud apart with a magickal breeze that it became clear who the victor was.
Peacemaker stood, one gun fixed to his hoof. Aside from a slightly charred tail and a furrowed brow, he looked no different to how he did moments before. Tongs, in the meantime, was down on his haunches and minus the greater majority of his mane. The gun-pony’s shot had shaved it away perfectly down the middle, leaving only two uneven rows, one on either side. The deputy’s ears drooped, and his eyes were wide and quivering in their sockets.
“She gave you a minute. You have five seconds left, cully,” said Peacemaker.
Tongs appeared to have forgotten how to talk beyond stammering, “You…you!” over and over. The grey earth-pony, though the victor, had done him no real harm, but you could tell just by looking in the deputy’s eyes that he felt fear all the same. He knew that this stranger could hurt him if he wished, that he could do more with his weapons than he could do with all of his unicorn powers, and the coolness with which the act would be done was unbearable. Before the unfeeling blue eyes of the gun-pony, his star and his class and his strength were meaningless. A kind of madness descended over the deputy in that moment, because he did not flee.
“I’ll get you,” he growled.
“Four,” said the gun-pony.
“You’ll pay for this,” Tongs swore.
“Three,” said the gun-pony.
“You an’ Nape an’…” he hissed.
“Two,” said the gun-pony.
“All a’ ya’ll are gonna pay for this! Oh, yeah!”
A shadow fell over the deputy. A big, mighty shadow. “Nope,” it said. Tongs looked back over his shoulder into the face of Big McIntosh. Apple Bloom, who had fled during the chaos to find the eldest brother of the Apple family, was sitting on his back. She was sticking her tongue out at the beaten law-pony.
“One,” said the gun-pony.
Tongs left.
The gun-pony blew a tail of white smoke from the weapon’s barrel and returned it to its holster. He stared after the rapidly diminishing form of the terrified deputy until it was gone completely, then he turned back towards the rest of the group. Granny Smith was carried inside, but she had been raised tough enough to survive a childhood which was far more demanding than those of her descendants, and now even in her dotage she was still tough, and still excellent at surviving.
Once she caught her second wind and could wet her throat with tea, which she took hot and with a hint of something that some country folk thought of as the perfect cure for a new-born foal’s teething pains, she revealed a side which was more characteristically genial, as Applejack and her siblings had always associated with her. She sat at her chair in the kitchen, surrounded by her cooking utensils, pastries, and baskets of apples, and the group were gathered around her.
“I cry your pardon, sai,” said the gun-pony, and Granny Smith started, turning her face up towards him. “When my bullet passed the deputy’s head, I fear it stuck in one of your precious trees.”
She smiled warmly. “Now, now, don’t be gettin’ all hung up over a little scratch like that,” she said. “Our apple trees are made a’ sterner stuff than ya think, sonny.” She turned to her grandchildren. “Applejack, Big McIntosh, could ya please go check on how all the others are doin’ in the orchard?”
“Yup,” said Big McIntosh, and went without question. Apple Bloom was still on his back. It would be ten minutes before Granny Smith realised her assistant was missing again and would start calling for her.
“Ma’am, is there anything we can do?” asked Jack-a-Nape.
“Well, if ya mean yourself,” said Granny Smith, being careful not to let her sentence lead her to a point where she would have to remember the nice young colt’s name, “ya can make up for all those apples ya think I don’t see my granddaughter sneak for ya. A day’s honest work’ll make a real pony outta ya.”
Jack-a-Nape chuckled good-naturedly, as glad as anypony else that the matriarch would be just fine. He nudged Applejack, who realised she had been staring at the gun-pony and blinked herself back to reality. She had developed a ruddy flush on her cheeks, and nervously feigned ignorance when Jackie pressed her on it later. She asked her grandmother if she would really be all right, and after a reassurance and being ordered to get her caboose rolling, went outside. Jackie stopped only to invite Twilight Sparkle and Spike to come along with them, seeing as they were there to carry out a royal assignment and all, and they all left together.
It was only Granny Smith and Peacemaker now.
The mare sipped her tea and said, “I know you. ’Least I know ’bout where ya come from, gunslinger.”
“How much do you know?” the gun-pony asked, not rudely.
“Enough to think,” said Granny Smith, “that your kind were all gone from the world. Dead gone.”
“Then you see different,” said the gun-pony.
“Tell me, please,” said Granny Smith, “tell me ’bout Gallowad. Does it still stand?”
“Gallowad is only history now,” said the gun-pony sadly, the first genuine sign of emotion he had shown since his arrival. “I have not deceived you, sai. We are not all gone, but I am the last. Now, you tell me, ’tis only fair, how do you know of my home?”
Granny Smith shook her head, and swallowed another sip of tea, then she regarded him for a long time, assessing him. Her smile was sullen. “I figured so, an’ your right, it’s only fair, ’specially since I was startin’ a’ think I’d never meet another pony from there. I may’ve lived an’ grown old here in Equestria, but I was born in Gallowad. My uncle was a gun-pony, like you, but my father, may he rest in peace, he was always a little different to everypony else. He wanted to leave the kingdom an’ find somethin’ different for his family. We settled in Ponyville, and we’ve been here ever since.”
She paused to reflect. The gun-pony waited patiently for her to go on. “My dear, departed husband was also one,” she said finally. “Arkansas Black was his name. Daddy hated him, ’cause he thought I’d go astray. Back to the way a’ life he wanted to forget. I never knew why, but I think he an’ my uncle just never saw eye to eye on things. One valued his duty to his kingdom an’ his dinh, the other his duty to his kin.”
“I am sure they were both good ponies in their own way,” said Peacemaker. He meant it with all his heart.
“That they were, sonny,” said Granny Smith. “My Arkansas, though, he was a good pony, too. When he found out what it’d take to earn my daddy’s trust, he threw his guns, his father’s guns, in the river an’ renounced everythin’ he’d inherit back in Gallowad. I rescued the guns later that night. I cleaned them, an’ I kept them safe all these years, ’cause I never thought he should’ve given up who he was for me.”
“If you would allow it,” said Peacemaker, “I would like to see them one day. The guns, I mean.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, “but not now. I’d like to get back to my work. I’ve rested enough.”
“And I as well,” said Peacemaker. “I have duties I must return to. You are very brave, sai, and very kind to do that for your husband. I hope in time we might hold palaver again and speak of better things than departures. Long days and pleasant nights to you.”
“An’ may you have twice the number, gunslinger,” said Granny Smith. She reached out with a forehoof, adjusted the bandanna around his neck, and let him go.
XXX
Twilight Sparkle was astonished by the sheer amount of earth ponies she saw at work in the orchard. Her mind boggled as she tried to comprehend how the ancient mare they had just left could coordinate such a vast operation as this all by herself. It was made apparent that with the news of Ponyville’s selection to host the Summer Sun Celebration, the Apple family had called on relatives from every corner of the region. They took their blood ties very seriously, and each successive generation had an unspoken promise of fealty to the last, while keeping a sharp eye on the next. They had absolutely no concept of distant relatives. All were close.
It was almost inspiring, but Twilight did wonder if mealtimes were anything like those back at the Academy of the White, where the acolytes and apprentices ate in a gigantic hall filled with rows of long tables, while the teachers occupied a single one at the far end, with Princess Celestia at their centre so everypony could see her more easily during announcements. She could imagine Granny Smith in such a seat, surrounded by the family’s elders, with their children and children’s children arranged in neat, parallel lines, only her vision involved bundles of hay in place of tables, and a few more chickens and other livestock wandering in to steal food off the plates. She quashed a giggle.
Jack-a-Nape, lagging behind, snagged an apple from the top of a passing cousin’s basket, then pulled it in half and gave one of the halves to Spike. The baby dragon munched on it happily whilst Twilight and Applejack talked.
“I’m sure sorry ya’ll had to see us at our most hostile,” the blonde earth pony said. “Normally we here at Sweet Apple Acres are happy to be makin’ new friends.”
“I take it the deputy back there isn’t the friend-making type,” said Twilight Sparkle. Truth be told, neither was she, but Applejack seemed nice, and she was worried for the safety of her family and the orchard that was their home as well as their livelihood. The encounter with the crazed law-pony had only served to confirm her feelings that there was something very wrong in Ponyville. What if his threat to gather a posse and come back to seek vengeance was more than that? He had sounded pretty set on it when he mentioned burning the whole place down.
“Tongs an’ his gang showed up ’round here ‘bout a month or so back,” Applejack explained, “an’ we tried to be real neighbourly to them. It didn’t exactly work out as planned. The little scuzz decided I was his destined or whatever, an’ he stuck to me like a bad rash. Too stupid or downright refused to take no for an answer.”
“How many are there in this gang?” asked Twilight.
“Three,” said Applejack. “He has this buddy, name a’ Hammer, an’ they both work for Sheriff Ramrod. He seems okay, I guess, but I still don’t trust him none. Always tells ya one thing when ya know he means somethin’ else entirely.”
“I understand,” said Twilight. “So, why don’t we talk about something different?”
“Sure,” Applejack agreed. While the girls talked about how Sweet Apple Acres would contribute all the food for the celebration banquet, Spike looked to Jack-a-Nape to answer his own question.
“So how come that guy didn’t like you, Jackie?” Spike asked.
“Just somethin’ that happened when we first met,” the chestnut earth pony shrugged. “I don’t remember all the details, it all went by kinda fast, but I know it started with a welcome party and ended up givin’ him this weird hatred for all things banana-flavoured. He don’t like to talk about it, and I’m in no hurry to find out.”
Applejack asked if Twilight Sparkle might like to sample a few of the things she could expect to see at the banquet. The unicorn said she would, so long as they could make it quick. The next thing any of them knew, the blonde had pulled an old metal spoon and triangle from somewhere and was ringing them together loudly while yelling, “Soup’s on, everypony!”
By the time Twilight Sparkle saw the oncoming stampede, it was too late.
The batwing doors connecting the back room of the Last Roundup to the predominantly empty front section flew apart, and the sheriff of Ponyville marched through. He was a massive, jet black stallion, carved entirely out of solid muscle. He could probably tangle with timberwolves and feel nothing worse than mildly irked. The proud, silver handlebar on his face matched his mane and tail. There were two stars upon him, a tin one pinned to the front of his coat, and a gold one on his flank, bordered by a lasso. A low-crowned hat was perched atop his head, shadowing his eyes.
“Hammer!” the sheriff demanded. “Did I just hear a shot go off?”
“I ’spect ya did, boss,” replied the greasy, brown unicorn seated at the lone table. He moved to investigate the unconscious body of his opponent. There were playing cards strewn everywhere, several of which were slowly turning in at the corners as they burned up. Gold bits were stacked high on one side of the table. Sheriff Ramrod did not have to think long on whose side that must have been. “Accused me a’ cheatin’, so he did,” Hammer explained, then paused his searching to let out a short laugh. “An’ would ya believe it, this little slime was cheatin’ hisself the whole time! That’s gotta be nine kinds a’ lawbreakin’ right there. Wouldn’t ya say so, Sheriff?”
“What I say, Deputy Hammer, is I doubt ya can even count to nine,” the sheriff snorted derisively. “An’ I don’t care if he accused ya a’ cheatin’ with his wife, which I have on pretty good authority ya are, by the way. I don’t want you compromisin’ our arrangement with the good townsfolk by shootin’ off your fool spells like some kinda danged party cannon.” The body’s limbs were pointing away from the torso at funny angles. He nudged it with one hoof, eliciting an unpleasant crunching sound. “This poor dumb sap’s gonna have to be mummified.”
“Sorry, boss,” said Hammer, not meaning it in the least, “guess I let my pride get the better a’ me.”
“See it don’t happen again,” said Ramrod. “Speakin’ of arrangements, you, me an’ Tongs gotta have us a conversation. D’ya know where the little idjit’s run off to?”
The doors burst open once more. It took Ramrod and Hammer a few seconds to recognise the trembling mess that slouched in as Deputy Tongs, or what was left of him, anyway. He had always been careful with his appearance, even if he had no concept of taste, but the youngest of the three looked as if he had lost a fight with a falling building. He was covered in dark, sticky patches and he reeked of smoke. His moustache hung like two limp stalks of hay, and what had once been a painstakingly styled mane was reduced to two thin rows that drooped down his temples, leaving him completely bald down the middle. His cheap pinstripes were unkempt and now seemed even cheaper than before. Dirt cheap, actually.
Once the initial amazement had passed by, Hammer fell straight to the floor on his back, clutched his stomach and let out peals of cruel laughter. Tongs’s few brains must have been scrambled something terrible, because normally he would have pounced on Hammer like a wild cat for mocking him so.
“Shut your yap, Hammer,” growled Ramrod. He was not acting to protect Tongs’s pride or anything like that, you understand, but he was hovering somewhere between surprise, outrage and bewilderment. He wanted answers to remedy this unwanted disposition and found Hammer’s chortling to be both distracting and extremely irritating. The brown unicorn shut his yap, and the sheriff returned his gaze to Tongs. “The heck happened to you, boy?”
Tongs could not answer at first. He started hyperventilating, and then he started stammering, an affliction he had suffered once as a foal that had now returned to him with a vengeance, but eventually he was able to get his story out. Ramrod and Hammer listened grimly as he relayed the way things had escalated at Sweet Apple Acres, how that ungrateful blonde bimbo had snubbed his kind offers and her family of savages had attacked him and broken the law, and then the appearance of the grey earth-pony with the ghostly eyes and flat, emotionless voice. Although the telling was rushed and littered with self-assertions, he did not lie about that. He could not lie about the way he had seen into the gates of oblivion.
“You let a kid with no spell power best ya, Tongs?” Hammer sneered. “An’ here I thought my opinion of ya couldn’t get no lower. Thanks for provin’ me wrong.”
“S-s-shut up, Hammer!” Tongs spat. He looked to Ramrod, who had turned away from him, either in thought or just because he could not bring himself to look upon such a pathetic specimen. That was when he dropped the bombshell. “He c-c-carried g-g-guns, Ramrod. Real b-b-big’uns.”
Ramrod glanced back over his shoulder at the deputy. “Guns?” he asked. Tongs nodded. “Well I’ll be danged,” said Ramrod softly. “Don’t that just beat all?” He paced a little as he plotted, then issued his commands to the pair of lackeys. “A’right, boys, I wanna see this gunslingin’ foal for myself, get the measure a’ him. I’m gonna have me a little palaver with our friends in the Everfree Forest. Hammer, I want ya to keep an eye on things ’til I get back.”
“No problem, boss,” said the brown unicorn.
“What about me, Sh-sh-sheriff?” asked Tongs.
“Go get yourrself cleaned up, ya look ridiculous,” said Ramrod, “an’ until ya get that stutter under control, keep your lips zipped. Understand?”
Tongs was about to answer, then reconsidered and settled for nodding his head again instead.
“I’ll inform the mayor I’m goin’ on patrol,” said Ramrod. “She won’t ask after me, not so long as she thinks we’re the only thing standin’ between her town an’ utter devastation. An’ I meant what I said before, Hammer. Don’t go blastin’ nopony ‘less ya absolutely gotta.”
“Colt Scout’s honour, Sheriff,” Hammer smirked.
“Whatever,” said Ramrod. He glanced at the unconscious bag of bones in the corner, and called out, “Ditzy!”
A light grey pegasus with a dreamy, wall-eyed expression came into the room. Ditzy Doo was employed by the saloon’s owner to carry out odd-jobs, and happened to be the only other inhabitant within the building at that particular time. She was a sweet and gentle creature, but she was slow, as everypony in town well knew. Not somepony whose presence would ever give the sheriff and his deputies cause to stifle themselves. She was carrying a bucket of water by its handle between her teeth, because she had been scrubbing the floor out front. “Sir?” she chirped.
Ramrod produced a gold bit and dropped it into the bucket with a little splash. “Call the hospital for that sucker an’ clean this mess up, addled one, before your boss gets back.”
The pegasus wanted to say, “Yessir, Your Sheriffship, sir,” but she was at least smart enough to know that dropping her bucket would serve only to make the mess even worse than before, so she just saluted with one hoof against her forehead. Ramrod let himself out first. Hammer sniggered at Tongs whilst collecting his winnings from the card game, and after the briefest of stand-offs, which quickly devolved into a childish shoulder-slapping contest with no clear winner and two irritated losers, they followed their leader’s example. Tongs would take to the alleys and head back to his rooms to make himself as presentable as was still possible with his greatly reduced mane, and Hammer would go to his station on the porch of the sheriff’s office.
Ditzy Doo sang a tune to herself as she worked, “Hey, Jude, don’t make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better…”
XXX
Peacemaker thought Twilight Sparkle had definitely eaten far too much pie at the Apple family brunch. Her belly was protruding to the extent that she looked heavily pregnant, dangling down between her four legs as she slumped painfully along on their return to Ponyville. The gun-pony knew the feeling would pass soon enough, although he could not think of any method by which it would happen that his charge would find at all agreeable. She struck him as the essence of Canterlot life, raised to be a proper mare, and liable not to find the rougher parts of her body’s own nature to be anything besides embarrassing. He had himself lived rough for a considerable amount of time, and any pretensions he once had about what was and was not deemed acceptable that his teacher did not beat out of him years ago had been ground out of existence by his own solitary lifestyle.
The gun-pony was thinking about the Apple family. He had found Granny Smith’s story startling. Although he had no doubts that ponies from his dead home had spread to Equestria, and perhaps other nations as well, he had not thought he would actually meet one who remembered it the way she had done. Even more unbelievable to him was what she had said of her father and husband. He had been taught that to wield the guns of a father who was a better pony than you would ever be was the greatest honour, for they represented law and order.
How, then, could a pony turn away from all that, for his family, for the mare he loved?
Peacemaker understood very little of love. His teacher had taught him of many things, but not of matters of the heart. Gun-ponies were the law. They were warriors of the White. They had sworn loyalty to Princess Celestia when she came to their kingdom across the Badlands because, in her own way, she too was of the White. Now the work of his father and grandfather had become his own, at least until the black alicorn’s trail reappeared, then that would take precedence. Love simply did not factor into it, for he was to be never afforded that luxury. He was the last of the gun-ponies, and not blessed with companions – ‘ka-tet,’ was the term in the High Speech of Gallowad – who could help to shoulder his emotions and keep him strong. Once he had found the black alicorn and put a bullet through her evil heart, then maybe, maybe he would be allowed to love another.
He reckoned his teacher would have been furious had he known the gun-pony was thinking of the blonde mare he had first seen through the farmhouse window. He had found her pleasing to look upon. She was not soft and doughy like Twilight Sparkle. She was strong without losing all hints of femininity, which seemed to make what was left radiate all the more. They had talked briefly while her family stuffed themselves silly. Like him, she had not known her parents long. Her mother and father had reached the clearing at the end of the path (she had told him it was a lovely way to put it) and left her and her siblings in the care of Granny Smith, but the children’s upbringing had been communal, thanks to the ever-readiness of the Apple family as a whole to support one another in times of crisis.
“Tongs won’t stand for this, y’know,” she had said to him. “He probably will make good on his threat.”
“It is likely,” he had replied solemnly. “He is a coward, so he will come with a posse. His gang, maybe. But he will not succeed.”
“It’s not exactly his gang,” Applejack had said. “He’s just a stooge for Sheriff Ramrod, but he could put a posse together.”
“Do you fear him?” he had asked.
“No, ’course not,” she had replied immediately, “but I do fear he’ll go after Granny Smith or Apple Bloom first. He knows if they were ever in danger, I’d do anythin’ to save them.”
“Including becoming his filly?”
Applejack had only nodded.
“I will not allow that to happen,” he had said. “You may set your watch and warrant on that, sai Applejack.”
“You’re sweet, Peacemaker,” she said, “but don’t go gettin’ yerself hurt on my account.”
“They will not hurt me,” he had said, shrugging off the suggestion. “If they tried, I would see them all dead twice over.”
Applejack had looked at him then, eyes huge. “Ya don’t mean ya’d really, well, kill them?”
Peacemaker had raised one of his guns then, the barrel pointing skywards. “I have been trained all my life to maintain the peace, sai Applejack. I will do what is necessary.”
She had asked him then how he could be so calm when he said that. Next, he was telling her about the years he had spent in the care of his teacher, after his father had reached his own clearing, and about the wisdom the old stallion had bestowed to him.
He found himself unable to stop himself before the tale had poured forth. He did not tell her what he had seen when he was only small, nor did he say anything which was not broad and un-specific, but he did tell her of his lessons. How to track, how to trap, how to forage, how to hunt, how to camp, how to shoot, how to riddle (this one was very important, second only to shooting) and how in the end to survive as a solitary creature with no room in his heart for another. In short, how to be a true gun-pony.
He remembered each one with perfect clarity, and quoted them word-for-word. His recitations were so accurate that inside his head, it was his teacher who was speaking, with him serving only as the mouthpiece.
“I think ya don’t need to be like your teacher,” said Applejack, and she put her hoof over his. “I’m sure he was only doin’ his best by ya, but please, Peacemaker, ya ain’t gotta be cold like that.” She had asked him not to kill, if only for her sake. He had said nothing. He would kill the black alicorn, or he would die. It was inevitable. He had quietly excused himself from the conversation. He wondered if perhaps that was why he could not stop thinking of her. His inability to respond to her disturbed him in some deep way his mind could not fully process.
“Yo, P.M.”
Peacemaker blinked. Jack-a-Nape, their diligent guide, had come to a halt right in front of him. Twilight Sparkle had found a medicinal stall a little way up the road and was gulping down a glass of something he guessed was meant to settle her ailing stomach, while Spike patted her back comfortingly.
“You feelin’ okay, pal? You, like, spaced out there.”
“I am fine, Jack-a-Nape,” the gun-pony responded. “Just…thinking.”
“Thinkin’ ’bout A.J.?” Jackie smirked. “I don’t mean to pry…actually, that’s a lie, I totally do, but it don’t take much pryin’ to see you two were gettin’ all kinds of chummy earlier.”
The gun-pony glowered at him. “We spoke of nothing that concerns you,” he said. “Are we close to our next destination?”
Jackie grinned at him. “Sure,” he said. “Spikers said it was decorations, right? They should be workin’ things out down at town hall. I know a shortcut. How’re you holdin’ up, T.S.?”
“I don’t know what’s in this stuff,” said Twilight, gazing at the tiny pool of liquid at the bottom of her glass, “but I feel much better already. Thank you.” The vendor at the medicinal stall told her she was welcome. “Is it some sort of magick potion?” she asked. The vendor told her there was no magick involved, just good old-fashioned herbal chemistry. Twilight glanced down at her stomach, which was significantly closer to its original size now. She was perplexed, and then there was a loud rumble, like the roar of a lion, from deep inside her. Twilight’s face twisted, cheeks turning green and puffing out, pupils dilating almost comically to dark pinpricks.
The vendor, not batting an eyelid at this dramatic reaction, pointed with one hoof towards a small wooden structure with a slanted roof and four doors in the front. Twilight disappeared inside it. Peacemaker peripherally noticed that someone had scrawled out whatever used to be on the sign above and carved the words ‘UPCHUCKLE MOTEL' in their place.
“I think we may need to wait awhile,” said Jackie, visibly wincing. He remembered the first time he had been treated to an Apple family brunch, and this was very much like looking at a mirror, the surface of which reflected his own past.
“I hope she’ll be okay,” said Spike.
“We reap what we sow, little one,” said the gun-pony. He retrieved a deck of playing cards from under his hide vest. “If we are to wait, have either of you ever played watch-me before?”
“I think I’m dying!” Twilight Sparkle wailed.
They played a round, and then Spike looked skywards. “I just realised something. There’s supposed to be a bunch of pegasus ponies clearing the sky for the celebration, but I still see loads of cloud up there.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Jackie. “Rainbow Dash is supposed to be handlin’ that with her team.”
“Are they not very good?” asked Peacemaker.
“Are you kiddin’? R.D.’s the best in the region,” said Jackie, “but I guess she must be snoozin’ or somethin’. She likes to leave it closer to—”
“Be silent,” said Peacemaker, and perked his ears up. He could hear something on the wind. A kind of whistling, and it was getting louder, to the point where his companions could both hear it a little. Peacemaker had heard tell of such a thing. In fact, he had been witness to it. There was no time to think on how nopony had been able to tell it was coming this way, and he noted it had been getting very warm in the past few days, although he had been hubristic enough to let the blame fall squarely upon the season they were in. His eyes were huge with electric panic.
“Starkblast inbound!” he shouted, and shoved Jack-a-Nape and Spike both to the ground. He turned towards the Upchuckle Motel. “Twilight, stay down!” The roof of the tiny building exploded in a shower of splinters. Twilight Sparkle screamed and fell to the exposed floor, covering her head with her fore-hooves. Peacemaker felt the impact before he truly saw it. It struck him with all the fury of a speeding train and carried him off his hooves. He tumbled, head over tail and tail over head again, over and around until sky and land blurred into one formless mass, and then he came to land in a tangle of limbs, into the dirt.
It had been no starkblast, he realised, but it hurt all the same. His nerves were all at once on fire, throbbing from end to end. He had skidded along at least thirty feet after returning to the ground, with enough force behind him to gouge out a trench in the earth. Displaced dirt and grass were piled up to either side of him. One of his guns was fixed to his forehoof while the other had become dislodged. His vision was bleary, but he could see the rest racing towards him. The ringing and the pulse of blood in his ears drowned out their calls.
“…ry, du…”
Peacemaker felt himself being helped to his hooves, but he was too unsteady to stand and fell on his haunches. Things were slowly starting to make sense again.
“…wa…nt…cite…”
The ringing faded, as did the thud as his brain put things back together. He was able to process the little snips of language and associate them more coherently. “Sorry, dude,” was what was said, and then, louder, “Wasn’t that exciting?”
There were nine more ponies joining the group, then his vision solidified and he could see it was only three. Three pegasi, to be specific. The one who had smashed into him was easily identifiable by the lumps of dirt, clay and grass gummed to her face and body. She had a cyan coat, with red eyes and an outrageous spectrum of colours in her mane and tail.
“We were so close!” she was rambling to anyone who deigned to listen. “We almost pulled off the Double Inside Out Loop to the Power of Three, dudes! That! Was! So! Awesome!”
“Dude, check that out,” said one of the other pegasi, pointing to the thirty foot scar in the ground.
“Yeah! I must’ve been wicked fast to do that much damage!” the cyan pony agreed.
“Here, Peacemaker,” said Twilight Sparkle, passing him his lost gun. He thanked her with a grunt and slid the weapons into their holsters. The unicorn turned to the chattering pegasus. “I take it that you’re Rainbow Dash?”
“The one and only,” the cyan pony replied, then gestured with her wings towards her two friends. “These are my crew. The big guy’s Thunderlane, and that one’s Cloudchaser.”
The other two pegasi greeted her happily.
“Yeah, sure, that’s nice,” said Twilight Sparkle brusquely. “You could have killed my bodyguard just now!”
“What’s your problem?” Rainbow Dash snorted. “I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”
“Sorry? Sorry!?” Twilight Sparkle snapped. “I don’t know what that pony’s made out of, but thank goodness he is because otherwise your stunt would’ve turned him into a stain!”
“I am well, sai Twilight,” Peacemaker croaked, and felt balanced enough to regain his hooves. “That was some impressive speed, sai Rainbow.”
“Thanks, dude,” said Rainbow Dash, beaming.
“But you lack coordination,” said Peacemaker.
“The three of us have got cooperation down just fine,” said Rainbow Dash matter-of-factly.
“He said coordination, not cooperation,” Twilight Sparkle tried to chime in, but the others were competing now, and so she was ignored. The ponies of Gallowad used to have a term for such a happening. They were standing commala. Like many words of their tongue it had several definitions, but in this instance it meant to stand chest to chest.
“We run circles around all the other pegasi,” Thunderlane agreed. “We’ve won the Cloudsdale 500 two years in a row.”
“Ah. Then it was your intent to drive both of us into the ground like a couple of nails,” said Peacemaker. Rainbow Dash grimaced, and the gun-pony’s mouth twitched up at the corners. “I will never fly as you do, but how to line up my target, that I know well.”
“What’re you getting at exactly, stranger?” the cyan pegasus asked.
Peacemaker looked around, until he saw a boulder. “Jack-a-Nape, would you please place six pebbles atop yon stone?”
Jack-a-Nape gave him an odd look, but did as he was asked.
The group, save for Rainbow Dash, moved apart as Peacemaker walked several steps, further increasing the distance between himself and the boulder and keeping his back to it. “Where I come from,” he said, “we are taught to aim not with our eyes, but with our mind.”
“How do you aim if you don’t use your eyes?” asked Cloudchaser.
“I know where my target is, and I know the weight of my weapon and where my hoof is when I lift it,” said Peacemaker. “The mind calculates all of these factors instinctively, so I can get on with the task without worry. I admit, it takes a lot of practise, but results do not lie.”
“Blah-blah-blah! So what?” Rainbow Dash scoffed. “Your way might be coagulated or whatever, but it’ll be slow. Speed’s what really matters. If you’re fast enough, you can make up for the mistakes before anypony even knows you made them. They’ll say it’s all part of the show, and I’m nothing if not a born show-pony.”
“Oh, you think so?” Peacemaker asked, and cocked an eyebrow at her.
Spike whispered something in Twilight Sparkle’s ear and pointed up towards the clouds. The unicorn smiled like a cat catching a canary, and approached the two ponies. “Excuse me, you two. Might I suggest a way to conclude this argument of speed over aim?”
Peacemaker and Rainbow Dash looked at each other, then at her. “What’ve you got in mind?” they asked as one.
“Rather than taking turns showing off, let’s make it a real competition,” said Twilight Sparkle. “I propose that Peacemaker will draw his gun and shoot those pebbles he had Jack-a-Nape set up earlier to prove how good his aim is, and Rainbow Dash can clear the sky of clouds. Whoever finishes first wins. Is that fair?”
“Make it twelve,” said Peacemaker. “Each of my guns holds six shots.”
“Better make it ten, then,” said Rainbow Dash, and smirked, “that’ll give you two extra ones if you screw up.”
Peacemaker frowned. “Twelve,” he insisted. Jack-a-Nape obliged him once again.
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Whatever, pal, it’s your loss,” she said. She spread her wings and lowered her body, preparing for take-off. Peacemaker, still with his back to the boulder, tensed his muscles.
Twilight Sparkle counted them down. “Ready…get set…and go!”
Rainbow Dash vanished with a burst of raw power, leaving a many-coloured contrail in her wake as she zoomed into the sky. Thunderlane and Cloudchaser both cheered loudly. Peacemaker was momentarily taken aback, but when he heard Jack-a-Nape and Spike calling his name, he recalled where he was and twisted about-face, almost launching the fearsome blue cylinders from their holsters and taking hold of the sandalwood grips.
Peacemaker allowed himself a split-second to target, then squeezed both triggers. He saw the first two pebbles go hurtling, cocked, and fired again. Four. Six. High above his head, Rainbow Dash was demolishing clouds with swift strikes, sometimes kicking and sometimes passing headlong through them, turning them into donut shapes before they dissipated utterly. Eight. The patches of white faded as Rainbow pushed harder still, becoming a furious whirlwind of many beautiful colours which churned the atmosphere like water in a bowl, sucking in the white puffs and spewing their smithereens across the heavens.
By all the divines, thought Peacemaker, how can she still be going faster? That kind of speed alone should break her bones and pulp her guts!
Ten. The end in sight. He could still win this. He pulled. Click! Peacemaker stopped and stared at the gun in his right hoof. He pulled twice more. Click! Click! He remembered now, and his jaw fell open at his own carelessness. He had not reloaded since he had stood against the worm Tongs at Sweet Apple Acres. He glanced up. The clean, clear blue of the sky was taking over now. No time to think. No time to worry or to second guess himself. He swore and threw his empty gun aside, moving his now free hoof to support his other. The last two pebbles were at opposite sides of the boulder. The only option left was a trick shot. Blessed father and teacher, let my bullet fly true!
At the exact moment that Rainbow Dash expelled the last cloud over Ponyville, the eleventh stone shattered into a dozen fragments. Peacemaker lowered his remaining weapon, and the whirlwind calmed as Rainbow Dash descended.
“That’s it,” she said, panting for breath and trembling a little. She was sweating profusely. “So, who won? Did you hit them all?”
Peacemaker stared straight ahead. His throat tightened. One lone pebble sat on the boulder. He hung his head in defeat. “I cry your pardon, sai,” he said, “for I have–”
“Guys, look!”
They all did. Spike had toddled up to the boulder and was now pointing at the lone pebble. “Check this out!” he said, and ever so lightly, he tapped it with a claw-tip. The pebble fell in half down its centre. “Looks like we got ourselves a tie!”
The onlookers gasped. Peacemaker gaped.
“A TIE!?” Rainbow Dash cried. “YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!”
“I’m not kidding! Look!” Spike answered, holding the two pieces in the air as evidence. “It’s still hot!”
“Darn it,” Rainbow Dash grumbled. She looked at Peacemaker, sighed, and offered him her forehoof. “Good game, dude. We should do this again.”
“And the same to you,” replied the gun-pony, and accepted the shake. “You may not have been what I thought, but you are as mighty as a starkblast, sai Rainbow.”
“Starkblast?” asked Rainbow Dash. “The heck is that?”
“It is a type of storm which is beyond compare,” said Peacemaker. “All who cross it fall by the wayside.”
Rainbow Dash grinned. It was not mean, or snarky, or smug, but it was satisfied. “Starkblast,” she said thoughtfully. “Yeah, if that’s what it takes.” She looked over her shoulder at Thunderlane and Cloudchaser, then back at the other group. “Well, the clouds are clear, so we’re gonna get back to practising. Maybe I’ll just keep that there copacabana stuff in mind.”
“Coordination!” yelled Twilight Sparkle.
Rainbow Dash laughed, “I knew that the whole time, horn-head. I’m just messing with you.”
Thunderlane, Cloudchaser, Jack-a-Nape, Spike, and even the gun-pony shared her laughter. Twilight Sparkle groaned exasperatedly. “Horn-head, huh?” she grumbled, and used her magick to shove the lot of them into the trench.
It was at Ponyville’s town hall that the gun-pony met his most terrible adversaries thus far.
The hall was three storeys tall, with protruding balconies surrounding the upper two, and a spire-like tip mounted on the elegantly curved, red tile roof. It was constructed from clay brick, not wood like the majority of the structures in the town, and painted white, with large windows and exposed Tudor studding all around. A sign redirected all enquiries to a side door, as the ground floor was being renovated in anticipation of the upcoming festival, and when Twilight Sparkle, Spike, Jack-a-Nape and Peacemaker approached, they could hear plenty of activity from within.
“Welp, this is it,” said Jackie. “Ponyville’s nerve centre, I guess you could call it. The decorators should be right inside. Just, y’know, hold onto your rumps.”
None of them were sure what he meant by that statement at first, but they found out when they got inside. The vital decoration was already well underway, with various colourful banners hanging from the inner balconies, and a huge statue covered by a tarpaulin smack dab in the middle of the floor. Worktables had been set up, and two mares were zipping between them at remarkable speed. Were it not for the fact one was a unicorn and the other a pegasus, you could almost say they were sisters, for they were very similar. They both wore their luxuriously long manes and tails in sophisticated styles which would have taken hours to perfect, like those models you saw on the covers of big city magazines. Peacemaker wondered why anypony would spend so much time on their appearance, but then he had never possessed an eye for fashion.
The unicorn was pristinely white from horn to hoof, with silver dappling, a mane of deep purple and three big diamonds on her flank. The pegasus was a kind of emerald shade, with a burgundy mane tipped delicately with white, and the gems of her mark were hexagonal and arranged in a V formation. Even their horn and wings glimmered respectively like crystals.
“That’s Rarity,” said Jack-a-Nape, indicating the unicorn. “She runs Carousal Boutique. Kind of our local fashion queen, you could say. Drama queen, too, but you didn’t hear that from me, dig?”
Spike was miles away, all in a world of his own. He was following the white unicorn with a misty-eyed expression on his face. Jack-a-Nape waved a hoof in front of the baby dragon’s face and got no reaction whatsoever.
“Yowza,” said Jackie. “T.S.? I don’t wanna worry you or nothin’, but I think your dragon’s broke.”
Twilight Sparkle sighed and put her hoof to her temple. She could already feel a headache coming on. “He’ll be fine,” she said. “Who’s that other pony?”
“Bow Sansy. Jeweller. Same address, actually,” said Jack-a-Nape. “Showed up in Ponyville just after I did. Rarity took her under her wing.” He chuckled at the irony. “They’ve been like daisies an’ daffodils ever since.”
“Excuse me, ladies,” Twilight Sparkle called out to them.
“One moment please,” the unicorn Rarity replied, as she inspected a length of fabric coiled snake-like around a brass pillar, “we are rather in the zone right at this moment. Now, I do believe there’s something missing here. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Sparkles, Rarity,” said Bow Sansy. “It needs more sparkles.”
“With you it’s always the sparkles, Bow Sansy,” said Rarity, “but you’re quite right. They are perfect for this piece.” Her horn glowed with teal energy, and the length of fabric was suddenly twinkling with hundreds of little motes of light.
“A triumph,” said Rarity and Bow Sansy together.
“Now, dear, what was it you wanted to…?” Rarity began, and then she and Bow Sansy froze with looks of abject horror on their faces. They stopped their work immediately and trotted across the room, except it was not towards Twilight despite her deliberate attempt to gain their attention, but to Peacemaker instead.
“Oh! You poor thing!” exclaimed Rarity. “How ever did you get yourself in such a dreadful state? You’re filthy! And tracking dirt!”
“Well, I—” the gun-pony began.
“Now, now, don’t argue with us, honeychild,” said Bow Sansy, matching Rarity’s frantic pace with her own. She tugged on the lip of his hide vest. “My stars, you’re a disaster! Rarity, we shall have to fix this immediately!”
“Oh! Without a doubt, Bow!” Rarity agreed. Peacemaker was dragged away behind a large folding screen before he could raise any further argument, though this is not to say he did not attempt to do so all the same.
“Excuse me?” Twilight Sparkle chimed in.
“One moment please, this is a very delicate operation!” said Rarity.
“It’s no good, Rarity,” said Bow Sansy. “We shall just have to take him back to the boutique for a full makeover.”
“I couldn’t agree more, my dear.”
“Don’t I get a say in this!?” Peacemaker griped loudly. Evidently, the answer was no.
Their transposition from the town hall to the boutique was almost instantaneous, and nopony knew for certain it was actually happening until it was over. Least of all did Peacemaker, who was whisked away so fast that his hooves never touched the ground. No beast or desert demon could ever have been so quick and efficient at absconding with its prey as these fillies.
Ponyville’s Commercial Road was one of the main streets. It crossed the square on two sides and was lined with myriad shops, kiosks and stalls, which also ringed the square, so that trade flowed along it like liquid in a classroom chemistry set. It went in through one tube and pooled in a beaker before going out through another tube. The steady stream of ponies travelling it in both directions only furthered this comparison. Carousel Boutique was situated at the heart of all this, between the furniture emporium and the coffee house, and directly opposite Harneleys, the big toy shop. It was a big, eye-catching building shaped to resemble the ride for which it had been named.
Twilight Sparkle, Spike and Peacemaker were all taken inside, while Jack-a-Nape was able to slip beneath the radar. He had absolutely no intention of letting Rarity or Bow Sansy get their hooves on him, not unless there was something to be gotten in return, for he was a practical sort of pony. Twilight had to admit that Rarity and her protégé-slash-partner were well chosen for their duty. The interior of the shop clearly evidenced style and taste in equally generous portions. The floor was divided directly down the middle by a black line which glittered with pink, red and gold flecks, and she saw folding screens and mannequins draped with outfits at various stages of completion to her right, while on the left the most significant difference was that the displays held jewellery instead of clothes. Scraps, shards and tools were scattered across the two counters in a manner she could only describe as controlled chaos.
The gun-pony was forced behind one of the aforementioned screens, where Rarity proceeded to undress him with uncanny speed. His vest went flying over the top of the screen, followed by his bandanna, and then his gun-belt, which toppled to the floor with a loud noise due to the weight of the guns. Bow Sansy, in the meantime, walked back over to Twilight Sparkle and guided her to stand by a mirror beside her counter.
“Sorry about that,” the pegasus said in a silky voice, “but you must understand, it was an emergency.” She grinned. “Doctor Rarity has the patient well in hoof now, though. So, you wanted to talk to one of us?”
“That’s right,” said Twilight after she found her ability to speak again, “I wanted to check in on how the decorations for the Summer Sun Celebration were proceeding. You two were given that job, right?”
“Among other things, honey,” said Bow Sansy, and she draped a sapphire necklace around Twilight’s neck, then decided it was too gaudy and took it back. “Ugh! I could’ve sworn I had a ruby pendant here somewhere.”
Twilight Sparkle glanced sidelong at Spike, who grinned sheepishly and wiped some bright red flakes away from the area around his mouth.
“Let me go!” Peacemaker growled.
“Oh, do stop putting up such a fuss, you silly boy,” Rarity was heard to reply. “No, no, definitely no, none of these will do at all. Let me try something else.”
“Are they going to be all right?” Twilight asked. She raised a hoof to stop Bow from attaching a diamond-encrusted ring to her horn. “Thank you, but none of us can really afford this.”
The pegasus snorted. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that. Rarity and I can’t really help ourselves at times like these. We get this overwhelming compulsion to give aid to anypony in need of it.”
“Oh. I see—”
“Glamour should be a right, not a privilege, after all. At least, that’s what Rarity’s always told me. So consider this an act of goodwill, courtesy of Carousel Boutique.”
Twilight was about to ask her if she always took Rarity’s words so literally, and Spike was about to ask her what Rarity was really like, but then Peacemaker loosed an inarticulate bellow, derailing both of their respective trains of thought. Piles of thrown away clothes were building up around the perimeter of the folding screen, and all the while they could hear Rarity’s rapid-fire commentary.
“Yes, you’re quite right. That’s too green…too yellow…too poofy…not poofy enough…oh, goodness no, whoever heard of cordovan with sinopia? Dreadful! Let me see…too frilly, too…shiny!”
“Give me back my belt, blast you!” the gun-pony growled.
“There’s no call for that sort of language…oh! Yes! Ah-ha! I think I’ve found the perfect ensemble! You look much smarter than you did before, and nowhere near as dirty. I dare say if there’s a special somepony out there, she’s going to find you positively rugged!”
A silent pause, and then, in his familiar monotone, “Do you say so?”
Twilight Sparkle felt the corner of one eye twitch.
“Ooh!” Bow Sansy started towards the screen. “Well, don’t hog him all to yourself, Rarity, let us see!” Rarity emerged from behind it with a flourish, and after a moment of hesitation, Peacemaker followed after. She had replaced his old vest with a new, chocolate-coloured one with silver buttons, over a black shirt and a silver-clasped bolo tie. His mane and tail were combed, and the outfit was finished off by a brown hat with a tan band. He was having trouble meeting anypony’s gaze with his own, and he was so different from the hardened colt that Twilight Sparkle had become used to, that she actually felt a bit sorry for him. She magickally willed his gun-belt to him, and it reattached itself about his middle.
“Splendid work, Rarity,” said Bow Sansy, “one of your best, I’m sure, but I still think it’s not quite ready to be unveiled.”
“I don’t think sparkles will quite compliment, uh…” Rarity stopped, and turned to Peacemaker, “where did you say you came from, dearie?”
“I did not,” said Peacemaker, “but I was born in Gallowad.”
“Le chic de Gallowad,” said Rarity. “Too rustic for sparkles.”
“No, no! I wasn’t thinking that!” the pegasus laughed, and ran behind her counter. She returned with a small, turquoise stone cut in a way that looked almost like a flowering rose. Rarity levitated it from her with a gentle swish of her head, and the stone was set into the bolo tie’s clasp.
“Flawless,” the two fillies agreed. Peacemaker scraped one forehoof against the floor uncertainly. So, Twilight thought, he was not quite as invincible as she had been starting to believe. Of course, the gun-ponies her brother had talked about had surely been full grown, used to years in the field. Her bodyguard, in spite of his skill, courage, and the faith Princess Celestia had placed in him, was still learning.
“If you’re quite finished with my bodyguard,” the unicorn said, trying to steer the conversation in another direction, “I wanted to talk about the decorations.”
“Yes, I was about to ask you about that,” Bow Sansy cut in. “If you’re the one in charge, you would have been sent by Princess Celestia, right? So, are you from Canterlot?”
Twilight Sparkle nodded. She was frowning a bit, seeing there really was no way to salvage her authority as the officially appointed overseer.
“Canterlot!” Rarity squealed. “The glamour! The sophistication! I’ve always dreamed of living there!” She fainted, and Bow darted over to her, holding a pot of smelling salts.
“Sorry again, honey,” she said to Twilight as she applied the salts. “You can keep the clothes and the jewels, but I think you’d best be on your way.”
“Right, before she tries to dye my coat a different colour,” Peacemaker growled. The two ponies walked towards the door, then had to go back for Spike, who mumbled something that might have been a remark about how Rarity even fell like an angel. They decided it was better to just ignore anything else he said until the euphoria was all out of his system.
“See you around,” the pegasus called, waving after them as they left. “Don’t be strangers!”
“It’s undeniable,” mumbled Twilight Sparkle, “the ponies here are all crazy.”
“You say true, sai Twilight,” the gun-pony agreed.
XXX
The Everfree Forest was vast, dark, and unknowable. It was fraught with danger, and the canopy was so thick that the radiance of Celestia’s sun had never been able to enter it, even now in the midst of summer. Only one path led through the foothills from Ponyville to the forest’s entrance, marked by a curving trail of randomly thinned grass and a steadily shrinking number of houses. Within the last few wheels, only the border-dwellers who found comfort in isolation from ponykind could be depended upon to make their homes there. Sheriff Ramrod stood atop one of the last of the foothills, looking at the trees contemplatively. Here, the Everfree looked peaceful and quiet, but he knew it was only a ruse. The true peril awaited just a little way inside. The entrance was like the mouth of a cave, which would close upon foolish explorers, revealing its true nature as the mouth of a gargantuan demon, like in the old story his mother once told him.
He concluded that the band of outlaws who made the forest their home were nothing short of insane, for even bravery had its limits. His contact was their leader, Gone Far South, who would usually know when he wanted to be seen – Ramrod always assumed he had acquired the services of a unicorn with the power of magickal sight – and meet him before the entrance to the forest. That suited the sheriff fine. He knew that many ponies had gone inside, few had returned, and none with the same soul they went in with. He had heard horror stories of ponies who returned wanting for their limbs, ponies turned a ghastly shade of alabaster, pegasi too afraid to ever fly again, unicorns whose spells could only bring disaster regardless of their intentions, and ponies driven to sleeplessness, paranoia and finally madness. Those, to their even greater misfortune, were considered the lucky ones.
Far South was absent, and in his place was a scrawny, piebald unicorn mare. She wore a frayed and faded cloak that obscured her mark from view, and the base of her curved horn bore a gold ring with two attached chains that dangled over the backs of her ears. There was a blood red eye engraved into the ring.
“Hile to thee, O Sheriff,” the unicorn said.
“Hile yourself,” Ramrod replied. “Where is Far South?”
“Where else? He’s gone far south,” the unicorn tittered.
“Save me your stupid jokes, witch, an’ answer me,” Ramrod snapped.
The unicorn sighed. “Thou art so serious,” she said. “He has been called to attend to business elsewhere, but his band remains at their camp and under my command. I am Bindle Punk, his consulting sorceress.”
This had to be the seer he had been thinking of, but that did not mean he trusted her. “How am I to know that you speak the truth?” he asked her. “How can you prove Far South put you in charge and you haven’t simply done away with him and taken his place?”
“I think he would take offence to thine ugly assumption, O Sheriff,” said Bindle Punk, “for we both know that his willpower is strong enough to resist even the greatest magicks, do we not?” She indicated the eye on her horn ring. “Plus I wear his sigul, therefore I am loyal to his cause, and whether I am his proxy or simply his messenger, thy words are certain to reach him.”
Ramrod would have argued, but to do so would only waste both their time. He had taken an instant disliking to her, but he knew she spoke truly.
“Very well,” he said, and told her what Tongs had reported to him in the back room at the Last Roundup. “Is it true?” he asked afterwards. “Is there a gunslinger alive in Ponyville?”
The unicorn’s eyelids fluttered once, and she grinned at him. “Be thou afraid?” she asked.
“I fear no pony, witch! Be they alive or dead!” Ramrod spat. “Never forget that!”
“I shall not,” said Bindle Punk, bowing her head, “and thou art correct by ‘dead,’ for the dead are all who rightly remain of that order. More’s the pity that ‘rightly’ and ‘true’ be not the same. A gun-pony does survive in the hamlet of which thou art sworn-in protector. Far South received visions of this, and he was deeply disturbed thereby. Such a one as this may interfere with his eventual march upon Canterlot.”
Her horn glowed, and a circle of light appeared in the air between them. Ramrod peered into it, and when the image within grew clear, he took a step back in amazement.
“Tongs was right,” he fumed, “he is just a foal! Why, those shootin’ irons are bigger than he is!”
“Clearly he has an interesting story to tell,” said Bindle Punk. “Look closer, O Sheriff. See very well the yellow grips, the branded muzzles, and know the enemy you must destroy.”
“I know him,” said Ramrod lowly, and indeed he did.
“Have thee thine own guns still?” asked Bindle Punk. “The plated ones which mark the shameful manner by which you survived the destruction of that civilisation?”
Ramrod grunted. He did.
“Then let them be not thine shame, but salvation, Ramrod,” said the unicorn. “Take up arms once again, destroy this fledgling gun-pony, and earn from his end the right to carry the steel of the true gun-pony.”
“Don’t give me orders.”
“I give no order. Please, forgive me for leading thee to think it. I merely believe this to be thine intent, and encourage it. Although thou never passed the test by which a gun-pony is forged, the death of this one shall leave only thee alone to decide thyself worthy of the title, or the title worthy of thyself.”
Ramrod found the idea attractive, but there remained one factor which made her claims hard to accept. “He is too young to have been one a’ them durin’ the fall,” he pointed out, “so there must surely be one more besides. A teacher.”
“Thou art correct yet again,” said the unicorn. “But I see no master to this squire. If a teacher there was, I say was be all they are. We can safely assume they have long since reached their clearing. This foal is the last.”
Ramrod’s own grin reached above his handlebar. “Tell Far South he shouldn’t worry,” he said, “when I’m through with him, there won’t be no gun-ponies left.”
“This news shall bring him joy which cannot be spoken of in words,” said Bindle Punk, and dismissed the image. “Wouldst thou speak with me of other business in relation, O Sheriff?”
“That I would, witch,” replied the sheriff. “That I would.”
“So that’s the food, weather and decorations all seen to. That leaves the music,” said Spike. He tucked his pencil and the scroll away inside a skin-pouch, then turned around so he was facing forwards on Twilight’s back. “That’s being handled by a pegasus pony named Fluttershy.”
Jack-a-Nape, who had re-joined them after their escape from Carousel Boutique and had spent the last five minutes poking fun at Peacemaker’s new, clean-cut appearance, calling him, ‘the Lone Ranger of Dodge Junction,’ suddenly perked up. “Not a problem,” he said. “I know a shortcut.”
Twilight Sparkle looked at him. “Do you know shortcuts to everywhere in town?” she asked him.
Jackie shrugged. “When you get chased ’round as much as I do,” he explained, “it really helps a bunch. Not only in town, either.”
Peacemaker did not question why Jackie would get chased around so much. He had seen evidence that the chestnut stallion was an able thief for himself. He was able to pick up the blur of his hooves as they lifted the writing utensils earlier. Most could not have done, but if he could, it was likely others could also. He wondered if Jackie had in fact been caught by such others, perhaps by the wrong pony while he was living in Manehattan, and was now in hiding here in Ponyville. Out there in the world, he could envision somepony wanting Jack-a-Nape badly, and therefore could believe that Jack-a-Nape prioritised learning all the narrow squeaks and hidden routes that his locale could provide for him. He would do well to keep a sharp eye open in his company.
Their destination was a cottage in the hills approximately six or seven wheels south of the town. A little way beyond that, they could see the treetops of an immense forest which Jackie informed them was called the Everfree.
“That there’s one place nopony’s got any business going, ’less they got a death wish,” he said. A brook gurgled down from it, and passed by the front of the cottage, so that visitors had to cross with the aid of an arched stone bridge. The trees closest to it were bedecked with colourful, hoof-crafted birdhouses, more of which could be seen mounted on a wooden signpost and sprouting from the moss-covered roof. These latter structures were surrounded by various little perches, holes and runways. The red front door consisted of what Peacemaker knew as ‘stable-make,’ that being two separate panels, one over the other, that could be latched together from the inside.
“What kind of pony lives so far from town all alone?” asked Spike.
“Well, she ain’t what you’d call social,” said Jackie with a shrug. “I heard she showed up maybe a year before I did, and got herself this cosy little set-up. Close enough to civilisation to get what she needs, but far enough way so’s she ain’t gotta deal with ponies all day long. Likes her privacy, I guess. Never one for the nightlife.”
“Ponyville has nightlife?” Twilight asked incredulously.
“Sure it does,” said Jackie. “Y’know, every now an’ then. If the stars are right.”
Twilight Sparkle rolled her eyes and knocked on the front door. “Hello?” she called after a moment’s silence. “Miss Fluttershy? My name’s Twilight Sparkle, I’m the celebration overseer. I just wanted to ask for a moment of your time.”
No answer. Twilight knocked again. Still nothing.
“Guess she’s not home,” said Spike.
“Wait,” said Twilight Sparkle. She closed her eyes and perked her ears up. The others followed suit. There was a sound coming from behind the cottage. A high, melodic warbling of birdsong. They had all assumed that the music would be reliant on the playing of instruments, as it had been for years, but what if this year they had seen fit to give the job to the cottage’s owner because she could provide something more unique?
Twilight smiled gently in appreciation and followed the sound to the back garden. It was fenced off by white posts, with an old tree at the back. The branches spread out beyond the boundary, and perched on the branches were small woodsy birds of all shapes and colours, chirping a beautiful chorus. A pale yellow pegasus with a long, sugary pink mane and tail was conducting them with a thin stick, swishing and bobbing it with the expertise of a pony who was wonderfully self-taught. She was wearing a white band around her neck. The band was trimmed with black fabric, separated down the front by a vertical line, and clasped using a copper circle emblazoned with the letters ‘Zn.’ The quartet watched as she moved her forelegs akimbo in a gesture for quiet, and the songbirds obliged.
“Pardon me, sir,” she said to one of the birds in a demure voice, “I mean no offence, but your rhythm is about a quarter-beat behind the rest. Would you mind if we tried that again, please?”
The bird shook its head because it did not mind. The pegasus hovered backwards a bit and raised her stick again. “All righty then,” she said, “follow me. One, two, three.” There was another short chorus of warbling and twittering from the avian choir, and Twilight Sparkle could not resist leaning on the fence and clapping her forehooves together in appreciation. The startled birds flew away in all directions, and the pegasus hid herself behind the old tree.
The unicorn winced. Jack-a-Nape covered his mouth to stifle a snort of laughter. Peacemaker kicked him lightly in the side and Jack-a-Nape swallowed his mirth for all of two seconds.
“Say something, Twilight,” Spike whispered in her ear.
Twilight pursed her lips, then eventually called in the general direction of the tree, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.” The yellow pegasus hesitantly poked her head out. “Come on, you can do it,” said Twilight encouragingly. The words fell uncomfortably from her mouth like unevenly formed ice-cubes. “We’re not here to hurt you. I promise.”
The pegasus emerged the rest of the way, but did not make eye contact with her, apparently finding the sight of her own hooves vastly more engaging.
“We just came by to check on the music,” said Twilight, “and it sounds beautiful. Did you train all those birds to sing like that?”
The pegasus gave them a nod so slight it would have taken a microscope to detect it. She made a sound which might have been, “Yes, I did,” but came out more like, “mimble-wimble.”
Twilight Sparkle scrunched up her snout. Why did this whole overseer business have to be so persistently awkward? She wondered if she had come on too strongly before, and tried a more genial approach. “My name’s Twilight Sparkle,” she offered.
The pegasus said nothing. In fact she seemed to withdraw further into herself. The pink mane obscured her head like the lip of a tortoise’s shell. Twilight felt like she wanted to blush, but her body did not agree, and weirdly enough that was even more embarrassing. She knew being genial was not one of her strengths, but this reaction was a thousand times worse than she had been expecting. Princess Celestia herself had told her to make some friends, and no matter how silly or unnecessary she thought that was, a school assignment was still a school assignment, and it was starting to look like she might just fail this one!
How spectacular. On top of everything else that had happened to upset her in the past few hours, now her attempts to be friendly had succeeded only in denting her self-esteem. She decided to try again. “That’s Peacemaker,” she said, “and I think you know Jack-a-Nape already, right?”
The pegasus lowered her head a bit more, but still she said nothing. Twilight sighed, exasperated. There no way she was coming out of this with an A+. Perhaps she could just make up for it with some extra credit work. She had never used extra credit before, and she was certainly due some. Except what if that made Celestia think she was unreliable? What if it made her look unwilling to put in that little bit more effort? She might only miss the goal by inches, and really the only thing worse than missing was missing by inches. When she thought of it that way the phrase, ‘so close and yet so far,’ stopped being a passing lamentation and started being a harsh, self-deprecating funeral march.
The pegasus named Fluttershy’s eyes filled with a spirals of dazzling starlight. “Is that a baby dragon?” she asked, her voice still tiny but audibly excited. “I’ve never seen a dragon up close before! Does he have a name?”
Twilight blinked in confusion, then the question made sense of it herself in her mind. Spike must have poked his head out from behind her mane when she was unable to speak anymore. She wondered how much time must have actually passed between her last attempt to get the pegasus to respond to her and the present moment. Spike was looking at her with a mischievous, conceited smile. ‘Well, well, well,’ he appeared to be saying. ‘Look at the great girl genius.’
Aloud, what he actually said was, “My name’s Spike. How do you do?”
“Oh! My goodness!” Fluttershy gasped, leaning closer to the both of them. “I mean, I’m doing very well, thank you. This is so wonderful. I had no idea dragons could talk. What exactly do dragons talk about?”
“What do you want to know?” Spike asked.
“Everything. Why don’t we go inside?” Fluttershy tipped a wing towards the back door of her cottage. “I’ll put a pot of tea on. I’d love to know all you can tell me about dragons.”
Twilight Sparkle noticed the plate above the back door. It was a larger version of the clasp on Fluttershy’s neck-band, and now she could see that the letters ‘Zn’ were formed by overlapping plant stalks. The same stalks, painted dark blue with spots of white, were knotted together along the border of the plate. The middle of the plate was pressed inwards, like a dish.
“Actually, do you mind if I ask a question first?” Twilight asked.
Fluttershy hesitated, then softly replied, “All right. What is it?”
“That symbol,” said Twilight, “the one above the door, I mean. It’s the same as the one on your clasp, isn’t it? What does it stand for exactly?”
“Oh. You mean my sigul of Oriza?” asked Fluttershy. Twilight nodded. “It’s a religious symbol,” said the pegasus. “I don’t think you’d find it very interesting to hear about.” She pushed open the back door, and aromatic warmth poured out over them. There were all kinds of smells emanating from within, each one more intriguing and pleasant than the last. It reminded Twilight of the kitchens at Canterlot Castle, where the cooks were always brewing up rich, fine cuisine. Her appetite had yet to recover from the gorging she had done at Sweet Apple Acres and the subsequent visit to the Upchuckle Motel, but her senses still soaked up the atmosphere and coated her tongue with water. Spike had actually started drooling, and she had to prop his jaw shut with her hoof.
She swallowed, and went in after Fluttershy. “On the contrary,” she said, “I’ve studied a lot of different belief systems, and I find many of them quite fascinating. In fact last year in Canterlot, my holiday pet project involved charting the similarities between several different ones.”
“It’s no joke, Miss Fluttershy,” said Spike. “That’s really her idea of fun.”
Twilight glowered at him, then arched her back sharply, dropping him onto his rear end on the floor. Spike grumbled about how he had only been joking and stood up, dusting himself down as he did.
“So, anyway, I’d love to hear about this Oriza of yours,” the unicorn said, “and maybe after you tell me that, Spike can tell you all he knows about being a dragon.”
“Well, I suppose so,” said Fluttershy thoughtfully. Peacemaker and Jack-a-Nape were now entering the cottage, and the pegasus busied herself in the small kitchenette. She put a pot of tea on the oven to boil, and placed a bowl of fruit on a round table propped up by wooden, prancing animals. A white rabbit was sitting on the table, twitching its pink nose and watching the visitors curiously.
“Lady Oriza is an alicorn princess,” she explained. “She watches over all the animals and helps farmers to grow their crops.” Her cheeks darkened. “I leave a charm of hers by the gates at Sweet Apple Acres every year, between Wide-Earth and Sowing. I don’t think any of them notice.” After a pause she added, “Please don’t tell them. I’d hate for them to think I mean to interfere. It’s just my way of helping out.”
“We won’t tell,” said Twilight. “So, is your connection to Oriza why you live out here surrounded by nature, instead of in town?”
“Oh. Oh, no, no not really,” Fluttershy both hung and shook her head at the same time. “I just don’t like to be in anypony’s way.”
“But you have no problem presenting the music at the celebration?” asked Twilight, then cringed inside. That sounded more accusing than she had meant, and she could tell by Fluttershy’s own expression that the pegasus had taken the tone like a whip cracking.
“No?” she squeaked.
A loud whistling came from the teapot on the stove. Fluttershy stood up and went to pour the tea out into a set of polished, flower-patterned china cups.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” said Twilight, She thought for a moment, then said, “Okay, look, I don’t want us to start off on the wrong hoof. You’ve answered my question about your sigul, so it’s only fair I let you ask about my dragon. That fine with you, Spike?”
“Sure!” Spike said. He toddled over to help Fluttershy with the tea. “You said you wanted to know everything, right? Well, I started out as this cute little purple and green egg…”
Twilight decided the best approach was to belt herself in and make it through the ride with dignity.
The hours melted into one another until it became impossible to tell exactly how much time had passed once Spike began his tale. However long it was, they had gotten through at least three pots of tea, five plates of assorted cakes and biscuits, a small pile of sandwiches – Peacemaker had eyed these like an inspector and asked if popkins were supposed to be eaten uncooked in Equestria – and more than once Twilight had to catch herself before she could drop off and bang her chin against the oak table’s surface.
Just as he had done earlier, Jack-a-Nape had taken the opportunity to make himself scarce, although Twilight could not say when he chose to make his escape. He had simply been there at one point and vanished the next. She reckoned Peacemaker probably knew the exact millisecond, probably watched him do it with those old, cold eyes of his, the way a daydreamer watches a passing butterfly. She would have questioned him, but if she did and he answered her, if she came to understand the secret of Jackie’s miraculous aptitude as an escape artist, even mastered it for herself in due time, she might not have been able to prevent herself from strangling him and cursing his name for not saving her from the arduous tedium.
“And that’s the story of my whole entire life,” Spike finished. “Well, right up until today, anyway. Want to hear about today?”
Fluttershy would have told him she did, but Twilight had decided this was her stop and unbuckled her metaphorical belt.
“Oh, my! Would you just look at the time!” she said in a hurried voice. “It’s getting really late, and I think we’ve kept you from your birds for far too long. Also, it’s close to Spike’s bedtime. He’s a baby dragon, after all.” She emphasised the word ‘baby’ in a way that earned her an angry glare from Spike, the kind of glare that said, ‘Quit treating me like a baby, Mom! I haven’t wet my bed in like three whole days! You’re so embarrassing!’
“But I’m not even ti—” Spike tried to argue, but Twilight quickly used her tail to sweep his paws out from underneath him. Fluttershy did not seem to notice this, but she did see the dragon fall on his rear for the second time during that visit and scooped him up, cradling him gently in her forelimbs.
“See what I mean?” said Twilight Sparkle, and put on a patronisingly cutesy speech impediment. “He’s so sweepy, he can’t even keep his widdle bawance!”
Peacemaker let out a quiet grunt that might have been an appreciative laugh. Spike’s eyes narrowed and his angry glare became more intense. Now it did not say, ‘You’re so embarrassing, Mom!’ but rather something closer to, ‘I will wait until you’re in bed, then I’ll eat everything in the refrigerator, chew on the furniture for dessert, and then I’ll track mud across the floor just to spite you!’ Fluttershy rubbed his head and he relaxed in her embrace, his petulant frustrations abated instantaneously. She had a magick touch, this Sister of Oriza, simply magick.
“You’re quite right,” the pegasus said. “He should be in bed. Is it far, where you’re staying?”
“We’re in town,” said Twilight Sparkle. “The princess said it was a place called Golden Oak Library.”
“Oh, my,” said Fluttershy. “Will this little one be all right to travel that far?”
“He’ll be just fine,” said Twilight. Her horn lit up, and her willpower lifted the disgruntled dragon out of Fluttershy’s grasp and draped him over her back. “Thank you ever so much for your hospitality, Miss Fluttershy, but we really have to be on our way. We’re all really looking forward to hearing the big performance. Buh-bye, now.”
The guests excused themselves. They made their way back to the road into town. The sun was descending now, slipping between the hills on the distant horizon and painting the skies overhead with shades of fiery orange. They found Jack-a-Nape leaning nonchalantly against an old fence gate, munching on a peach he had snatched from Fluttershy’s fruit bowl. He was beaming at them. A sign reading ‘WELCOME TO PONYVILLE’ hung above him.
“Have fun, you guys?” he sniggered. “Didn’t mean to abandon you, but they was about to close up Sugarcube Corner, an’ lemme tell ya the coffee an’ cake combo deal they got on, it just can’t be missed. Out of this world. We should go some time. Maybe you should’ve tagged along, T.S., ’cause you’re lookin’ kinda tired. Do that next time rather than let Spikers run his mouth to impress the fillies, huh?”
Twilight wanted to get angry with him, call him a rude name, tell him to shut up, anything, but he was right. The day had been long, and she was tired. Her legs and hooves were sore. She had transferred Spike’s weight to the more toughly built Peacemaker when Spike, who had indeed dozed off during the trip, grew too heavy for her. She tried to hide a groan, but was unsuccessful.
“She is exhausted, Jack-a-Nape,” said the gun-pony. “It is unfitting to tease her.”
“Hey, cool your hooves, chief,” said Jackie, and he chucked the rest of the peach into his mouth. He went behind a nearby hedgerow, and came back out with a battered-looking pony-drawn cart. “Park your rump on the party wagon, T.S. Consider it one more example of the fine service we provide here at Jack-a-Nape’s Friendly Freight Company. We apologise that our dinin’ car is no longer functional, but there were too many complaints from the health inspector.”
Twilight Sparkle smiled briefly at him and clambered aboard. She magickally lifted Spike and placed him beside her in the cart.
“Where did you get this?” the gun-pony asked incredulously.
“I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at,” said Jack-a-Nape. “It’s mine. I work deliveries.”
“You work?”
“Sadly, bein’ an all-around great guy don’t exactly pay for all the nice things I want.”
Jackie hitched himself to the cart and started off. Peacemaker went beside him.
The gun-pony sat outside the front door of Golden Oak Library with the brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes, although he was not asleep. The night was warm, so he had declined a blanket. He held guard in absolute silence, as inside, Twilight and Spike slept peacefully. The library had been made by hollowing out the heart of a fat tree which had stood since before the day of Ponyville’s founding. Its roof of green leaves and the healthy colour of the bark led the gun-pony to believe it was still very much alive, and had not been claimed as real estate by any building authority, but rather it had allowed itself to become useful to the community growing around it. It was now home to eight-thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-four books and scrolls, with a private room amid its highest boughs. Jack-a-Nape had found the key underneath the mat and let them in, then Peacemaker had carried his snoozing charges one-by-one up to the bedroom and left them there, Twilight on the bed and Spike in a basket beside her which would serve as a cot for the time being.
After that, they had talked outside. Jackie had told him that he understood what Peacemaker thought of him, but he really did want to make nice and help out the newcomers. He had been one himself not long ago, and it could be difficult to adjust. The gun-pony said that he was grateful on Twilight’s behalf for the guide and the cart, what Jackie had called the party wagon. Jackie slapped him on the shoulder, told him it was nothing, and invited him for a drink at the Last Roundup, since the saloon was open late. Sarsaparilee, the mare who owned and ran the place, had been hiring additional staff and keeping even longer hours over the season, what with the influx of holidaymakers coming for the Summer Sun Celebration. Maybe they could find a couple of pretty fillies out for a wild weekend and in need of a little local hospitality, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
Peacemaker asked Jack-a-Nape if he had something in his eye. The chestnut pony shook his head and pushed on with his sales pitch. “Sounds like fun, right? Been a while since I was on a real boys’ night out, an’ I’ll bet it’s the same for you but even longer! So, you comin’?”
“I think I had better not,” the gun-pony answered. “I should remain on guard here, just in case.”
Jack-a-Nape gave him an odd look. If Peacemaker planned to stay up all night, how was he going to get any sleep?
“In case of what?” he asked.
Peacemaker shrugged. “I do not know, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, do you kennit?”
“Well, sure, I guess,” said Jackie, “but look, the saloon’s just over there.” He gestured across the expanse of grassland surrounding Golden Oak. It was surrounded like a secondary, smaller town square, on a short hill at the intersection between two roads. The sheriff’s office and gaol was to the southeast of it, the Last Roundup to the southwest. “We can go there an’ you can still keep a close eye on the library if you want.”
The gun-pony was silent for a minute, then he spoke up. “May I ask you something?” he questioned.
“Sure,” replied Jackie.
“Why do you want me to drink with you so badly?”
“Because I meant what I said before, P.M. I think I just wanna be your friend. I can tell you’re a good guy, even if you got nearly no sense of humour an’ the social skills of a rabid wolverine, seein’ as how you let those things on your belt do the most of your talkin’ for you.”
Peacemaker looked at him, then to the library and finally to the saloon. He seemed to be analysing inside his head, or maybe he was enjoying the distant, slightly clumsy plink-plink-plinking of the honky-tonk piano.
“I suppose there’s little point in shunning you forever, Jack-a-Nape,” he said at last. “You are not evil, and I do not think you would give up on befriending me or the others, even if I told you it was impossible and emptied both my barrels into you. One drink.”
Jackie’s expression brightened up considerably. “You’re a pretty good judge of character, P.M.,” he said. “I don’t believe in impossible, just highly improbable, so there’s always a chance, y’know?
“I know,” the gun-pony agreed.
They walked to the saloon, and Jackie sang loudly and happily along with the rising chorus of jumbled, mostly off-key voices, “Clean shirt, new shoes, an’ I don’t know where I am goin’ to. Silk suit, black tie, I don’t need a reason why…”
The saloon was filled with light and laughter. The hours which preceded the dawn of the Summer Sun Celebration were growing fewer and fewer. The number of out-of-towners looking for places to stay was expanding in near-perfect contrast. Jackie did not know most of the ponies inside, drinking, talking, playing with cards and dice, but it was an atmosphere he liked a lot. Everypony was in good spirits. He led Peacemaker up to the counter, where Sarsaparilee, a brown mare with a froth-coloured mane, thick in frame and sternly beautiful in mien, was pouring out glasses of the house special with blinding speed and dexterity.
“Hey, there, Sarsaparilee,” said Jackie, “man, is it bright in here tonight or is it just the—”
“Nice try, Jackie,” the saloon’s owner interrupted him. “I like ya, but you’re still too young for the good stuff, an’ ya know it.” Jackie grinned, and she added, “I’m talkin’ ’bout the drink.” Her expression was pleasant and her tone light, but there was a hard edge that told the gun-pony that she must have had many confrontations with many stallions, perhaps because they were trying to bum drinks, or just because they were flirting. He could believe that, for she had kept her looks well. Her voice and her demeanour spoke of a mare who was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, formidable.
“Yeah, well who’re you gonna tell? My ma?” Jackie asked with a sardonic snort. “Fine, can I get a soda then?”
“No law ’gainst that,” Sarsparilee replied agreeably. “What’ll your handsome friend have?”
Jackie looked at Peacemaker and mouthed the word ‘handsome’ in confused surprise. The saloon owner had only said it to get a rise out of him, Peacemaker could see that from her mischievous smirk, but did not comment on it.
“Graff, if it pleases you, sai,” he said.
“Excuse me?” Sarsaparilee asked, wrinkling her nose.
The gun-pony thought about it, then said, “It’s a kind of apple cider.”
“Well, we got cider straight from Sweet Apple Acres,” said Sarsaparilee, and she started tapping a keg behind her. “Not sure if it’s the same stuff you’re talkin’ ’bout, sweetie, but it’s still pretty dang good.” Jackie paid her the cost of the drinks, and she placed two perspiring glasses on the counter in front of them. “Enjoy it, boys.”
Peacemaker peered into the depths of the amber-red cider, and took a tentative sip. The taste was wonderful, although he could tell immediately that it contained no alcohol, which he found strange, for he had never heard of such a thing. Graff always had a distinct headiness to it, and was so strong that it could knock young colts right off their hooves. Sweet Apple Acres, she had said. That meant Applejack might have made this, which was a pleasing thought. If not, then old Granny Smith had, and he had liked her as well, like a venerable great aunt. The smell of the vast orchards returned to him, and he remembered the better part of his time there, brief as it was. It was not just the smell of the orchards, but the smell of Applejack, and suddenly he recalled her golden mane and her dazzling green eyes.
She had asked him not to kill, for her sake.
He had left her with no answer.
For the first time in his life, the gun-pony truly felt the weight of the big widow-makers which had been his travelling companions for so long. The weight seemed to transfer to his drink glass, and he let it land on the counter with a solid bump. Peacemaker took a step backwards.
“Where you goin’, bud?” Jackie asked.
“Nature’s call. Won’t be long,” the gun-pony replied, and with that he disappeared into the crowd of patrons like a ghost.
At the same time, in a far corner of the saloon, Deputy Hammer was jostled from behind by a tourist who had taken too much of the strong stuff for his own good. His eyes widened and he clutched his playing cards to his chest. He glared over his shoulder at the offender, who looked like he could barely stand up.
“Watch where you’re waddlin’, dough-ball,” the deputy growled.
“Shorry, pal,” the tourist slurred, and Hammer thought that would be it, just another stupid lush involved in a stupid accident inside a crowded room. Could have happened to anypony. Only, that was not it. In fact, it was exactly the opposite, for just as the whole affair began to slip from the list of things he cared about even peripherally, the deputy found a face sharing the same space as his shoulder, and two blurry eyes trying to focus on his hoof. “Hey, good cards, man. I dijn’t know ya could get five aces. You mush be shome…shome kinda…”
Hammer could hear his opponents asking it before they even opened their mouths. ‘Some kinda what, pard’? Just what kinda ‘some kinda’ might ya be talkin’ ’bout? See, we’ve done heard some unsavoury stories ’bout our dear friend the deputy here, and that one guy did land hisself in the hospital with casts on all a’ his parts, an’ that don’t seem like no accident what can happen on the ground floor of a saloon.’ The deputy’s mind conjured these accusations, along with many others, each more damning than the last. He felt the corners of his eyes twitch.
“Buzz off, ya dang fool, ’fore ya end up sleepin’ your headache off in a cell,” he murmured.
The tourist looked at him, or tried to at least. His head dipped down and he could not make actual eye contact. “I ain’t got no headache.”
“Yeah, ya do,” said Hammer, and out of sight of his fellow players, he kicked the tourist’s legs out from under him. The drunk went down like a rock, bashed his head on the table, then reeled back onto the floor. “Idjit out-a’-towners,” Hammer shrugged. “Seein’ double an’ all. Whoever heard a’ five aces? Even if I was cheatin’, I wouldn’t be that half-cocked, right?”
The other players looked at one another suspiciously and the game continued. Hammer either did not know, or simply did not care, that he had made his own inconvenience into somepony else’s. The tourist’s falling body had rammed into the side of Ditzy Doo, who was carrying a pot of red-eyed coffee in her forelegs as she made her way to table three. The effect of the impact was very much like a runaway train hitting a wooden fencepost. Ditzy had crumpled under the bigger pony’s weight, and the red-eye went flying. A few who saw it cheered it on, as if watching the winning shot in a ball game, before it landed, upset, at the hooves of the pony who had just stepped through the batwing doors.
The pot broke loudly on the floor, and a silence fell over the saloon. All eyes were on the figure standing in the doorway. Even though he had donned a wide-brimmed hat and a coat to obscure his damaged pride, the tin star left little doubt as to the identity of the pony who had been splashed. Tongs’s eyes scanned the room from behind his spectacles until they found Ditzy, who had squirmed out from under the big creature pinning her down and was now clumsily trying to regain her footing. He advanced on her, placed one forehoof atop her head, and pushed her back down.
“Ya got crud on me, slow one,” he uttered. Gone was the false confidence he had once worn before the incident earlier that morning. Now there was only a deep, bubbling anger which was and still is born of humiliation, and the knowing that it had been nopony’s fault save his own cockiness and stupidity. It was a breed of anger which sought to deal blame at any cost, and when no one pony was truly responsible, then all could be called upon to pay it. All he needed was a signal to home in on, and he had received it. “Ya got it on my hooves. So lick it off.”
“Gee, Mister Tongs, sir,” Ditzy whimpered, “can’t I just say I’m sorry and be done? ’Cause I am sorry! Really, really sorry!” She squeaked in pain as he lifted his other forehoof, piling further weight down on the vulnerable pegasus’s head. He dangled this second one in front of her mouth.
“Lick my hoof clean,” he scowled. “I want it so clean, ya can see your feeble-minded face in it.”
Ditzy’s mismatched eyes looked pleadingly around at the other patrons. Nopony moved. They were all staring back at her, mindless with anxiety. All save for two.
“Step off, Deputy,” said Sarsaparilee. “It was an accident. I saw the whole thing. Just let her go, have a drink on the house, an’ forget this ever happened. I don’t want no trouble in my place.”
Tongs did not move. Ditzy was shuddering under his weight. “What did you say to me?” he asked, in a quiet, emotionless tone, and suddenly he whipped about to face the saloon’s owner and screamed at her, “YOUR PLACE!? I’M THE LAW!” He called her something so rude it cannot be repeated in print, and then, “THIS PLACE IS MY PLACE! JUST LIKE EVERYWHERE IN THIS STINKIN’ TOWN! WEREN’T FOR THE LAW, YA’LL’D BE DEAD! AIN’T NO HOKEY ALICORNS SAVIN’ YOUR UNGRATEFUL HIDES FROM BANDITS, IS THERE!? IT’S THE LAW!”
Jackie put his drink down and turned to him. “You keep crowin’ ‘the law, the law’ like that,” he said, “an’ it’s gonna end up bein’ a serious curse word. The name Tongs is gonna be like what you call a pony born outta wedlock, if you catch my drift.”
“Watch your tongue, Nape,” Tongs threatened hoarsely.
Jackie continued. The words flowed forth like a stream, unable to stop, “Oh! An’ speakin’ of crowin’. For a stallion who don’t shut up about how safe the town is ’cause of him an’ his buddies, Ditzy there don’t look too safe to me. She don’t strike me as a bad guy, either. An’ am I the only one who didn’t actually see you headin’ out into the Everfree to fight this so-called outlaw gang? That don’t seem like your type of fight.”
“An’ jus’ how d’ya know what is an’ ain’t my type a’ fight?”
“Well, normally you don’t like it when the other guy hits back, do you?”
A wave of unsettled murmurs passed over the spectators. Tongs’s eyes went from one side to the other, then re-focussed on Jackie. His horn started to glow.
“Tongs, don’t do it,” said Hammer.
“Shut up, Hammer,” Tongs spat, and shifted his attention to the chestnut pony. “Nape, I’ve about had it with you an’ your kind.”
“And I have had it with yours, sai Deputy,” came the voice of the gun-pony. Tongs froze in fear. He could see him, across the room, both his guns ready. The rest of the scene became faint and wispy, as the force of the gun-pony became starkly more real to him, real and inevitable. The gun-pony’s position did not change, but the sensation of him crept towards the deputy like the tentacles of a hideous sea-monster. “I missed your brains on purpose last time, but I see the lesson has yet to be learned. Stand back, or you will die.”
Tongs looked down at the quivering lump of jelly beneath his hoof, then back to the stranger with the guns. The audience were expecting a stare-down, for one to be strong enough to wither his opponent with only his gaze. He could not meet the blue eyes of the stranger. The stranger was Death Himself, and Death withered everything, even the strongest. His coward’s instincts took over, and he was pedalling away from Ditzy Doo before he had consciously made the decision.
Jackie went to aid Ditzy, leading her away from the deputy to safety behind the bar where Sarsaparilee took her from him.
“A’right, kid,” Hammer told his colleague with an irritated growl, “get your rump on outta here, you’re an embarrassment to the badge.” Tongs, doubly cowed, slunk slowly out of the batwing doors and onto the street. Hammer nodded his approval, then faced the gun-pony and said, “Stranger, I reckon I owe ya an apology for his reprehensible behaviour.”
“You owe me nothing, sai,” said the gun-pony, and holstered his totems, “but your fool friend owes much to the filly he bullied, to sai Sarsaparilee for his rudeness, and to all the ponies whose enjoyment he has so flagrantly destroyed, do you kennit?”
“I make ya right, friend,” said Hammer. “How’s about you an’ I step out, let these ponies all get back to their merry-makin’? I mean no offence, but so long as one a’ us is in here, they’re gonna be stayin’ antsy, wouldn’t ya agree?”
“Agreed,” Peacemaker replied with a nod. “Thankee for the graff,” he said to Sarsaparilee, and followed Hammer towards the door.
“I don’t like this,” murmured Jackie, falling in step behind him. “My big mouth didn’t exactly help much back there, lemme make it up by watchin’ your back.”
Peacemaker said nothing, which to Jackie was not a no.
XXX
Tongs thought he had been sent into the Last Roundup to find Hammer, but around the time they entered the sheriff’s office and gaol, he realised that the truth was very different. He had been intended as a scapegoat.
He was boiling over with embarrassment. His cheeks felt twitchy and uncomfortable long after the blushing had stopped. He was angry all the time now, no matter how hard he tried to control his temper – which was really not his fault, it was all down to that unholy ghost, honest and truly – and that made the guys think he was useless. He should not have been surprised. Of course they thought like that, because they always had done. He was the youngest, four years Hammer’s junior and who-knew-how-many Ramrod’s. The sheriff was a fully grown stallion before Tongs had even been born. It had not been so long ago when he had been known to them as ‘the kid’ and other monikers which made him feel so inadequate. That was why he had grown his moustache, even though he found tending to it an awful hassle. It helped him look at least the same age as Hammer, who had no facial hair, only the dark speckling on his face that Tongs found horrible to look at because it made him think they had dripped right off the ends of his greasy, black bangs.
Ultimately, it had been for nothing, just like his attempts to win over Applejack had been for nothing. Hammer had called him ‘kid’ in front of everypony.
He would always be ‘kid.’
In the enclosed space of the office, he pushed himself into the corner shadows, feeling uneasy being so close to all of them. The sheriff and the stranger who must surely be the Pale Pony of Death competed in his heart for who made him the most fearful. He wished so hard that he had shot the soft-spoken brat’s baby blues right out of his back end, and a gradually weakening part of his personality insisted it was not too late to fix that oversight. Rubbish. It was miles too late. Even Nape, smart-mouthed moron though he was, had achieved a higher standing in the pecking order. Ramrod had no reason to be disappointed in Nape, and Hammer had no reason to hate him, but he knew both of these sentiments spoke for how they saw him right now, if they saw him at all.
“Hammer, Tongs.”
The sheriff broke his spiralling train of thought, and thank all the powers that he did. Tongs hated being allowed to think so deeply. It made him too self-conscious of how much he loathed himself.
“Escort Mister Nape to one a’ the cosy cells, an’ make sure nopony gets nosy. I’d like my chat with our young friend here to be in the strictest confidence.”
“Hey, I ain’t movin’,” Jack-a-Nape retorted defiantly.
“You’ll do what your sheriff tells ya, Nape,” growled Tongs, thankful he could project his aggression, “an’ you’ll do it gladly ’cause he’s—”
“Tongs, if you say ‘the law,’ I’m gonna cut your tail so it matches your stupid mane,” Nape interrupted. “Seriously, pal, you should probably go ask your stylist for your money back. I mean, don’t take it personally, ’cause I actually dig retro, but that New Age crop circle look went out years ago.” This elicited a sharp bark of laughter from Hammer. Tongs hated that laugh, and he hated the toothy smile spreading across the earth pony’s face.
“Jackie will comply with your wish,” said the gun-pony, before Nape could protest, “but he will only need one of your deputies as an escort. I request you send the other elsewhere whilst we palaver.”
“Sounds fair,” Ramrod conceded. “So be it. Ham—”
“I cry your pardon, sai,” said the gun-pony, “but let it be Tongs who takes Nape to his cell. Send Hammer away.”
Ramrod eyed him incredulously. “Mighty presumptuous of ya to make demands of a sheriff in his own town, boy,” he said.
“I make no demands, sai,” replied the gun-pony. “I only ask with the respect a pony of the law deserves. Where I hail from, the star on your chest carries great weight. Only ponies whose virtue and judgement are trusted may wear it.” He bowed in his strange manner, one foreleg tucked beneath and one stretched out.
“It’s some kinda trick, boss,” said Tongs. “Don’t you go fallin’ for it.” He immediately paid for this surge of bravery with a stab of dread as Ramrod looked at him. His eyes were brimming over with disdain. Tongs withdrew into his shell and the sheriff returned to his previous conversation as if nothing had happened. The gun-pony had risen straight again.
“P.M., don’t be stupid!” Nape moaned. “You can’t trust him! You need a pony to watch your back!”
The gun-pony responded by donning a countenance which brokered no argument. Nape shut up, and Tongs felt a hint of satisfaction knowing he was not the only one who had to suffer that species of mistreatment. It never occurred to him that Peacemaker’s expression had been one of reassurance, not dominance, and that talks of trust were at that very moment being tested by what was to happen next. Tongs had no concept of that. Trust was only a concise way of telling you to shut up and let the boss do what needed doing, or to shut up and do as you were told. Bosses pushed you around because they were bigger and knew better than you and that was that.
“Let’s go, laughin’-boy,” he said, and pushed Nape through the door which led from the front office to a hall containing a row of barred cells. Ramrod had insisted the separating wall be built so that if prisoners got too rowdy he could shut the door, ignore them and go back to his nap. He saw over his shoulder as Ramrod gestured and Hammer obliged him by leaving the office entirely. That made him feel a little better. He did not care where Hammer went, only that he did, because with Ramrod occupied by his talking with Death Himself, there would be nopony to tell him to stop if he decided to have some fun with his favourite little pain in the neck.
“So I guess we ain’t invited to the party, huh?” Nape joked as they reached the furthest cell. “They must be ticked off ‘cause I forgot to bring the cake an’ punch. It’s not exactly my fault, though. Cake’s in bed with a cold an’ punch is outta town visitin’ family.”
Tongs shoved him roughly into the cell. Nape’s hooves scraped the floor and his side bounced against the wall.
“Yo! How about a little courtesy in here?” he griped. “Lemme tell you, buddy, I don’t see this place makin’ three stars in the next edition of Hooflin’s Red Guide.”
The deputy said nothing. He watched Nape become apprehensive, and grinned wickedly. Go on, you motherless pile a’ manure! he thought, his every neuron firing through a filmy vat of poison. Go on! Laugh at me! It’ll be the last thing ya ever do! Nape said nothing, only continued to watch him. He poured his magick into his horn, and soon felt the familiar, pulsating warmth which was between and behind his eyes at the same time. He cast it towards the door at the far end of the short hall, and the gaps between the door, the wall and the floor filled with reddish-orange foam that solidified into crusty muck.
The Spell of Soundlessness had magickally proofed the office and the gaol from each other. “Looks like we’re alone now, Nape,” said Tongs, unable to hold back his chuckling. “Just you an’ me.”
“Okay, champ, you need to settle down,” Nape was pleading. “Is this over the banana thing? I mean, seriously, that was ages ago. Can’t we let bygones be bygones?”
Tongs entered the cell and willed the door shut behind him. “Naw,” he said, “it’s just that I got a long list a’ names now, an’ you’re the closest.”
“Oh, criminy,” Nape whimpered, “don’t hurt me.” The words were different in his ears, not entirely the same as how Tongs’s demented brain processed them, but he was feeling big now. Here, he was in charge. He was the boss, and he could do what needed doing.
“Okay, champ, you need to settle down,” said Jackie impatiently. “Is this over the banana thing? I mean, seriously, that was ages ago. Can’t we let bygones be bygones?”
Tongs moved through the door of the cell at the back of the town gaol, swaying from side-to-side like a hot-cheeked lush. His horn glimmered and the metal door slammed shut.
“Naw, it’s just that I got a long list a’ names now,” he sneered, “an’ you’re the c-c-closest.” The deputy’s eyes looked sort of glazed over. The irises and pupils had merged into formless blobs of no real colour. The grin was like a Hearth’s Warming nutcracker. This mad caricature that had once been a unicorn made Jackie wince and step backwards. This was not just a silly face pulled to make ponies laugh. It was too sincere, which was a contradiction because that meant it was utterly devoid of empathy, compassion and mercy. It was honest-to-goodness, uncut, straight-up buggo.
Holy jumpin’ crud, Jackie thought, stepping further back as the monster lurched on. He’s outta his freakin’ gourd! His hoof clopped against the wall behind him. There was no more room to retreat into. It was a dead end, double-dipped in deep diarrhoea.
“Oh, criminy,” he said, which to Tongs’s ears sounded like the whimpering of a broken and terrified animal. Jackie was feeling incredibly nervous, true enough, but he was too proud to rely on begging for his life. Still, that did not rule out negotiations. “Let’s talk. The atmosphere’s kinda tense in here. How’s ’bout a game to lighten the mood? Hangpony? All we’d need’s a piece of chalk. Or what about I spy? You can start.”
“I ain’t g-g-gonna hurt ya, Nape,” Tongs stammered, his horn already charging up another spell.
Jackie wondered what he had said to prompt that particular response, and what the heck had happened to the deputy’s voice. It was like listening to one of those talking Smarty Pants dolls he had once seen on sale at the big toy shop in Manehatten and again at Harneleys, only somepony had taken a mallet to this one’s voice box.
“I’m g-g-gonna k-k-kill ya.”
Jackie felt the sudden rush of rising heat, and then a lightning bolt shot towards him. He yelled, darted to one side, and the interior of the cell exploded with light.
XXX
The sheriff offered Peacemaker a glass of something he called aqua vita, which the gun-pony accepted. Ramrod produced two glasses of the golden-coloured stuff and passed one to his guest. They drank quietly and civilly, wholly unaware of the Spell of Soundlessness in effect which prevented them from hearing what was happening in the adjacent hallway. Peacemaker could sense other matters hanging in the air between them. He watched the sheriff over the rim of his glass, but it was only after a long and contemplative pause that the big, ebony stallion finally spoke.
“I’m thankful we could have this here palaver,” said Ramrod. “I’ve been lookin’ forward to it, an’ to meetin’ you. Tell me your name, son, if it pleases ya?”
“I am Peacemaker, sai Sheriff.”
“Call me Ramrod, an’ yes, I thought I recognised the look a’ ya,” said Ramrod. He looked into his empty glass and poured himself a second dose. “Ya look an’ sound just as your pa did at your age. He was Gallowad’s dinh in days long past, aye?”
Peacemaker said nothing, but he did respond in a way. The bristles of his mane seemed to stiffen as if manifesting the electrical surge passing through him, or perhaps that was just the aqua vita hitting his system.
“Does it surprise you, Peacemaker?” asked Ramrod. “I mean, that I know who an’ what ya are?”
“A little,” the gun-pony admitted, “but I have met one other who surprised me the same way, so I fear the impact of your words may be blunted, sai.”
“Do you say so?” asked Ramrod, and his eyes seemed to indicate his own mild surprise.
“I say so,” said Peacemaker with a nod, “though it is with no ill intent. Are you also a gun-pony?”
“A matter for debate,” said Ramrod. “One I would very much like to settle. There’s not much room left in the world for our kind, or have you not heard? Equestria does not seek to wage war on its enemies. Warriors are considered unfashionable these days.”
“You say true, I say thank you,” said Peacemaker. If he was sorrowful of the fact, he hid it well.
“So I can’t help but wonder,” said Ramrod. He leaned across the desk, fixing his gaze on the young stranger before him. “What does a pony a’ your bloodline want in my peaceful little town, ’less there’s trouble fast a-comin’? Tell me that.”
“Gallowad is history, its territories scattered. My bloodline means little now,” said Peacemaker. He found the words to be bitter-tasting, but he was able to swallow his resentment. “I am naught but a drifter in search of work, which has been provided to me. I am a bodyguard to the overseer of the Summer Sun Celebration, nothing more. When she leaves, so too shall I.”
Ramrod’s eyes narrowed. Peacemaker hid his grimace behind his glass.
“A bodyguard,” said the sheriff. His tone became harder, and Peacemaker could detect a hint of challenge there. “With those guns? The old dinh held those in mighty high regard. I remember him tellin’ me so when we was babbies in the same ka-tel.”
Peacemaker recalled being very small and hearing of his father’s class of apprentice gun-ponies. His eventual tet had consisted of six members, each of whom had taken positions of great prestige once they reached stallionhood. He recalled each one of his uncles, for they were as close as brothers to his father’s heart, with perfect clarity. There was Sharpside, who was the finest surgeon in the kingdom, and dependable Dusty Trails, who was broad at the brisket and never without his favourite orange scarf. He knew the twins Wild and Free who were as famous for their martial skills as they were for their pranks, and how could one forget Carnival Game, the great storyteller who once defeated the giant worm queen with only his slingshot? He searched and searched again through his memory, but he did not hear or see Ramrod among their number at all. Only the group which was made six by the inclusion of his departed sire, the Light Lord.
“They are no longer my father’s guns,” he said. His voice was stern but without rudeness. “They are mine, and I have decided that they are justly employed.”
“As a bodyguard?”
“Aye.”
“An’ what body are ya guardin’ right now, or in yon waterin’ hole? Are ya not to stay close to your charge at all times, boy?”
“I’m close enough,” said Peacemaker. He pointed out of the window towards the library. “My hoof is quick, sai, and my father’s guns fire true.”
“Better hope so, son,” said Ramrod. “Look again.”
Peacemaker did, and he saw something that made him start. Three ponies were positioned around Golden Oak’s front door. They were clothed in dark from top to tail so as to resemble shadows, save for the rust-coloured gorgets clasped around their necks. A symbol of an eye was engraved into each of the gorgets. One of the ponies was holding a ball of smouldering flame in one forehoof.
Peacemaker reared up on his hind legs and drew one of his guns. Click! A second gun cocked right beside his ear. Ramrod had drawn a pistol of his own and had the young gun-pony in his sights. The weapon was smaller than Peacemaker’s dual widow-makers and crafted from metal as black as its owner’s coat.
“What is the meaning of this, sai Ramrod?” Peacemaker asked. “Who are those ponies, and why do you draw on your own kind?”
“I think it’s time we dropped the pretence and got down to business, son. You’re not one a’ mine,” said Ramrod. “Gallowad life wasn’t really for me. The stink of its arrogance was choking me. The same stink as on you.” His voice developed a bitter edge, “That’s why I set up shop in this happy, ignorant little backwoods burg.”
There was a small spark of lightning as something finally connected in Peacemaker’s mind, like a stuck railroad switch giving way before the train missed its pass. Yes, he had heard of Ramrod, or rather he had heard of a stallion fitting his description, spoken of only once in the gun-pony’s life. Not by his father or uncles, instead it was by his teacher in the days when he was learning the importance of the trial of stallionhood.
If the trial was passed successfully, the hopeful apprentice would best his mentor in single combat and prove himself worthy of the honour of carrying guns of his own, as a symbol of the continuance of what had kept his people alive in the dark times of Gallowad’s founding and the maintaining of the law during the centuries that followed. Failure, which resulted if the apprentice yielded to the teacher, meant immediate banishment from the kingdom. The loser was sent west and would never be recognised as a gun-pony. Although the father would never be blamed for his son’s transgressions, such an event would mar the honour of the bloodline forevermore.
“His greatest tragedy, he said,” Peacemaker mumbled.
“Say again?” asked Ramrod.
“My teacher once knew a colt as black as the night, who valued personal strength over ka-tet,” Peacemaker elaborated. “A colt with vast potential, until one day he got cocky. Something happened to him, like a madness or fever, and he challenged his teacher to single combat. The duel ended in half a minute, with the colt begging for mercy.”
Ramrod pushed the rim of the gun’s barrel against Peacemaker’s temple. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to mock me while I’ve got this against your skull?” he asked.
“I have no fear of you, sai,” said Peacemaker, “and as of now, no respect, because the story goes on. That colt’s father died days later of a single shot. A terrible tragedy. Yes, I can believe you were in their class, but you were no babby of theirs. Congratulations, your debate is settled.”
XXX
The acrid fumes from the blackened wood made Jackie retch. The cell was full of smoke, and tentacles of it were already curling out into the hallway. His eyes were full of tears and his ears were ringing from the explosion, which had catapulted him clear over Tongs’s head and dumped him against the wall. He tried to call out, but all he managed was a fit of coughing.
The deputy was suffering from the after-effects of his reckless spell as well. He was pressing himself flat against the floor to reach what clear air was left. Jackie crawled away from him, all the while hacking and sneezing as his body fought to get the pollutants out before they could permanently damage his lungs. There were no windows inside the cells, nowhere for the smoke to go. Very soon it would swallow everything and suffocate both ponies to death.
“Nape!” Tongs cried hoarsely. “Nape! Where are you!? T-t-tell me so I c-c-can waste ya!”
“You c-c-call that an incentive?” Jackie retorted, equally strained. “You fail d-d-diplomacy forever!”
The deputy realised he was being made fun of and let out a furious bellow. Jackie felt something whoosh past his head, something so hot that it singed his coat and mane. He cried out and dropped to the floor again. His legs became entangled with Tongs’s, making him realise how close he had come to being cooked alive, and the deputy landed right on top of him.
The last fireball had been a small spell. It had reached its maximum range and simply exploded. Its flames had petered out in mid-air, leaving only smoke and charred wood behind. This second one passed right by its intended target and hit the door at the far end, blowing it to splinters and dispelling the enchantment attached to it. Jackie struggled out from under the crazed deputy and hurled himself through the opening into the front office, where he landed painfully on his side.
He heard a cry that might have been the sheriff, and then Peacemaker calling out his name. A shot rang out, and then the gun-pony was reaching him through the cloud and pulling him to safety. The front door opened with a bang, and Jackie was dragged out into the open. He squeezed his stinging eyes shut and continued coughing and spluttering, but he did not need to look to see that the gaol was burning.
All of Ponyville was awake with activity in a matter of seconds. Everypony was pouring out of their homes to see what was happening and to lend a helping hoof. Hot House, the local watch commander, arrived with an emergency storm cloud to douse the blaze, and a perimeter was set up to clear the danger zone of civilians. Jackie opened his eyes in time to see three forms fleeing the vicinity of Golden Oak Library, and then he finally blacked out.
XXX
He awoke to the smell of antiseptic and the sound of his own breathing – no, that was wrong, not quite his own breathing. He was wearing an oxygen mask and what he heard was the flow of cleansing gas from an attached tank, which sat beside the bed he presently inhabited. The bright lights of the hospital room hurt his eyes and turned the insides of his eyelids the colour of sunset. He detected hoofbeats coming up the hallway, and the pitter-patter of paws close behind. Why did hospital floors always make walking so loud? Would it kill them to put in some nice, soft carpeting?
“There he is.”
The visitor’s voice was muddy, like he was hearing it from underwater.
“Jackie?”
This was from a second visitor, a feminine one who was older than the first.
He tested his jaws and throat. His own voice was raspy, but he could speak without difficulty. That was a good sign. “Who’s there?” he asked.
“It’s Twilight Sparkle,” the second visitor replied, “and I’ve brought Spike with me. Peacemaker asked us to check on you for him.”
The bed shifted with a creak of springs. He guessed it was Spike sitting at the end. “Brought you some things,” said the baby dragon.
“Can you turn the lights down?” he asked.
“Sure, hold on,” said Twilight. The sunset colour receded, and after a moment he dared to open his eyes again. The curtains were halfway drawn but he could see it was morning. The hospital room was characteristically featureless. The walls were a subdued beige that gave way to colourless white at the top and bottom. Twilight and Spike were looking at him with concerned expressions. He wriggled into a sitting position and moved the oxygen mask up onto his forehead. The flow felt oddly good against his mane. Spike poured him a glass of water from the jug on the side cabinet and passed it to him. If the pure oxygen felt good, then the water was fantastic, even though it was no longer chilled.
“Thanks, Spikers,” he said, sounding more like his usual self.
“Brought you some grapes and a bottle of soda,” said Spike, indicating the gifts on the cabinet. “Hope you like orange.”
“Mm-hmm,” Jackie mumbled with a nod.
“How do you feel?” Twilight asked him.
“Like somepony used the inside of my head as a kiln,” he replied. “What happened?”
“A fire broke out in the sheriff’s office,” said Twilight. That much he already knew from first-hoof experience but he kept his silence to be polite. “The building was lost, but the blaze was stopped from spreading. Peacemaker dragged you out, then went back inside to get Tongs. The sheriff was able to get out by himself.”
“Where’s Peacemaker right now?” Jackie asked.
Twilight and Spike both looked downcast. Jackie felt a weight in his stomach.
“Ramrod told everypony the fire was Peacemaker’s fault and he was arrested,” said Spike.
“Arrested!?” Jackie cried, shocked and outraged. “Why, that low-down, slimy-skinned son of a two-bit—”
Twilight placed her forehooves on his shoulders and pushed him down in his bed. “Whoa there, hotshot,” she said, “you need to concentrate on getting better before you go starting more trouble.”
“Trouble!” Jackie groaned. “If I hadn’t mouthed off in the saloon last night, this could probably all have been avoided! Heck, goin’ there was my idea the whole time! This mess is my fault!”
“Don’t be silly,” said Twilight. “I don’t know what’s really going on here, but I intend to find out. First off, I want to ask you a question. Does the name Gone Far South mean anything to you?”
“Far South?” Jackie asked. “Hmm…I think he’s some kinda big-time outlaw in these parts, but other than that, I got nothin’. Why?”
“That’s who the sheriff’s accusing Peacemaker of working for,” Twilight explained, “and a few ponies say they saw figures in dark clothes wearing this guy’s trademark fleeing the town.”
“I saw them,” said Jackie. “They were by the library. I didn’t really get a good look at ‘em, though.” He hung his head. “Jeez! Tongs tried to kill me last night! I mean really, seriously kill me, y’know? He’s the one who started the fire tryin’ to do it! Peacemaker was out the front with the sheriff when it happened! It doesn’t make a lick of sense!”
“I know, I know, it’s crazy,” said Twilight. “Listen, I’m going over to the mayor’s office to see if anything can be done for him. There’ll have to be a trial. We can put together a defence. The answer to this affair may lie with those three ponies you saw last night, if not with Sheriff Ramrod himself.”
“Just…” Twilight paused, formulating her next words.
“Just trust us, Jackie,” Spike finished for her.
“Right,” Twilight agreed. “Just trust us. The nurses want to keep you in for observation, so stay in bed until they discharge you, all right?”
“Fine, s’not like I got a choice or nothin’,” Jackie grumbled, and crossed his forelegs over his chest.
A pretty young mare with a blue coat and light green mane poked her head into the room. She was carrying a board with a checklist in one forehoof. “Good to see you’re awake. How are we feeling today, Mister Nape?” she asked. Jackie wondered if the way she batted her eyelashes was intentional or just a quirk.
He grinned slyly. “Suddenly a whole lot better.”
Spike covered his grin with a paw. Twilight rolled her eyes.
Peacemaker sat alone in an old storage vault deep beneath Ponyville’s town hall. It had a heavy, iron door which was set into the wall at an angle and could only be opened using unicorn magick. Besides himself and a few debris-littered shelves, the room was empty. The festival props were all on the surface now, and many of the other items that had once been locked up within had been transferred to other, newer rooms that were easier to access. There were no windows in the vault because the only things they would look out on were dirt, earthworms and the occasional curious mole. It was big, barren and chilly despite the time of year.
He suffered it all without a single complaint. He rested against the wall with the brim of his hat tugged down over his eyes. His guns had been confiscated, but they had not taken everything. He reached beneath his clothes and brought out an old, red harmonica. He flicked away some dust and blew into it. The tune was neither masterful nor consistent. It morphed and digressed frequently, and he often played the wrong notes, but it gave him something to do whilst he waited and contemplated his situation.
Sheriff Ramrod, a wayward and forsaken son of Gallowad, sought his destruction. It was a desire born of longstanding hostility towards ponies who reached the clearing at the end of their path years ago. The midwives who aided in this birth had been pride and denial. They put into Ramrod the idea that he had grown beyond his old world because he had outlived it, or rather that he might still do so by executing Peacemaker, thereby removing all traces of it from his new world forever.
Peacemaker had never known anypony to deliberately wish him death. It was a worrying thought. More-so was the knowledge that the sheriff had allies. There were the three shadows from the library, not to mention Hammer and Tongs, the former of whom could very well have been one of them. Hammer was surely more level-headed than Tongs even by a cursory examination. Why had he insisted it be the younger deputy who should escort Jack-a-Nape to the cells? It was because his estimation of Hammer was an educated guess, but not a confirmation. He knew for a fact that Tongs had a demon howling away inside his mind, and had been prepared for it. He was wild, unable to control his own actions fully. He would flail and strike at random. Hammer had shown no such weaknesses, but if he had allowed Hammer to be the one to stay, would Tongs have taken his place outside, poised to incinerate Twilight Sparkle and Spike whilst they slept?
Once you got down to the nitty-gritty of it, Peacemaker realised he had found no advantage in that situation. He had allowed the light and the happiness which flowed through Ponyville to slow him down. Ramrod had gotten the drop on him because he had let him, and likely it was only his haphazard stalling and the mayhem which followed that had prevented the sheriff from blasting his head into so much shrapnel. He could not picture a single course of action available to him at the time which would have improved his situation. He was sloppy and idiotic and his teacher would have made him run thirty laps around the ancient training grounds on an empty stomach for such a gross lapse in judgement.
He heard the old nag’s voice behind his eyes. ‘Hunger sharpens the reflection, maggots,’ it rasped. In the days before he could call himself a gun-pony and wield the sacred irons, that voice had been law.
When the guards came to bring him his meal, he would ignore it.
‘Hunger sharpens the reflection, maggots,’ the voice repeated, echoing along the corridors of his mind as if from some great distance and gradually decaying, ‘…sharpens…maggots…’
XXX
The world had moved on, and the season of Year’s End with it. Winter followed, bringing with her the most biting cold the kingdom had known for centuries. There were no warm hearths left within the castle town. No diligent mothers to cook hot meals for their families. Good-tasting things were gone, and what little music remained was no longer a signal to commence joyous dancing on Fair Days, but sombre dirges that testified to stolen lives and ruined foalhoods. The last generation of Gallowad rallied together amid the brittle, frozen grass, surrounded by dull buildings that jutted from the earth like broken teeth. The insulating fuzz of their seasonal coats was no longer a comfort, but an inconvenience. They itched and prickled when they came and made them feel puny and vulnerable when they were shed. Comfort, like all those other good things, had been buried by treachery and rubble. There were no foals in Gallowad these days, only survivors.
“Hunger sharpens the reflection, maggots. No supper. No breakfast.”
A chorus of groans arose from the cluster of would-be gunslingers. Their teacher, the only grown stallion to whom they could turn for help, had been instructing them in the ways of falconry. They were expected to hunt and track their own quarry in the wilderness, and the hawk was an indispensable tool. Their teacher always told them that hawks were gunslingers for the divines and deserved the same respect they would give their own fathers. Their teacher had released a flock of pigeons into the air and the students were commanded to unhood their hunting birds and launch them into the fray.
They had all been too slow for their teacher’s tastes, all except for Peacemaker. His hawk, Artemis, had almost swooped out of her hood and into the cold air, easily catching one of the pigeons in her talons before returning to him. She was old, that hawk, and mighty trig. She had returned to the protective saddle on his back and roosted there to enjoy her meal. She had done it all in a single fluid movement. His classmates were not so fortunate.
It was not entirely for their slowness that the old nag punished them, Peacemaker observed. It was also for what happened after.
“We cry your pardon,” they had stammered, “we just—”
Excuses. Their teacher despised excuses. True gun-ponies made no excuses.
“Speak the High Speech!” the stallion roared.
If only the fire in his belly could shield us from this chill, Peacemaker thought, then mayhap I would join them in their erring. Would be worth it, I reckon.
“Speak your act of contrition in the speech of civilisation for which better ponies than you will ever be have died for!”
There came a quiet bud of discontent that surely would have blossomed into whines had his classmates not known better. “We grieve,” they said as one. “We have forgotten the faces of our fathers, whose guns we hope someday to bear.”
“That’s right, brats,” said their teacher with a sneer, and then delivered his ultimatum so they would better consider what they had done. Peacemaker’s cold, calm eyes glared out through the messy bangs of his black mane. His teacher was an observant cove, mind you, and took less than a split-second to notice. “Problem, my prince? You think me too harsh on your fellow maggots?” he growled. “Anxious to express your displeasure like a stallion?”
“Mayhap,” said Peacemaker.
His teacher snorted. “Then there’s hope for you,” he said. “We will conclude your lessons for the day now. Reconvene here one hour early tomorrow morning.” He turned and trotted away, cracking the dead grass into tiny showers of crystal. “When you think you can, you come for me, as our tradition demands. Fight me and leave as a gun-pony, or as an exile.”
Teacher had gone into his house and locked the door. Peacemaker had joined the other apprentices in their adopted lodgings. There were no hearths, but they could still stoke the fire in what had been the castle’s underground kitchens, so they had set up mats to sleep on in there. Peacemaker and another colt, Blotch, who was the oldest, were able to gather enough supplies to create a meagre and watery stew. Both of them knew a little of cooking, but teacher had educated them on how to do it properly, especially how to make the most of what they had. Most of the orchards and the forests surrounding the dead castle were gone and they were forced to survive on what unspoiled food remained in the pantries. It was not much.
“We can’t go on like this, Peace,” said Blotch. They were sitting away from the others, who knew well enough to leave them alone at mealtimes.
Peacemaker grunted his agreement and swallowed a spoonful of the tasteless, colourless concoction. He may as well have been sucking down hot seawater.
“I think we’ll have to start going abroad soon,” said Blotch. “Mayhap teacher will let us reclaim some of the farms we lost in the battle. If we can survive this Winter and reach Wide-Earth, get everypony involved, we could do it. Grow our own food, lose all this tinned garbage.” Just for emphasis he picked up a discarded metal can and chucked it over his shoulder. It struck the stone panels with a resounding clang. “We have to learn to be self-sufficient now.”
“I hear tell windigos live in those lands now,” replied Peacemaker. “Be you brave enough to risk them for your farm, Blotch?”
“Not mine. It’d be our farm. All of ours. Besides, Peace, we’re the sons of gun-ponies,” said Blotch steadily. “If we can’t take our own lands back from a pack of roving spirits, then it might be best if we gave up and died here, huddled together like…like…”
“Like scared foals,” Peacemaker finished for him.
Blotch sighed, then said, “They’re all we have, and they’ve all got what it takes. Ka-tet flows strongly through them all, do you not kennit? Liquid steel runs in their veins.”
“Aye, you say true,” said Peacemaker. “I cry your pardon, it’s just that I sense a large ‘but’ coming.” He offered a dry, humourless smile and added, “Only this time I don’t think it’s the old cook’s.”
“You shouldn’t joke, Peace,” said Blotch. “You’re not very good at it.” Peacemaker could see the faintest hint of a smile on the older colt’s lips. That was enough for him. “You’re right, however. What they’re missing is an example. Somepony they can all rally behind. Like your father or better yet Gunmetal the Grey himself.”
“Tall order,” said Peacemaker. “Unless you’d have them mount the bones on flagstaffs?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it!” snarled Blotch. He was frowning deeply, his heavy brow marring his normally handsome features.
Blotch was said to have possessed the most attractive face of any colt in the kingdom. His coat was as yellow as a cornfield and his mane as white as snow, but there was a trail of furious, red splashes travelling down his right foreleg. They terminated at the fetlock, which looked as if it had been dipped in blood. Blotch’s father had been Sharpside the surgeon, so it was an appropriate comparison. Blotch’s nevi had always been something of an embarrassment to his father, who had found no viable way by which to remove them. Eventually they had forgotten that enterprise altogether, and Blotch learned to wear his brand with pride instead of revulsion. Such was the pony known by those familiar with him as ‘the Red Hoof.’
“I cry your pardon, friend,” said Peacemaker. “This example you speak of. One of us would take the role, you say?”
Blotch’s indignity abated and he looked a little sad. “I’m the oldest,” he said. “I know the others look up to me, much as I feel I’m wrong for such praise. Tomorrow, for their sakes, I will challenge our teacher to my trial.”
“You go in with that attitude, and you have already lost,” said Peacemaker. Blotch shot him a bewildered expression. “I mean that you will go in with weight on your shoulders. You will lose, be sent west, and what good will you be to us then?” Blotch said nothing. “Stay with them, there is no shame in it. When you can go to teacher with a serious purpose—”
“You don’t call this serious?”
“It is, but it’s also a responsibility you gave yourself. That’s not the same as purpose. When you do have one, I will not stop you, old friend.” He stifled a belch. “Besides, you’re the only one out of any of us smart enough to think of reclaiming the blasted farms. Your brains would be better suited to figuring out how to pull it off.”
He set his empty bowl on the floor and stood up.
“Where are you going?” asked Blotch.
“First to the mews, and then to my bed,” replied Peacemaker. “We are to be up earlier than normal tomorrow. I intend to be earlier still.”
XXX
The sound of hooves crashing against the wooden door of the house was loud enough to waken not just the old nag who had been asleep within, but everypony left alive in the city. It was still dark out, for the sun was still an hour away from rising. Small birds shrieked as the crashing scared them off. Snow dropped from the rooftop in heavy clumps, dotting Peacemaker’s grey coat with white as they joined the powdery mass covering the ground. Peacemaker kicked the door again and again, over and over, each time shouting out the name of his teacher at the top of his voice. It was only when he heard movement from inside that he finally cut short his assault and turned his face towards the squat building’s withered edifice. The door opened wonkily. Only one iron hinge remained to keep it from collapsing entirely. He saw a glint of something shiny, and then his teacher’s chiselled face emerged from the shadows, as grim and unemotional as ever. Save for the intensity in his eyes. They were eyes that already knew what he had come for and in all likelihood what the outcome would be.
“You are early, prince,” said the nag. “Two years so at the very best, I should judge.”
“Teach me no more, bondspony,” replied Peacemaker hoarsely. “Today, it is I who shall teach you.”
His teacher let out a sigh. “It’s too bad,” he said. “You have been a most promising pupil, the best since your father. I thought you might have the makings of the next Light Lord, but carry on down this path and you will leave broken and blinded.”
Peacemaker felt a twinge in his nerves, but he did not back down. He was very good at maintaining his watch-me face. His teacher growled thoughtfully. “You even give me that same look as he did. Is that your reason, boy?” he asked. “Do you wish to follow his example by challenging me at so young an age? He was king of all Gallowad, you realise, and twice the stallion you are. Why not wait half again as long?”
Peacemaker said nothing.
“No reply? Very well. Let it be so. The gathering field. One hour from now.”
“Will you bring your staff?” Peacemaker asked.
“I always have,” replied the teacher. “What weapon do you choose?”
“That is my business,” said Peacemaker.
The teacher chuckled. It was bitter and humourless. “Wise enough to begin, my prince,” he admitted, and turned around to go back inside. After two steps, he stopped, glanced back over his shoulder and asked, “Have you considered the very strong possibility that you will never see your friends or your home ever again?”
“I know what exile means, teacher, and my home died in the battle at Jericob Hill,” Peacemaker replied. “I will fight you for the right to see a new one built on its ruins.”
“An empire rising like a phoenix,” his teacher said with a snort. “Admirable. Overreaching. Go now, and meditate on your father’s face. Much good will it do you.”
They parted ways as master and student for the final time. Aside from the coveted guns, there existed two remnants upon which Peacemaker would meditate. One was his father’s seat in the throne room of Gallowad Castle. It had been forged from the same blued metal as the weapons and cushioned with red. There was a hollow in the head of the seat’s frame, which had once held a magnificent white gemstone found deep in the mines. The jewel was gone now, and the fine fabric of the cushions was charred black. The other item was a photograph of the king and queen together, which Peacemaker placed on the seat. He knelt before the makeshift shrine, and recited the oath of the gun-ponies.
“I do not aim with my hoof,” he said, beginning with the words he would later reverse simply as a means of showing off to an even bigger show-off. The present Peacemaker would think to rectify this gross blasphemy later and cry sai Rainbow’s pardon. “He who aims with his hoof has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hoof. He who shoots with his hoof has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do not kill with my hoof. He who kills with his hoof has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.”
He had looked upon the photograph. Ponies in those days often remarked that he was the spit of his sire, and by extension that of Gunmetal the Grey himself. Although Peacemaker was not old enough to grow his moustache or develop the deep grooves in his face, they did share the same coat, the same mane and tail as dark as the abyss, and the same ghostly blue eyes. His features were gentler, like the beautiful mare standing beside the king.
“Mother,” he whispered softly.
He could recall her perfume, for there has never been a more powerful sense for memory than smell, and her sweet voice from when she sang to him when he was tiny. The children of gun-ponies were expected to brave the dark themselves and so he never saw her at night, but naptimes were a different matter entirely. She always came to him then so she could read or sing him to his rest. His favourite had been the Baby-Bunting Rhyme, because even when he knew better there was a part of him that insisted she had come up with it especially for him.
“Baby-bunting, darling one, Now another day is done, May your dreams be sweet and merry, May you dream of fields and berries. Baby-bunting, baby-dear, Baby, bring your berries here. Chussit, chissit, chassit! Bring enough to fill your basket.”
The flood of childhood images broke through, from looking up at her smiling face from his cradle to looking down at her as her coffin was lowered into the ground when he was nine years of age. His father’s heart had broken that day, and so had his own. Peacemaker bowed his head and let his tears form tiny stains on the floor. There was a brief moment when the Peacemaker who was preparing for his trial, the Peacemaker who had been at the funeral, and the Peacemaker who lived to remember all this were united.
He had thought of saying something more, but no words came to him. Instead, he closed his eyes and returned to chanting his mantra. “I do not aim with my hoof, he who aims with his hoof has forgotten the face of his father…”
Sunrise came, spilling pale beams through the broken windows of the castle. He went to the gathering field, and found his classmates waiting for him. They were all shuddering in the morning cold but unwilling to miss the momentous duel that was to come. Blotch and one of the younger colts were taking note of the fat, dark clouds swirling above their heads.
“Storm coming,” said the younger colt. “That’s an omen.”
“I see a worse one,” replied Blotch in a berating tone. He turned to Peacemaker. “Your weapon, Peace! You’ve forgotten your blasted weapon!”
Peacemaker said nothing in response. They were all giving him odd looks. He had visited the mews again on his way to the field, and now he stood before them wearing the special saddle. Faithful Artemis perched upon it, wings tucked calmly in. She was not wearing her hood, and her eyes gave off a light of confidence and certainty to match her young master’s.
“Is teacher here?” he asked.
“He is here,” answered the nag’s voice. He was descending to the field from his house. Across his back he carried a long, wooden pole with an exotic blade at each end. One was shaped like a crescent, the other a teardrop. Dangling from holes along the inner curve of the former blade were big, metal rings that jingle-jangled ominously with his every hoofbeat. “Have you come here for a serious purpose, boy?”
“I have come for a serious purpose,” said Peacemaker.
“Have you come as an outcast from your father’s house?” asked his teacher. Just like hearths and mothers, there were no houses anymore, but this was a sacred exchange and the honour of the gun-pony line demanded it be maintained.
“I have so come,” said Peacemaker, “and will remain so unless I best you.”
“Have you come with your chosen weapon?”
“I have.”
“What is your weapon?”
“My weapon is Artemis.”
His teacher paused to consider this. The class were silent, confused. Peacemaker and Artemis stood their ground and ignored them. Finally, the grim stallion grunted and said, “This is your last chance to cry off, foal.”
“And this is your last chance to surrender, old nag,” said Peacemaker.
His teacher sneered. “So then have you at me, boy? In whose name?”
Peacemaker held up his head proudly as he made his declaration, “In the name of my father, Peacekeeper. In the name of Gunmetal the Grey, first Light Lord of Gallowad. In the names of all my ancestors who ruled between them.”
“Come then, you poor damned thing,” said his teacher, who reared up on his hind legs and twirled his stick between his forelimbs. He lowered the teardrop blade on his opponent. Suddenly, thunder clapped overhead, a flash of lightning filled the sky, and the two warriors charged. The teacher bellowed his challenge. He was a creature to be feared, for when it came to combat he knew everything that had ever been.
Peacemaker knew this. A sword, spear, bow or club would have been useless. He was adamant to see a new Gallowad rise, and he would begin this by earning his guns through means which were also new. He loosed the hawk with a command, “At him, Artemis!” The bird spread her powerful wings and streaked towards his teacher with a screech, and Peacemaker saw comprehension dawning in those malicious old eyes. Artemis filled his vision, her flapping feathers boxed his ears and her razor-sharp talons carved hot, scarlet lines down his face.
“Hai, Peacemaker!” the spectators cried. “First blood! First blood to our bosom!”
He hurled himself forward without hesitation, tackling his teacher roughly to the ground. Artemis flew upwards and the staff bounced away, leaving the two opponents to wrestle in the grass. The frozen blades erupted in a thousand tiny, crystalline supernovas around them, scattering white fragments across their respective fields of vision. A forehoof struck Peacemaker across the face and he rolled away. Teacher regained the staff and straddled the colt’s stomach, ready to plunge the flat of the crescent end down on his head like a mallet. Peacemaker had caught glimpses of the damage Artemis had done, but now he saw it clearly. The right eye was closed, permanently blinded beneath its scarred and weeping lid.
“Artemis!” cried Peacemaker. The hawk swooped down to protect her master, battering and scratching and shrieking as she had done before. Once more, the staff became dislodged. Another flash of lightning, and finally Artemis went down, trampled underhoof. The teacher rose shakily, never taking his good eye off the bird’s remains. She had bitten one of his ears off. The pale lump of flesh was still clamped in her beak.
“You were a fierce trim, sai hawk,” he panted, “but now you’re done!”
“So are you,” said Peacemaker. Teacher looked up, and saw the teardrop end of his own stick primed on him. The boy had escaped him during the skirmish and turned the fight in his favour by picking up the one remaining weapon on the field. It was all so efficient, so calculated, that it genuinely surprised him.
“Yield,” said Peacemaker.
“Never,” his teacher said, and spat blood into the grass.
Peacemaker swung the staff and struck him hard against the temple with the shaft. “Artemis took your eye and your ear,” he said. “Yield, or I’ll finish the job she started!”
The storm brewed unnaturally dark, as if sympathetic to the tide of the battle. The thunder grew so loud that the voices of the competitors could barely be heard. Lightning assaulted the gathering field, burning the grass and forcing the onlookers to scatter. The ground beneath the opponents rumbled, and then the side Peacemaker was on began to slither quickly downwards. Trees toppled, breaking their trunks against each other and filling the air with splinters. Artemis disappeared under the earth, and Peacemaker thought he would join her before too long. Soil, grass and stone flowed around him. He saw the root of a dead tree sticking out of the slide and clamped his teeth around it.
“The stick, boy!”
Peacemaker looked up. He had an impulse to gasp, but doing so would make him release the root. His teacher had found a tree that was tilted but not entirely dislodged. He had clambered up it and was now hanging from a branch by his hind legs.
“Hold the stick and give me the end, for your father’s sake! Let me pull you up!”
The tree to which Peacemaker’s root was attached became unstable and began to slither into the tumbling dirt. He gingerly passed the crescent end up while simultaneously holding on to the shaft below the teardrop. Teacher hooked his forelimbs around the blunt inner curve and pulled with all his strength, but the fight had sapped much of it from him and he quickly began to lose the tug-o’-war he was playing with the ground.
“You’ll kill us both if you hold on!” cried Peacemaker, and now the only thing preventing him from being swept away was the staff. “Just tell me before I go! Did I finish our fight!? Will I die a gun-pony!?”
“Nay!” his teacher roared back. “If you want to find out, then you’ll just have to live! Now quit flapping your stupid lips and climb before the pain in my head makes me lose all my strength!”
Peacemaker’s mouth curled into a bitter grimace. Even now he was denied acknowledgement for his victory. Fine, then, he thought, I’ll climb just to spite you! So you’ll have to admit who won our duel! He felt the slightest of lapses in the force coming down around him, and started pulling himself along the length of the staff. His teacher pulled at the same time, and when he was in mid-air, he threw his weight forward and swung onto the edge of what was left of the gathering field. Blotch, who had returned to help douse the flames crackling all about them, had seen his friend and raced over in time to steady Peacemaker as he landed. Together they helped their injured teacher down from his branch just as its tree also fell into the avalanche. The nag dropped to his knees in the grass, raking air into his lungs.
The bizarre storm changed again, morphing like a caterpillar from thunder and lightning to snow. Teacher and Peacemaker turned their eyes skyward as the frozen drops of water washed away the blood on their faces and extinguished the numerous small fires. They died hissing with quiet despair at the clouds.
“At least this was more exciting than the end of your father’s trial,” said the nag in a tired, breathless voice, and they laughed hysterically at that. “You had me dead to rights, and I would forget my father’s face to let an act of divines mar that.”
“Then…?” Peacemaker began to ask, but let the sentence hang.
“I yield, gun-pony. I yield smiling,” said his teacher. “You have today remembered the face of your father and all those who came before him. Two years younger than he, who was the youngest. What a wonder you have done.”
Peacemaker fought down the urge to voice his excitement in the most exuberant manner possible. “Take him inside the castle, Blotch,” he said. “Get him warm and use what we have to bind up his head. Make him some stew.”
“I will,” said Blotch. “Will you come with us?”
“Soon, old friend,” said Peacemaker, “but first, I’m going to my father’s vault. I’ll get my guns, and fire a shot to salute my hawk.”
“You’ll need this,” said his teacher, and produced a large key on a loop of cord. “The hawk was a fine weapon. How long did it take you to train her?”
“I did not train Artemis,” replied Peacemaker. He took the key. “I befriended her.”
XXX
“I befriended her,” Peacemaker whispered. He opened his eyes, and he was back inside the subterranean vault. His guns and belt were still absent. He sighed. It was not the hawk that was his weapon, but his friendship with her. She had been willing to give herself to help him, and this thought made him realise that, had his teacher let him go as he commanded, then he would only have dishonoured her sacrifice. His teacher must have known that was the case, otherwise why would he have fought through the searing agony he was in to save the one who had caused it?
He had been selfish. He had spurred himself on with spite, and he had equated purpose with personal gain. He could have easily wound up just like the sheriff who had seen him locked up, had he not been lured from that path. The only difference was that he had won, been able to let the legend go before him and learn from the training which was to come and still ongoing even today. If things had turned out differently and he had lost the duel, he might have taken the humiliation of the loss with him into exile, where it would fester and rot away his soul until the only thing left was a sucking, destroying vortex. And Ramrod’s gang might have one more to its number, he thought.
The vault door opened, and two figures in black outfits and rusty red gorgets entered. One of them was carrying his belt across his back. The guns were in the holsters.
“Morning, chief,” said the first one. “We’re breaking you out.”
Rarity had gone out of her mind entertaining the idea of moving the stage for the Summer Sun Celebration to somewhere else, which meant undoing all the glorious work they had carried out already. Rarity was diligent when she was in her element, sure enough, but she looked at each of her creations like a doting mother, so she could only be pushed so far when her vision was compromised. Bow Sansy distinctly remembered several incidents where Rarity had broken down and locked herself away in her bedroom like a princess in a tower. Usually these sulking periods lasted a few hours and she could be coaxed out, but it was not unheard of for her to retreat for days on end. Given the scale and significance of their current project, Bow predicted that should Rarity be allowed to be alone with her thoughts, nopony would see her for weeks.
Bow had opted to put her hoof down. “Listen, honeychild,” she had said both kindly and firmly, “we are too good at what we do to give up what we’ve started. The ponies of this town want this dusty old hall turned into a glitter palace for the Summer Sun Celebration, and by golly that’s just what they’re gonna get! This is the most important day in the history of Ponyville, and it’s up to the girls from Carousel Boutique to make sure it looks the part!”
Rarity had looked uncertain for a moment, and then her eyes lit up. “Yes, you’re right!” she had exclaimed, nodding her head and laughing in that haughty way of hers. “Surrender, moi? What was I thinking! That’s ridiculous! Yellow just doesn’t go with my colouring! It’s so…unfashionable! Come along now, Bow, we’ve work to do!”
Her exuberance was a touch more extreme than the reaction Bow had been aiming for, but at least the seamstress was happy again. They had worked non-stop throughout that morning with such renewed vigour that one would think they were finished ahead of schedule, but Rarity was an artist at heart and no artist was ever truly satisfied. She would always find something that needed to be added or taken away, and parts of the town hall interior would undergo several dizzying transformations in a matter of minutes. In her present state of mind, Rarity did not see mistakes, only opportunities. More than once Bow had to stop whatever she was working on to watch in awe the mistress at her craft.
It was a glimpse of something in the corner of her vision that drew her back to reality. She descended to the floor of the reception area in time to see two guardsponies in grey uniforms and peaked caps. These they wore angled, so that they obscured their eyes from onlookers. They walked in perfect tandem, and one was making a remark to the other about the way Rarity’s posterior wiggled as she ascended the stepladder she was using. Bow did not particularly approve, although a few remarks were no cause for concern, especially since Rarity did have a wiggle. What did concern her was that she had no idea who these guards were.
“Excuse me, you pair—?” she began.
“The mayor called us in to keep a check on the prisoner, ma’am,” one of the guardsponies interrupted her. “You remember the dangerous arsonist sleeping right under the floorboards. I’m sure somepony must’ve mentioned it to you.” His voice had an audible sting behind it, and Bow Sansy felt at once both insulted and very stupid.
She remembered, all right. The disaster that had destroyed the sheriff’s office rattled her as much as anypony else. Even more upsetting was the identity of the supposed culprit; after all, just the day before he had been right inside their place of work, and she and Rarity had transformed him from a scruffy desert rat into a delectable young specimen of stallionhood. Bow Sansy did not rate herself highly as a judge of one’s character, that would be presumptuous and arrogant, but he was not a criminal. There was something in the frosty glow of those eyes, something that was not evil.
“Of course,” she said, “but please be delicate about it. The town’s depending on this place for—”
“We’ll be as delicate as we can, so we will,” the same guard interrupted her again. His mate snickered, and that sent a shudder through her for some reason. Now she noticed a slight bulge beneath that one’s uniform. “Pardon us.” They excused themselves before she had a chance to respond.
Bow Sansy watched them go through a dark door at the very back of the room, tucked away so it was almost impossible to notice. The wood was grotty and in dire need of replacing, and the handle scratched all to blazes. Somepony had carved out graffiti in its surface, but it was worn and gouged into senseless scar tissue. She and Rarity could not fathom why it had been left in this sorry state and had decided it best to simply cover it up before the ceremony. She had initially taken it to be a supply closet of some kind, but it was in truth the entranceway to the subterranean storage level which had been converted into a temporary cell. Just before it slammed behind the two guards, she spied a stone stairway going down into the earth.
How many hours had that poor boy been down there in the dark now?
How long had it been since he had been given any food?
“Rarity, honey,” she called to her partner, “I’m going to make a Studbucks run. I won’t be long.”
“That’s fine,” the unicorn replied without taking her eyes off what she was doing. “I believe I’ve got this arrangement just about right. Ooh! Could you be a dear and get mine with extra cream and one of those luxury paninis? Merci mille fois!”
XXX
“Morning, chief. We’re breaking you out.”
Peacemaker looked up at the two black-clothed figures. There was a lengthy pause, and then he replied, “I am no chief of yours.” He got up on his hooves and fixed his eyes on the speaker. “You were at the library last night. You and one other.”
“Then you know it would be best not to argue with us,” said the second figure, the one with his belt draped across his back. The guns were aglow despite the low light of the room, silently howling inside Peacemaker’s head to be returned to their true wielder. What was there to stop him from simply tackling these idiots and snatching them away?
“I can tell what you’re thinking,” said the first figure suddenly. Peacemaker saw the corners of his mouth turn up beneath his hood. “It’s not a very good idea. We may be the only two you can see, but there’s a powerful sorceress watching over us even as we speak. If you don’t cooperate, there may be consequences.” The sign on his gorget – a flaming eye – seemed to shimmer in affirmation.
“Don’t threaten me, cully,” said Peacemaker. His voice was hard and edged with steel, the voice of an older pony. It made the two intruders flinch, which was incredibly satisfying. “You endangered the lives of the ones in the library. Far as I’m concerned, you’re both already dead.”
“We shall see,” said the first figure snidely. “Now come.”
They ushered him out of the storage room-cum-prison cell and down the gloomy hallway. It was narrow, so they had to walk in single file, with Peacemaker sandwiched between the two intruders. The figure carrying his belt brought up the rear while his colleague, whose demeanour indicated he was the more dominant one, took the lead. A warm breeze blew over them from up ahead, making the trip through the cold passageway a little more bearable.
“Just explain one thing to me, sai,” said Peacemaker. “What’s this all in aid of? I am new to this town. I know nopony in these here parts.”
“Enough of ’em know you, though, gun-pony,” said the figure in the rear. The one in front grunted disapproval, but his colleague continued on, “Know you for a dangerous trim. Far South, he has seen your ilk very well. Thought you was all dead, save ol’ Ramrod.”
“There’s really a Gone Far South?” Peacemaker asked. He remembered the name as the one the sheriff had accused of him of working for. Ramrod had made a real show of that one after the fire. He still had no idea who this pony was, but the name had struck enough of a chord with the populace to prevent them from listening to his defence. “I thought it was Sheriff Ramrod you answered to?”
“Sure enough it’s both,” said the figure. “Ramrod intends to see you in the ground ’fore you can get in the way, boy, but all serve the Red Daddy in the end.”
“Fancies himself your father, does he? And Ramrod’s? He must have been a busy old husk one time, I’ll warrant,” Peacemaker sniped. “And what is there in Ponyville that your Red Daddy could want? A simple town like this has much to value, true, but only to its citizens or to common harriers, and no harrier I’ve ever met called on sorceresses. Mercenary magicks demand a fine bit, and they’re all too stingy to part with it.”
“Met many harriers then, have you?” the figure in the back sneered. “I’ll bet you’ve wandered the wastes for many a year, dispensing justice against us sinners wherever you go, being judge and executioner, like the gun-ponies what came ’afore. I’ll bet your hooves are stained red with the blood of your enemies, little warrior.” He laughed. It was a guttural, unpleasant sound.
“Not in so many words, I fear, but I have met enough, fat thief,” said Peacemaker curtly. The laughter cut off with a dumb grunt, followed by an irritated growl. The insulted intruder may have been about to say something regrettable, but his partner spoke first.
“Stop,” he said, and the line came to a halt. “Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?” the figure in the rear asked.
“That breeze.”
“What about it?”
“You don’t think it’s strange?” replied the first, and his companions both heard the tension in his voice mounting. “When we came down here, we closed the door behind us. And there’s one other thing.” A pause. “I’ve been hearing four sets of hooves.”
A light came on, although Peacemaker could not discern its origin, and he saw that standing before them, with the stairs a short distance behind her, was Bow Sansy. She dropped the tray she had been balancing between her teeth, spilling coffee and a kind of food the gun-pony thought of as a popkin all over the stone floor.
“You think she heard us?” asked the figure in the rear.
“That generally happens when you gossip with the assignment, fathead,” replied the one in front. A piercing whine split the air, and little motes of light swirled around the eye on his gorget. “You’re real lucky, pegasus. You’ll meet your end nice and easy.” Bow Sansy’s own eyes widened and she slowly began to back away on trembling legs. There was no room for her to fly and the way she held her wings close to her body made her seem small and vulnerable. Peacemaker realised that if ever there was a time for action, then it was now. He would save her and himself, and prove that the doubts which he had tortured himself with over the past few hours were wrong.
“GET DOWN, BOW SANSY!” Peacemaker roared, and he bucked as hard as he could, driving both his hind hooves into the chest of the figure at the rear. The figure went down with a choked cry and the belt flew up into the air, landing across Peacemaker’s back and locking itself in place as if it had a mind of its own. The first figure reacted to the sudden chaos by turning, but by then the gun-pony was already rearing up and drawing one of the blued metal totems into his grasp. A bullet ripped free of the barrel and struck the sign of the eye. Just at the same time a bubble of green light was growing out of the engraved pupil, the flickering motes orbiting it like a cluster of moons, and when the gorget shattered, so too did the bubble.
XXX
Sister Fluttershy made her way into Ponyville to shop for a new flower vase. Her rabbit, Angel, had kicked the old one off her mantelpiece and shattered it into at least a dozen fragments. She would have been within her rights to feel angry, but it was said her ability to forgive was almost supernatural. Although not true, the sentiment was entirely understandable. She had stood amid the debris, water soaking the fur on her fetlocks, and felt relief that the only damage caused had been to the vase and not her mischievous pet.
“No harm done,” she had said, then cleaned up the mess and went back to her household chores. She had bagged the pieces rather than thrown them away. The vase was made from clay and she knew a potter who would never turn down some spare material that could be softened back to its purer form for future use. Still, the mantelpiece seemed incomplete without the vase, and so she decided to push her usual shopping day forward and pick up a new one at the same time. That was the plan anyway.
When she saw the wreckage of the sheriff’s office, she dropped her basket and covered her mouth with her forehooves. “Oh, my goodness!” she said to nopony in particular. “What happened?”
“You didn’t hear?” replied an earth pony she was not familiar with. “It’s that guy Peacemaker. Sheriff says he’s really working for the outlaw prince, Gone Far South.”
“But that simply can’t be!” Fluttershy protested.
“Why, do you know him?” asked the earth pony incredulously.
“Well, no, not really,” Fluttershy admitted, deflating.
The earth pony put a hoof against her shoulder. “Take my advice, Sister,” he told her in a matter-of-fact way, “you ought to be careful before you get mixed up with that sort. Somepony as gentle as you, why, they’d eat you up for breakfast, and they’d do it smiling.” He picked up her basket and held it out to her.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, accepting it. She felt an urge to get away from him. Whether it was something about his posture or just the way he nonchalantly described the horrific details, she could not tell. She just needed to put space between her and him as quickly as she could.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind, when he was gone. Fluttershy looked all around her. There were quite a few ponies out that day, even if they were keeping their distance, and he seemed to have vanished completely into the crowd. She tried to pick him out when she realised she could not recall what he looked like. Not the colour of his coat or even his mark. The memory of their meeting seemed to just disintegrate from her mind, leaving her feeling rather foolish and even more disturbed.
“Fluttershy?”
Fluttershy jumped with a start, but it was only Twilight Sparkle and her baby dragon. She offered a meek greeting.
“I take it you heard about this disaster,” said Twilight, gesturing toward the ruins.
Fluttershy thought she should nod. After all she had heard about it, but could not remember where or who from. She then considered shaking her head, because how could she trust an idea that might not have any real foundation? It could be that she had simply been intimidated by the grim, soft-spoken Peacemaker and made the association between him and the fire by herself, which she thought did not seem like her at all. Lying would be wrong, not to mention pointless, so in the end she opted not to move her head at all.
Her eyes must have reflected her confusion however, because Twilight told her anyway, or at least what she could tell. Twilight and Spike had both been asleep when it all started, but they had been awoken by the smell of burning and the sound of raised voices. The building had been totally ablaze by then, but thankfully there had been no fatalities. Twilight also told her that they had just been to the hospital to visit Jack-a-Nape, who was apparently recovering just fine.
“I’m glad nopony was hurt,” said Fluttershy, “but what’ll happen to Peacemaker?”
“Well, the plan is to see if we can help put together a case to prove his innocence,” said Twilight, “but we need to get his side of the story first. That’s where we were going now.”
“I sure hope you’re right,” said Fluttershy, then she smiled. “I’m sure you are. I mean, you two must know him really well, right? You were together all of yesterday, weren’t you?”
That seemed to give Twilight reason to pause, and Fluttershy felt her smile droop.
“Oh, dear,” she mumbled.
“Peacemaker’s cool, Fluttershy,” Spike chirped. “Once we find out what really happened from him, I bet it’ll all make sense and we can smooth this whole nasty incident out.” He snapped his claws for emphasis. “Just like that.”
There was a cataclysmic bang. The front doors of the town hall flew off their hinges as green-grey smoke whooshed out in a thick, rolling wave that blanketed the ground for several feet. Any nearby ponies darted away from it, gasping and gawking. Others came closer to investigate what had occurred for themselves, but wisely chose to keep about a yard’s length between themselves and the bizarre, glowing cloud.
“Did I do that?” asked Spike, staring at his claw-tips in amazement.
A shape staggered out of the town hall, and as it pushed through the smoke, they could all see Rarity and Peacemaker carrying Bow Sansy between them. Three pegasi whooshed in from above, circling the town hall until the resultant wind tunnel carried the cloud up and dissipated it across the heavens, where it was swallowed up by the blue morning. The three of them, now clearly visible as Rainbow Dash, Thunderlane and Cloudchaser, alighted on a nearby rooftop and watched the scene with nervous interest like birds of prey.
Bow Sansy was set down on the ground, and the ponies immediately crowded closer, bombarding them with questions and hurling insinuations, most if not all of which were aimed at Peacemaker. Twilight and Fluttershy did their best to appeal for calm, but it was nigh impossible to be heard over the chaos.
“All right, ya’ll! That’s enough!” a new voice hollered. “Give ’em some breathin’ space, for cryin’ out loud!” The voice was Applejack’s, and she was presently walking side-by-side with Big McIntosh. The behemoth stallion’s bulk forced the crowd to part like water before the prow of a ship, allowing the siblings to come within reasonable range.
Peacemaker stared at her silently, unblinking. “Sai Applejack—” he started.
“Later,” she said, with a hint of a smile. “I’m glad that you’re okay. We were in town resupplyin’ when we heard the explosion an’ rushed right on over.”
“Yup,” Big McIntosh agreed.
“What happened in there?” asked Twilight, looking at Peacemaker.
“There’s more going on than we realise, sai,” the gun-pony explained, “but this is not the place to explain.” He knelt down beside Bow and rested a hoof gently on her shoulder. “Bow Sansy, do you hear me? Are you all right?”
The pegasus coughed, and a wisp of green-grey mist rolled off her tongue and broke apart on the ground. She gingerly opened her eyes, which were sore and watering, and turned to look up at him.
“I think I’m fine,” she said. “You saved my life.” Peacemaker breathed a sigh of relief, then helped her up on her hooves. Rarity wrapped her forelegs around the pegasus in a tight hug, then gratefully did the same to the gun-pony. “What about the two others?” Bow asked. “The ones who tried to kill us, aren’t they still in there?”
A pulse of worried murmurs coursed through those who had heard it, quickly meeting the ears of the ones who were standing further back.
“Looks like the smoke out here’s all cleared,” said Twilight.
“YOU’RE WELCOME!” Rainbow Dash called down from her perch.
“But there might still be some floating around inside,” Twilight finished. “We should send somepony in to retrieve the two—”
“They both disappeared the moment I shot off the siguls they were wearing,” said Peacemaker. “Don’t ask me how. One second they were there, the next they were gone.”
“That’s a load a’ bull!” someone shouted.
“Yeah! What’d you do to them!?” crowed another.
“Who said that!?” Applejack demanded. “Come on! You’re brave enough when there’s a nice cosy crowd to hide ya, you’re brave enough to say it face-to-face!”
Big McIntosh nudged her. “Nope,” he mumbled, shaking his great head. Applejack understood that he was telling her not to rise to it, but she was mad now. She kicked the dirt with a forehoof in frustration.
The crowd started to recede once again, and the gathered group felt a crackle in the air, as if a storm were building rapidly on the horizon. The shape of Sheriff Ramrod approached, with the smaller, primmer visage of the town’s elected official close behind. Mayor Mare was so puny beside him that it was almost comical, but those who knew better understood that there was nothing humorous to be said about the law-pony. Peacemaker eyed the belt hanging around his middle. Stuffed into the holsters were guns. Huge, nasty-looking ones crafted out of dark metal that rippled with blue and purple patterns where the sunlight hit them. The grips were red and smelled like cedar.
“An’ jus’ what’s goin’ on here?” Ramrod asked, feigning confusion. He lowered his gaze on Peacemaker, and for a split-second the gun-pony registered a glint of surprise there. Of course Ramrod must have been expecting him to be accompanied by his two visitors. It would look so incriminating, the courageous sheriff catching the agent of Gone Far South escaping with the help of his criminal partners. It would look so good for him too.
The mayor gasped. “How did you escape your cell?” she demanded, as if his presence were a personal affront to her.
“I didn’t escape,” said Peacemaker. “I was invited out. Seemed rude not to answer.”
“Somepony seize that outlaw this instant!” the mayor cried. “Sheriff, can we add unabashed cheek to the list of charges?”
“No need for that, ma’am,” said Ramrod. “Lockin’ him up’s just invited more trouble, we all see that. Reckon we’ll settle this the ol’-fashioned way instead.”
“You mean a duel,” said Peacemaker. “Interesting. Single shots at twenty paces? That’s the way it always used to be.”
“Nay,” said Ramrod. “Double. And we’ll make it ten paces.”
“Were those the conditions when you killed your father with his own guns and ran away?” asked Peacemaker, and the crowd uttered a horrified sound at this statement. Behind his handlebar moustache, Ramrod’s teeth clenched together.
“Peacemaker, this isn’t necessary,” said Twilight. “Bow Sansy was in there with you. Nopony here has reason to disbelieve her if she tells them what happened.”
“I cry your pardon, but our ideas of what is necessary differ, sai,” Peacemaker replied.
“Oh, dear,” mumbled the mayor. “Sheriff, this seems just a touch extreme.
“The young cully’s right, ma’am,” said Ramrod, and snorted derisively. “Let me lay down the word a’ the law an’ put him outta our collective misery.”
“Time for talk’s done,” said Peacemaker.
“Aye. So it is,” Ramrod agreed.
And so there was no more talk, and no more arguing. The two gunslingers faced each other ten paces apart in the middle of Ponyville’s Main Street. All was silent in the town, which until that day had known little of terror or bloodshed. Battle had descended on Ponyville. The citizens watched from windows, doorways, alleys and rooftops, but nopony remained on the dusty street itself. That place had become sacred.
None could rightly explain why they allowed this to happen. Perhaps it was that the gun-ponies exuded a natural aura of authority, or that they could sense there really was no alternative. Whatever the reasoning behind it may have been, what followed was a performance unlike anything they had seen before, and many would never see again.
To the onlookers, an eternity seemed to pass during which the fighters were completely motionless, but they were wrong. Each was tense, his muscles bunched tight, his vision as sharp and penetrating as a shard of glass. They were watching for the slightest twitch or tell-tale sign of hesitation. One was determined to see his opponent dead, the other was bent on proving himself, and neither of them would or could afford to compromise. Mouths thinned to lipless scars. Eyes narrowed to shining slits. Forelegs flexed, ready to draw.
Ramrod moved.
“PEACEMAKER!” Applejack cried out.
On that day in Ponyville, everypony heard two shots ring out.
Ramrod reared up and drew both weapons. The triggers twanged, and the guns burst apart. Ramrod howled in agony as molten slag burnt the fur from his fetlocks and shards of metal dug into his skin. The heat blackened the tips of his silver moustache and spotted his face and mane with dozens of tiny burns. He fell to the ground, cursing and spitting.
Peacemaker had been a split-second too fast for him. He had risen into position and cleared leather in a single fluid motion, pulled the triggers, and his bullets had plugged his opponent’s barrels just as the hammers on Ramrod’s weapons clicked. He fired a third shot, taking the hat from the old stallion’s head, then a fourth that stuck in his sheriff’s badge, which split down the middle and clattered into the dirt. Peacemaker blew tails of white smoke from his gun, then twirled them, holstered them and dropped back down to stand to all fours.
He walked slowly and deliberately towards Ramrod, and when he was close enough to be heard, he said in a quiet, stern voice, “This is what sets me apart from any outlaw, and from you. I am a lord who is merciful. On this day I have remembered the face of my father…while you have forgotten yours.”
Ramrod, former elected sheriff of Ponyville, fled.
Peacemaker turned to face the stunned audience of citizens. “You were ready to believe his words before without question!” he cried. “Because he was your sheriff, and when the sheriff talks, you all pin your ears back and listen! That’s fine, that’s all fair.” He lightly kicked one of the split badge pieces, and his expression turned fierce. “Now I’m talking, so this time you’ll listen to me! I’ve beaten your sheriff and chased him out! He ran because I was strong enough to beat him without taking his life! I don’t know what he did to make you all follow him so fervently, but I want you to stop and think, just for one second, that that was the pony you all depended on to stand up for law and order in this town! A full grown stallion, who ran away because he was beaten by a colt, who did not run even as we stood in the light of that blaze!”
“That doesn’t prove anything!” some fool was brave enough to cry. Applejack would swear it was one of those who had called them out before. “How’re we supposed to know what you did or didn’t do last night?”
“Try asking Jack-a-Nape!” Peacemaker retorted. “He’s in hospital right now, recovering from the fire I pulled him out of! Or ask Bow Sansy, she’s right there among you! Who here did not see sai Rarity and I haul her from the smoke before it could suffocate all three of us?”
Mutters, voices expressing points to both camps. Peacemaker felt the corner of one eye twitch. Something fell out from between two buildings behind him, wrapped up in an ash-coloured cloak. Looming over it was Rainbow Dash, whom both Thunderlane and Cloudchaser only then realised was no longer standing between them on their roof. The cyan pegasus pulled back the fallen shape’s hood to reveal the unconscious face of Deputy Hammer.
“Check out who I found skulking in the dark,” said Rainbow Dash. “This slug was firing up one wicked-looking spell just now. Aimed right at your back too, chief. Sheriff must’ve put him there to cover his rump if he lost.”
“But that has to mean he was hopin’ for this duel,” said Applejack. She had walked up beside Peacemaker, and now Fluttershy, Twilight, Spike, Rarity, Bow Sansy and the mayor were all coming out to join her.
“It was a set-up from the very beginning,” said Twilight, and frowned.
The mayor looked at Peacemaker incredulously. He smiled humourlessly and pushed his forehooves out slightly. “This really has been quite an eventful morning,” she said once she was satisfied he would not draw on her, “and I’d like to have avoided this kind of excitement so close to the Summer Sun Celebration.”
Twilight decided it was best not to bring up her own worries regarding the upcoming holiday. Emotions were already running rampant and the last thing anypony needed to hear about was the revival of a thousand-year-old evil from the dawn of civilisation. “If I may offer my thoughts on the subject, ma’am,” she said, “perhaps it would be prudent if you told everypony to just stay focussed on the preparations.”
The mayor wrinkled her snout for a moment, then nodded her head. “Yes, you are correct, Miss Sparkle. As far as they’re concerned, this was all a misunderstanding and it has since been settled. You, Miss Sansy, Mister Peacemaker and I will reconvene at my office in ten minutes. That is if Miss Sansy feels up to it after her ordeal.”
“Really, I’m fine, ma’am,” said Bow pleasantly, “and I’d be happy to help.”
“What about the rest of us?” asked Rarity.
“You heard what Miss Sparkle said,” the mayor replied. “The matter is settled. Just return to whatever it was you were doing before.”
“But if Bow’s going to be at the office, I’ll have to do all the work by myself!” the unicorn protested.
“I’ll help,” Spike piped up with a huge grin and pink love-hearts in his eyes.
Rarity tittered. “Well, aren’t you just the most precious thing?” She rubbed the baby dragon’s head. Twilight resisted the urge to press her own forehoof into her face.
“I’ll ask Miss Dash to put Deputy Hammer somewhere he can’t cause any more trouble,” said the mayor, “and alert the staff at the hospital to keep an eye on Deputy Tongs’s room. Gentlecolt, fillies, I’ll see you in ten minutes.” She tilted her head respectfully to Sister Fluttershy, and then trotted off to address the townsfolk.
The group began to dissipate, with Spike floating through the air after Rarity and Fluttershy saying her sweet goodbyes and drifting away into obscurity. Peacemaker glanced at Applejack, then turned to Bow and Twilight. “May I request that you leave us, just for a moment?” he asked.
Twilight looked at him oddly, but Bow smiled her understanding. The pegasus nudged the unicorn, and they left the two earth ponies be. The mayor did her job well, for soon enough Ponyville had returned to its previous happy flow. It was almost disconcerting how the events of the past ten minutes seemed never to have taken place at all.
They walked together out of the fray to some relative privacy behind a building, where they came to a halt. The branches of an old tree hung over them, casting bars of shadow that brought to mind images one associated with conspiracies, secrets that must only be known to a select few. Applejack had seen old films at the town picture-house, and although that technology had never thrived in Gallowad, Peacemaker could easily conjure such images from beloved old stories told around the hearth. The shadows crackled in their nerves, although the feeling this produced was not of nervousness, in fact it was peculiarly comfortable. They could have stood like that for hours beneath the boughs without needing to say a word, but Peacemaker had to know.
“During the duel,” he said, “you called out my name.”
“Well, course I did,” she replied. “I ain’t never seen a real gunfight ’til today an’, well, I was worried ’bout ya.”
“But you didn’t stop me from going out to fight him. Shouldn’t you have done that instead?”
“Why’re ya interrogatin’ me?” Applejack asked with a snort. “I saw the look in your eyes when ya told Twilight to back off. I reckon me tryin’ to stop ya would only have gotten ya riled up.”
Peacemaker nodded sagely, and bowed his head to her. “I cry your pardon, sai. It was wrong of me to question your intent. You say true and I say thank you.” He straightened up. “One more question?”
“Shoot,” said Applejack. The ire that had been building in her was ebbing, but she was on her guard now.
“You being in town right as this all happens seems kind of a coincidence,” he said.
“Just what’re ya insinuatin’?” Applejack demanded. She was standing closer to him now, her blazing emerald eyes locked on his ghostly blue ones.
“Nothing,” he said, “I’m just wondering, were you coming to check on me?” A voice inside his head prayed that her answer was yes. For a long while she continued to gaze into him, and he found himself returning the gesture, or lack thereof. When she finally nodded, the little voice inside his head whooped with joy.
“Somepony needed to,” said Applejack. “Didn’t know for sure if anypony else was gonna, what with the whole town bein’ so busy. It wasn’t easy to find a good chance to get down here, though…”
Her voice trailed off into another long, enveloping quiet, and the reply he was formulating died on his lips. There was nothing more to be said. Those first kisses were the best in his life, and would never be forgotten, even if the moment was a fleeting one, cut short by a sudden harrumph of disapproval. Big McIntosh had come looking for his sister, and was less than ecstatic at how he found her now.
“I don’t suppose ya can let us finish ’fore ya drag me off home?” Applejack asked. She and Peacemaker were both as red as her sibling’s coat.
By the time Peacemaker’s case was heard by the mayor and the county judge and discussions became less heated, Twilight Sparkle felt her anxiety returning. The Summer Sun Celebration was set for tomorrow, and all the while she had been trying to do her teacher’s bidding, or else make some sense of whatever bizarre feud had driven the sheriff and her bodyguard to bump heads so violently, but all these things did was distract her from what really mattered.
Really, what was a bookworm like her even doing here? She should have been trying to figure out a way to halt the return of Nightmare Moon, not supervising a tiny little frontier whistle-stop like this. She had no experience as a civil custodian, and thought it should have fallen to the mayor and her ponies to sort this out. It was their town, after all, not hers. When she looked across the office at Peacemaker, the protector she had not even wanted, she felt like a stranger, and when she glanced out of the window at the citizens, she felt like an outsider. Spike, the only truly familiar thing Twilight had brought with her, was downstairs helping Rarity, but even though he was close by she was horribly out of her comfort zone. It was only when Mayor Mare spoke up that she realised she had been unconsciously edging towards the door. She mumbled an apology and returned to the pertinent business.
The judge, an impeccably neat and well-to-do Manehattan native appropriately named Lady Justice, was listening with rapt attention to Bow Sansy’s testimony. She did not live in Ponyville herself, but had been called in from a neighbouring town with the intention of passing sentence on Peacemaker after the festivities, when they were safe in the belief that he would remain imprisoned beneath the town hall for the duration. Her expression was entirely unreadable as she took in everything she was told until finally she raised a forehoof, requesting silence.
“It seems to me,” she said with a sigh, “that this case isn’t a case at all. This sheriff of yours failed to present sufficient evidence of this boy’s supposed foul play. Nopony has corroborated his story, and both his eagerness to engage in martial justice and his subsequent running away lead me to question why he was entrusted with such duties as being an enforcer of the law entails in the first place.”
Her eyes drifted to Mayor Mare, who retreated sourly from her unspoken allegation, then returned to Peacemaker and Bow Sansy. “Your stories, however, can be supported. Further investigation will be necessary, particularly in regards to the two disappearing intruders and the third accomplice who may have been with them on the night of the incident, but for the time being, I see no reason for you to remain in custody, Mister Peacemaker.”
“You have my thanks, sai,” said Peacemaker, lowering his head to her.
That seemed to take Lady Justice aback for a moment. She cleared her throat and replied with a polite, “You’re quite welcome.” She shot another withering glance in the mayor’s direction. “Madame Mayor, I advise you to take precautions when the time comes to find a new sheriff, especially if you wish to guarantee your next term in office.”
“Yes, Your Honour,” Mayor Mare grumbled.
“Miss Sparkle,” said the judge, “I apologise that you have been kept from the duties Princess Celestia gave you. Please return to them.”
“At once, Your Honour,” said Twilight with a nod.
“Mister Peacemaker, Miss Sansy, I believe you both have duties of your own to be getting on with. If that is everything, then I’ll say good day to you all.”
Twilight only allowed herself to breathe again once they were back outside. She and Peacemaker thanked Bow Sansy profusely for her help – the gun-pony did his odd bow with one foreleg curled under him and the other stretched out almost flat – before picking up Spike, who was reluctant to leave Rarity’s side. Twilight had shaken her head and simply levitated him out of the door, although impressively his eyes remained fixed in the general direction of Carousel Boutique all the way back to the library. Twilight saw the cordon of safety tape around the ruins of the gaol and lamented the fact this had happened on her watch. A part of her worried that this just might reflect badly on her assessment. Another part countered that this had been beyond her control and that so long as the celebration went ahead as planned then there was no reason for her to fret. This provided her with little comfort.
“So what’s the plan now, Twilight?” asked Spike, having apparently gathered himself.
“I still have the rest of today and tonight to find a solution to the Nightmare Moon problem,” she replied, “so it’s best to use that time accordingly. Maybe there’s something in the library’s occult section.”
“What would you have me do?” asked Peacemaker.
“You just stand guard,” said Twilight. “If you see more trouble coming, make sure to let me know immediately.”
Peacemaker nodded and sat beside the door, lowering the brim of his hat over his eyes. Twilight and Spike went inside, and the unicorn immediately began poring over every relevant-looking old tome, scroll and document she could find on the shelves. Extracts of these she copied and pinned up to a noticeboard on the wall, eventually forming a strange sort of spider’s web of highlighted papers and string. During the afternoon, Spike brought up a plate piled high with sandwiches, when he noticed something missing from the whole mess.
“Gemstones,” he said.
“Excuse me?” Twilight asked from between two tall columns of books.
“Gemstones,” Spike repeated. “When you were looking through this stuff back at the academy in Canterlot, I remember seeing a page with these six gemstones on it. There was a green one, a violet one, an orange one, a really yummy looking blue one, a red one, and one that was kind of a pinky colour.” His forked tongue flicked out and ran over his lips at the thought. “Maybe they’re delicious – I mean, important?”
“That’s it! How could I forget?” exclaimed Twilight, emerging from her hiding space and picking up another scroll. “The story of how the princess imprisoned the witch a thousand years ago mentions a key. Even in magick, every lock requires one. That part seems to be rather obscure in most references for some reason…here we go! Is this the picture you saw?”
She turned the sheet of parchment she was levitating for Spike to see. Inscribed on it was that same golden eight-pointed star with five colourful stones at the top and sides, and one more in the centre.
“That’s the one,” the baby dragon said. “Not exactly as detailed, but definitely the same thing. The stones are even in the same places, with that pinky one in the middle. See it?”
“I see it,” said Twilight. She spread the scroll out on the table in the middle of the room and indicated a complex, cursive scrawl of ink going diagonally across one of the gems. There was a scrawl on each of them, all slightly different but so similar that to a cursory glance they would appear identical. “These names appear to be written in old Equestriform.”
“Can you read Equestriform?” asked Spike.
“In my sleep, underwater and with the lights off,” said Twilight smugly. “Of course I can read Equestriform.” She tapped a hoof-tip over the red gem, located at the topmost point of the star, then each of the others in clockwise turn. “This one reads ‘loyalty.’ This orange one is ‘honesty’ while I think this green one is either ‘charity’ or ‘generosity.’ The bright blue one there is ‘joy’ or ‘laughter’ and that violet one is ‘kindness.’”
“And the one in the middle?” asked Spike.
“That one’s a bit harder to translate,” said Twilight. “In Equestriform, the same characters can be used to refer to ‘soul,’ ‘heaven’ or ‘sorcery.’ Together, the six were mounted on the crown of the first alicorn princess, who called them the Hexadema. That’s what this star is. Without the crown, however, they’re called…” Her voice trailed off and her brow furrowed in concentration.
“Twilight, what’s the matter?” asked Spike.
“The characters above the illustration are ‘ka’ and ‘tet,’ but I don’t know what they mean. They’re from an entirely other language.”
“I don’t get it,” said Spike. “Why would they use two different languages?”
“You know how sometimes we say certain phrases in Cheval even though we’re speaking Equestrian?” asked Twilight.
“Sure I do,” said Spike, “I mean Rarity does it like all the time.”
“Well it’s because those phrases don’t exist in our language,” Twilight explained. “I think that must be the case here as well. Those exact same characters came up when I found the name of the ritual that locked Nightmare Moon away in the first place, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of them then either.”
Before they could speak further, there was a knock at the front door of the library. Twilight looked up in confusion, wondering why Peacemaker had not stopped anypony from coming close while she was working. Reluctant to leave what she was doing for fear of losing her place, she sent Spike downstairs to handle it for her. After a few moments, however, she lost her place anyway because of the sudden rush of noise from the library’s ground floor. After disentangling herself from a small mountain of collapsed books, sheets and scrolls, she hurtled downstairs, and when she saw what awaited her, her jaw fell open.
It had still been late morning when she left the town hall, but the grandfather clock against the wall indicated it was eight o’clock at night. She had delved deeply into her research before, in fact it contributed significantly to her reputation back home, but she even amazed herself with this one. Also, there were ponies. Ponies absolutely everywhere. It looked like at least half of Ponyville had been squeezed into the library, and they were all chattering away happily and, worst of all, loudly. She spotted Peacemaker among them, and made a beeline straight for him.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.
“You said I should alert you in case of trouble,” the gun-pony replied. “I’ve yet to see any.”
“What!?” exclaimed Twilight. “But this—!? Well no, but it’s…and I—!” The sentence she had been trying to form turned into an irritated squawk. “Who in the hay’s responsible for this!?”
The throng parted on her left to reveal a chestnut earth pony with a ruddy mane and tail. He was accompanied by Sister Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash.
“Oh. Hey, Jackie,” said Twilight. “It’s good to see they let you out.”
“Let me? Please! They couldn’t keep me if they wanted to,” Jackie scoffed. “Broke me a few hearts on the way but y’know I just couldn’t be tied down. It ain’t in my nature.”
Rainbow Dash sniggered. “I saw the whole thing from above. This joker got himself escorted out by security ’cause he got fresh with the nurses.”
“There may’ve been some unpleasantness involved, it’s true,” said Jackie with a shrug, “but hey, who cares about the ancient past? It’s our last night before the celebration! I didn’t bring you all here to talk! Let’s get this party started!”
There was a scattering of agreeing cheers, including a noticeably deep and loud, “YEAH!” from somewhere in the midst.
“You did this?” Twilight asked, exasperated. “Why am I not surprised?”
“What can I say? I’m a mover an’ a shaker, doll,” said Jackie. He clapped his forehooves together once and did a little spin. “Me, I can put the bop in the bop-shoo-bop-shoo-bop! The dip in the dip-da-dip-da-dip! I know the score, heck I can feel the beat with my back to the wall! And besides all that, who in their right mind don’t love a real swingin’ party, I ask ya?”
Twilight had lost him about halfway through. If that was Jackie’s attempt at spell-casting, it was the dumbest one she had ever heard. “Where’s Spike?” she asked.
“He’s over there,” said Jackie, gesturing. Twilight looked and saw Spike balanced on the backs of two ponies with a lampshade covering his head. “Spikers really gets into the swing of things, don’tcha think? But, ah, between you an’ me, T.S., he’s kind of a lightweight.”
“Oh, my!” Fluttershy whispered in the closest approximation she could manage to a cry. “Be careful, little dragon!” She darted off to stop him doing anything stupid.
“Why’s the sister here?” asked Peacemaker.
“Yeah, I thought she wasn’t the social type,” Twilight put in.
“Most of the year, yeah,” said Jackie, “but the celebration’s a pretty big deal for those Oriza ponies too. Syncs up with one of their equinoxes or whatever, I think. Not to mention she’s in charge of the music, so she has to be in town anyway. And speaking of music!” He whipped away from her and stood up on both hind legs. “Yo, Vinyl! Get your cute boom-boxin’ little butt out here and lay us down some tunes! Do I sound stupid or am I just havin’ a good time?”
Twilight looked at Peacemaker helplessly. “Who throws a party in a library?” she asked. “Libraries are meant to be quiet.” The gun-pony could only shrug in response.
“Ease up, girl,” said Rainbow Dash, draping a foreleg over her shoulders and leading her through the crowd. Somepony had already set up bowls of punch, snacks and dip on a table. Rainbow poured out two glasses of the sparkling red-orange liquid and set one down in front of Twilight. “Drink up. Wash those worries down the drain.”
Twilight wished it were that simple, but what could be the harm in just one drink? She closed her lips around the end of the straw and took a big gulp. Lava filled her mouth and whooshed out of her ears and nostrils. Her eyes filled with tears and electricity turned her mane and tail to needles. She heard a pony with an accent ask her if she was feeling all right – Applejack? Half of Ponyville really was here! – but the mental image of the library being transformed into the aftermath of a volcanic eruption kept her jaws firmly closed.
Without a word, she flew upstairs like her head was on fire and her rump was catching. The wailing of alarm bells inside her skull was louder even than Rainbow Dash’s laughter.
XXX
It was out by Craggy Canyon that the harriers made camp. They were surrounded on all sides by the all-consuming darkness of the Everfree Forest, and warmed by the pulsating, sickly light from the belly of the canyon itself. Some called such rare and evil phenomena ‘deadlights,’ while others knew it as ‘hellfire,’ but neither term really did justice to the bubbling, eldritch horror that lurked below. The worst reminder of its presence by far was the incurable, sickly-sweet smell of rot and decay that clambered up and over the lip of the canyon like creeping vines. It surprised nopony that the arch-dastard Gone Far South would choose this for his haunting ground. The beast called for blood, and it was said that there never was a more obliging pony to answer it.
All around the cantonment, the assorted scoundrels, cutthroats and rogues sat and waited for the call to action. Some played hooves of watch-me, others dozed or ate stew by the fire at the centre of their ring of tents, and all did well to avert their eyes from the one tent which had been erected just beyond the circle, as much an outsider as the creature meditating within. The piebald unicorn witch, Bindle Punk, hunkered spiderlike in her tiny space, staring into a jagged piece of smoky quartz. The stone was the only illumination, casting its dim glow on jars of poisons, bones and more grotesque besides. Truly, she was all that was evil. The witch’s mouth moved as she watched the shapes in the stone’s flickering surface swim and transform and collapse, quietly chanting her prophetic mantra.
“The stars will aid in her return, And all Equestria shall burn, The Red shall rise, the White shall lose, And Harmony drowns beneath—”
A sudden chorus of raucous laughter and jeers from outside broke her reflections. Bindle Punk brushed a hoof over the quartz, dispelling the light and the images, and emerged into the night. She trotted closer to the fire, where the band had gathered to watch two of their number dragging a struggling shape up the slope towards them. The shape was dropped onto the rocky ground, and Bindle Punk realised who it was. Her mouth jerked into an involuntary sneer.
“Hile to thee again, O Sheriff!” she said gleefully. “Or perhaps I should say ‘former sheriff?’ Thou art changed since our last meeting. Can’t say it’s an improvement, if I’m honest.”
Ramrod looked up at her with huge eyes. The skin of his fetlocks was exposed, scarred and ruddy. His face was freckled with burns and there were tiny black patches all through his mane. He was dirty and dishevelled, his clothes torn, probably after who knew many hours spent absconding through the forest. A particularly nasty wound had cut the mark on his flank down the middle. One look in those bloodless eyes told the witch all she needed to know.
This thing, barely recognisable as Ramrod anymore, had been subjected to the terrors that lived in the darkness. She had of course been watching with great mirth his duel against the boy from afar, and seen for herself how he had been disgraced. Beaten and humiliated that he had failed to extinguish the fire that had been at his back for so many years, he had simply picked a direction and went without a thought. It was much too late for him to do anything by the time understanding had dawned on his poor fool mind. Bindle Punk reached a hoof towards him and he flinched, which was immensely satisfying.
“I fear no pony, witch!” she taunted him in such a perfect rendition of his own voice that it made him start. “Thou wouldst slay the gun-pony and prove thyself better than his kind. I know much of prophecy, dear sheriff, and let me tell thee something for free. I wasn’t really betting on thy chances.”
“What you want we should do with him?” one of the outlaws asked her.
Bindle Punk’s eyes seemed to glow with emerald fire as a terrible thought occurred to her, so terrible in fact that it made her giggle aloud. She turned her gaze in the direction of the canyon, and then back down towards the quivering stallion.
“Dost thou believe death to be the worst of fates?” she asked. “Is that why thou fled thy town, the fear of death?”
Ramrod hesitantly nodded his head.
“Then I shall prove thee wrong,” she said. “Take him, let him drink deep of the deadlights.”
This finally prompted a verbal response from Ramrod. He screamed and begged as he was dragged away to the lip of the canyon, and thrown bodily into its depths. He bounced off the sloping wall four times on the way down, finally landing in a crumpled heap on the earthen floor. Bindle Punk and her harriers gathered to watch, and one even began passing a large bowl of popcorn around.
Ramrod rose to his hooves on trembling legs and had begun to shake the stars out of his brain when he noticed the whistling sound. It was low, like sensing an electrical current in the air, but it seemed to come from every direction at once. A quiet, persistent, uninterruptable noise that stitched itself through the fabric of reality over and over. It made his stomach turn and his tongue dry and his eyes and skin itch. Ramrod could see the light up close now, the way it throbbed to a rhythm, like a heartbeat. He could see it, and as the whistling threaded itself in and around his brain, he could see into it.
First he could only stare, his pupils contracting until they were almost invisible. His jaw hung open and the colour drained from his face, making him appear ancient and sickly. Eventually, he started to scream, and soon after he collapsed into a mound of black and silver jelly.
There followed several moments of silence as the harriers watched the show with baited breath, and then the light spat something out onto the canyon floor. Pale tendrils squirmed out like earthworms, wriggling along the ground towards his paralysed body. One passed over his eyes, and through its translucent surface Ramrod saw the bodies of the witch and the outlaws changed into something else, something that was incomplete and utterly un-pony. All the while, the whistling in his head was warping into a different sound. It was a voice, impossibly deep, and it was beckoning him.
“Come in, Ramrod of Gallowad-that-was…come in and visit. Be at rest. Be at peace. Be at one!”
“The stars will add in her return,” Bindle Punk murmured, eyeing the mark on Ramrod’s flank as the touch of the deadlights began to change it. She looked to the harrier directly to her right and said, “Arrange to have those other two morons, Hammer and Tongs, brought before me. We have only a few hours remaining, but it’ll be better to have all three of them together, methinks.”
“As you command, my queen,” said the harrier.
“Splendid,” said Bindle Punk with a hideous leer. She watched the remains of ex-Sheriff Ramrod convulse and spasm with undisguised enjoyment, and when he finally went still, she cast a spell that dragged him up out of the dirt. The mark on his flank was changed now. The star remained, though it was cut down the centre in two jagged halves, and no longer encircled by the lasso. Now it was backed against a pale blue hexagon, the lower half of which was longer and narrower than the top.
It was the shape of a coffin.
Bindle Punk brushed a hoof-tip across the image. There was an audible hiss, and tiny tails of silver steam rose up from the black surface. “Rise anew,” she cooed, “my Big Coffin Hunter.”
On the eve of the celebration, the ancient princess deigned not to mount her royal chariot. Although her advisors hastened to remind her of the intensive ceremony and protocol such a supreme position as hers demanded, she had responded by giving them all the night off. This had roused responses that ranged from awestruck gratitude to incoherent spluttering. What so many ponies in her service failed to realise was that in spite of her legendary beauty, Celestia was old, far older than enough to be able to make her own decisions. Whenever she reminded them of this, it never seemed to quite sink in all the way and would hit them each time like a rock to the face.
The Summer Sun Celebration occurred on the same day every single year, but this was the millennial, and in its own way that was quite special. Her subjects always worked so hard to prepare for it, so it was only right that all but the volunteers be excused from their obligations. They would all be having their parties, striving to avoid sleep so that none of them would miss the raising of the sun. Many of them would catch up on their missed sleep by dozing away the afternoon in tranquillity, surrounded by friends and the bounty of nature. The princess did not like to think of it as a day to remember her triumph over a demon, but to honour the White and the beauty of harmony. For Celestia, it was an important yearly ritual to strengthen her resolve by reminding herself exactly what she was fighting to protect.
The only escort she took with her were those who wanted to witness the occasion for themselves. She expressly stated that they were not to accompany her as servants, protectors, chariot-pullers or any of that other decorative nonsense. She had led the pegasi that accepted her invitation to the balcony of the tallest tower of Canterlot Castle, and from there propelled herself into the night sky.
It is said in Equestria that to see an alicorn in flight is to see a vision of Elysium, and as her great glorious wings spread open and carried her up, dispersing arcs of tiny, twinkling lights in her wake, nopony would have denied it.
The entourage left the boundaries of Canterlot and crossed into the skies above the lush fields and forests of her domain. The night was peaceful here, and the burning wastelands of the Red seemed many miles away, although the distance was frightfully shorter than that. Celestia opened her wings wider and ascended above the cloud line, where she turned her eyes to the moon. She watched as the dark imperfections on its silver face formed a kind of silhouette profile. A melon slice canyon became a sneering mouth, a crater its single lidless eye, staring madly out into the universe.
A millennium ago, she had put that face there, locked it beneath the oceans of glowing dust. She had hoped the creature had been allowed the mercy of a long hibernation, but that eye, always the eye, told her the truth was so much more horrifying. The Mare in the Moon had been entirely aware during her long imprisonment. Worse still was that the purpose of the coming morning was to ensure she continued her suffering for another millennium.
The Equestrian satellite had a circumference of around ten-thousand kilometres, and if every grain were stained crimson it would not match a fraction of the hatred that must have been coursing through the monster within. If seeing an alicorn in flight was truly a vision of Elysium, then the sight of Nightmare Moon was nothing less than a window into fiery Tartarus itself. The moon was a warning of all the darkness hiding in the universe, and she had made it that way. She gazed sorrowfully into its dark features, and she sang to it.
“Once more I dance this dance alone, And sing of heartache unbeknown, Though what I did was right and true, This fate was never meant for you,
“And now this night has come again, I am reminded how we were blinded, When we were torn by stubbornness and scorn, Left hopeless and forlorn.”
The face in the moon transformed. It became softer, kinder, as if it drawing the image from the princess’s long memory. Whether it was Celestia’s imagination or a vision, she could not tell. Truthfully, it did not matter. The face was black, not like the fearsome black of the unknown, more like the comforting dark behind one’s eyelids before sleep descends, with a mane of twinkling stars and eyes of aquamarine.
“What has become of my best friend? What brought our love to this sad end? I’ve been without you all these years, So incomplete without you here, Try as I may, to look the part.”
The face changed again. This time it was Twilight Sparkle, and behind her was a cluster of shapes Celestia could not entirely discern. More silhouettes. More shadows.
“My poor successor, this night will test her, I have foreseen, that she may hold the key, To set both sisters free.”
Celestia was surprised to realise that, by the time she had finished her lament, she had overshot the town of Ponyville and was cresting the treetops of the great Everfree Forest. Normally she was an excellent navigator, but clearly it had been a long time since she had flown solo. She let out a sound halfway between an exasperated sigh and a chuckle, and began to circle around.
Suddenly, she felt a hefty weight pull down on her left hind leg, and then on her right foreleg. Celestia let out a cry as she was hauled down towards the forest, and all at once she found herself surrounded by a swarm of black, flitting things with eyes of sickly azure fire. The things zipped and darted in two circles around her.
“What is the meaning of this?” Celestia demanded. Two of the flitting things whooshed overhead, and she saw they were carrying a chain that glowed as blue as their eyes. They dropped it over her, and it wrapped itself around her middle like an iron snake, constricting her wings. “Release me at once!” she cried. “I am Celestia, princess of Equestria and guardian of the White!”
“We know!” the flitting things chorused. Three of them came forward. One, the leader no doubt, had a thick handlebar moustache of feelers on his face and lank hair the colour of chalk. He wore the ruined remains of a hide waistcoat and shirt, ripped open by the growth of new wings and rows of chitinous black spikes all along his back. His subordinates were dressed in equally distressed attire.
“We’re mighty glad to have ya stop by, Your Highness,” the moustached one sneered. “It’s a real honour for us all.”
“What in Equestria’s name are you?” asked Celestia.
“We used to have names. That’s true,” said the moustached one. “Time was when I was called Ramrod. My brothers here were named Hammer and Tongs, and who knows who else is here? Now we are the servants of somethin’ greater than anythin’ Equestria has ever known. We serve the outer dark behind the deadlights.”
“What madness are you talking about?” asked Celestia. “Tell me!”
“Better yet, darlin’,” sneered the hideous thing that was once Sheriff Ramrod, “we’ll show ya! Upstage, boys an’ girls, I know ya’ll have been practisin’!” It was then, as if in mocking, that the flitting creatures started to sing. It was a horrible sound, like a million insects rubbing their legs together in a combined fervour.
“This hour, she’s ours! Get the princess, catch the princess! Take the princess, bind the princess, It’s so fun!”
Celestia tried to channel a magickal charge into her horn, but found she could only manage a sputter of sparks that fizzled and popped uselessly in mid-air. She tried to gain altitude, but the creatures flung more chains across her wings, forcing them closed. Another length found its way around her neck. Arcs of light flowed into her, blitzing her nerve-endings and scattering charred feathers.
“There’s no escape, and doesn’t she seem so surprised? This hour, she’s ours! Chain the princess, steal the princess, We got the princess!
“Let her try to fly away, nopony left to save the day, We’ve sprung our trap, she’s here to stay! Let’s start the party!”
The flitting things were crawling on her now, digging their claws and teeth into her flesh like hundreds of tiny thorns, sucking the life right out of her. The more she struggled and squirmed to break free, the weaker she felt herself become. The creatures’ singing became a warbling, buzzing cacophony that droned in her skull and made her temples throb with agony.
“Break the princess, squeeze the princess, Hold her tight and watch how she fights, Until her pretty wings are tired, And then she’s all ours!
“Bruise her, beat her, howl and rage, Then grind her down until she’s in her cage!”
Celestia felt the hard slap of the ground, and then the shadows swallowed her utterly.
XXX
Applejack found Peacemaker back on his vigil, hunkered down just out of sight of the library’s front door. He was idly sipping cider through a straw and blocking out the excited sounds coming from inside, where Jack-a-Nape had started a round of Pin the Tail on the Pony. Applejack got the distinct feeling it would end up more like ‘run around drunk with pointy things until one gets stuck in somepony’s butt,’ and had excused herself before things escalated.
“This seat taken, sugar cube?” she asked, gesturing to the grassy spot to the gun-pony’s right.
“Not that I’ve seen, sai,” he replied, looking up at her and taking off his hat.
“Well, ain’t you a real gentlecolt?” she teased, and sat beside him. Peacemaker offered a tiny smile that might have been sheepish.
“You’re not enjoying the party?” he asked her.
“Party’s fine an’ all,” Applejack replied, “but I thought I’d get me some air.”
“Drink?” he asked, and tipped his bottle of cider towards her. “It’s not graf but I reckon it tastes fine just the same.”
Applejack leaned towards him and took a single sip. The only alternative inside the house was mixed fruit punch, and while that was fine, sometimes she could not resist the tart, spiced taste of home. They sat in comfortable silence, if such a thing exists, for a few minutes. The scent and feel of each other, the muffled sounds of the party and the gentle, warm breeze of the summer night made for an oddly restful experience.
“Nopony’s going to sleep tonight,” said Peacemaker after a while.
“No, ’course not,” said Applejack. “Everypony will wanna stay up to watch Celestia raise the sun.” There was another period of silence. “Did they celebrate it where you’re from, in Gallowad?”
Peacemaker’s face took on a look of deep thought. Eventually he simply shrugged his shoulders. “They may have, but I don’t remember. The world moved on while I was still small. I remember very little save for lessons and promises.” He was a bad liar. Applejack burned to know more, but this seemed the wrong time to pry without exhibiting caution. “I remember the stars, though,” he said, and she looked at him curiously. “We used to say that there were two stars in the sky looking down on all of us.”
“Sure, I know what ya mean,” said Applejack. “The North and South Stars, right?”
“You say true,” said Peacemaker, and he pointed up towards the sky. “To the south is Lydia, Old Mother. To the north is Apon, Old Star. Long ago they were married, you see, and they were so in love that they made all the other stars jealous. Then one day, they had an argument fierce enough to shake the heavens, and they fled to the farthest ends of the universe just to get away from each other. Neither has the courage to apologise first, yet still they work together to guide all lost souls home.”
“Did your teacher tell you that?” asked Applejack.
“No,” he replied sombrely. “My mother did. She used to tell me the reason those two stars are so much brighter than any others in the sky is because no matter the distance, their love for each other burned without end.”
Applejack stared up thoughtfully towards Lydia as he told the story. She crinkled her nose and asked, “Your ma’ was a fan a’ that mushy stuff?”
“Yeah, I suppose she must’ve been,” said Peacemaker, and he laughed. He suddenly turned his head up at an angle, and Applejack followed his gaze. In the upper boughs of the tree which housed the library was a large window, and Applejack managed to catch a glimpse of something moving out of her line of sight. Twilight Sparkle, she was certain.
“Ya think she’s okay up there, Peace?” she asked.
“I think she isn’t a fan of surprises,” he replied. “I can appreciate that.” He contemplated the near-empty bottle and then passed it to Applejack. “I’ll go check on her. You can finish this if you wish. I won’t be long.” He got to his hooves, put on his hat and went inside. Applejack watched him leave, then went back to looking thoughtfully up at Old Mother and Old Star.
Peacemaker weaved his way through the exuberant partygoers, bobbing and ducking around their game, until he reached the stairs to Twilight’s bedroom. He knocked and found it unlocked as it swung open. Twilight was on her bed, holding a pillow over her head.
“Twilight?” he asked.
“Close the door behind you,” she replied in a muffled voice. He did so. “What do you want, Peacemaker?” Her tongue was lemon-sharp.
“I just came in to see if you were feeling all right,” he said.
“Oh! Now he takes an interest in doing his job!” Twilight snapped. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m fine! No desperadoes or corrupt sheriffs for you to fight in here, so you can just go back to whatever it was you were doing outside with Applejack!”
Peacemaker blinked. He had observed the unicorn being unfriendly before, but this sudden anger was new. “I cry your pardon if I’ve offended you,” he said. She threw her pillow at him, and he leaned to one side to avoid it. It smacked harmlessly against the door behind him and flopped down onto the floor.
“Do you!?” Twilight demanded. “Do you actually care if I’m offended or not? Princess Celestia made you my bodyguard, and ever since we met your mind has always been somewhere else! You’re always getting yourself into trouble! The fire, then prison, then that stupid showdown with Ramrod! I mean that really says it all, doesn’t it!? All this madness happens, and you all act like it’s nothing! Nopony cares!”
Peacemaker said nothing.
“Why won’t you say anything!?” Twilight ranted on. “Don’t just stand there staring at me, get angry! Tell me off! Insult me, you dense mule! That constant calm of yours is getting me down!” There were hot tears welling in the corners of her eyes. When she realised this, she wiped them away and stormed over to her desk, where she crossed her forelegs and buried her face between them.
Peacemaker put a gentle forehoof on her shoulder. “I say nothing, sai,” he told her kindly, “because I am listening.”
Twilight heaved a morose sigh, and turned towards him, but she could not meet his gaze. “That was out of character, wasn’t it?” she asked. “I’m not angry with you. I’m just so frustrated, and I’m acting stupidly because of it.” She hugged him, a gesture that surprised Peacemaker greatly, but he kept it from showing on his face. “I’m sorry for calling you a dense mule,” she murmured.
“I have been called worse,” he told her, “and you are right. I have not taken my duties seriously. I have forgotten the face of my father.”
“That phrase means you’ve acted dishonourably, doesn’t it?” she asked. She felt him nod. “You haven’t. Really you haven’t. You can go back to what you were doing if you want, just…just please give me a minute of your time first? All I need is for somepony to listen to me.”
“I will stay,” he replied.
Twilight realised she was still hugging him and broke away, blushing brightly. Whether he was doing the same, she could not tell. She turned towards the window so her back faced him, and she told him then of her fears. She skipped over the greater majority of the signs and omens she had noted, knowing it would just go over his head, and went straight to the point. She had watched the stars and foreseen the return of Nightmare Moon, and the terrible vengeance she would no doubt wreak upon all of Equestria for her long imprisonment. He sat there the entire time, never interrupting, letting her rant on about how she felt the entire world was either unable to unwilling to take caution. It was only when she finally seemed to run out of puff than the gun-pony responded.
“The battle between Nightmare Moon and Celestia was so long ago that nopony alive can remember it,” he told her. “They know of it only as a story. It is distant and unknowable, the way all magick is distant and unknowable where I come from. It’s not their fault that they were all born so long after the fact.”
“No, but then why bother celebrating Celestia’s victory at all?” Twilight asked heatedly.
“They don’t,” said Peacemaker. “They celebrate the fact they have been honoured by the most beloved figure in Equestria. They celebrate it will be the longest day of the year. They celebrate the unity and happiness it will bring to them and to everypony who visits them. They celebrate that their tiny little town, deep in the wilderness, that nopony ever talks about, will finally be counted. Is that so wrong of them?”
Twilight heaved another sigh. “No, it’s not, but they’re all in danger. We’re all in danger, and I…I don’t know what to do!”
“I see it’s not for lack of trying,” said Peacemaker, and pointed with his head at the explosion of books and scrolls that littered the walls and floor of the room. He moved over towards one in particular, which bore a large, lovingly detailed illustration of an eight-pointed star and six shimmering stones. He tapped a hoof-tip thoughtfully against the paper.
“I’m sure it’s important for stopping Nightmare Moon,” said Twilight, “but I’m having no luck deciphering the whole thing. There are phrases I can’t find reference for in any of my materials. I mean I’m fluent in three ancient languages, but this one is totally alien to me.”
“I know this word,” said the gun-pony. “Ka-tet. It’s the High Speech. I don’t know this other language but I can read parts of—”
Peacemaker never finished his sentence, because he was suddenly tackle-hugged by Twilight. Down below, Jack-a-Nape heard the thump of the impact and made a lewd joke to somepony. Spike, meanwhile, looked concerned. Upstairs, the two entangled ponies stood, exchanged mumbled apologies, blamed the non-specific stress, and focussed their attention squarely on the scroll.
“Can you translate for me?” she asked. “Maybe if I knew what ‘ka’ and ‘tet’ meant, I could start putting the pieces together better.”
“Ka is the wheel upon which all things revolve,” Peacemaker explained. His face indicated deep thought for a moment, then continued, “In Gallowad, ka is just ka, but if I had to give you something close to another meaning, it is the force of life. It is our duty to ourselves and each other. It is the places we are going to. You might call it destiny.”
“And tet?” asked Twilight.
“Tet is a group,” said Peacemaker, “and ka-tet is a group brought together by ka. The most literal meaning is one from many.”
“One from many,” Twilight mused, running her hoof-tip from one gemstone to the next. “Loyalty, honesty, generosity, laughter, kindness…” She trailed off as she remembered the three different words the final character could represent. Soul, heaven, sorcery. “Six brought together by destiny. I wonder what it means.”
“What else does it say?” asked Peacemaker.
The door opened, letting in the clamour of the party and causing Twilight and Peacemaker both to jump. The gun-pony was already drawing his weapons when he realised the intruder was Spike, his large eyes peeking out from beneath the edge of a frilly lampshade.
“Come on, you guys!” the baby dragon chirped. “The sun’s about to come up!”
XXX
The party migrated from the library to the town hall, which seemed to be packed out with every pony for miles around. Everywhere Twilight looked, she saw happily, nervously chattering citizens. Pegasi were forced to remain hovering in mid-air due to the lack of floor space. The past few days had been exciting, sure, but all that had been building up to this. Here, now, finally was the moment of truth. They would see the power and the glory that was Princess Celestia for the first time in their lives. It would be something they would be proud to tell their children and grandchildren about in years to come, a glowing memory they would treasure for the rest of their lives.
There were remarks that Rarity and Bow Sansy had done a marvellous job beautifying the place, and Twilight had to agree. She had gotten the idea it might be tasteless or excessive, but she could not deny the quality of the work. It reminded her a bit of the more sophisticated affairs she had felt obligated to attend back in Canterlot, albeit with a smaller venue. Banners suspended from the walls displayed the apple tree barony emblem and the coat of arms of the royal family, a sun shining over a pristine white tower against a field of indigo and amethyst chequers. Pastel-coloured flowers were being worn in manes or otherwise overflowed from hanging baskets that dangled from the upper level balconies, which were standing room only. The centrepiece was a long table with an ice sculpture of the princess in the middle. Twilight assumed it had to be magick that was keeping it from melting in the heat. A stage had been set up, and the two decorators stood to either side of it, ready and waiting for their cue to pull the ropes that would draw the curtains and begin the grand performance.
“I don’t like this,” Twilight murmured.
“Keep an eye out for trouble,” Peacemaker replied. “If this Nightmare Moon does appear, we’ll handle it.”
“And just what are you planning to do?” Twilight asked incredulously. “We’re not talking about some two-bit spell-slinger. We’re talking about one of the most dangerous magicians who ever lived.”
“I told you, magick doesn’t mean much where I’m from,” said Peacemaker. “I’ll handle it the way I handle everything. With a quick eye and a quicker draw.”
“Look,” said Spike, who was perched on Twilight’s back, “it’s about to start!”
All eyes were on the stage. The mayor emerged from behind the curtains and a spotlight fell on her from somewhere above. She cleared her throat and spoke loudly and clearly to the audience, who listened with rapt attention.
“Fillies and gentlecolts,” she began, “as mayor of Ponyville, it gives me great pleasure to announce the beginning of the Summer Sun Celebration!”
A rousing cheer went up from the crowd.
“In just a few moments, our town will witness the magick of the sunrise and celebrate this, the longest day of the year!”
Peacemaker and Spike both felt Twilight grow tense like a bundle of wires. Neither of them had noticed it, but she had, through one of the high windows. A vision of the moon, and the way its countenance suddenly began to shift, as if layers of silver dust were suddenly blown away to reveal something else buried beneath it. The mayor’s speech droned on.
“And now without further ado, it is my honour to introduce to you the ruler of our land. The very pony who gives us the sun and the moon each and every day. The good, the wise, the bringer of harmony through all of Equestria, Princess Celestia!”
Sister Fluttershy began to conduct her choir, and a warble of pleasant birdsong filled the air. Rarity and Bow Sansy each took hold of their ropes and pulled. You and I have been privy to events taking place elsewhere and thus know what they would find, but be wary that the little ponies who lived in Ponyville were not so wise, and so when they looked upon the empty space beyond the curtains there was a new rush of activity amongst them. It was not happy talk this time. It was confused, scared even.
“Remain calm, everypony,” said the mayor, looking as unnerved as the rest of them. “There must be a reasonable explanation.”
There was none. True evil is not known to be reasonable. It is meaningless but malignant, swirling senselessly like haphazard dust devils, seeking only to consume and destroy as if such consumption and destruction would somehow serve to fill the void at its heart. It worms its way in from the dark places outside and it goes unnoticed until it has already successfully hooked its vile barbs into the skin of the universe, just as an awful, resounding laughter hooked itself into the ears of the gathered ponies and would be heard in their worst dreams forever. The sound came from everywhere, but those closest to the stage heard it the loudest. The town hall shook, and ponies tried to flee in all directions, but it did them no good. With a deafening roar, the entire top half of the building was wrenched away and scattered all over the town in a rain of timbre and tiles.
A burst of light exploded from the middle of the stage, throwing the mayor, Bow Sansy, Rarity and anypony else standing too close, followed by a crackle of energy that was not so much heard as felt, and a heady aroma of incense. A round hole opened in the floor, bubbling like a cauldron, and blue, glittering smoke poured out over its lips and drifted around the hooves of the terrified audience. They watched, not a single one breathing, as a shape began to grow out of the hole. A tall, lithe frame as black as tar, black as pitch, clad in armour forged from fear and misery. A long, spiralling horn coiled out of its forehead. Wide wings hung about it like a cape, then flapped open with a cry like a thousand glass windows shattering. Cold eyes flashed, and a mane and tail of starlight blazed like freshly lit pyres.
Oh, no! Twilight wanted to say, but even in her mind the words were barely formed. That’s her!
Peacemaker’s own eyes were huge. His jaw was open. Twilight could not tell what he was thinking, but it was that he had finally found his quarry. The black alicorn! She’s here! She’s here at last!
That was when the monster finally seemed to take notice of the smaller creatures. It smiled, showing what Twilight swore were not two, but four rows of cruel, sharp teeth. The husky, sensual voice that came when it spoke was a stark contrast to its frightening mien. “My beloved subjects,” it said, “it’s been so long since I’ve seen your precious, little, sun-loving faces.”
“What’d you do with our princess!?” somepony demanded. Twilight realised it had been Rainbow Dash only because of the multi-coloured streak passing over her head. Nightmare Moon’s eyes seemed to crinkle around the edges, and a bolt of light shot out of its horn, striking the pegasus and ploughing her into the floor.
“Am I not royal enough for you, insect?” the monster growled. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
Nopony said a word, and that made it mad.
“Does my crown no longer count because I’ve been away for a thousand years?” it ranted. “Not by choice, I might add, but enforced exile! Did none of you recall the legend? Did none of you see the signs heralding my return?”
“I did,” said Twilight, voice quavering. “I know who you are! Nightmare Moon!”
The ponies found their voices again. Confusion and fear gave way to panic and tears. Finally, the bit dropped and the gravity of the situation sunk in. The end of was nigh.
“Well, well, well,” said Nightmare Moon with a sneer, its voice carrying effortlessly above the screams of the crowd, “somepony who remembers me. Then you must also know what I intend to do next! Remember this day, my little ponies, for it was your last! The night shall last forever!”
“NO!” Peacemaker roared. Two explosions rang out. Nightmare Moon reacted with a sweep of its mane, which caught the bullets and dropped them, crumpled, to the floor. Its left eye began to emit a thin, purplish aura, and Peacemaker was hauled out of the crowd and into the air by its sheer will. It intrigued the beast to see not one, but two ponies try to strike her, and made it wonder how many more were waiting for her.
It drew Peacemaker closer. “Very foolish, my little one,” it said softly.
“I…I’ve waited for this a long time, sorceress,” said Peacemaker, trying to raise his weapons again. “I…owe you this…for Gallowad!”
The creature’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I don’t know that name, my little one, but if you think you can do what Celestia could not, if you think you can destroy me, then come for me in the place where it all began. If you’re worthy of me, then we will do battle there.” Its eyes locked with Peacemaker’s, and it watched as a sense of something like realisation dawned on him. It snorted, and threw him to the rapidly emptying floor. Peacemaker let out a pained cry as part of the floor shattered on impact around him. A few other ponies gathered protectively around his injured form, but they still shrank when its shadow fell over them. It smiled down emptily at Twilight, and then raised its horn to the sky.
Arcs of blue and white lightning blasted the hole in the floor from which it had emerged, and the viscous goo inside turned purple. The hole expanded, spider-webbing into cracks that shook what remained of the hall to rubble before spreading out into the town beyond. The goo rose and bubbled and steamed like molten magma. Parts of its surface erupted in pink flame, hardened and melted again in seconds. It swirled unnaturally in all kinds of directions, forming shapes like mouths and clusters of luminous, protoplasmic eyes. It crawled over the landscape as ponies desperately tried to get away from it, either by fleeing to the borders of Ponyville as fast as their hooves could carry them or by scrambling up onto rooftops and spires.
“From this moment forth, Equestria as you know it shall cease to exist!” Nightmare Moon bellowed. “WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE!” It howled with laughter, and was gone in a flash.
Peacemaker staggered up on his hooves, cried out and fell over again. The monster had thrown him hard, and his right foreleg and side now filled him with white hot torment when he tried to move. He felt two others trying to help him up, definitely two, but he could not tell who. His vision was bleary and his hearing muddied. Voices were drowned beneath the rumble of the hellish flood and the hysterical screams of Ponyville’s citizens. A warm, moist feeling washed over him, gummed his eyes shut and filled his nose and throat, and in the next second he felt it freeze his heart.
The last anypony saw of Peacemaker, Twilight Sparkle, Spike, Jack-a-Nape, Applejack, Sister Fluttershy or Bow Sansy that awful night were their dismayed faces before the unspeakable purple menace engulfed them.
Rainbow Dash, for the first time in her life, had been too slow. Still shaking off the worst of Nightmare Moon’s blasting spell, she was still able to get above the sea of muck in time and regroup with Thunderlane and Cloudchaser. She had been able to focus her vision enough to see Twilight and the others huddled around Peacemaker’s broken body. She had ignored her friends’ cries and rushed down to save them, only to miss Twilight’s outstretched hooves by a split-second. The unicorn’s last desperate cry was choked by the slime filling her mouth, and then she was gone with the rest of them in the time it took to blink.
Rainbow did not believe she knew heartbreak. She would tell you that it was a sissy feeling, and she was no sissy, but she figured that the twinge of despair vibrating inside her ribcage was close enough to count. What must be understood is that for all her bravado and steel, she was technically an innocent girl of sixteen years. Between the simplistic, isolated pleasures of Ponyville and the lofty magnificence of her original home in far-off Cloudsdale, she had never seen the terrible things that lived in the world below. Now she had seen the absolute worst, and it had destroyed lives right in front of her. Lives she had failed to save. All because she was too slow when it really counted. All because Nightmare Moon had stopped her.
Nightmare Moon. The name chased away her despair and replaced it with something new and much more dangerous.
Rainbow kept that image of Twilight Sparkle’s eyes, welling with tears of fright as she was sucked beneath the waves at the forefront of her mind, because she was wrong about what she felt. It was not heartbreak. Heartbreak implies a degree of deep regret and confusion. No, this was anger. A pure anger, a righteous anger, and it demanded satisfaction for the cruelty and injustice she had witnessed. Peacemaker, an earth pony who could not fly but had proven himself nothing less than her equal, would call it the anger of a gun-pony, but she was not to know that. He was dead. They all were.
That awful night would change things in Ponyville forever.
Thunderlane and Cloudchaser knew something was different in their leader when she joined them on the roof of the schoolhouse. The doors and windows were bolted shut, and through the skylight, the three pegasi could see Miss Cheerilee the schoolmistress and her pupils gathered in a tight circle. Cheerilee had volunteered not to attend the Summer Sun Celebration in order to babysit the foals who would not be able to stay awake into the early hours of the morning, which now seemed like it would never ever come.
“Find every pegasus who hasn’t run for the hills!” said Rainbow Dash, her tone brokering no argument. “First thing we’re going to do is evacuate those kids, and then make sure everypony is as far away from here as we can get them!”
“And then what, Rainbow?” asked Cloudchaser.
“What else?” Rainbow scoffed as if it were the most inane question ever. “We’re going to stop that whatever-it-is dead in its tracks!”
“And just how in the hay are you planning to do that?” asked Thunderlane challengingly. “Hit it with a big newspaper? It’s already bigger than Lake Mustang and it’s still growing!”
“I’ll think of something,” said Rainbow, and she sounded as if she truly believed it. “Thunderlane, Cloudchaser, we might be all Ponyville’s got, so let’s show that overstuffed jelly doughnut not to mess with our town! You with me?”
“All the way,” said Cloudchaser without hesitating.
“Me too,” said Thunderlane, “but we’re still going to die.”
Rainbow Dash smirked. “If we win, we’re heroes. If we die, we’re still heroes. Seems like a pretty solid bet to me.”
So the long, hard effort began. The Starkblasts, as they now collectively called themselves, rounded up all the pegasi they could, and sent them to every corner of Ponyville in teams of two or three to effect rescues. Rainbow found the back door of the school ahead of the purple slime and, recalling her first meeting with Peacemaker, twirled her body in mid-air until she reached enough speed to drill a deep scar into the earth. Despite its evil nature, what they were facing was still a liquid-form, and after pouring over the edge of the scar, it would not be able to re-emerge until it was filled to capacity. She created a second one on the opposite side, creating a moated path for the evacuation. The pain she would be in later was sure to be excruciating, but she could not have cared less. Her plan was working.
Thunderlane bucked open the back door to a chorus of terrified shouts. Cheerilee came out swinging a broomstick, raining ineffectual blows on Thunderlane’s nose. It tickled the black pegasus’s nostrils and he sneezed with enough force to tear a hole through the broom’s brush. When she realised who she had been hitting, Cheerilee stammered an apology.
“It’s fine!” Thunderlane interrupted her stuffily. “Get your kids together and come on! Rainbow’s bought us some time but we don’t know how much!”
“Where are we going?” one of the foals asked.
“Anywhere but here!” exclaimed one of the others, the youngest from the apple orchard.
“Right! Just follow us and you’ll be A-okay!” said Thunderlane with a reassuring wink, and he and Cloudchaser began ushering the class through the door as quickly as possible, all the while Cheerilee was reminding them to stay together and in an orderly fashion so nopony got separated.
They were making their way along the moated path at a brisk pace, when a shriek went up from the rear. Rainbow had been correct in assuming the ooze would fill the cracks she had created, however she had not anticipated the stuff may be intelligent and have a contingency of its own.
A great, sticky pseudopod had lurched up out of the mess and caught a lagging filly around her hind legs. The stuff was crawling over her body, and would have doubtlessly meant her doom had Thunderlane not acted right then. The pegasus clamped his teeth around the child’s mane and gave an almighty yank. It hurt like hell, but that filly would always remember that it had saved her from something far worse than a sore scalp. Thunderlane flung her across to Cloudchaser, who caught her in mid-air, and then the pseudopod exploded against his back. He vanished in a spray of the stuff, to the dismay of the witnesses.
A mess of sludge and ebony feathers smashed into the earth, and then it rose to its hooves with a serious of sickly squelching noises. The shape trembled, took one lurching step forward, and opened its eyes and mouth. They were hollow, black holes, void of any semblance of the pony who had been there before. It vibrated a long and impossibly low moan, and a chorus of identical sounds emanated from all around them.
Rainbow felt her blood run cold.
XXX
Celestia was jolted back to wakefulness by a distant song of chaos. She was on her knees, affixed by chains to wooden posts engraved with ancient and arcane symbols. They were old and potent magick, and when she tried to pull at her chains, she found the effort fruitless. She seemed to be in a camp of some kind. There was a close circle of tents and a fire was burning. The camp sat near the edge of a gorge that filled the princess with a sick trepidation. She could not see into it, but something about it, or whatever was inside it, felt wrong on a fundamental level.
She thought she was alone with the feeling, but then she saw the shapes of things peeling themselves away from dead trees. They dropped their camouflage, the chitinous texture growing dimmer until they were transformed into ponies. Most of them were dressed in black hoods, save for four. These, you may have rightly guessed, were Ramrod, Hammer, Tongs and the piebald witch known as Bindle Punk.
“Hile, O Lady of Light. Sleep well?” the witch asked with a leer. “My sincerest apologies for the unrefined seating arrangements, but please understand, we cannot just have thou leave us until after the entertainments.”
Celestia grimaced. It was quite clear whose entertainment she meant.
“Listen to that wonderful calamity,” said Bindle Punk, lifting her head and closing her eyes. “Sweeter music has never been composed by pony hearts.”
Celestia could hear it. That song of chaos was still vibrating in her mind, carrying within it a cacophony of fear, misery, confusion and madness. Above the treetops, she saw the new face of the moon, and a thought dawned on her, a thought that drained the blood from her.
“Thou hast begun to understand,” said Bindle Punk. “That’s very good.” The tip of her horn lit up, and a window of light opened in the air for all to see. Through it they could see Ponyville and the horror that had befallen it.
“No!” Celestia exclaimed. “Do you have any idea what you’ve unleashed?”
“Not I, regrettably,” said Bindle Pink with a sigh. “How I wish it were, to be true, but nay, such wondrousness be the work of another. One far greater than thy humble servant.” She smiled with malevolent intent. “And it is wondrous, O Princess! Such pure, primordial havoc finally set free after an eternity beneath the skin of this world. But the time for us to talk is passed. I hear her approach, and she has much unfinished business to discuss with thee.”
The group parted as a plume of blue mist suddenly belched up from the ground. A smoky smell of incense filled the air, and the mist curled and twisted into a shape Celestia recognised all too well. Nightmare Moon had arrived, and the ponies all prostrated themselves before it.
“Great One,” said Bindle Punk, keeping her head bowed, “thou dost honour us with thy presence here tonight.”
Nightmare Moon snorted derisively. “And you are?”
“Bindle Punk. Merely a fellow servant of the Red,” was the reply, “and, if I may be so bold, the engineer of thy resurrection. It was prophesied that the stars would aid in thy return, and just look.” She gestured towards Ramrod, Hammer and Tongs, and the uniformly cracked stars emblazoned on their flanks. “Under my direction, the stars did exactly that, and as thou can see, it gets even better.”
Nightmare Moon turned its head towards Celestia. “Yes, so I see,” said the creature. “You’ve done well, Bindle Punk. You and your followers have my thanks. You may stay and watch as I give my beloved big sister what’s coming to her.” Its long horn lit up, and Celestia screamed as her whole body was racked with pain.
“All the things I missed because of you,” snarled Nightmare Moon. “A thousand long years, unable to move, to do anything save watch my world change under your rule until it didn’t even resemble a shade of its former self. All this sun-soaked happiness, why it’s just sick! And do you know the worst part, Tia?”
Celestia’s legs trembled as she struggled to remain upright, to seem stronger than she felt. Her resistance crumbled in seconds under Nightmare Moon’s relentless assault.
“Imprisonment is boring!” the creature bellowed. “You can’t imagine the mind-numbing monotony of the whole thing! I am an equine of the old blood, born to roam! And yet knowing that need all too well, you stuffed me into that prison and threw me away like so much rubbish! You abandoned me!”
“I know I hurt you, Luna,” said Celestia, “but don’t you dare delude yourself by thinking it was for nothing! You know well enough of the unspeakable crimes you committed against our subjects!”
“Well, that’s all academic now, Tia,” said Nightmare Moon. “Now I’ve discovered a whole new world, full of unfamiliar things just waiting to be destroyed, and this time around you’re powerless to get in my way. Unleashing the Smooze was just the beginning, because while it decays the lands and boils the oceans, I will unravel everything you’ve ever worked towards and plunge the rest of reality into darkness, to be rewritten as I see fit. The Red shall at last triumph over the White.”
“Luna, please!” Celestia pleaded. “You can still stop this insanity! If you want to punish me, then so be it! Goodness knows I deserve it! I’d welcome it! But leave my ponies alone, they’ve done nothing to you!”
“But what better way to punish you than by annihilating them?” Nightmare Moon asked rhetorically. “I’ll wipe the slate clean and ensure you suffer for eternity. It’s the most pragmatic course of action. Wouldn’t you all agree?”
“Indeed, O Dark Mistress,” said Bindle Punk. “Kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes. Rather an appropriate turn of phrase, if I may say so.”
Nightmare Moon laughed, and with a theatrical flourish of its feathers, it began to sing.
“Oh, my dearest sister, Your nightmare’s come to pass, A thousand years have been and gone, You’ve finally been outclassed.
“I recall how you betrayed me, Then exiled me from our land, I became a horror story, Now it’s time I make my stand.”
Celestia chimed in desperately.
“My little sister, let’s start over, Stand together, wing to wing, With mercy and compassion…”
Nightmare Moon leaned in close, its smile so wide and filled with so many teeth that its visage was split across the middle. Celestia could see its breath as tails of electrified blue fog.
“No, that’s really not my thing.”
“But you know what is?”
“Your ponies’ hearts all filled with fright, Their foals all screaming in the night, Your sunlight dies, my dark unfurls, That’s my nightmare world.”
It whirled away from her, its tone changing from ferocious to thoughtful. Its eyes swivelled up towards the mutant face of the moon, a moon that was now empty and desolate. It remembered the ever-present smell of the silver-white desert and the faithful reverberation of its own thoughts.
“Now in the past I have considered, That it may have been deserved, But a thousand years? You’re kidding, You’ve really got some nerve.”
Celestia pleaded once again, and this brought a cruel, thin smile to Nightmare Moon’s features. She was begging. The accursed traitor sister was begging. The whole spectacle was just too delicious.
“Luna, try to understand me, I could find no other way, I’d do anything, believe me, To go back and change that day.”
“Well isn’t this your lucky night? You’ll get your chance to make things right, Like me, you’ll gaze from greater heights, Upon my nightmare world.”
“Luna,” Celestia whispered, perfect tears streaming down her cheeks. “Please, this isn’t you. Fight the evil inside you.”
Nightmare Moon’s flaming eyes filled Celestia’s vision. The black patch of fur between them seemed to expand and reshape itself in the princess’s mind, the horn on its forehead growing longer and thinner. Now what she saw was a tower, impossibly high and surrounded on all sides for many miles by a sea of red roses, only she was not looking at it from a distance as she had done days before in her dreams, but from a balcony high up on its side.
Nightmare Moon walked amid the gathered harriers, its voice sounding almost sorrowful as it continued its wicked song.
“Dawn is done, and poor Luna’s finished too, As you’ll see for yourself soon, That no matter how you call to her…”
The creature spread its wings wide against the glimmer of the starlit night, and like a mass of black cloud, its feathers seemed to suck in the light and leave only blind oblivion.
“There is only Nightmare Moon!”
“Please! Just listen, sister, It’s not too late, you’ll see.”
“It is for you, the end has come, For now I’ll rule supreme!
“The thrill of what I have in store, When darkness reigns forevermore, The joy of vengeance!”
Bindle Punk and the harriers joined it in mocking diapason.
“Testify!”
“You’re no longer welcome!”
“Adieu! Adios! Bye-bye!”
Its eyes flashed, and the ground beneath Celestia’s hooves began to quake and transform. Thin knives of light burst up from the soil and cut a deep circle just wide enough to contain the princess and the wooden posts to which she was so helplessly bound. Green and blue flames flickered in the gap, and then the section of ground began to rise into the air.
“It’s farewell to your kingdom, You’ll see my banner fly, Against the moonlit sky, In my nightmare world!”
“Have a nice flight, Tia!” crowed Nightmare Moon.
Its horn sparked with magick, and then to a chorus of wild cheers Princess Celestia, chains, posts and all, rocketed into the upper atmosphere, where she disappeared in a tremendous fireball. The explosion was so high up and so bright that it could be seen clearly from all the farthest edges of Equestria. Bindle Punk and her harriers thought it was the most beautiful sight they had ever known.
XXX
Peacemaker opened his eyes, and was surprised by the distinct lack of sickness in his head. He was lying on his uninjured side under a blanket of large, soft leaves. He tested his right foreleg and found he could move it, but barely. A cursory investigation revealed it to be bound in a sling. Cautiously he stood up. He was in a small, dark room with a curtain of vines obscuring the doorway. He could make out scant light around the edges and hear voices. Familiar ones. He lowered his head and pushed his way through.
He was now inside a large room hewn from twisted wood, with a cauldron over a fire in the centre. There were shelves of bottles and jars filled with colourful substances, and strange masks and fragrant bags hung from the walls and ceiling. The ceiling was pitted with many holes like a honeycomb, through which yellowed light shone down from some mysterious source. Like the voices, the aroma coming from the cauldron was oddly intimate to him.
Before he knew it, a pair of forelegs wrapped around his neck and pulled him into a hug.
“Good to see ya back with us, sugar cube,” said Applejack.
“Where are we?” asked Peacemaker.
“That’s what we’d like to know.” Jack-a-Nape was walking towards them with Bow Sansy and Spike. Sister Fluttershy crouched almost invisibly behind them, looking around the room distrustfully. Twilight Sparkle was inspecting one of the masks with keen interest and had not seemed to have noticed them.
“You’re all alive,” said Peacemaker.
“No need to sound so amazed, buddy,” said Jack-a-Nape, chuckling.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Peacemaker protested.
“Easy there, P.M.,” said Jackie. “We know. It’s pretty crazy. One second we’re facin’ down the universe’s ugliest dessert pudding, next we’re in this nutty place.”
“How are you feeling, honey?” asked Bow Sansy. She took note of the sling around his leg and her face registered concern. That confirmed enough to Peacemaker that none of them had been responsible for his bindings.
“A bit sore, but I’ll live,” he said, “although I don’t think I’ll be shooting right-hoofed for a while.”
“Poor baby,” Applejack teased, and nudged him in his unhurt side. He smiled wryly at her.
“What kind of place do you think this is?” asked Spike.
“And where d’ya suppose that light’s comin’ from?” asked Applejack, looking up at the ceiling. “It sure ain’t natural, but I ain’t seen no evidence that this place has a power source. No wall sockets, no wires. Nothin’.”
“I’ve no clue how to answer any of those questions,” said Peacemaker, shaking his head. “Whoever owns this place is clearly a follower of magick, and I don’t know one type from the other. Sai Twilight, your thoughts?”
Twilight finally seemed to notice them. She looked haggard. Her eyes darted to one side as if the question had caught her off her guard and she had to remember a script, and even when she did she could not look him in the eye. Peacemaker wondered if she had been crying.
“This is alchemy,” she said. “Potions, poisons, rare ones at that. Look at the labels on these jars, some of these haven’t been seen in Equestria for hundreds of years. Whoever this place belongs to, I can’t imagine how or where they got so many of them.”
“If you wish to know from whence they hail,” a new voice spoke, and they all jumped to attention, “then ask me one day and I’ll tell you their tale. I think first that there are more pressing matters to which we must attend, there is great evil to stop and a land to defend.” The voice was low and sultry, with an exotic accent.
With a sound of fluttering fabric, the Manni zebra known as Zecora appeared before them on the far side of the cauldron. “Greetings to you, wandering pony of steel and heat, I had thought it would be longer before our next meet. But necessity beckons as to destroy you dark forces conspire, to remember my promise to you of safety beside my fire.”
“I am once more in your debt,” said Peacemaker, and bowed his head to her. Zecora returned the gesture amiably.
“You’re the one who saved us?” asked Jack-a-Nape. “Hey, thanks, babe. ’Cause I mean gettin’ eaten by some monster grape jelly stain can really put a damper on your good vibes, dig?”
“I dig, and I truly wish the circumstances were more pleasant,” said Zecora, “but we must be done with niceties so we might discuss the present. Ponyville has been lost to an unspeakable blight, and soon this forest too shall feed the Smooze’s appetite.”
“The Smooze?” asked Applejack. “The Sam Hay is that supposed to be?”
“Once, in a time before time was just a dream,” said Zecora, “the Smooze was born with a primal scream. An ocean of chaos that filled all of creation, in which lived every kind of abomination. Until one day, suddenly out of the deep, entities of light were aroused from their sleep. They constructed a Tower and six Beams to hold it, and from that central point civilisation unfolded. The chaos receded, leaving its denizens stranded, they were forced to adapt to the shores where they had landed. It was from those survivors the first monsters were given birth, always longing to return to that Stygian surf.”
“Hang on a sec!” Spike interrupted. “You’re saying that blob’s responsible for every single evil creature in the whole world?”
“And what’s all this about a tower?” asked Bow Sansy.
“It is said that all things in the end serve the Tower,” said Zecora, “for it turns even the wheel of ka with its power.”
“Ka!” Peacemaker and Twilight exclaimed at once. The others gave them odd looks.
Jack-a-Nape huffed. “Okay, I got no idea what you’re jabberin’ about, lady, but you seem to know a lot about this thing. So, let me ask you a question. How do we stop it?”
“The first time the Smooze was sealed with six Beams, six points of light,” Zecora continued, “so to vanquish it once more, the same six must reunite. You must go with great haste to where the feud of day and night was begun, for only with the elements inside can this battle be won. Hurry now, friends, for the enemy flies, you must reach your goal before our last hope dies.”
Peacemaker and Twilight looked at each other. They were sure they knew what the six referred to. The Hexadema, the crown with six gemstones which, according to only the most obscure texts the unicorn had unearthed, were the key to overcoming Nightmare Moon’s evil in the Ritual of Ka-Tet. All that left was the location. Peacemaker recalled the sorceress telling him to come to the place where it had all begun, and here it was again in Zecora’s strange, omniscient rhyme-speak, but he could not guess what it meant. It was the curse of his lack of imagination coming to haunt him all over again.
“Castle Everfree,” said Twilight after a moment. “Before she moved her throne to Canterlot, Princess Celestia ruled Equestria from Castle Everfree. The battle with Nightmare Moon reduced it to rubble and it was forgotten.”
“I don’t know. Sounds a little hokey to me, T.S.,” said Jackie.
“Got any better ideas?” asked Applejack. Jackie grinned sheepishly and looked away.
“So where exactly is this Castle Everfree?” asked Bow Sansy.
“Where else?” Twilight replied. “At the very heart of the Everfree Forest.”
A tense silence fell over the group. Sister Fluttershy whimpered and hid her face behind the curl of her own luxuriant mane.
“It’s not like we have a choice,” said Twilight, and turned towards the door at the far end of the room. “Peacemaker and I are definitely going.”
“What about me?” asked Spike.
“I want you to stay here with Zecora. That is if she doesn’t mind,” said Twilight. Zecora responded with a wordless nod of her head. “If things go wrong and we don’t make it back, I want you to send a letter to my brother in Canterlot. Tell him what’s happened and to put everypony on high alert. Understand?”
Spike moved to protest, but Twilight gave him a stern look that brokered no argument.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Jackie exclaimed, approaching the pair. “You’re not goin’ without me. Look, I may not be from Ponyville originally, but it’s still my home, an’ let me tell you no scum-suckin’ witch’s brew from the dawn a’ time is going to turn it into mulch if I got anythin’ to say about it! Capiche?”
“That goes double for me,” said Bow Sansy, flapping her wings as if it emphasised her point.
“Ya’ll realise this is likely a suicide mission, right?” Applejack piped up. “Still, if we gotta go down, then I wanna go down swingin’ for the right side!” She looked at Peacemaker, and he saw a courage in her emerald eyes that he adored.
Jackie whirled about until he was facing Sister Fluttershy. “What about you, soul sister? You ready to rock an’ roll with the rest of us or what?”
“W-well, the thing is,” Fluttershy stammered in a tiny squeak, “I-I’m not sure, but…”
Peacemaker limped towards her. “Sister,” he said, “if you do not wish to join the rest of us, we will not force you, but you were brave enough to come to me when I was hurt in the town hall, and I can tell that your faith is strong.”
She gnawed her lower lip thoughtfully. “My faith in Lady Oriza is everything,” she said eventually, a little louder but just as meek, “but it means nothing if I can’t use it to help others. Let’s, uh, let’s go.”
Peacemaker smiled and bowed to her, and Jackie and Bow Sansy both cheered loudly. That was how their quest started. Zecora led the six ponies out through the front door of her home, and they realised they were already within the shadowy boundaries of the Everfree Forest, and from there they would face the greatest of its myriad trials. Spike waved after them until they disappeared amid the trees and their hoof-beats faded from his hearing. Zecora gravely incanted one final rhyme, and whether the wind carried the words to their ears or not, just as the spinning of the planets is no less real even when it cannot be actually felt, their gravity was not diminished.
“I wish you all luck and pray you find the ties, that bind you together in each other’s eyes. Against Nightmare Moon you must all strive together, for if true Harmony goes unfound, then twilight falls forever.”
