Prologue

With only short warning threat came again upon the land of Equestria.

Scouts returned to Canterlot with a frightful report: great danger was coming from across the sea. A Diablerie Dragon – an especially wicked breed of dragon which had on its forehead a crooked, spiral horn filled with poisonous magic – named Wryzard the Wretched was flurrying over the shimmering sea, straight towards Canterlot. His intent was plain: to descend upon the capital city and unleash the worst of his furious flame, dousing everything with his caustic magic.

Celestia – Princess of the Sun; Bearer of the Elements of Harmony; Princess over all Equestrian ponies – was determined to avert disaster. However, it had been six hundred years since the banishment of her sister and co-ruler, the self-proclaimed Nightmare Moon, and over those long centuries of lonely rule the sun princess had let decay important wisdom she had once memorized so well. Slowly a foolish and blinding pride had come into her; generous yet selfish; egotistical yet not vain. Many centuries as a single sovereign had caused her to forget the true reason for working cooperatively with others; to forget the strength inherent in faith and reliance; to forget the courage needed to surrender to a fear by trusting in a love.

An essential lesson in the magic of friendship, sadly lost to disuse.

In her heart was the sincere wish to protect all of her little ponies from danger, but in her mind was the mistaken belief that only she could bear the responsibility. No other pony could be allowed to shoulder the dangerous duty. Any risk whatsoever to others was unacceptable to her, no matter how unimaginably important the defense.

That thin crack in her otherwise superb character led to the folly which followed, but would also recement her forgotten lesson in her heart.

Yet even teachers forget how some good lessons can be so painfully cruel.

Princess Celestia commanded the Royal Guard of Canterlot to collect and lead all the citizens of the mountain city into the relative safety of the castle and stay there with them. The loyal guards were strictly ordered to remain hidden in the castle and to not engage the dragon under any circumstances. Her intended plan was to wield the great magical power of the Elements of Harmony and face the monster by herself.

But Wryzard arrived sooner than she had anticipated. She had not finished her preparations by the time his attack began.

A demon’s shadow over the city.

A sunless, dark day in Canterlot.

At that critical moment, with the vulnerable city about to be smothered by the evil curse churning in the dragon’s fire-filled throat, there appeared Prideheart, a high-ranking unicorn of the Royal Guard. He had defied the princess’s orders by emerging from the castle, and he was the only pony in all of the Royal Guard to have done so.

Like the princess, he was one staunchly unwilling to see even a single pony harmed. He could not bear the thought of it. He rose and stood atop the highest castle tower, alone between city and dragon, and he put forth all of his magic into a shield over the city.

Wryzard rained down his wicked fire, flames sick with a toxic spell weaved together by the dragon’s crooked horn.

Dauntless, Prideheart never let his shield slip even as the black dragonbreath pounded upon his protective bubble. But the assault was relentless, Prideheart’s strength began to wane, and as he weakened it allowed the foul spell within the fire to corrode his magic, mixing into his own magical power. His shield did not fail, but some of the sinister curse originally meant for Canterlot wormed its way into the pony’s body instead.

His sacrifice was not in vain. The precious time his heroic stand had bought allowed Princess Celestia to complete her preparations. Summoning the power of the Elements of Harmony she banished Wryzard the Wretched back across the sea, never to return.

Canterlot, and Equestria, were saved.

But the price of that safety was laid entirely upon the broken hero Prideheart. The dark corruption which had entered him had scarred him too deeply to ever be fully healed: his horn had been shattered, forever breaking his magic, and deformed marks had been carved permanently into his face, including the death of one of his eyes. The corrosive illness was tenacious and incurable, taking up residence inside him in the form of a constant, exhausting pain.

Princess Celestia, for her part, was taken immediately by grief. She swiftly understood her own role in the tragedy that had occurred: if she had only been wise enough to have trusted in the aid of others – to have relied faithfully on other ponies as she had once been able to do long ago – then she would have allowed all of the Royal Guard to have stood together against Wryzard. Their combined magic would have been enduring enough to have safely held the beast at bay while she had readied the Elements. Not a single one of them would have been so greatly exposed to his corruption as to have been actually harmed.

But as it had gone, it had been her ignorant choice that had put Prideheart in the position to have made the noble, tragic choice which he had.

She made no effort to avoid blaming herself.

A short time later, a ceremony for Prideheart was held in the throne room of Canterlot Castle. Before all present, the sun princess humbly confessed to her complete culpability in what had occurred. Sincerely she apologized to the valiant pony who had shouldered the cost of her failure. She pardoned entirely his violation of her wrongly given order to stay hidden. To him she awarded a rightly earned Medal of the Valorous Heart; a great honor recognizing any of the Royal Guard who are injured in the line of duty.

But before that ceremony...

In the first days after his wounding, Prideheart had been bedridden. Curtains drawn tight to dim the sunlight, he had laid in the endless dark of his room and had searched for what little peace could be found after such an grievous injury. Yet rest had eluded him at every turn. His new physical pain had constantly blared across his senses, unwelcomingly invading his every moment. Through the long and lonely silences it had become his closest company.

The excruciatingly slow hours over those days of recovery had driven him into bitter, secluded thought.

Worse than any damage taken by his body was the wound he had taken in his heroic soul. A cancerous anguish had consumed him. Not an anguish born of his damaged flesh, or of the terrible curse he had absorbed, but born of the failure of the princess.

The sun princess who had failed Canterlot.

Had failed her ponies.

Had failed egregiously in the most sacred of all duties: to protect others.

Prideheart valued protecting the lives of ponies above all else. Boundlessly chivalrous was his love for others, most especially foals. Early in his youth he had felt the call of his cutie mark; it had pulled him to the Royal Guard like the moon pulls on the oceans. He had aspired to don their armor as far back as his memory ran. Easily his full-hearted dedication had earned him a position among them at his very first opportunity, and swiftly his valor had allowed him to climb ranks. Not at any point had he ever doubted his choices. Even outside of his official duties he had committed himself to others, living and breathing a life of protection and service with all his heart.

Willingly.

Resolutely.

Without compromise.

The duty had run within him as powerfully as his blood.

For years he had loyally worn that golden armor, and for years he had eagerly listened to Princess Celestia speak sagely about the different righteous virtues to which ponies should commit themselves. He had lapped up her wisdom about magic and Harmony. He had echoed all the ideals she had publicly praised. He had believed in her light and leadership.

And he had been betrayed.

When the hour for true action had come, she had given the ponies of Canterlot her solemn promise of protection, and then she had failed. She alone had exposed to mortal danger all of the ponies whom he himself had sworn to protect. Those beloved ponies had stood unguarded against darkness because of her proud shortcomings; her inability to live up to her own preaching which she had always leveled upon others like a queen. She would have led them all into vile fire if he had not broken with her orders and acted.

Alone and bedridden in his sunless room, the terrible thoughts had sunk into the wounds on his heart.

At the ceremony in his honor, fallen far into the depths of his all-encompassing pain – physical and emotional – he listened to what she had to say for herself; her apology and her praise for him.

And it wasn’t enough.

No matter how genuine her feelings, it just wasn’t enough!

It wasn’t enough for all of the lives which she had endangered! It wasn’t enough for all the protection she had traded away in vanity! It wasn’t enough for all foals she had held so close to the flame!

It wasn’t enough!

In that very moment, driven by all the chaos swirling inside of him, he made an angry decision.

Prideheart denounced Princess Celestia for all the lives she had failed to protect. He spat upon her apology. He renounced irrefutably his station in the Royal Guard, refusing to serve under her wings any longer. He even decried magic itself, feeling he knew now the great evils it was capable of, whether violently offensive evils like that which had caused his wounds or even repulsively passive evils like the impotence of the ’powerful’ princess. He rejected his medal, throwing it back at the princess in disgust. It bent and chipped as it crashed against the smoothed tiles of the throne room floor.

As Equestria was the home of everything he now reviled, Prideheart sought to escape his homeland forever. He vowed to lead all whom he could away from the evils of magic and a faithless, unservable sun. Quickly he gathered those ponies nearest and most loyal to him; friends and family who had known and trusted him all their lives. Stirred by the furious and insistent words of one whom they loved, and who had also already saved them once at great cost to himself, they too questioned the image they had always held of a glorious, powerful, and protective sun princess. Choosing in the end to trust the one who had incontestably proven his love and devotion, they followed Prideheart. His flock gathered, he and his ponies quit Canterlot with the declaration that they would never return.

Princess Celestia agonized over their departure. Being at the time the bearer of the Elements of Harmony, and having known personally the devastating loss of her own sister due to banishment, she understood well the hurt, risks, and dangers that such a rift between ponies bore. The tragedy of Prideheart’s fall had been immensely painful already, but by tearing ponies apart with a wedge of anger; by keeping them separated with walls of animosity; by burning fields so hate had room to grow...

... such awful things only invited more pain, in the end.

Their journey away from Equestria was not to chase peace or healing, despite their declarations. This she knew. If the pain of Prideheart was the fuel behind their flight, then the tragedy of the past would only extend further into the future.

But what could she, even as princess, justly do? After all the suffering Prideheart had endured because of her, how could she also steal from him his freedom? Maybe holding him against his will would spare all of those ponies who had chosen to go with him from whatever consequences his rash actions might bring. Maybe forcing him to stay would grant everypony the time needed to heal and to understand. Maybe any risk justified trying to save those ponies from willfully stepping further away from Harmony.

But to personally stab the already-wronged Prideheart with the pain of betrayal again...? Even for what she believed was the greater good...?

Could she...?

Her failure to trust the Royal Guard, and what that failure had wrought, had awakened in her such fear that she could dread no thing greater than being responsible for more harm to Prideheart. She had seen now what her overreliance on herself had caused and she trembled each time she thought of acting unilaterally again.

In the end she tearfully chose to take no action to impede their departure. Grievously she prayed that her decision was the right one. She prayed that one day the tragedy would end and the rift would heal. She prayed that one day there might come a pony who understood Harmony and friendship enough to atone for her own horrendous mistakes.

It was heartwrenching for her to see the end it had all come to: a noble unicorn whom she had been so proud to have watched grow into an immeasurably faithful defender; a pony who had been filled with so many good things that her spirit had always been delighted every time she had seen him shining golden in his armor; a selfless protector who in a moment of deepest crisis had heroically and without fear stepped up to save what she herself would have failed to save...

... now just a wounded victim of her choices, running, and in need of aid.

But her fear let him go.

Desiring to be forever free from Princess Celestia, Equestria, and all of magic itself, Prideheart led his followers far to the west, eventually crossing the immense Pearl Peaks. On the far side of those mountains laid a land untamed. Several times in the past ponies had tried to erect frontier villages there and each time their efforts had come to nothing. Though resilient ponies could raise towns, cities, and castles in many harsh places, there was something about that land which had always warded off their efforts and left the territory barren to pony life (save for wandering travelers and curious explorers who would often pass briefly through).

Among the many things in that outlying land which Prideheart and his ponies found was Dryearth Forest, a vast woodland with an imposing mystique. At first they were reminded of the infamous Forest of the Everfree, for these woods also seemed so wild. But they soon discovered a stark, and to them intriguing, difference between the two woods:

None of the creatures who lived in Dryearth Forest exhibited magical abilities or properties in any way whatsoever.

By probing the depths of the forest they eventually uncovered its secret; a secret which answered both why the animals of the forest lacked magic and why Equestrian ponies had always failed to settle the land.

In the very heart of the forest was a great spring, and its everflowing waters unceasingly pushed to the surface large, glowing crystals which naturally grew under the earth there. Those crystals shined because of a rare magivorous property. They constantly absorbed magic power: spells, enchantments, and even ambient magic which normally only lingered in the air. They ate magic. It was as harmless and simple as it was beautiful and elegant: eating magic, converting it, and radiating it away as simple light from their colorful, crystalline structures.

The heavy presence of those crystals enormously weakened magic’s power in Dryearth Forest, and the many rivers and streams that flowed out from that central spring carried crystal dust which broadened a weaker version of the same effect into the surrounding land. That was why Equestrian settlements had always failed: the innate magic so ever-present in pony culture had the muscle robbed from it there. Attunement to the land, manipulating the weather, unicorn’s spells; all normal parts of pony life, but all rendered unreliable for prospective frontiersponies. Without their full power the many settlers had found success perpetually elusive.

Celebration broke out amongst Prideheart’s faithful. Though the land and forest was not entirely devoid of magic as their hero had hoped for, it was the next best thing. They were far, far away from any interference by their former compatriots, the endless canopies of Dryearth Forest shielded them from the watchful light of the now-forsaken sun, and most importantly of all the crystals native there guarded them from the despicable power of magic.

Prideheart, however, did not abandon his wish to discover a new home further afield; one utterly and completely free of all magic. But he did understand the value of Dryearth Forest. The fact that other ponies had failed to live there because they had been too stuck on their rotten magic gave him a sense of vindication. He and his ponies were also exhausted from their long journey, and as he cared greatly for them he happily acquiesced to settling down for a time to recover. They planned to continue their journey later.

And so there at the wellspring in the center of Dryearth Forest they founded the village of Heartwood. In recognition of their rejection of magic, and in honor of the forest which blessed them with its safety, they rechristened themselves Dryponies.

But time lets roots grow strong.

The longer the Dryponies lingered in that place the more seeds they planted there, and the harder it became to swallow the idea of leaving. Prideheart always attempted to keep his ponies’ hopes up that one day they would depart and find a paradise truly free of magic. But as time continued to pass he began to realize the truth.

He was the only one there who earnestly held on to that hope.

The others, though regarding Prideheart with an outwardly faithful deference, gave reasons for staying at Heartwood which were many and varied:

They were “still tired of travel.”

Their temporary home was “good enough.”

They had “already escaped the wicked princess of the sun.”

They were sure that “sunponies would never find them, having not the strength to live somewhere without their awful magic.”

And so on.

Prideheart came to understand that he was always going to be divided from his followers. They were ponies who had followed him only in the heat of loyalty. They had rejected the sun princess and magic as he had asked, but though they had claimed these things faithfully they were also still just ordinary ponies with the same sacred needs for friends, family, love, and life. Needs which they now acted upon in Heartwood.

The Dryponies’ love of Prideheart was eternal, but their devotion to him had only carried them as far as the forest. Their passion had cooled and they could not anymore abandon their lives for his sake.

And he, though a broken hero after his ordeal, did not at that time have the wherewithal to abandon them despite his own wishes. He stayed with them.

The months became years, and the torches of camp became the lanterns of home.

As the years flew by in Heartwood, the old stories of Equestria began to be twisted or lost, and a new culture came to rise amongst the Dryponies. The hatred of magic became a part of their communal fabric, as well as did the unforgiving detestation of the abhorred sun. Their voluntary exile to the forest became to their memory a forced escape from the plight of persecution. Prideheart became to them only a representation of all ideals: nobility, to self-sacrifice for others; loyalty, to commit completely to those for whom one serves; independence, to stay free and live for oneself, away from any dire sunlight; strength and courage, to face down impossible odds without hesitation; and more. Even his wish of true escape merged into their new story, becoming a myth of a Walking Desert who would one day conveniently come to them and thereafter guide them forever away from the magical machinations of the wicked sun.

And so the Dryponies survived, and waited.

And survived, and waited.

And festered in their anger, hate, and resent; and waited.

And four hundred years passed by in that fashion.

By that latter day many of the details of Prideheart’s tragedy had become muddied to known history back in Equestria. Wryzard’s attack and banishment was known mostly only to those ponies who bothered to study old stories with enough zeal. More pointedly, because those who were most loyal and best knew Prideheart had left with him, memory of the fallen hero himself had vanished from all accounts of the attack, save for the personal recall of Princess Celestia.

And she had certainly never forgotten.

Being wise and resourceful she had easily been able to discern where Prideheart and his followers had fled to, but she had kept that knowledge in the same secret place as her shame and regret, sharing it never once. Through the intervening years she had grown committed to practicing her painfully relearned lesson on faith in others, but she had never found the full healing needed to reach out and attempt to peacefully recover her lost little ponies. The disgrace and cowardice she felt inside had always driven her to have let them be.

Sometime after the redemption of Nightmare Moon and the restoration of Princess Luna, the inevitable time for reckoning came.

Another group of Equestrian ponies had gone out to yet again try to tame the frontier beyond the Pearl Peaks. Unlike the many failures that had gone before them, the newest group was more dedicated, more stalwart, more resilient, and more clever than all prior. Where their ancestors had failed, they succeeded. In their unity, intelligence, strength, and resourcefulness, they overcame the drain of magic in the land and triumphantly began a small, successful village which they named Hamestown, right next to Dryearth Forest (then known as Unicorn Spring Forest to the ponies of Equestria, from a strange legend which had cropped up in the past four hundred years: supposedly unicorn foals had sometimes been found alone on the outskirts of the forest by explorers and travelers, as if the baby unicorns had sprung from the woods themselves).

Knowing that contact between her ponies and the Dryponies could not be avoided forever, Princess Celestia maintained a close interest but a distant eye on Hamestown. And fortunately for the princess, her prayer from long ago for a pony better versed in Harmony and friendship had been answered. She had at that time under her wing a faithful pupil by the name of Twilight Sparkle; a unicorn who had, along with her closest friends, become the new bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and the student herself was a pony personally well-studied in the magic of friendship.

Putting into her beloved student the faith she had four centuries ago failed to put into Prideheart and the Royal Guard, Princess Celestia dispatched Twilight and her friends to Hamestown. Then, as her harshest lesson had taught her, she merely stood aside in faith and prayed once more.

Her faith was not misplaced.

With patience, forgiveness, understanding, humility, and the strength of friendship, Twilight and her friends were able to convince the Dryponies to explore options of peace. When the Dryponies met personally the frontiersponies of Hamestown for the first time, they discovered that the so-called ’sunponies’ they had long reviled as enemies in their isolated tales were instead very much like themselves: ponies flush with nobility, loyalty, and strength, toiling hard to live an independent life on the frontier. Common ground was found, and peace was forged.

Shown forgiveness and understanding by the princess’s pupil, even in the face of their rage and aggression, the wayward Dryponies grew the very bravery of heart they needed to pass along the same forgiveness to Princess Celestia. They met with her, and they pardoned her for her role in the fall of their hero four hundred years ago.

At long last Harmony had been restored.

The great rift which had been caused by foolish pride, noble sacrifice, and evil dragon fire had finally closed up and healed.

For most.

The rift in Princess Celestia’s heart remained.

Dryponies and ’sunponies’ had come together again, but sun and hero had not. Nor could the golden reconciliation four-centuries-late have ever restored her and him at all, for the trail of a broken hero was not the same path the Dryponies had walked.

Much to the princess’s grief, the inheritors of Prideheart’s legacy could not answer what had ever happened to Prideheart himself. What end he had ever come to; what final words of her he may have ever had; what forgivenesses he may have found or what outrages he may have still held on to...

They did not know his fate.

Their stories remembered only that, in his later years, after having spent some decades in Heartwood, he had simply upped and vanished. He had gathered a small few things and had left by himself without having said a word to anypony.

Like everything which they had dealt with in their isolation the Dryponies had in time wrapped his surprising departure into their self-serving mythology. At first it had been with reasonable and rational thoughts: their hero had gone for an unexpected patrol and some mundane fate had befallen him. In time, as his absence had grown longer, the grand power of their myth had expanded upon it: their hero had left in search of the Walking Desert, to speed the day of their full escape; or perhaps he had gone to find the promised land himself, and he would have eventually returned to have shown them the way. When so much time had passed that his death – even if just by age – had been assured, the final version of their legend had come about: their hero had prepared them for their long destiny of waiting for the Walking Desert to arrive and guide them away from the wicked sun, and in faith and trust he had left them to meet their destiny on their own.

In their willful and blind devotion to their self-selected destiny they had made themselves immune to seeking out the truth, whatever it may have been. Despite any good intentions in their hearts, Prideheart the legend had become more important to them than Prideheart the pony.

And so it seemed that even with Harmony restored nopony would ever know what had become of the hero who had let himself be seared and cursed to save Canterlot. Perhaps being forgotten in that particular way was another sacrifice he had taken upon himself for the sake of others.

Perhaps he had never escaped Equestria as his infernal pain had begged him to.

Or perhaps he had never escaped being a hero.

Chapter 1: A Joy Shared

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Approximately 640 years after the banishment of Nightmare Moon...

There was little the residents of Stony Nook had to fear from the silent evening moon. Nightmare Moon was just a foal's tale, often repeated only to scold or excite depending on the occasion (and on the temperament of the foal). Throughout the town's short history there hadn't ever been any threat as dire as the frightful Mare in the Moon. The townsponies hardly ever worried about even so much as harmless pipsqueak monsters, let alone mythical civilization-ending tyrants. The most recent story of such cataclysmic mayhem was some sort of dragon attack on Canterlot which was already forty years a hazy memory and from before the time of Stony Nook itself.

The only real threats feared by Stony Nook were economic: seasons a little short on food, slowdowns in their exports, or lacking the migrant hooves to get done all what needed doing. But dragons, demons, and monsters? They weren't worth fearing any more than the everyday hard work needed to forge a comfortable frontier life.

Stony Nook was nestled in the northwest, though much more west than north. It wasn't as far out as the places where the buffalo roamed, lands dry and red which were all dust and rust, but it was also not near enough to the central plains to catch the forever winds which roamed the endless verdant grass. Stony Nook's land and weather were something in between. The grass was never green but perpetually a color brown-and-yellow, far from dead but thirsty all year since the pegasi of Cloudsdale were miserly with their rain for a place so thinly populated. The wind was doled out with the same selective regard. Lonely breezes took solitude in the rocky hills and only occasionally found friends to race through the sparse, roomy forests.

The liveliest resident of the land was the powerful river which coursed down from the nearby mountains. Here and there the white rush got stormy, and elsewhere it almost always jogged at a healthy pace, but the ponies of Stony Nook had been wise enough to found their village on the river's widest and slowest bend. They knew the river as a mellow neighbor whose calm caress hugged them on the north and east.

Founded a little over two decades ago, Stony Nook was still small enough to have only one official road: an unpaved, dusty street which cut straight through the center of town, indistinguishable from the east-west country road it was a part of. It was a fat trail that had been beaten flat since before the time of Stony Nook itself. Nothing so much as a stepping stone decorated it; just pebbles descended from older pebbles, and the tracks of wagon wheels carved deep through the years.

To the east the road crossed the river via a simple but sturdy stone bridge, and it traveled several lengthy miles out before it hit a crossroads. Some ways led to Stony Nook's nearest neighbor villages. A road further east shot across the country. Another way winded north towards the cold lands which had once been the Crystal Empire. One path split south and turned into a sunkissed highway which eventually broke southeast towards Canterlot. The crossroads didn't choke with travelers at any point throughout the year, but Stony Nook wasn't far enough out of the way to be ignored by the frequent-enough migrants, traders, merchants, and supply caravans who saw profit in an extra stop.

The western road out of town was a very different story. It was long and lonely for a mind-numbing amount of miles before it hit any crossroads. The days of walking it took to get anywhere within horizon-distance of another pony village was reason enough for most ponies to avoid taking it, coming or going. Usually the only folks to venture that way were travel-hearted ponies who wanted to head southwest by the slow and scenic route.

And scenic it was: the road for a great stretch hugged the mighty Pearl Peaks. They were some of the largest, most picturesque mountains in all of Equestria.

The range seemed to have no beginning or end. Mountain followed after mountain forever, each shimmering white at their cap just as their name implied, like a tribe of lazy giants reaching their painted fingertips up to stroke the sky. Every morning they basked brilliant in the sunrise, and every sunset they gently caught the falling sun as it faded through a rainbow of cooling colors into sleep.

For most ponies the Pearl Peaks were the end of the frontier, or at least the end of that particular edge of it. Only pegasi and other hardy travelers suffering from adventuresome itches ever bothered navigating past the mountains to see the other side. They were regular enough that they passed through Stony Nook from time to time, but to the ordinary townsponies living their day-to-day lives there, the mountains weren't much more than a beautiful mural painted across the western horizon.

Stony Nook had most of the staples expected from a frontier town: one post office, one tavern, one schoolhouse, one general store (with short-lived new competition every odd year), one squat water tower, one doctor's office, one town hall so small that town meetings usually took place right on the main drag... Really, two or more of anything was just plain excessive, with the natural exception of how many strong working hooves one should have. The buildings lined themselves on either side of the road, never more than one deep, with only just barely an alley's worth of room to squeeze between them.

A notable absence was a train station. Daytime doldrums were never broken by the piercing whistles of rolling trains, and exciting new visitors never came in droves. The missing station wasn't for lack of petitioning the railroad authority to extend themselves, though. The never-fading grumbling around town was that the lazy city ponies who financed and managed the lines couldn't screw their heads on straight enough to add Stony Nook to the route, but the unfortunate truth was less palatable and more mundane: there already existed rail lines which passed not all that far to the east and south of Stony Nook, and the financiers had yet to justify the expense of such a small detour. As it stood, anypony who needed a train had to travel over four dozen miles along the eastern road to reach the neighboring town of Mule's Head where the closest train station was.

The lion's share of the town's exports went to Mule's Head too, for the same reason.

Stone was Stony Nook's bread and butter, at times reinforced with ores of varying natures. True connoisseurs of lithology could recognize the superior excellence of what Stony Nook quarried, or so the dedicated ponyfolk of the village had always told themselves. They were the foremost experts on quality stone (again, in their own minds), and their stone was what had put them on the map (when those blasted cartographers remembered that their village existed at all).

All of the town's buildings, commercial to residential, were proudly built from locally quarried stone, braced with timber framing and topped with thick hay roofs. The stocky, enduring structures had bumpy faces of unvarnished gray; walls pockmarked by whole stones. The invincible armies of rocks held back the cold, wind, rain, and every unwelcome element which might have ever threatened homely comfort. There was no doubt that the dwellings would stand without care for a long, long time to come if Stony Nook were to ever have been abandoned.

But certainly the townsponies could have never imagined fleeing their well-loved home. They had always gotten by as best they could, working hard as they had for a generation in their quiet, close-knit, neighborly town. Friends and strangers had always cooperated all as one family, through good times and bad, laboring tirelessly during Celestia's days and resting peacefully at night under the silent light of the moon.

And the moonlight that particular evening seemed no different than any of the nights which had come before...

There wasn't much of a nightlife in small Stony Nook, but the tavern offered the best it could.

Out front under the building's long canopy hung a wooden sign which always creaked in the breeze, and the painted name wasn't refreshed nearly often enough to stay readable. Not that locals had any trouble identifying it, or visitors either for that matter. One had to but follow the loud trail of laughter and chatter, or look for the door which spat out ruby-cheeked ponies in happy stumbles.

Inside, the usual evening revelry was well underway. The vacant tables looked like they had seen a war: wet rings where had once stood fine soldiers, signs of their blood spattered across the battlefield, and dribbled crumbs left behind like drying bones. No doubt sooner or later the rest of the tavern would look the same! Merrymaking ponies nursed drinks, traded talk, and shared laughter both light and loud. There wasn't a mousehole there which didn't ring with tales of the near, the far, the everyday, or the extraordinary. Some of the guests wore new faces – out-of-towners or recent arrivals – but they were welcome to join the fun as if they had always lived there.

All in all, the usual for the tavern.

Though up at the bar there was something unusual.

It was normal for a few solitary ponies to sit at the bar and share wet-whistled words with T. Totaler, the establishment's proprietor and a mare quite generous with the taps. That night however, instead of the odd drinker or three, there were six smiling ponies at the bar. They occupied stools all in a line, and they were an excited little party all their own.

Mrs. Totaler was a late middle-aged earth pony of straw yellow complexion, though almost always her color was covered by an apron whose long-set stains read like a navigational chart. Her mane was short and frizzy, not so different-looking from the foamy tops of the six mugs she filled from the back wall's most popular cask. The mugs went on a tray, the tray went in her teeth, and she turned it over to the bartop with enough perfect speed to swish the golden drinks up to the lips of the mugs (but not enough to spill a drop!). Twenty-five years of practice did that for a pony, or maybe it was just the cutie mark of two ready mugs on her flank.

"There y'are!" the proud bartender slapped the tray down before her guests and tipped her head at them. "Six ciders. Enjoy!"

All the party waited on the sunny-gray earth mare who sat at the end of their row.

The gray mare, first peeking down the line at her patient crew, took on a flattered look and leaned forward on her stool. She pulled off a mug from the tray for herself.

Permission thus granted, the remaining five ponies leaned in together and claimed their drinks.

But before anypony took a sip, the gray mare pushed a prepared stack of bits towards the bartender; enough to cover all six ponies' ciders and more, if they wanted.

"Well ponies, drink up!" she then heartily invited, and she lifted her mug high above her short, straight, pale pink mane. "Let these be the first of many tonight!"

After some fast cheers of celebration they all followed orders, throwing back their drinks and gladly guzzling most of their first round in one go. The gray mare's own swig was a little less greedy than the others, but all the same she smacked her lips in delight when she finished.

A cough came from Mrs. Totaler. Nothing harsh; just a polite signal for attention.

The gray mare looked to see the bartender rest a hoof over the payment. The older mare sifted out a small allotment – just a few bits – before she dragged the bulk of the money off the bartop and into one of her apron's pouches. The spared portion she pushed straight back to the gray mare.

"Li'l discount for you," Mrs. Totaler said, topping her gesture with a closed, friendly smile.

"Mrs. Totaler, come on now!" the younger mare protested gaily, showing her refusal by nearly tipping her stool over backwards. "Fair is fair! I don't mind paying when I want to treat my little ponies to something special!"

"Nonsense, Crumble Pie!" the bartender gladly countered. "After all you've done for this town? All you're still doing? No, no! Sure enough I know I'll get my due in time. New quarry you've been slaving away to get going is gonna drag a lot of business back to Stony Nook; maybe enough to earn us a railroad, heh! No doubt in my mind we'll see another boom, just like the last one when you opened that old quarry all those years back. You bring in them thirsty workponies again, and I'll be drowning in bits in no time!"

"Too kind, Mrs. Totaler! Too kind!" Crumble Pie relented happily. She took back her discounted bits and went for another swig at her delicious drink.

Hailstone, another one of the six, hoisted her mug as high as she could reach, even popping out her frosty-blue wings to get an extra inch of lift.

She agreed wholeheartedly with the bartender, "Yeah! Hear, hear! To Crumble Pie!"

More cheers; more swigs.

Some humble chuckling came from the gray mare, and she told them, "It's nice to feel appreciated, but I haven't done anything too special."

"No way!" said Hailstone. She used the bartop to push herself up. "First you come along and set us up with the quarry that all but gave Stony Nook its name! Then when that dried up you set us up with another quarry? As far as I'm concerned this party is for you!"

Again encouraging cheers blared.

But before the partygoers could drain whatever drops were left in their mugs with another round of celebratory swigs, Crumble Pie insisted, "It's a party for all of us. Nothing I did, I did alone. Not the old quarry. Not this new one. We've all put in a lot of hard work together to make this happen. And I couldn't be prouder to work alongside such great ponies."

The other five vacuumed up the inclusive praise, though they only felt worthy of it due to their rock solid trust in their forepony.

Mrs. Totaler lauded, "Aw, an admirable pony through and through!" She had returned to the bartop prepared to deliver a fresh round of cider, and this time she distributed the little barrel-shaped mugs herself. Her hooves worked on autopilot, one sharing drinks while the other collected any empty mugs, and meanwhile she spoke unhindered, "Still, Stony Nook wouldn'ta gotten half this far if you hadn't been here to whip us into shape on the matter."

"No, no," Crumble Pie shook her head gently. "I'm trying to tell you: starting a quarry isn't difficult. There's no special tricks involved. It's just a lot of hard, time-consuming work. Anypony can do it if they've got the drive."

"Well," Hailstone laughed, and she finally gave up on the war of compliments, flipping back the white wisps of her mane, "I'm glad you were here to help start ours twice anyway."

The rest of her work crew spouted concise agreements.

"You're plenty welcome, fellas" the gray mare responded, and then she took a deeper draft from her drink.

But when she set the mug down and wiped the moisture from her lips, a few retrospective thoughts had obviously entered her; old, old thoughts which in recent years had been growing younger.

She lowered her voice into a tone very serious but otherwise still sprinkled with the party's mirth, and she said, "I think two's my limit though. Whenever this new quarry eventually goes south like the first one, well then I'm going south too."

Mrs. Totaler, taking a respite, folded her forelegs on the bartop.

"Say it ain't so, Crumble Pie! You'd leave us?"

"Not without missing you all, of course!" smiled the gray mare. Yet she wanted there to be no confusion. Likewise resting herself on the bartop, she said solemnly, "But yeah... I'd go. A pony can only break their back starting up quarries on the frontier for so long, you know? At some point I got to move on to other things."

"We're not trying to make you feel guilty," Hailstone assured her. "We'd just miss you too."

All the crew agreed earnestly.

A silence followed whose melancholic undertone Hailstone didn't care for. She injected some happy energy right back into the party, asking her boss brightly, "So why south? What sort of plans are you making for a future down there?"

"I'm not absolutely sure," Crumble Pie rubbed her chin. "South; southeast, maybe... The land that way is quite a bit flatter but still has plenty of stone. Could start a rock farm there. You know, a lifestyle a little more sedentary than all the heavy labor out here. A little, heh."

"A quiet life on the farm?" pondered the pegasus in amusement. "I never would have pictured you like that, but now that you mention it: that is totally you!"

"It'd be a chance to really settle down," justified Crumble Pie. "Do some of the things I've never had the time or inclination to do because of all this quarry business." She wiggled her bottom such that her stool rocked loudly side-to-side, and she joked with mixed sobriety, "Age isn't making these hips any better for bearing foals!"

Everypony laughed, though after hers Mrs. Totaler warmly offered, "Nice dream to have, Crumble Pie. Way you run a quarry, I'm sure you'd make a wonderful family mare."

Unlike all the sincere praise before, the older mare's comment was enough to paint a strip of color across Crumble Pie's nose, and she silently nodded.

"Hey, speaking of family," Hailstone chimed in boisterously, "where's Scrolldozer? He should be here with us!"

"Oh by Celestia's sunny mornings," the gray mare cracked, "give the guy a chance to see his filly!"

The pegasus winced, feeling embarrassed by her short memory.

"Is that where he went?" she smoothed over her error as coolly as she could. Then, with legitimate concern, "We'll be seeing him tonight though, right?"

"I'm sure we will eventually," Crumble Pie replied. It surprised none of her crew how she explained the whole situation with open-hearted sympathy for the absent pony, "We were gone longer than usual and came back later than usual, so of course he went to spend some time with his little girl. Once he's tucked her in, read her a story, and kissed her good night, then he'll be here to finish out the evening with us."

"Suppose I should be settin' aside a drink for him then," Mrs. Totaler said, and she lifted herself off the bartop to get back to work.

Crumble Pie pointed a hoof and said, "No cider, though. You know how that big softy likes his milk."

"'Course, 'course."

While the bartender made another round through her tavern, the party reveling at the bar continued to swish, swig, sing, and laugh the night away. Their little quarry company needed no better company than themselves, and their conversations wandered and danced no differently than family banter at a dinner table:

"Hey Crumble Pie! How long until the quarry's fully ready to open? A month?"

"Balderdash! Two weeks at the most, and then we send the word out: Stony Nook's looking for hard-working hooves! Why do you think I got the mayor to lure some builders to town already? Gotta get some new lodging up for all the ponies who'll come to work the quarry! So I hope you're not thinking of slacking off just cause we're so close to finished setting up!"

"Me? Slack? Never, haha!"

...

"So that's when Scrolldozer said to me, ‘Oh no, I've stacked them in the wrong corner again, haven't I?’"

"Hahaha! Please tell me that this time you let him know he hadn't?"

"Well-"

"Cause last time he stayed up all night without telling anypony so that he could get all five tons of rock moved around only to find out next morning that he had been right to begin with and had to move them back!"

"I told him, I told him! Don't worry!"

...

"You can't think of anything?"

"What? We took all our supplies with us when we pulled out from the old quarry. There's nothing left behind to retrieve!"

"No, I mean, from all the stone still there."

"Oh. No. We left bad stone behind. All the quality stuff ran dry."

"I thought when we shut down you said it was cause the quarry floor was getting unstable."

"Yeah, that too. The whole thing was a big sinkhole waiting to happen; cavern or something under there. But even so, whatever halfway-decent stone is left wouldn't be worth floating down the river."

...

"No no, you're wrong. They're very safe, practically designed, and easy to use. Toss'em around, stomp on'em; I guarantee you're never going to set one off by accident."

"So you really think that makes it okay to trust just anypony with those things?"

"Anypony responsible, sure. And trained. I don't let a pony near a blasting charge if I think they'll blow their own hooves off with'em. But with the requisite know-how, even a foal could handle one!"

"‘A foal,’ huh? Is that why I saw you teaching Scrolldozer's-"

"You think she doesn't have the smarts for it? Not that you're ever going to tell her father that I showed her how they work, you understand?"

...

"Let's see... um... three years ago? Yeah, three years; when I went to see the Summer Sun Celebration in Canterlot."

"Goodness. Yeah, I haven't seen her since I was a filly and my parents took me to the Equestria Games."

"Well if you were a big important princess then how many of the little hamlets out in the middle of nowhere would you visit? Your parents took you to see her, but I can't even convince my mom to fly out here for a visit!"

"Heh. I'm just saying: maybe catching a glimpse of the ruler of all Equestria is something a pony should do more than once in a lifetime?"

"So are you going to be hosting tea parties for her on your rock farm, then?"

"And you won't be invited, hah!"

...

"Crumble Pie?"

"Yeah?"

"Just... again... thanks for everything."

"Stop trying to make me blush! I mean it when I say it: we're a team and I'm proud to stand with you ponies and see this through."

And so the chatter continued replete with laughs and awash with drinks all the way until their missing crewmember arrived. His appearance was no surprise, however a special little surprise did come along with him.

Through the tavern's swinging door at last came Scrolldozer.

A unicorn with a squat horn; it was packed with a startling amount of power, at least whenever it came to heaving heavy rocks around. The horn poked out of his short black mane like a thick root jutting from a craggy pile of coal lumps. His hide was neither brown nor orange but something dull between the two, and his face was so plain that it sat down in a crowd. He wore his withdrawn posture like a suit he was going to be buried in.

The great surprise he had brought along was a bolt of lightning packed into a small bundle of hooves, tail, and mane. Bright-eyed, exuberant, irrepressible beyond reproach; behind him came his young daughter. The filly skipped through the door with far more energy than was proper for such a late hour.

She had inherited her father's most orange side, sparkling far above his drab shade, but her red mane had come from her mother, vivid almost to the point of glowing. Thick waves of hair poured out of her head, and it would have flared out like matted fur if it hadn't been braided tightly together. Down the left of her neck the rope of hair fell, hanging near the floor and tied at the end by a single ribbon of stunning violet which matched her eyes.

Like both her parents she was a unicorn, but her tiny horn had never demonstrated much magic. Not that she had ever complained, however. At an unusually early age she had learned to read and it hadn't been spellbooks she had voraciously dug into. Extensive reading had already earned her a cutie mark, and it was of a thick tome laid flat and open, holding infinite worlds within which beckoned to be read.

It was very unlike Scrolldozer to have allowed her out during the moon's reign; she was still in that youthful phase were early bedtimes were one of the right vitamins for healthy growth. But they knew their friend well enough to know how litigious his filly was, and no doubt she had twisted and wrenched her father's leg until he had given in and allowed her along.

Crumble Pie wasn't bothered at all that they were blessed with seeing her. She turned on her stool and leaned down, calling in welcome to the approaching filly, "Well, if it isn't the little wiggler!"

"Ms. Crumble Pie!"

The filly pranced ahead of her father and tackled the hanging hind legs of the seated mare, rocking her stool.

After a quick hug at uneven heights Crumble Pie grabbed the filly, hoisted her up, and held her out.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" the gray mare teased.

"Nope!" was the filly's cheeky answer.

"Oh, believe me: I tried," Scrolldozer said. He shambled up to the bar, though his tiredness was made more of weary joy than potent exhaustion. "I tried."

He climbed onto the barstool next to Crumble Pie, at the very end of his group of coworkers, and he sank himself onto the bartop.

"Not tonight," he shook his head and chuckled. "No story was setting her to sleep tonight. It was easier just to let her come along."

Crumble Pie bounced the filly in her limbs and laughed, "Bookworm, you troublemaker! Are you being a stone in your father's horseshoe again?"

"But Ms. Crumble Pie," protested Bookworm, "I wanted to come see all of you and join your party!"

"Wanted it bad enough to hassle your poor father, I see! Well—" The gray mare rolled her voice in phony consideration, and past the little filly she snuck a wink at Scrolldozer. "—I guess if you promise to behave and go to bed on time for the rest of the month, then we can let you stay up and have some fun with us just this once."

"Uh-huh! I promise!" Bookworm unsurprisingly vowed, patting a hoof over her heart.

"Just a promise?" Crumble Pie knew to ask, leading the filly on with a knowing smile.

"I super promise!" Bookworm smiled right back.

"That's better! I can trust that!"

And the gray mare pulled Bookworm in for a hug and a kiss, each attack raising squeals of laughter from the filly.

Bookworm spun back to look at her father, throwing him a glance which was a little too eager with childish vengeance; ‘told you so!’ in the non-verbal language of schoolyards.

His answer was to sigh contentedly, much more in need of a good night's rest than his bedtime-overdue daughter.

The father shifted to make himself more comfortable on the bartop when he suddenly snapped up, alerted by a frothy and cold glass of milk which slid into position before him.

Mrs. Totaler smiled at him warmly and said, "And if you give me but a moment, I'll have a li'ler glass for your lovely lady as well."

The bartender nodded to Crumble Pie and tapped upon the bartop, a signal the gray mare took as permission to set Bookworm down upon it. As promised, the little filly was delivered her own miniature glass of milk. But if anypony had hoped that the milk would have put her in a sleepy mood, they were foiled by her thirsty interest in their goings-on; she hardly found the time to sip her drink!

"So did anything happen out there this time, Ms. Crumble Pie?" By the speed which she had asked it, Bookworm's imagination had obviously already dreamed up its own fanciful answers. "Anything exciting?" she begged.

"Haha, no!" the gray mare said, happily exasperated. Every time they had returned from the quarry, the tale-hungry filly's question had always been the same even though the answer had never changed. Needling the little one, Crumble Pie asked, "Don't you think your father would've told you about it already if something had happened?"

"I try to tell her every time!" Scrolldozer explained like only the parent of such a delightful frustration could. "All we do is work: planning, building, digging, moving, excavating, carving..." For each boring item on his list he lovingly scratched the side of his daughter's neck.

Bookworm's hopes weren't deterred.

"Come on, Ms. Crumble Pie," she pleaded, "there's gotta be something you can tell me! You do a lot of digging, right? Did you find anything buried in the ground?"

"Yes! Stones!" Crumble Pie smiled, and then she elatedly admonished, "Oh wiggler, it's a quarry! There's no big story behind it! There's no old civilizations buried there! There's no monsters in the ground! You don't go there for adventure! You're going to have to accept that your father's right: we work, and we only do things you'd find dull."

The second denial, like usual, managed to dent Bookworm's optimism. She still held onto her hopes though; she needed them. All her books had been filled with eye-opening, awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, imagination-stirring things; stories she had insatiably devoured one after the other. But though they were so familiar to her that she could see them in her memories, she had of course never actually encountered any of those sorts of fabulous things while trapped in little everyday Stony Nook. It was always her hope to catch real glimpses of such great stories from those ponies who did come and go.

Crumble Pie was very familiar with the tiny reader's lust, and she pried innocently, "Don't you have your new book? You know, if you want to hear about all sorts of interesting things and not boring quarry work?"

"I finished it!" Bookworm boasted.

The gray mare, shocked despite knowing the filly's appetite, gazed wide-eyed at Scrolldozer for confirmation.

"It's true," the father informed Crumble Pie, and there was a rare bit of personal pride which he pinned on his chest. "She tore through the whole thing while we were away."

"Well roll me down a rocky hill!" crooned the gray mare, astounded enough to need another gulp of her drink. She rubbed the top of Bookworm's mane. "How are you going to stay busy if you read that fast?"

"It's okay!" the filly contended. "I'll just mail that one back to Mom and she'll pick out another one from the Canterlot library to send me."

"At your rate even the library of Canterlot is going to run out of books to read," Crumble Pie warned playfully.

That threat, in a small way, actually seemed to worry the little filly.

"I don't think so," she maintained, though a significant weight had fast pulled her hopes down into hushed tones.

There was a sudden excited rapping on the bartop.

"Hey! I got a story for you!" Hailstone said. Excess cider was drooling from her lips. She turned her voice eerie and shared the gossip with everypony, "Anypony heard the latest about those mystery attacks on the west road?"

Scrolldozer's spine froze stiff.

"Hailstone, no," he pleaded like any worried parent would have, "please don't get Bookworm worked up with that!"

"Ooooo!" the filly didn't share her father's concerns in the slightest, and she started leaning her way down the bartop towards Hailstone. "You've heard something new?" she panted and begged. "Tell me, tell me!"

"Bookworm, honey, please," her father implored. Two sparkles from his horn snatched her ears and folded them down. "We don't want to hear about this, baby."

She thrashed her head to try and shake off the magic, whipping about her braided mane, and she complained loudly, "But I do, Dad! I don't get to hear about this stuff when I'm always stuck at the schoolhouse or with the sitters whenever you're gone!"

"I don't want you hearing about it!"

"Dad! Come on!" Bookworm whined, her bitterness growing.

The father frowned painfully.

Crumble Pie was quietly conflicted. Scrolldozer was her best friend, but sometimes he really had a way of making the friendship cumbersome.

Any new details regarding the mysterious attacks were of interest to the gray mare; she was curious as any regular townspony to keep up with worrisome local happenings. She was a little fearful even. The wellbeing of the whole town was important enough to her for even rumored risks to be given serious regard.

But she also didn't question the father's desire to have absolutely nothing to do with such threatening rumors. He was the only crewmember with a foal. The quarry was far enough away that daily commutes would have been senseless wastes of daylight, so every time they went to the quarry it was for days at a time. The father always had to leave Bookworm behind in Stony Nook in the care of trusted townsponies.

Maybe he was still being a little too overprotective though. If his ravenous filly really wanted to find out the gruesome details then she would one way or another, and probably during one of her father's regular absences. Better that the story be shared here while he was around to talk with her about it.

"Hey," Crumble Pie brought a soothing, natural tone to the conversation, "it's alright, Scrolldozer. Hailstone's not trying to scare anypony (right, Hailstone?) and there really isn't any way to keep the wiggler from the news if she wants it. But she'll handle it." She gave a grin to the filly. "She may still be a growing pony, but she's a very mature and smart pony all the same."

A big, loud, long, exhausted sigh; Scrolldozer didn't relent so much as he reluctantly accepted. The glow of his horn faded, releasing his daughter's ears much to her victorious delight.

Hailstone had picked up on her boss's hint and secretly slapped a little sobriety into herself. More considerate of the anxious parent, she held back from any further flourishes. She only cradled a hoof around her drink and spoke matter-of-factly.

"Well, actually," she said, "all I heard was that there was another attack just yesterday. This one was the worst so far they were telling me. Some poor pony came through town with a big haul of goods and was going to take the west road along the mountains, but he got jumped several miles down the way. They said he lost everything."

Bookworm gobbled up what few details there were, but she longed for more. Meanwhile, her father's mood dangled between thankfulness for the brevity of the tale and fright over the third such report of something so unsavory.

Crumble Pie, however, was hardly moved in any way save skepticism.

"That's it?" she asked. "How is it ‘the worst’ when it hardly sounds any different than the last two? All these stories of attacks are turning out kind of thin."

"I dunno. It's all I heard," Hailstone remarked. "They've always happened while we're out at the quarry. Ponies like us just get the rumors afterwards."

The gray mare snorted, doubt-filled but amused, and she brushed the whole thing away, "Always the west road; always travelers from out of town..." To placate Scrolldozer she added, "I wouldn't be surprised if it's just inexperienced ponies getting daunted by the long, lonely road and then spooking themselves, or maybe getting spooked by some harmless wildlife."

"Oh, not this time," Mrs. Totaler broke in.

The bartender had just returned from collecting the used mugs and dishwares of other patrons. She set the stack aside in a sink, splashed water onto just one mug, and brought it with her to the bar where she stuffed a rag-coated hoof into it to dry it. Each twist had the same sober, sad quality to it that her words did.

"I got to see this feller myself, 'fore and after. One heck of a change."

Most of the work crew shifted closer with moody interest, tipping their stools towards the bar. None was more taken than Bookworm who leapt excitedly to her hooves... only to have her butt slammed back down by her father's magic. The nervous father pulled his foal across the bartop closer to himself.

"So... what's the story?" Crumble Pie asked, speaking low and intently as if she was part of a backroom deal. Like everypony in town she had a lot of trust for the longtime bartender's accumulated news. Her half-finished drink she pushed aside, and she folded her forelegs onto the bartop and listened.

"Well...," began Mrs. Totaler with a heavy sigh.

Decades of bartop chatter had made her a talented, natural storyteller. She cleared her throat and softened the twists of her rag, resetting herself so as to begin the tale like a rising dawn; incidentally where the story also began:

"... So... he trots into town last morning; very early, probably stayed in Mule's Head the night before and got up ahead of the sun to make it here. Big wagon behind him; hauled it himself; freight-type of some sort, right fat with commodities stacked high. Wandering merchant. You all know the type; they come through often enough: thick legs for taking his wares far and wide, hard-faced from all the weather he's weathered, but pleasant-voiced from dealing with so many kinds'a ponies all everywhere, and tail's always just a little dirty from too much dust and not enough showers... He must'a had a real trip in him too cause that wagon was loaded proper with goods: dry foods and preserves, barrels of different drinks, all kinds of blankets, and tools, and trinkets, and something for everypony. Real journeypony and-"

She stopped herself. In the silence she set the spotless mug aside and then snapped and folded her rag.

"Point is," she resumed, resting a leg on the bartop, "I know'em when I see'em, and he wasn't no neophyte. Some of the clay caked on his wagon wheels probably came all the way from Fillydelphia. Anyway, where was I? ... Right, so... pretty usual stay for a pony like him: comes into town, chats a spell, makes some sales. I even bought a small case of Cloudsdale Rainwater Mead off'a him myself."

The bartender keenly pointed to one of the shelves behind her bar and highlighted a simple, unlabeled box which had recently taken over a vacancy there.

"Save it for a special occasion I think; fair trader, he was. But, ain't here nor there I suppose... He was around two or three hours at the most; no longer. Stony Nook was a mite too small for'em; finished his sales quick and weren't nothing else for him to see here, so he was on his way. Left on the west road; seemed pretty excited about it too. From what I gather he knew exactly how long it was and where it led; wanted to enjoy the long, quiet trip; a traveler's heart in him."

Again she took a moment away from the tale, letting her words settle in while she folded her rag and shined her bartop clean.

The usual clamor continued on all around the tavern. Happy guests were enjoying their evening, from those who only whispered warm words to those who were pounding on their tables with laughter. Yet up at the bar the party was sieged by anxious silence, all waiting for the story to continue.

A grim night fell upon Mrs. Totaler's tale.

"So, 'fore noon, he was gone. And that should'a been that. But... come late that afternoon..."

Her wiping of the bartop slowed to a crawl, then ceased altogether. She laid the rag very carefully aside.

"... he came running back into town. Really running; tripping over his own hooves. No wagon with'em anymore; just the broken remains of its hitch still clinging to his body and draggin' on the ground behind him. And he was screaming for help; wailing, top-of-his-lungs-like; something about... fire and fangs... Weren't no bold traveler anymore; no, he was jus' a knee-knocking mess of a pony. Looking into those eyes of his, I tell you... all my years and I ain't never seen a fright like that. It was something."

The bartender clacked her tongue, sighed, and then grabbed her rag and began wiping again.

She muttered one more time, "It was something..."

Everypony in the party had different muted reactions.

Scrolldozer was unsurprisingly regretful for having allowed the tale to have been told so far. Mrs. Totaler's natural talent for storytelling had incidentally played the drama in the exact worst way for his fatherly fears. By the story's end he had pulled Bookworm so close that his one leg had her snared in a protective hug while another had tightly twirled itself around her tail.

But of course the filly had hardly noticed because she had been so deeply drawn into the story. Her enthusiasm heedlessly flooded right through all the cracks in her father's hold as she beseeched the bartender, "So what happened to him on the road? Huh? Huh? What happened?"

Scrolldozer clasped his daughter more tightly, trying to rein her in.

Crumble Pie, in contrast, was taken by curious apprehension.

"Yeah, what exactly happened?" she echoed Bookworm somberly. "Where's this guy now?"

"Gone, again; other way this time," Mrs. Totaler replied with a shrug. "Can't tell you what really happened; couldn't get it out of him. Terrified pony just kept shouting and babbling in a way that didn't make no sense, and whenever we tried to ask it outta him he just kept begging for help in getting away. In the end this big heart of mine took pity on him. He lost everything so I gave him a canteen of water and a sack with a few haybiscuits, and then I convinced the mayor to spare him the bits for a train ticket. We sent him on his way back to Mule's Head, and that was that. He dashed out of here right quick, running down the east road for all he was worth; couldn't get far enough fast enough."

She clacked her tongue again and shook her head.

"Really makes a pony wonder just what could-"

"I'm sorry but I think that's enough, Mrs. Totaler," Scrolldozer pleaded for mercy, with his grip so tense that he was practically squeezing all the air out of his daughter.

"Oh! Awful sorry, Scrolldozer," the bartender realized.

"Aw, come on, Dad!" Bookworm fought. The enticing little tidbits had only made her appetite more bottomless. She fantasized out loud, "Maybe it was a dragon that got him! Can you imagine?"

"Oh, Bookworm, honey," the father very much didn't want to imagine. He gently rolled his filly's face around to his own and instructed her, desperately entreating, "Don't treat others' misfortunes so lightly. This isn't one of your bedtime stories. That was a real pony who lost everything. There are real consequences to what happened. Please don't have fun with this."

"But Daaaad-!"

"Bookworm, baby, no. I don't want you getting curious about this," admonished Scrolldozer. Then to the others he implored, "That's enough of this horrible news. Let's drop it. Please?"

Without a word the party agreed, if only for their friend's sake. Legs lifted off the bartop, hooves returned to mugs, stools shimmied back a step, and some quiet whispers picked up new conversations (or at least pretended to).

Bookworm was upset enough that a blaze of typical young grumpiness ignited inside of her. She squirmed and wriggled within her father's possessive claws, never saying a word but instead spitting out grunts and whines.

Unfortunately familiar enough with her temper, Scrolldozer released his hold. He expected, like usual, that she simply needed some time and space to cool off. She wouldn't go far.

Sure enough the filly stood up and right away hopped down from the bartop, first onto the vacant stool next to her father and then onto the floor. Turning her grouchy backside towards the parent who had so displeased her she nestled herself between the legs of the empty stool and gave a low, dim huff.

Crumble Pie polished off the rest of her drink and politely waved off Mrs. Totaler when the bartender signaled if she wanted more. The fresh rumors were still being turned over and over in the gray mare's head, and she twiddled her hoof slowly around the top of her empty mug while analyzing Scrolldozer.

The standoff with his daughter hadn't broken his heart; not that it was easy for him, but it was no more than a typical spat between them, fighting her tiny tantrum with his patient love. Now that all the horrible hearsay was over, the father was actually much calmer and very relieved. A battle with his foal was a thousand times more preferable than any parental nightmare, no matter how remote.

The gray mare knew how grueling the cycle was for the father: three or four days away at the quarry, two or three days back in town, week after week. Good stone was only harvestable in the more distant hills, away from the fresh water of the river, and sadly for Scrolldozer that meant he was more often away than around his one and only daughter. She was all of his love since his wife's responsibilities left her almost entirely absent.

It honestly had been unfair to have tortured Scrolldozer with Mrs. Totaler's savage story. Bookworm was his responsibility, but he was no great storybook hero who could protect her always and everywhere.

Crumble Pie made a mental note to discuss the suspicious road attacks with Stony Nook's mayor as soon as she could. Now that there had been a third such report, maybe the town should consider taking some sort of action?

In the mean time though, she had to maintain the health and happiness of her dear coworker. Not just because she owed it to him for having pushed Mrs. Totaler into telling her tale in the first place. And not just because she didn't want him distracted at work since he was the most incredible dang earthmover she had ever seen, with magic more muscular than a bodybuilding dragon!

Because simply he was her best friend.

And she had a clever plan ready to net him a tiny bit of sweet relief.

Stealthily she rapped on the bartop to draw Scrolldozer's attention, and she motioned for him to be silent and watch. Tilting her stool back she leaned out to look around him, and she called down to Bookworm very intentionally.

"Hey, wiggler!"

The filly didn't look back, but her ears twitched in obvious alertness.

"Hey! Wiggler!" the gray mare called again, louder and buttering up her voice.

This time Bookworm turned her head enough to peep back around the stool's leg, showing just the teeniest corner of her eye.

"Mm?" she moaned.

"Now," Crumble Pie bargained, "I know you're not very happy at the moment, but I think I got something to cheer you up. How about when we head back to the quarry in a couple of days, why don't you come with us just this once? What do you say?"

Right away a spark of electricity jolted the filly, though she tried to hide every sign of it. Her childish indignation was just a bit too proud to give up so soon.

"I thought you said I'd think the quarry was boring," she tried to grouse, except really it was just eagerness poorly disguised.

The gray mare snuck around her previous truth with ease, saying through a crafty smile, "Yeah, most of the time I think you would. But who knows? We can explore a little around the nearby hills and see what's there. Sound good to you, wiggler?"

It became that much harder for Bookworm to keep her excitement under wraps, and she squirmed in her seat.

"I guess I'll go," she quickly responded, still putting up a grumpiness as false as it was paper-thin. Yet at the very end the honest truth snuck out of her in a quiet, "Thank you, Ms. Crumble Pie."

"Don't mention it!" replied the gray mare, at the same time giving a wink to Scrolldozer.

He repaid her with a thankful and simple smile, though one also twinged with mild reluctance. Escorting Bookworm on their next trip was hardly a perfect solution: she would miss some schooling, there was scantly any time to foalsit her while there because of all the work that had to be done, and they had never taken her along in the past because he already knew that she would indeed find it boring; it was a dusty bin of rocks, not the wonderlands she found in her books.

But he'd roll that whole boulder uphill if he had to when the time came. It was at least worth the peace of mind, and thank goodness for Crumble Pie who understood that much.

A tired sigh popped out of the father and he tapped his drained glass of milk loudly enough to summon the bartender.

"How about another one?" he asked.

"You sure you don't want something a mite stronger?" Mrs. Totaler smirked, retrieving the used glass.

"Please, no," the tired pony chuckled softly. Waving his head back and forth he humorously lamented, "I can't take any more than I already do."

Chapter 2: Not Prisoners of Fate

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Mrs. Totaler ran a tavern, not a restaurant. Nopony waited to be seated or served; they drifted in and out as they liked, summoning service with as much as a friendly holler or as little as a polite glance. There weren't any checks; ponies paid whenever they felt like it, whether up front, at the end, anywhere in between, or even next Tuesday. The townsponies called their tavern practices simply "being cordial."

And that was how Mrs. Totaler knew that the stranger was from somewhere far outside of the frontier. The unknown pony hadn't been rude in any fashion, but he most definitely hadn't known anything about how to be cordial.

Immediately she had noticed him when he had first arrived hours ago; she noticed everypony who came in, courteous and mindful businesspony that she was. But the stranger, unlike most, had merely waited by the door undecided after he had entered. However before the bartender's busy rounds had allowed her the chance to have invited him to a seat, he had finally moved and selected a lonely spot at a small table in the very far corner of the tavern. There he had sat silently the whole time, never having once called for service.

In all her twenty-five years at Stony Nook, and even longer at the art of bartending itself, Mrs. Totaler had only seen that kind of hesitant and withdrawn behavior from far-flung travelers unfamiliar with local customs. She had kept an eye on him all throughout the evening, hopeful that he might have given her a chance to have welcomed him to her friendly corner of the world.

In over three hours the chance had never come.

Tucked in his solitary corner at a narrow table meant for four, the stranger had been nigh motionless for his entire stay. For some reason he had sat down oddly and never corrected himself, turned off-center from the table. His left side had kept a good watch over the whole of the tavern, but his right side had befriended nothing but the wall. Yet even with so obvious a watchpost there had been no way to tell what if anything he had been observing; concealing him almost entirely was a large travel cloak.

Of finely woven, durable, brown cloth, whatever superior origin it had was hard to guess at because of how battered and worn it was. Several scars were present which had been stitched up by unskilled hooves, some obviously multiple times over during its lifetime. Dust and chalk made whole neighborhoods upon it; the cloak had been traveled hard recently without any chance to have been washed. Its great length covered the stranger practically nose-to-tail, long enough to have hung mere inches from the floor when he had been standing, with no more than the barest bottoms of his hooves and the faintest tufts of his golden tail visible. The only adornment the cloak had was the brooch which kept it fastened about his neck; the trinket was either a very convincingly fashioned jewel or a rounded leaf trapped in hardened sap. Above, folded up over the stranger's head was a heavy hood which left his face in complete darkness except for the tip of his white snout.

It was a distinct look which was almost too blatantly suspect. He had at first drawn many more eyes than only Mrs. Totaler's. Yet in time he had earned his solitude. So long as he hadn't been making any trouble, the easygoing townsponies had been more than kind enough to have loaned him their polite disregard.

Mrs. Totaler had no such luxury, of course. Never risk an unhappy customer!

She would have intervened sooner if it hadn't have been for the unusual busyness of the party up at the bar. It was only after Crumble Pie and her crew had been well placated by drinks and stories that the bartender felt she at last had the opportunity to approach the stranger. Hopefully he wasn't just some incredibly civil, extraordinarily patient, very angry customer who had all this time been expecting a waiter.

She set aside the few mugs that were still unclean, she laid flat her folded dishrag, and she stepped out from behind her bar... only to right away spy Bookworm quiet and nestled between the legs of the unused stool next to her father.

The filly wasn't being expressly cold to Scrolldozer anymore, but nor had all of her immature resent been washed away. She had that young look of unhappy pride, sometimes peeking out from her cover to glower sadly at the party she wanted so badly to join again but couldn't after the fuss she had made. She otherwise entertained herself in her gloom by watching other patrons in the tavern.

Likewise, Scrolldozer hadn't forgotten about his daughter, but if there was some better solution to her tempers than a little bit of spacious solace, he had never figured it out. It was painful to intentionally ignore his precious foal after he already lost so much time with her each week because of his job at the quarry, and not so secretly it worried him that she had learned so well how to soothe herself by his absence and also that he had come to rely on it. Every time it happened he prayed that it was just some normal thing; that she was an ordinary filly who was cranky because it was past her bedtime, and that by temporarily freezing her out he was being an ordinary and capable parent.

He prayed so hard sometimes.

Being in the presence of his bantering friends made it much easier to give his daughter distance.

Mrs. Totaler, however, felt a guilty knife poke into her professional pride when she saw the filly and realized that she had forgotten that the child was even there. She put the stranger aside.

"Pardon, darling," she bent low beside the stool and lured the filly out of her quiet musings, "but are you still thirsty? You like something more to drink?"

Bookworm gave a rushed smile, wanting only to get back to her own thoughts.

"No thank you, Mrs. Totaler."

"Alright then. You speak up if you feel the need?"

"I will."

"Okay, darling," the bartender warmly beamed and gave a gentle pat to the filly's soft mane.

Her heart settled, Mrs. Totaler moved on. She weaved a path with familiar ease, maneuvering around tables on her way to the stranger's corner. Just once she looked back to smile an extra time at Bookworm.

The filly was watching her intently.

The cloaked stranger took early notice of the bartender's approach but barely budged in reaction. He didn't sit up more formally, didn't bend in intimidation, or make any great adjustment at all. Muted and stiff, there was only a slight drop to his nose which made his already hooded face that much harder to see.

"Pardon, sir," Mrs. Totaler didn't hesitate to greet as soon as she was standing before the stranger's table.

The welcome might as well have fizzled into smoke. The stranger gave not one utterance in reply. He still sat cold and undisturbed.

"You been perched here lonely for awhile," Mrs. Totaler continued undaunted. "Anything I can get you? Something to nibble on, maybe? A drink, if you'd like?"

Still no response, not in voice or movement. No sign, not accepting or rebuffing. Nothing.

The bartender held as long as she could for an answer, but at last she resigned, "Fair enough. If you have any need you only have to give a shout; I'd be happy to serve."

She turned to leave but stopped upon just barely catching a glimpse of subtle ruffling under the stranger's cloak.

"Sir?" she maintained a hopeful demeanor.

The stranger stayed silent, but he at last turned to fully face the table. It made clear that the rumbling under his cloak was him rooting around for something.

After a moment more, the part down the front of the cloak widened and a white hoof came out. It pressed down hard upon the tabletop, delivering a chinking noise, and when it lifted there were two golden bits left behind.

"... Apple juice...," the stranger whispered, distantly stern.

However his money didn't catch Mrs. Totaler's interest so much as his uncovered leg did.

His hoof was as stained, scuffed, and element-worn as his cloak was. Dirty colors went all the way up his leg as far as she could see, ruining his pure white fur. Very noticeably his ankle was swollen red. What's more, the shape of his leg had an unusual contradiction: strong with muscle but thin with age.

Suddenly the stranger caught sense of how exposed he was and he rapidly withdrew his hoof back into the cloak's safety. He gave a dim snort before dabbing his snout in the direction of the deposited coins.

"Oh, yes sir!" Mrs. Totaler returned to attention, heavy with heartfelt apology. "One apple juice, right away."

She went to sweep the two bits into one of her apron pockets, but she halted just as she slid the coins to the brink of the table. Her nose came down over them, almost sniffing something unusual about them. Finally she stood upright and raised one of the bits to her discerning eye.

In awe she loudly whistled and then said, "These is some old bits! They don't stamp'em like this anymore. And look at the year! They're nearly as old as I am, heh!"

The stranger was once more cold and still.

Never before had Mrs. Totaler's usual charm failed her so thoroughly. Her dignity was slightly wounded, but not nearly enough to detract from her professionalism. She quickly corralled her manners and put on her most genteel face.

"There's no problem, sir," she consummately apologized, "they're still plenty acceptable. Had'em with you for awhile, eh? You keep here; I'll be back in a hurry with your drink. Thank you for your patronage."

She dumped both bits into her apron and then departed, focusing on her task and not looking back.

In short order she returned to the stranger, and it didn't surprise her to find that he hadn't moved a muscle. She dropped a tray onto the table and served him a mug fresh with the fragrance of apples.

"Here you are, sir. Enjoy."

As expected, the stranger made no acknowledgment of her whatsoever. Certainly he wasn't going to reveal his hoof again just for a sip.

And fair enough. Mrs. Totaler gave a courteous tip of her head, picked up her tray, and left.

The rigid stranger watched from under the shadow of his hood as she returned to the bar and got caught up in gabbing with the party there. He carefully spun his neck, slowly scanning the whole tavern; everypony was busy yammering or stuffing their snouts. Only once he was absolutely certain there were no interested leers did he reach for his drink.

He cupped his mug and lifted it gingerly to his nose, giving the apple juice a sniff: savory; fresh; pleasantly piercing to the very back of his nostrils. His heart suddenly quickened, awakened by the memories of a smell that had been missing for a long, long time. His lungs closed up, jealously holding onto the sweet air, and briefly he got lost staring into the golden portal within the mug. Lightly he tipped the drink up, turning it just enough to let the bounty lap at his lips. Only a small few drops of nectar rolled over and struck his tongue, but they were enough to thaw him rapidly.

A thirst decades old roared to life, and the stranger threw himself so far back that his hood almost flopped off his head. The mug flung up with him and flooded his mouth with its shining treasure.

The liquid hammer smashed the back of his throat and plugged his gullet, letting him enjoy the mouthful of apple flavor until he relaxed and took it into his stomach with one enormous gulp. Afterwards he could no longer pace himself even that little, and he guzzled delicious wave after delicious wave; a train of tremendous swallows. Between each one slipped out a gasp, wet and desperate like a pony drowning. By the time the stranger finally set the drink back down only a pittance of juice remained sloshing about in the mug.

He panted for air, and weighed all of his risks and regrets against the satisfying tingles which still coated his mouth and throat.

The apple juice made a very persuasive argument. Perhaps he had been a fool to have feared coming into Stony Nook.

His tongue sopped up the tantalizing remnants of flavor on his lips, he caught whiffs of apple sweetness on his own breath, and his hoof refused to let the mug go. Finally after several moments of idle impatience – a swirl here, a bounce there – he permitted himself to indulge in what little remained. He drained it quickly, smacked his lips again, and then, even knowing that he had saved himself no more golden dew, he tried to drink a third time. Naturally the mug yielded nothing more no matter how far back he tilted it. He shook the tree and no apples fell. All that came was the whispered scent of fruit.

He peered into the mug with his left eye, shaking the empty cup in frustration.

"Bah..."

In his irritation the stranger carelessly threw the mug down. It bounced on its landing, rattling as it rolled on its rim. The teetering was mesmerizing, in an annoying way. He glared hard enough to frighten the mug into settling, losing his focus for a moment.

When his clarity returned, bringing the warm and lively glow of the tavern back into his senses, he quickly searched for disturbances:

Mrs. Totaler still chatted with the bar party.

Ponies elsewhere murmured and laughed and drank the same as before.

Everything appeared unchanged... Yet his vigilance still refused to stand down.

From below, a hint of red suddenly glinted.

Suspicious, the stranger leaned himself around his table.

Standing there shorter than the tabletop itself was a red-haired, violet-eyed filly who was beaming up at him eagerly.

"Hi, I'm Bookworm!" she announced herself, truly trying for politeness but with so little control that she almost leapt in excitement.

The stranger knew precisely where he had last seen her, and he glanced quickly at the bar. The party continued unabated; nopony there had detected her absence.

The filly's hungry smile had only grown wider by the time the stranger looked back at her. Abruptly he retracted his hoof into his cloak.

Bookworm nudged herself a dainty inch closer.

"What's your name?" she asked.

The stranger turned his head, confronting her with his left side. From behind the shadow of his hood he studied her.

He fixated first upon her little horn, almost helplessly; it was the first detail about her which stood out to him, sticking him in the eye. The nub was tiny and harmless even for a unicorn her age, yet he appeared so peaceless about it. A few wordless whispers came from him, as dark and malevolent as the curses which dribble like saliva from restless wraiths better left alone.

Then suddenly his heart turned around. He pulled her horn from his eye, and any under-breath curses became not the spite of haunting phantoms but his own self-castigating murmurs.

Old fool, be fair! It was not her fault she was that way.

His cleared eye let him draw back and take in the whole of the filly: her pint-sized body stuffed to the brim with oversized enthusiasm; her bright and beautiful face so alive and warm; her new smile, written on her like a verse of pure joy.

She was perfect in every way a lovable filly could be.

He became absentminded during his review of her, and without thinking he brought his hoof out again. He lifted his spent mug for another go but set it down immediately upon consciously feeling its empty weight. Again he muttered unhappily to himself.

Bookworm was content to wait for an answer to her question, though she did have to focus on her patience. She had after all keenly noted how icy the stranger had been to Mrs. Totaler, so that he now showed at least some faint amount of life enthused her to no end. And besides, his cloak made him like a delicious book with an unlabeled cover, simply begging to be read.

If there had maybe been just a little more light in that dim corner of the tavern then she would have noticed the very guilty, very charmed grin which appeared under the stranger's hood.

Discarding his frosty silence, he declined to fully answer her request for his name and instead only told her, "It is not relevant."

The little filly twisted her head in curiosity, enough that the end of her braided mane dusted the floor. In her head, gloomy and disappointed soldiers marched against a colorful band of imaginative barbarians.

She rather liked his incomplete answer.

Inquisitively she followed up, "Your name? Or your name?"

"What?" the stranger replied bluntly.

The filly laughed, tickled by her own perceived cleverness, "Is your name Not Relevant?"

Misinterpreting her again, he reaffirmed, "It is not."

"Relevant?"

Saliva sputtered from the edges of her giggling grin.

"It-," he started to belt before suddenly halting.

Ah. What a game!

Rather than show her playful mischief an angry retort he merely hummed a laugh and eased back in greater comfort.

"My name I'd rather not share," he told her explicitly. "All my apologies if that disappoints you, young Bookworm."

"Aw," the filly whined, but only with the lightest sprinkling of dashed hopes. Regardless she tried one extra time to slip around his defense, asking, "Is your name a secret?"

Briefly he pondered.

"Verily," he decided.

"So... can I know the secret?"

"Without exception: no."

"Aw."

The ordinary fun tricked the stranger into such relaxation that he again mindlessly picked up his mug only to recognize that it was empty and drop it.

He suppressed his thirsty frustration and questioned the filly earnestly, "Why have you come before me, young Bookworm?"

"I saw you," she chirped.

The stranger expected more, but she let the simple reason stand on its own.

"Nothing further?" he asked.

She thought, rolling back and forth with whimsy, before she reanswered him, "You look interesting."

The stranger admired the uncomplicated honesty of the response and he grunted happily. Even in the darkness of his hood his smile started to become visible.

"I should say," he complimented the filly, "that I find you rather interesting."

Bookworm instantly illuminated with mirth, positively delighted by the inroads she had made. She reared up and clutched the side of the table with her forehooves, only just tall enough to get her chin over the edge. Her springy energy nearly pulled her all the way onto the table.

With her large eyes shimmering, she exclaimed, "I love stories! What's your story, mister?"

"‘My story?’" he asked. But this time he had made no mistake interpreting her. Purposefully he draped himself in playful ignorance, as much as his body was draped by his large cloak.

"Yeah!" she beamed. "I mean, you gotta have a good story! Look at you!"

"Hm!" he purred loudly and suspiciously to string her along.

He observed her quietly without any further words, waiting to see if her eagerness would fade as he stretched out the seconds. He even tested glancing away with disinterest, wasting his eye on nothing in particular, and when he came back she was still clinging to the table like a puppy who wholeheartedly believed that table scraps were eternally forthcoming.

Pleased and also quite amused, he didn't violate his silence but instead started to lean towards her slowly, tipping nearer as if he had a phenomenal secret to share.

Bookworm's heart fluttered and she let out a young gasp. She inched along the table edge closer to him, lifting her forehooves in baby steps. Her little hind legs, up on their tippyhooves, wriggled along to keep up.

Deeper he bent. Closer he leaned. His lips were still sealed.

And the filly reciprocated, so captivated and breathing ever faster. She tried so hard to scramble along the table edge, sprinting like a caterpillar towards the finish line, too captured by her own imagination to understand how her awkward standing was actually limiting her speed.

When the two ponies finally met, noses breathing on each other, the stranger stalled.

He had known from the start that he shouldn't have risked the sojourn into Stony Nook.

That he shouldn't have risked entering the tavern.

Ordering the apple juice.

And now this.

But then again, the only written orders he kept to were those inscribed upon his heart. And when he looked upon the angelic face of the endearing filly, now so close to his own...

... in his heart, he felt-...

Oh...!
... What harm was there?

"From over the Pearl Peaks I have come," he revealed, all but singing it to an adventurous tune. He knew full well how the filly would react.

And she did not disappoint.

"Wooooahh!" her eyes flashed larger, and a thrilling thunder rocked her enough to shake the whole table. Her floodgates opened, "Really?! Dad, and Ms. Crumble Pie, and Mrs. Totaler, and Mayor Desk Job, and everypony else says that nopony lives over the Pearl Peaks! Like, sometimes there are ponies who go over there to explore but nopony stays there! I read once about all the expeditions that went there again and again, and they tried to set up towns, but the pegasi couldn't get their rainclouds to work, so their farms didn't have enough water, so they couldn't eat, and they had to come back!"

"Ha! Few can survive there," the stranger chortled, suddenly self-righteous. He sat back up, and a tone came over him which was dark and vindictive. "Certainly not anypony crippled by the crutch of magic, or anypony desperate to lick the hooves of a becrowned fraud. To endure there, one must have strength and independence of their own!"

The million little hints he was leaking enthralled Bookworm.

"What's over there?" she begged for more.

"Wild lands," he responded romantically, "untouched by the vain rule of the lordly feckless. And a forest, great and unending, overspread with liberty. Freedom shines through crystal light, loosening the mystical shackles which enslave ponykind. Those of mighty will can thus forge their own destinies." Some of his overreaching melodrama melted away, revealing underneath hints of raw honesty. "Beyond? I know not well. There are vast waters whose horizons I have not seen past. And unknown trails to places further which I have never trotted... though... there was once a time when... I had hoped to seek out more freedom through them..."

"Eeeee!" the filly squealed.

He was such a living storybook! She wanted to read every chapter; every page; every word! She hardly knew where to begin!

Drumming her excitement on the table, she threw out the first of a thousand random questions which littered her mind, "So there are other ponies there too? Who did you live with?"

The stranger flinched, recoiling like the filly had thrown at him not a question but a spear.

"Others...," he mumbled. "... There are others, but they-... they..."

"... Mister?"

Bookworm felt the excitement kicked out from under her as all the stranger's vitality drained into silence.

He concluded with only a low, dour snort.

"Aw... Is it a secret too?" the hurt filly lamented.

"... Verily."

"Okay...," she yielded with a disappointed moan.

But she was fast to regain her traction. In her head was a pile of a million questions for him, and she scooped her hoof in to grab any old one. She was worried however that the last question had ended so sorely because she had somehow asked it in the wrong way. Concentrating, she put on a practiced guilt-free face which she knew adults liked, contained her tingles of excitement, and with a cautious tremble asked her new question.

"What do you do over on the other side of the mountains?"

The stranger spoke not a word in immediate reply. His latest mistake still weighed his neck down like an iron collar.

It hadn't been the filly's intention to have attacked his heart; he knew that. He hadn't needed her adorable false face to have sold him on her innocence. It was proper and natural for a foal her age to hunger for the world. He didn't blame her.

Really the mistake had been his. He had exposed himself by having stupidly entered Stony Nook. And by indulging her, he only risked more mistakes.

Oh, but look at her!
No darkness; no secret burdens; no awful entanglements!
Pure light; a precious child; a wonder!

Old fool, how could one abandon such a heavenly smile?

The moments ticked by without a stir from the stranger and Bookworm began to deflate, fearful she had blown her amazing opportunity. Heavy sadness dragged one of her hooves off the table and it dangled limply before her. Her upright form started to crumple...

... when very suddenly a remarkable whimsy came upon the stranger and he propped himself up. Frivolous with bluster, he boasted, "To survive in those far lands, many arduous endeavors must be undertaken. Yet perhaps none are so frequent as the dispatching of giant, pony-devouring bull weevils."

He had hardly put a disguise over his blatant lie, having worn it like the oversized mask of a holiday pageant. It would have been more mature to have literally seized and pulled the filly's leg.

But Bookworm wanted to believe. She had recognized his horribly phony sound, but did she ever want to believe!

Her hooves clamped back onto the table stronger than before.

"Really?!" she gasped. "You've fought bull weevils?"

He was fast to correct her, still heedlessly flinging about his fun dishonesty, "No, little filly. Not any of the usual mold, but enormous bull weevils! Monsters whose hulking size makes them more than a match for three ponies! But yet in single combat have I bested them time and again!"

"Oh, wow! You must be super strong!"

"Just so. One must be."

His posture began to support his absurd tale. His hooded head went high, his chin pointed towards the unseen horizon in search of another adventure, and his chest nearly burst from his cloak, shoved heroically forward.

"The beasts have unsoothable temperaments; they are whirlwinds of angry destruction! Their bladed horns make deadly their ferocious charges! Essential is courage, young Bookworm, for in but one attack they fell any challenger! They are rampant beyond the peaks, and relentless! Each day their rampages must be beaten back, sometimes twice before morning's meal!"

"That's amazing!"

Dazzling light filled Bookworm's eyes. Her mind could see the battles so perfectly, more crisp than any rendering she had ever found in one of her books.

"Ah, there is nothing so extraordinary in it," the stranger somewhat toned down his exaggerated bravado. He had of course never actually fought a bull weevil before, but her continued good faith in his obviously fraudulent heroics was a bit addictive. He couldn't help himself from feeding her imagination, so he slipped in a hint of truth, "I have stood against fiercer evil before."

Bookworm buzzed.

It was everything she had ever wanted to hear from a mysterious wanderer! It was all the wonderment she had so often read about, now finally come to her boring village! It was every fantastic adventure which she knew in her heart to be true, at long last freed from a prison of pages!

"So mister, why did you come to Stony Nook?" she hoped and hoped and hoped for another astounding answer.

But unfortunately the stranger crashed back into reluctance. His fanciful ego vanished. He turned inwards.

Quietly, but very specifically, he insisted, "... I will not stay... I am only traveling through..."

The filly had to force herself to smile through the discouragement.

"Oh... well... where are you going then?"

"Hm..."

He abruptly turned his gaze towards the darkened windows set in the tavern's front wall. Thin glass held back a moonlit night; murals of an empty blue road which cut through town.

"... Where do these roads now lead?" he questioned in surprising ignorance.

Bookworm squirmed. In all her reading she had devoured plenty of atlases and she actually had a fair sense of where Stony Nook sat in the world, but only academically. Never in her life had anypony actually asked her for directions.

"Um... what do you want to go see?" she petitioned him.

The stranger gave a snort; not dismissive, not hostile, but neither was it particularly interested or enlightened.

The filly screwed in her courage and tried her hardest to be helpful.

"Okay, well mister, which road did you come from? The west road? Cause, I mean, the Pearl Peaks are that way."

He didn't answer, but the way in which he half-turned towards her struck the filly as a reaction of surprise.

She hiccuped, "You didn't?"

Again the stranger gave an indifferent snort, and he looked back towards the windows.

Bookworm thought on his odd reaction for a moment before she suddenly jumped with a new idea.

"Oh! Mister! If you didn't come that way, you should definitely go that way! Some ponies have been talking about a monster down the west road!"

"‘Monster?’" The stranger whipped about to face the filly.

"Yeah!" Bookworm's enthusiasm completely betrayed her father's earlier admonishment. "A few ponies tried to go that way and they came back all scared! Everypony is saying a monster attacked'em!"

Her sunshine didn't sell the seriousness of the story, and the stranger swiftly began to doubt. The alarm and worry which had snapped him straight dissolved away.

He murmured with only friendly interest, "‘Attacked?’ Is that so?"

"Uh-huh! I mean, maybe! Everypony says so! How about tomorrow we go and try to find the monster?"

"'We,' young Bookworm?" the stranger teased, now able to enjoy her little fantasy for the pure imagination it was. He played along, "No. On the dangerous hunt for monsters is not where a growing filly belongs."

"Well," she argued her dream blissfully, "maybe it's just a big bull weevil who came over the mountains! Then you can fight him, and I'll be safe!"

"Ha! It is no bull weevil, I am certain," he laughed, "and regardless, no closer than a league would I ever lead you to any perilous predator."

"Aw, but I could really be a big help, mister!" Bookworm gaily protested, and she touted herself, "I know everything about monsters! I've read all the old myths, about sirens, and cyclopses, and hippo-griffins. I've read the new stuff too, like Darkwing's On the Origin of Beasties. Oh! oh!—and I've memorized everything by Star Swirl the Bearded, including his Bestiary of the Dark and Dangerous!"

"Dedication impressive!" the stranger chuckled. So as not to discourage her studiousness, he found a new reason to reject her, "Yet even so useful, I could never shepherd along one who has no journeying experience."

A well-chosen snare; she fumbled immediately.

"I-I've... gone some places before. O-Outside of town. Uh, with my dad," she gibbered unconvincingly. She couldn't persuade her lie to be dishonest. "I m-mean, he's taken me to Mule's Head a few times before so that we c-could ride the train places..."

"Riding in comfort is not to be likened to hiking in toil," advised the stranger. He considered his empty mug again, and under his cloak he rubbed his empty belly. "One must measure the miles carefully in water and food."

"I c-can do a big trip on hoof, mister!" she asserted herself. Where experience had failed, blind confidence would succeed! "I've read a lot about camping, and travel, and heroes journeying to faraway places! I bet I can do all that! I probably don't need the train to get to Canterlot!"

In an instant something changed about the stranger. The shadows of his cloak crept down over what few parts of him were visible.

Bookworm rambled on, "I don't think it would be very hard at all! I could probably do it without Dad! Oh! Mister! What if instead of the west road, you and I go down the east road? I'll show you that I know the way to Canterlot! We can go there and-"

"No!"

The stranger's outcry hadn't boomed like thunder, even considering that he had struck the table with his hoof. It may have been the tavern crowd which had made him so wary of making a scene, but then again his eruption had simply lacked much froth and fire, nor did much seething follow it. He instead withdrew into quiet insecurity. His hoof crawled back into his cloak and disappeared.

"... To that city I will not go," he whispered.

"O-Okay, mister," the surprised filly hurried to smooth things over. "We don't have to go. Um... M-Maybe instead we can-"

But she noticed that the stranger's attention was elsewhere.

His left eye was brought to bear on each and every table in the tavern. Thankfully most everypony had been too busy laughing and drinking to have noticed his small outburst. Only a few of them had thrown harmless glances towards his table, and he watched them vigilantly from beneath the shadow of his hood until every last one of them turned their short-lived interest away.

"... Mister?" Bookworm called with a touch of dread.

She heard him direct some chilled words at himself under his breath.

"Filly," he then grunted at her, "your company has been appreciated, but the time has come for you to leave."

"No no no, mister, please, I'm sorry!" the distraught filly begged. She dropped from the table edge and rushed around to all but grovel before him. "I really am! We don't have to go to Canterlot, or look for monsters, or anything! Please let me stay! I want to hear more!"

The longer she pleaded, the higher her distress climbed.

It worried the stranger, and he started another hasty search of the tavern. Nopony seemed to have noticed the rising commotion, but it was only a matter of time. If a simple request would not dismiss her, then he would need to do something more compelling.

Suddenly he swiveled to face the filly head on, hushing her with the sharpness of his turn. His shoulders went broad. His head lifted, tracing a thin outline of light upon his shadowed face. He began to lean forwards. Slowly he closed in nearer to Bookworm, creeping over her in the manner of a stalking beast.

His newly menacing presence squeezed her against the floor and she landed on her rump as her hind hooves fell out from under her. Each inch he came closer had her wriggling backwards, pushing herself against the wooden floorboards. Her eyes scaled wider and wider as the darkness under his hood consumed more and more of her vision.

He finally stopped when his snout was perched so close that she could feel his nostrils dropping hot breaths onto her own nose.

"Little girl..."

The stranger's tone was almost decorated with cruelty.

"... you should flee back to your parents, lest you come face to face..."

A hoof slithered out of his cloak.

"... with... something... truly..."

The hoof climbed.

"... frightening."

He flung his hood back, and as fresh light spilled over his liberated face Bookworm released a long, soft, dying gasp.

He was marred by grotesque injuries.

In the middle of his forehead there was only the broken stump of a unicorn's horn, jagged where it had been shattered and with cracks running down the remainder. Within the fractures there appeared a sickly color; almost some kind of awful glow, as of diseased magic languishing inside. Numerous small pustules sat atop the serrated edges of the stump, all filled with a poison-tinted fluid. They grew from thready veins which wormed their way out of the devastated horn, and upon closer inspection the whole revulsive network pulsed with the mistimed throbs of a defective heartbeat not his own.

His white fur had receded unevenly around the horn's base, yielding the ground to black and rotten flesh. A streak of dark corruption ran down from the infection and engulfed his right eye. Like with his horn, the fur around it had retreated in favor of tainted skin, black wherever it hadn't taken on a toxic hue. The eyeball itself was dead, iris and pupil murdered. All it was now was an empty, clouded orb with a pale, ill tinge.

So disgusting were his injuries that they distracted from the unharmed portions of his face.

He was an older pony who had seen enough moons to have been a fresh grandfather. Where once he had probably worn a mane clumpy and lush, now it had thinned down into shy curls which clung to his head and evaporated down his neck; the golden color had not yet gone at least. The fullness of his once-youthful cheeks was fighting a losing battle against the gaunt drain of a waning life. His good eye too showed its age, now no more a fire of golden red but instead a tired ember which had lost its shine.

Still, there was some unconquerable determination left inside of his body. Hard muscles could be seen down his neck, their power unrelinquished. Under his fur most of his skin was still tight, like he had indeed gotten older but had resisted shriveling into an elderly form.

He pushed his ruined visage into Bookworm's frozen face.

"Quit this encounter, filly," Prideheart twisted his lips into an awkward snarl.

Tiny trembles came into Bookworm. Her quivering hoof covered her half-open mouth. But in her eyes was a perfect stillness, locked onto the stallion's disfigurement.

From deep within her shaking throat came an awed mutter of, "Oooohhhh..."

But then her face illuminated like an instant sunrise.

"Cool!" she held the note long in amazement. Then breathlessly she unloaded, "How'd that happen? What's the story behind it? Was it the bull weevils? Please tell me, mister! It's not a secret too, is it? I promise I won't share it with anypony! No; I super promise I won't!"

Suddenly and fearlessly she reached her hoof out towards his dragon-wound just to try and steal a curious feel of it.

Prideheart sat up straight before she was able to touch him, dazed by her unflappable response.

The filly continued to bombard him with endless questions, cutting herself off every time another excited thought leapt out from her imagination. She only scarcely remembered that he wasn't any actual storybook and could slam his cover shut in her face with a hard ‘no’ if he so wanted. Those worries in the back of her mind manifested as repeated, doe-eyed interjections of, "Please, mister?"

Caught stupefied, Prideheart scanned the tavern again.

Not another soul had glimpsed him.

Quickly he threw his hood back up, concealing his downcast and defeated frown.

"No," the stranger denied the restless filly. Glum despair filled him, and he moaned, "I apologize, young Bookworm, but I can afford you no more time. Please leave."

One last time she pleaded, achingly sincere, "Mister, I'm sorry..."

"Please," his own plea was also so pained and sincere, "return to your parents."

He faced the table again, and a limp hoof came out of his cloak and reached for his spent mug only to give it a helpless push away. Then he sat stiff and motionless against the corner same as before, with his dead eye to the wall and his good eye overlooking the whole of the tavern.

Bookworm's mouth fell open to say something which died before it could even crawl halfway up her tongue. She collapsed in surrender, taking her sagging hooves and using them to haul herself away one tiny bleak clop at a time. There was no bedtime story tonight, and those kinds of nights were the worst nights.

The walk of shame lasted forever. Plodding along, an ocean would have drained faster one dismal drip at a time. Her head rode the floor the whole way, and her braided mane dragged along the ground like an anchor. When she at last reached the bar she went straight for the same empty stool she had been sulking under earlier.

Crumble Pie on a lucky chance noticed the stool shift a step as Bookworm slumped herself back between its legs. The gray mare looked to Scrolldozer, silently signaling him.

He peeked down at his daughter's backside, recognizing that she must have wandered off at some point, and his brow turned with a measure of guilt over his obvious failure at vigilance. He didn't speak a word to the filly, pitying himself instead. Fatherhood was overwhelming as it was; how he wished that, instead of this night at the tavern watching her while distracted by his friends, neither she nor he happy, he could have spent the evening with her doing one of the rare fatherly things he was actually successful at: reading Bookworm to sleep with a bedtime story.

The gray mare wasn't about to let responsibility quietly fall by the wayside though, even if the filly's temporary absence had probably been nothing, and she asked, "You go somewhere, wiggler?"

"Uh... to the potty," Bookworm responded blandly.

"Mm," Crumble Pie nodded, accepting the answer but only after an unsure delay. She observed carefully each lethargic little nudge of the filly's body; something very different from how the filly had started the night. "So," she guessed, "getting a little tired there, wiggler?"

Bookworm leaned around the stool leg, but looked up at her father instead of Crumble Pie.

"Yeah," she said, worn down by unhappiness.

Retreating back under her stool, she glanced across the tavern to the far corner.

An empty table sat with a lone mug abandoned upon it.

For a third time Prideheart dropped his mouth into the river and guzzled generously, taking in water until he nearly drowned. He was coughing when he pulled up, and between the harsh gasps he wiped his lips clean with his foreleg. The water had a bitter flavor, dusty with sediment, and had gone down him with a biting cold, but at least it had been refreshing.

After three tremendous drinks his stomach was stuffed with an enormous block of ice. Yet despite that he was still so exhausted with thirst! He dared not go down for a fourth time however; falling ill to water intoxication would only add to his troubles.

How he would have preferred to have instead filled his belly with more of that delectable apple juice! The flavor had been forgotten for so many long years that it had become new and heavenly again!

But maybe the short taste of paradise hadn't been worth the cost.

Curses!
Curse those craggy mountains!
Curse his body, aged and magic-battered!
Curse all of the choices which had led him here, whether wise or foolish, whether ill-thought-out or fortune-guided!

A galloping pattered somewhere nearby.

Prideheart snapped alert and grabbed his lowered hood, ready to conceal himself. But as he quickly searched the riverside he saw no intruders or onlookers. Nopony was up or down the riverbank, nopony was in the darkness across the water, and nopony was coming through the alleys between the buildings. Nothing.

He let the hood go.

Distinctly somepony had been clopping along but they must have been on the main road, on the other side of the buildings and hidden from sight. Prideheart waited and listened for the sound to recur, but it did not.

Relieved, he turned back towards the river and withdrew a canteen from his cloak. It looked like any other, being covered over in a padded cloth, but on the inside it was quite primitive: large leaves dried and pressed together into a hardened shell, with a strap made from forest vines twisted into rope. Only a puddle's worth of water sloshed about within it.

Prideheart popped the wooden cork and lowered the canteen into the water, mouth upstream. Once the canteen was swelling with icy-cold water he recorked it and stashed it again under his cloak. He would need more water later if he was going to correct his error and leave this mistake of a town.

But departing immediately would have been a grievous error of its own. He was in no shape to undertake another journey of unknown length, and he had only made the forsaken decision to have entered Stony Nook in the first place because of his ailing body!

His hooves were on fire, a scrape away from openly bleeding. His spine was a crooked arch of pain with a spike driven into the very center, terrible pinches spreading in both directions. Anytime he so much as stood, let alone walked, there was a tremble which sliced into his shivering bones. And he couldn't even begin to take count of his sore muscles, every last one complaining as loudly as they could if they hadn't already been silenced by numbness.

The crossing over the Pearl Peaks had been brutal.

Prideheart was not the pony he had been forty years ago when he had made his first trek over those forbidding crags and across those dangerous cliffs. Back then, even suffering from his dragon-wound, he had been composed of a more muscular vigor, a more enduring resilience, a more determined attitude; a more able body in every way. In fact, the trip had been made with all of his follower ponies and he himself had daringly shepherded many of them through the perils. Every dear pony had been brought safely over the mountains thanks to him. The first passage had been a difficult but triumphant experience.

Not so, this second trek back over to the Equestrian side—his lonely return. Time had poisoned him with age and rusted his memories of the mountain pass.

How he had clawed up steep rock faces only to be aghast at how quickly the efforts had sapped his strength!

How he had navigated short, treacherous distances only to be appalled at how soon he had needed to lay down and rest in the snowy mountain winds!

How he had carefully moved from ledge to ledge only to be dismayed by how graceless his every leap had become!

What he remembered most was falling. Falling and falling and falling. Many times on the climb up certainly, whenever his grip had suddenly lost its strength. But many times on the trek down also. He had all but rolled and crashed down the other side of the mountains. After each tumble he had laid stiff and wallowed in the pain, sure that he had broken a bone or two, but every time he had always found himself to be in one piece. One battered, twisted, beaten piece.

When he had finally reached the foothills on the southeast side, staggering from a body in tatters, he had acknowledged himself lucky. By all rights the journey should have killed him.

He should have died up in those mountains.

But luck was relative.

Owing to his poor judgment, he had spent all of his food and water by the time he had descended into the foothills. Physically eroded, devoid of supplies, and in a land for which he had no maps and only cloudy memories, it had very much seemed like his second victory over the Pearl Peaks had been entirely hollow. Death was going to have claimed him lost in the wilds regardless.

He had been spared that fate by pure fortune: in his blind stumbling through the hills he had come upon a stream which had saved him from thirst. There had been nothing to have eased his agonizing hunger, however. He had learned enough about scavenging in Dryearth Forest to have survived there, but the knowledge hadn't translated to the rocky hills. Better that he had starved upright and walking than had starved laid out from a poisonous meal.

Badly in need of rest but at the borders of starvation, he had followed the stream onwards for two days. Finally, in the light of a particularly bright sunset, he had crested a tall hill and seen the orange landscape spread out before him. The guiding stream spun its way down and joined a larger river, and that river rolled southeast where in the faint distance he had seen it curve around a small village.

Stony Nook.

His memory had appropriately told him nothing of the village; it hadn't been there forty years before when he had last passed through that land. He had also harbored no wish to have interacted with the ponies of an Equestria he had long ago forsaken. But his own stupidity and age-grown weakness had left him in such a desperate bind. He had needed food and a safe place to recover.

It had taken a whole day's more of feeble marching to have reached the village, and he had grumbled and wavered with indecision the entire way. He had arrived during the dimming divide between afternoon and evening, still unsure as to whether the risk would have been worth the reward. By following the river on its north side he had reached the unguarded stone bridge into town and had crossed it without detection. Thereafter he had lurked behind the buildings and within the alleys, staying out of sight.

He had decided upon a straightforward plan: food wherever he could find it and rest wherever he could take it, all without being discovered.

The plan had not included going to the tavern.

He didn't even remember why he had chosen to break with his strategy and undertake such a stupid risk.

For food or drink? To have been bought with the scant few bits he had saved from his Canterlot days?

For warmth or whimsy? To have escaped the cold, or seen Equestrian ponies again up close?

All pointless.
Ignorant old fool.

There by the riverside, the angry Prideheart recommitted himself: on the next morning he would depart Stony Nook whether or not he was hungry or rested. There had been no value whatsoever to the risky foray into the village; nothing had made it worthwhile.

...
Such a tender smile on her face...

Prideheart shook the thought out of his head and blocked it from re-entering by drawing up his hood.

The stranger didn't trust himself to scavenge for food in the darkness. Normally he had faith in his well-honed ability to sneak, but after all his many idiotic mistakes that day he felt no more stealthy than an inept late-night burglar sure to be the noisy catch of some sleepless townspony. He would go to bed hungry.

Carefully he snuck behind the buildings and entered one particular alley he had chosen earlier. It was thin and clogged with obviously forgotten debris; an ideal place to stay hidden and unvisited throughout the night. He slipped between a pile of mossy stones and a heap of splintered lumber which hosted a city of spider webs, and there he unladed himself.

From out of his cloak he withdrew his canteen fully, strap and all, and set it aside; something so cold and wet was not a pleasure to snuggle with. He also withdrew a travel satchel of similar natural construction to his canteen. Inside the satchel was a woven blanket which had been folded many times over. He dropped the satchel aside and, without the blanket to stuff it, it slouched limply on the ground. The blanket was thin and altogether modest in size – his cloak was a more thorough cover – so he simply left the blanket folded and threw it onto the cold dirt to act as a pillow.

At last he lowered his weary, aching, bruised body down and laid on the earth. He always put his right side towards the ground; it was a long-entrenched habit which allowed his good left eye to be a lookout if necessary. He tucked his hooves in close to protect them from the night's chill though that squeezed his water-bloated belly uncomfortably. The liquid weight pounded against his tightened stomach muscles, but he endured it.

A little discomfort in his stomach, after all, wasn't as bad as the blunt pain which forever came from his dragon-wound. It wasn't as sharp as it had been in the first few weeks after his searing, but thereafter the low agony had been like a specter of icy fire which gnawed endlessly on his face. A dimly boiling flame lived under his corrupted skin, a hot squirming crawled over and over across his skull, and a prickle pulsed down his veins with every tired heartbeat.

Tight and tense, burnt and bloated, fatigued and famished; the stranger tried to release his troubles and sleep.

...

Bah...

Why had he even come back to his forgotten homeland, doomed by a faithless princess? It had been necessary to have broken with the Dryponies in order to fulfill his promise to protect them. But why had he chosen to suffer the mountains and return to Equestria?

Why had he not gone to the sea and sailed away from the atrocious power of magic? He was no shipbuilder or sailor and would probably have died on the waves, or more likely under them, but at least that would have succeeded in keeping him away from the Dryponies.

Why had he not gone beyond Dryearth Forest to the far off unknown in search of a paradise outside of magic's corruptive reach? That had been his original intention forty years ago before he had been shackled to the Dryponies' throne.

Why had he not gone anywhere except for back to a land of villainous magic? He cared not to see again any of the ponies who had been left behind. He cared not to know if magic's perverse taint had further eroded his former home. He cared not for anything at all in the land of Equestria!

... But somewhere in Equestria was her.

... Had he been called over the mountains by that small, futile wish to have found her and apologized?

A damned and foolish hope!

Even if by the greatest miracle of coincidences he were to have crossed her path he would not have recognized her anymore, nor she him. Their one and only meeting had been chiseled into his memory, polished and immortalized by a lifetime of shame, but it had been so very long ago. Time would have changed her too much.

And there was no hope that she would have ever recognized him.

How could she have recognized an ultimate betrayer she had never seen before?

... Old, worthless fool...

The stranger lifted his head just to strike it down against his folded blanket hard enough to feel the small, jagged pebbles underneath. He sealed his mind, locking away every last one of his own infuriating, despicable thoughts. But that silence inside him only made room for the voices of devils to rise. Always during the unbearably long hush of every night, his shadow enemy came forth from out of the pure darkness, speaking at him evil histories and calling upon an army of torturers who unselfishly wielded their fires, and their brands, and their pitchforks.

Supposedly Nightmare Moon had dominion over the wicked dreams that haunted ponies in their restless slumber. It was said that the guilty were tormented by her because of her endless lust for vengeance.

How quaint.

What awful nights for the stranger, sleeping under a silent moon!

Chapter 3: Courage is Fire

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"Come on, get moving!" shouted Crumble Pie. "And quit yawning."

"I'm nahh—oohht yawning," Hailstone yawned. She picked at the corners of her crusty eyes.

The gray mare shook her head and gave a grumpy snort.

"Well you've certainly sold me on that all of a sudden."

Hailstone blinked again and again, trying to wink away the last blurs of sleepiness, and in good humor she complained, "You're a real whiplashing pony, Crumble Pie. First you keep us up late partying, then you demand we get up for work at the crack of dawn?"

"Crack of nothing!" Crumble Pie said. "The sun rose two hours ago!"

Both ponies were walking down the main drag of Stony Nook. Crumble Pie hadn't been exaggerating: the sun was already racing up the eastern sky, bright blue with no remaining hint of groggy orange, and the wide street was already flooded by the usual everyday commotion of a town morning.

In front of the general store a pony meticulously checked over their wagon: counting up their folded quilts and heavy jugs, inspecting the axles for any sign of weakness, and otherwise ensuring that they were ready for the trip out to Mule's Head. Elsewhere, two pegasi with satchels sagging from heavy tools floated about the town's ailing water tower, much overdue for repairs as it was, laying fresh boards like band-aids over every cracking piece of the listing structure so that it wouldn't come crashing down on anypony. And if there was anypony in town who wasn't taking care of their chores right there in the street then they were out ambling, trotting, or galloping their way along to their business elsewhere.

"My point is," Hailstone said as she tailed her boss down the road, "we just got back from the quarry yesterday evening. Three days from now we head out again and stay there for another four days, busting our butts." Vainly she hoped, "Our days in town are supposed to be our days off!"

"Since when?" Crumble Pie glared with a smile. "Besides, the quarry's almost ready now, so that means we've got to make sure Stony Nook's ready for it! Changes gotta be made around here if we're going to accommodate all the new ponies who'll come looking for work!"

"Right, right," the pegasus forfeited her hopes, and she indulged in one last yawn.

"Uh-huh. Now pay attention!" the gray mare went on. "First place to start, I figure, is new boarding houses. Definitely a thing better done sooner than later anyway."

"Sure," Hailstone agreed blindly, but after a moment more of thought she asked, "Wait, are any of the old ones good anymore?"

"No, not many," answered Crumble Pie. Those busier yesterdays still brought back some sentimental remorse whenever she thought about how they had ended. "Old quarry shut down, ponies fled for greener pastures, and most of the houses got converted into more useful buildings, if they weren't torn down for materials."

"Ah, right. Doc Remedy's office used to be one."

Hailstone cracked her neck and stretched her wings.

"Alright, I'm ready. Whatcha need, boss?"

Crumble Pie smirked, but then slid smoothly into command.

"Today is going to be all preparation. While you were taking your sweet time to get up I already set the others to taking stock, getting the construction ponies up to speed, scoping out spots to lay foundations, and so forth. What I want from you and Scrolldozer is to organize, assess, and recount what stone we already got here in town. Tabulate it all, you hear? We've been hauling back a lot these past few weeks, but if we're going to build then we need to get all our rocks in a row."

She stopped walking and turned to face her crewmember.

"Got that?"

"Yeah, no problem," Hailstone said confidently. But then she put on a sly grin, poking just the very tip of her tongue out. "Except, of course... where is old Dozer?"

"Right here! Right here!" the father called.

Scrolldozer dashed up to them. Given all the morning bustle on the street, he had practically emerged from the broad daylight itself. He almost groveled before his coworkers, sorry for his tardiness.

But his friends had every reason to be forgiving: his daughter Bookworm was in tow, carrying a small knapsack loaded with her school supplies.

Scrolldozer greeted, "Morning, Hailstone! Morning, Crumble Pie!"

"Morning, Scrolldozer," Crumble Pie warmly returned. "How'd you sleep?"

"Like a rock, of course."

The gray mare smiled at him and then bent herself nearer to his daughter, sugaring her voice.

"Morning, wiggler! And how'd you sleep?"

Bookworm wasn't hampered by any big yawns, or tired swaying, or red eyes which needed a good rub to wipe away a glassy look. Yet even so, she wasn't her lively self. The others merely blamed it on her unusually late bedtime the night before.

The filly gave a closed smile and answered flatly, "I slept alright, Ms. Crumble Pie."

Scrolldozer still apologized for himself, "I'm really sorry I'm so late, but between that late night, and trying to get Bookworm ready for school, and-"

"It's fine, it's fine!" the gray mare laughed away her friend's worries.

The father gave up a relieved sigh, but putting down one worry only left him free to take up another.

He suddenly turned on his daughter, throwing his magic over her for some last minute school preparations. Not that he hadn't already spent an hour at home feverishly readying her, but they had blown out the door so quickly that he had left all the memories of preparation behind! Glitters of his magic attacked her from every side: tightening the bow on the end of her braid, straightening her tail, nudging her knapsack left and right until it finally hung in perfect presentation; he even opened it twice to be sure that she had her feather pen, inkwell, homework, lunch, and schoolbooks.

Naturally his filly squirmed under the obsessive attention. On those many days without him around she had always gotten herself ready for school just fine, and usually in a fraction of the time.

"Oh, suurre," a dubiously hostile Hailstone needled her boss in a fast aside, "Dozer's the last pony to show up but of course he doesn't get a lecture."

"Put a rock in it," Crumble Pie snickered back before stepping closer to the frantically fumbling father. She got him to ease up by resting a comfortable hoof on his shoulder. "Come on now, it's no big deal. I figured this morning might wind up a little slower. All that matters is that – once you got the wiggler taken care of – you give it all you got. And you can do that, can't you?"

Scrolldozer used one big breath to try and throw away all of his anxious baggage.

"Right. Yeah. Anything you need, Crumble Pie," he promised.

"Good," the gray mare gave him a faithful pat. "Hailstone can fill you in on the details. You'll be working with her."

"You and me again, pal," Hailstone grinned. "You ready?"

"Yeah, I-... J-Just a minute!"

The father raced to apply the finishing touches to his daughter, returning everything to her knapsack and adjusting her bow a final time. Bookworm still grumbled, moaning audibly.

"Alright," Scrolldozer mumbled, trying to get his bearings, "you're all set, so... let's just get you over to the schoolhouse before your morning session starts."

"It's too soon!" complained Bookworm.

"What?"

The world ground to a halt.

For the life of him Scrolldozer couldn't recall the exact starting time of his daughter's class. His eyes darted over to the unremarkable town hall. Next to the door hung a large, brass-made windup clock – the officially-kept time of Stony Nook – but its hands might as well have been spinning like a tornado. The brass face couldn't jog his memory at all, and there wasn't any hour, minute, or second he could pick which he felt confident in.

It left him horrified and ashamed. He could hoist and fling humongous stones a hundred times his own weight in his sleep, but something as simple as seeing his daughter off to school, when he had raised her all his life in Stony Nook? That was such a frightening weight.

"... Um... I-It starts-... It starts in... f-five...?"

"Twenty-five minutes, Dad," his own little filly solved the riddle for him with an annoyed sigh.

"O-Oh. That long?" Scrolldozer responded. Drops of sweat crawled down him like ants. "W-Well... you can wait there for twenty-five minutes for your classes to start, can't you, baby? That way I could get right to work-"

"Daaad!" Bookworm whined, "You promised we'd go to the post office first thing so we could mail Mom's library book back, or else how am I going to get a new book?"

The angry, pouting filly jiggled her sagging knapsack, and it rocked with a heft heavier than that of any ordinary schoolfilly's. She always took the loaned library books with her to school; they were her extracurricular activity.

"Oh, right," more cold sweat poured down the father. He had actually seen and moved the library book about during his harassment of his daughter, but yet he hadn't remembered his promise to her at all. He rushed out a well-intentioned, boilerplate apology, "I'm sorry for forgetting, honey. We'll go do that right now, and then you can go to the schoolhouse and-"

"Daaaad! I'm not going to have any new book to read! I can't sit there waiting if I don't have a book!"

"Baby, please," Scrolldozer bargained and pleaded so earnestly and desperately, perhaps even mixing a few tears in with his sweat, "it's just a few minutes. I have to get to work and-"

"But Daaaaad!"

The scene was upsetting for Scrolldozer, but cute for Crumble Pie. She was all smiles, but understood also that it was time for her to step in.

"Alright, alright!" she chuckled as she came between father and daughter.

Bookworm immediately smiled; Scrolldozer sighed in relief. Yet again the peacemaker was going to save the day.

Crumble Pie encouraged her good friend, "Why don't you let the wiggler stay with you while you work? At least until her classes start. It's not like she'll be late. Thank goodness for little Stony Nook, right?" Then she gave the filly a knowing wink. "I think it'll be good practice for when we take her to the quarry a few days from now. Don't you, Scrolldozer?"

Bookworm blared, "Yeah, come on Dad!"

The father ‘surrendered.’

"Okay," he said to his filly. "The post office first, a few minutes out here with me, and then you gallop right over to school, alright?"

"Yeah, sure!"

His daughter bounced, celebrating her perceived triumph over her overbearing father.

To the gray mare Scrolldozer slipped a confidential whisper, "Thanks again, Crumble Pie."

"Don't mention it," she replied quietly, all cheer. Then, through a laughing grin, "Just get to work!"

Scrolldozer nodded and began to herd his daughter away.

Hailstone, still smirking in amusement, gave a waving salute to Crumble Pie and then took off in a flying trot after the pair. She shouted to her coworker, "Warm that horn up, buddy! We're gonna need it!"

Crumble Pie, aglow in the morning sunshine, started off eastwards down the road, opposite the way the others had gone.

She had been many things over the years: a frontierspony, a planner, a builder, a forepony, and all sorts of other roles besides. The list was a very good size for how relatively young she was, and every last one of those experiences had been quite fulfilling too. For the longest time there hadn't been any regrets over all she had accomplished.

But one role she had never, ever envisioned herself in was that of a parent. It wasn't until she had met and built a dear friendship with the simple, hardworking, goodhearted, but overtired Scrolldozer that she had really gained an appreciation for that path in life which she hadn't taken. Starting from the very day he had first walked into Stony Nook carrying his newborn baby wiggler in a basket on his back, she had again and again witnessed those little everyday moments between father and daughter; between parent and child. And sometimes it had made her wonder.

She had wondered about washing muddy faces to reveal the adorable foals underneath, and every time it had made her glow.

She had wondered about sitting bedside with a thermometer, a sack of ice, and a teaspoon of foul-smelling syrup, trying to nurse the fever out of a filly one tiny cough at a time, and every time it had warmed her heart.

She had wondered about what it would be like to watch a gaggle of little Pies shove rocks around a farm, and every time she had woken up from her short daydream with some happy mist rising from behind her eyes.

But while all of those momentary yearnings were beautiful like the sturdy roundness of a rough-hewn stone, none of them quite cut to the sparkling core of the geode.

What had truly touched her – what had inspired her the most – had been how such an uncomplicated fellow like Scrolldozer had gone relentlessly at that task of parenthood no matter how much it had overwhelmed him. As a pony his heart was always in the right place (bless him!) but he was a small fellow. There wasn't much he was good for except floating boulders about. His daughter, on the other hoof, was an enormous little pony. Yet no matter how much he had always struggled to raise such a world-thirsty filly ten times his own size, he had never given up for even one doubtful moment.

No matter how dead tired he was whenever he walked in through the door after a hard few days at the quarry, he stayed up for as long as it took to read Bookworm to sleep with a bedtime story.

That a child was worth that much dedication from so underequipped a pony had always given her a lot to think about.

However... all just dreams. The clock on those dreams would be running down sooner rather than later, but nevertheless they were dreams for tomorrow. Today, she had too many obligations to Stony Nook.

Now that Scrolldozer and Hailstone had been set to task, all of Crumble Pie's crew had their assignments. Only she herself was left, and she knew where she was going to start.

But she also knew that, as per usual, the assignment was probably going to come to her first.

"Crumble Pie! Oh, Crumble Pie, there you are!"

Constant as a cornerstone.

"Mayor!" the gray mare stopped and greeted the pony who was racing towards her.

Mayor Desk Job approached, slowing to a wheezy trot.

She carried a saddlebag jammed pack with paperwork, some neatly rolled and sorted, but the rest hastily crumpled and stuffed inside. Above her floated a scramble of items glittering with her celadon magic. It was an unending chase: a dry quill fruitlessly wrote nothing across a paper, an inkwell rushed after to refresh the quill, a stamp pursued the inkwell to claim its own share, and the paper flocked after the stamp to get itself officially sealed.

The fraught unicorn stumbled up to Crumble Pie and gasped, "Oh, Crumble Pie! Fantastic! Good! Glad I caught up with you!"

The gray mare casually glanced at the pointless parade whirling above the mayor's head – a familiar sight – and, ignoring it, she mentioned politely, "I was just on my way to see you."

"Ah... you... were...?" panted the mayor.

"Yup. I know how you like progress updates on the quarry. I'm sure we would've scheduled a meeting"—Crumble Pie peeked once more at the flying circus—"if there had been the time to pencil it in."

"Huh? Oh!"

Desk Job at last noticed the infinite chase. She caught her breath and brought everything back to slow order, floating the paper down before her eyes.

It wasn't even the right form!

She groaned and then pounded the page back into her saddlebag with invisible fists of magic. More light came from her horn and began to shuffle through the paperwork there; the rolled papers danced in annoyance.

Crumble Pie, pleasant and patient, said, "Well, no need for an office. Let's just get down to business right here."

"Excellent. Yes," the mayor agreed. She remained consumed with rifling through her papers, now and again lifting a document out only for her floating tools to sniff and reject each one. "What's the progress on the quarry?"

"Quarry's on schedule," the gray mare proudly reported. "I expect two weeks until we can call out for new workers."

"‘Two weeks?’ Are we ready for-"

"Oh, the ponies'll trickle in over a few months once the call goes out, just like when we opened the last quarry. Ramp up is going to be pretty gradual. Got my crew working on accommodations already."

"‘Already?’"

Slowly Desk Job's harried search wound down.

"Yup," Crumble Pie affirmed. "They're split up right now; taking inventory, surveying build sites. A few of'em are bringing those new construction ponies up to speed."

The last flaps of magically moving paperwork ceased, and the mayor's wits flocked away from her.

"... ‘Construction ponies...?’" her jaw dangled.

Crumble Pie pointed a hoof down the road, highlighting the pegasi hammering new stability into the water tower.

"There's two," she said. "Another two are up on one of these roofs somewhere. And then I think another one's patching up some cracks in one of the storehouses."

Desk Job squinted; at the water tower, the roofs; everywhere. Or rather, nowhere.

Her confusion read plainly to Crumble Pie; it was probably the mayor's most familiar face.

The gray mare gently stirred the other pony's memories, "Remember a few weeks back, when I asked you to put out that too-good-to-be-true work offer? You know, where you balked at how many bits I was proposing for a few fast weeks of repair work? Well, bait lured a few fish in. Now we got five builders of high professional quality thanks to those extra bits."

It took a moment but at last heavy recollection thwacked the mayor on the back of her head.

"...! The short-term residency paperwork that came through!" she exclaimed.

"That's right!" Crumble Pie said. "But they'll be filing to extend their stays, I promise! As long as they're here anyway they'll be happy to stick around longer for some extra work. Work like, say, putting up new buildings? Hey, with their help we could throw up a fortress lickety-split if we had to."

The floating inkwell capped itself and drifted gently back into a fat pocket on the front of the mayor's saddlebag, followed by the quill and the stamp. Desk Job secured the pocket shut, and then she sighed.

"This town would really fall apart without you, Crumble Pie."

"Aw, you're just saying that, Mayor," the honored pony accepted with a shallow blush. She nonetheless insisted, "We all hold this town together."

"Oh, I don't know," the mayor sighed again, this time burdened by disappointment. Her magic pulled and unrolled a few of the organized papers from her bag, showing them off as examples. "I've been working my way through all the old ledgers, budgets, lists, inventories, itemized summaries, and so on, trying to update them. A little accounting isn't any trouble and I think I'll crunch those numbers in time. But..."

She neatly put away the good paperwork and then flung around some of her wrinkled, messier pages in a hapless display.

Ill-tempered grunts punctuated her words, "... All these permits, and approvals, and licenses, and property records, and stone quality assessment authorization forms, and-! Ugh! My head spins trying to get them straight! In all my life I've never successfully managed more than the books of midlevel business firms. I think a whole town is a little too much for me."

Crumble Pie, in sparkling honesty, complimented, "Nonsense, Mayor. You've done some fair work during your short time here. Be proud of it."

"Hm," Desk Job lightly laughed to herself just once. "If you say so, Crumble Pie. But I would never be able to keep this place rolling without you." Her eyes crept over her shoulder and she offered a hoof towards the meager town hall. "In fact, anytime you want to sit behind my desk..."

"Oh, heh! No thank you, Mayor! Plenty happy where I'm at!"

"I figured as much," said the mayor, not displeased in the slightest. "Just please promise not to leave me all alone here! Celestia only knows what sort of trouble we'd get into without you."

Crumble Pie smiled appreciatively...

... but the words reminded her about Mrs. Totaler's grim tale.

"Hey, speaking of trouble," the gray mare introduced the subject warily, "I came back into town just last evening and already I've heard about more trouble on the west road."

The fast change of subject surprised the mayor, though she didn't take much interest.

"Yes, Mrs. Totaler cajoled me into tossing some tax money at the problem pony so that he would go away," she mentioned. "Why do you bring it up?"

"Well," suggested Crumble Pie, "maybe we should be a little more concerned now that it's happened three times?" Though she wasn't fearful, something about the bartender's dark words had lingered uncomfortably with her. She diligently advised, "I think it might be a good idea to start warning off traveling ponies from that road, at least for a little while."

"Crumble Pie!" the shocking proposition threw the mayor off balance. "We want to lure ponies to Stony Nook in order to work the new quarry! Not scare them away with nasty rumors of ponies getting waylaid by Celestia knows what!"

"It's just a safety precaution, Mayor," the gray mare flatly stressed. "I don't suppose it's much either, but why take any chance? Bad stories spreading are one thing; bad news spreading is a whole 'nother bundle of rocks."

"Whatever is happening on the west road doesn't worry me nearly as much as getting the town in order for the new quarry."

"I'm sympathetic to that, Mayor. I really am," Crumble Pie said. "But I don't want to take any chances that somepony gets hurt. The last thing we need is for somepony to get snuck up on by some sort of-"

"Crumble Pie! Found you!"

The fiery shout came from a third mare who trotted towards them with a terrible, angry purpose. Every pound of her hooves blasted up dust. Her lips were tightly curled, tense and sour. All the pebbles in her way leapt aside in fright to avoid her.

It wasn't a very reassuring sight coming from a doctor. Doubly so for Dr. Home Remedy since her fur was red as boiling blood, though thankfully most of it was covered over by an immaculately white physician's coat. Even more, the coat rang with a happy jangle because of her pockets full of medical knickknacks, all stuffed in haste during her rush out of her office. Only her ever-present stethoscope clung to her securely, glued around her neck such that it hardly thrashed to her heavy clops.

"Doctor!" Crumble Pie greeted, showing all the cheerfulness she could in the face of the fast approaching scowl. "Good morning! How can I help you?"

"I'm not surprised to find you standing out here chatting like you have nowhere to be," the irate Home Remedy grumbled. She came to a stop only once she was threateningly close to Crumble Pie. "I hardly waited five minutes before racing out here to look for you!"

"Why would you-?"

Well throw her off a cliff and bury her in an avalanche.

"Riiight," the gray mare remembered and gave a pensive sigh. "Every three months."

"That's right, ‘every three months!’" the doctor scolded. "And this is the fourth time in a row that you've forgotten about your regular checkup! The fourth time I've had to hunt you down!"

Sparing not a moment more, Home Remedy swooped in and began an impromptu checkup of the gray mare, forgoing office, waiting room, check-in, courtesy, and certainly most of all privacy.

Crumble Pie endured the doctor's aggressive, gentle, though utterly uninvited touch, but it was a struggle for her to be cooperative. She politely fought back with her mouth.

"I'm—ah!—I'm sorry for forgetting, Doctor! But maybe—egh!—we could just—ng!—reschedule this?"

The suggestion slid off of Home Remedy's unresponsive gaze, fixed as it was upon every searching pat she delivered to the gray mare's body. The strikes rained down like a storm.

Crumble Pie continued to protest, "Do we—ag!—do we have to do this right here in the street?"

"Well..."

For the briefest moment the doctor let up on her torment...

... only to swiftly dive back in with almost bitter enjoyment, handling the other mare twice as hard.

"Maybe if you had shown up for your appointment at my office," she said with compassionate heartlessness, "then you wouldn't be out here right now, hm?"

"Doctor," Crumble Pie pleaded.

Smoothly Home Remedy flicked the buds of her stethoscope into her ears and pushed the flat side of the chest piece onto her patient.

"Breathe deeply," she commanded.

Despite the icy chest piece pressing against her uncomfortably, the gray mare followed through and inhaled a large, calm breath. But at the very end of her slow exhale she pleaded once more, this time urgent in her annoyance.

"Doctor."

"Again," Home Remedy ordered paid no heed and shifted the stethoscope an inch.

The gray mare reluctantly complied, and for another time she followed up with a protest.

"Doctor, I'm sorry! But can't we just push this off until later?"

Home Remedy froze stiff. Her eyes peeled themselves away from her inspection and met those of her frustrated patient. Never for a moment afterwards did her acrid stare break away from Crumble Pie's shrinking, sinking eyes.

As creeping as moss gathering on a sleeping rock; as solid as a tree limb in winter; the doctor raised a hoof and unplugged her stethoscope from her ears. From inside her coat she produced a wooden tongue depressor and, wielding it like a robber's dagger, she aimed it level at the dissenting mare's mouth.

"Stick your tongue out," she ordered.

Groaning with displeasure, Crumble Pie obeyed. Her poor tongue got depressed stern and fast, choking out the last of her objections underneath a guttural gag.

It was hard to believe that this villainous physician was the same pony whom everypony in town pleasantly called a "fine country doctor." That iron scowl seemed forever branded on her face!

Mayor Desk Job had not fled from the grisly scene and, seeing as how the gray mare had been muzzled, she broke her silence and delicately interceded on behalf of her town's most valuable workpony.

"Dr. Remedy," she addressed formally, officially, and honorably, "I greatly respect your... rambunctious dedication... to serving our community, but Crumble Pie has some very important business she should be attending to. If you could please perhaps give her a rain check-"

The doctor's stare stayed three hooves deep in the gray mare's throat, but she did halt every last motion of her body to give the mayor a very intent reply, directing her words with unbelievably coarse precision.

"Crumble Pie isn't a physician and hasn't thoroughly studied the nuances of maintaining the health of the pony body. Crumble Pie makes regular trips through the countryside to a quarry where she does repetitive, strenuous labor for several days straight. Crumble Pie should listen to her doctor and have a routine physical every three months if she wants to catch the early signs of any developing injuries or conditions which could be exacerbated by such continuous heavy labor and, if left untreated, would thereafter put her out of commission for a few months at least."

"Now Crumble Pie, she is your doctor," the mayor immediately switched teams. "Let her do her job."

A garbled, begrudged groan warbled out the gray mare's open mouth.

After Home Remedy had drunk her fill of revenge, she at last withdrew the depressor.

Crumble Pie spat deliriously, "Alright, alright! I'm sorry that I forgot about my checkup again, and I submit to getting it over with right now. Just, please, can we take it to your office, Doc?"

Dallying, the doctor opened her coat and deposited the spent depressor in an empty pocket for later disposal. Her stare stayed dangerous, but for just a moment she betrayed herself with a fast, tiny show of a grin.

"Hmph. Yes, might as well," she snorted.

Home Remedy turned and began to lead the way back to her office. She didn't peek behind herself once to check if her patient was following, confident that she had instilled obedience.

And indeed Crumble Pie followed, hanging back only to give a short and apologetic farewell to the mayor. As she went she flicked and wagged her tongue to toss off the splinters caught on it.

Desk Job called after her anxiously, holding out a chasing hoof, "Oh! Crumble Pie! Very quickly! While you're indisposed: your crew!—Whom should I be checking up with?"

"Start with Scrolldozer and Hailstone!" the gray mare shouted in reply, pointing westward to the opposite end of town.

Home Remedy worked fast to make up for lost time. She spared Crumble Pie another physical assault, but even while they were walking down the open street she continued her exam with stern verbal questioning.

"Since your last checkup have you had any injuries that you didn't bother to inform me about?"

"No, I'm all in one piece," Crumble Pie bluntly replied, and immediately she segued into a separate remark, "You're a vicious predator, Doc; dragging a poor pony out of the street for their own good. Though, again, I'm sorry for the trouble."

"It's not just you, Crumble Pie. I have to hunt down almost every one of your crew! Don't they give two pebbles about their own health?—Any unusual aching, weakness, or soreness?"

"No. Been fine—I'm sure they do care, Doc. We just get busy."

"You know, Scrolldozer is the only one of you lot who never misses a checkup, but that's not his doing! He brings in his sweet little girl whenever she so much as sneezes, so I catch him all the time—do you ever feel dizzy or lightheaded while working?"

"Again, no—he cares a lot about his little wiggler. Don't knock him for it."

"Not my point. I wouldn't see him at all if he didn't have a daughter. He's just like the rest of you—any recent shortness of breath? Unusual loss of appetite?"

"No. I'm seriously fine, Doc—and come on! We try."

"Not hard enough. You know, Crumble Pie, for such an organized, respectable pony... have you ever even heard of a calendar?—Any concerns; anything bothering you that didn't used to?"

"Nope—and I don't know; never needed a calendar. I roll with the boulders as they come."

"And so successfully, as we've seen."

"I really like to sort them by size and shape," Scrolldozer explained to the mayor. He was puffed with the tiniest, most fragile sense of pride. "That's what makes the most sense to me, anyway. Nopony's ever complained."

In contrast to his delicate demeanor, his horn had effortless control of four heavy stones. Without losing one drop of sweat he was darting them around through the air, swarming them with precision despite his divided attention. The oblong stones were much longer than they were wide or thick, and each was a little bit larger than the size of a pony. It would have taken a whole crew to have lifted any single one of them without magic.

But Scrolldozer's brawny magic did the trick with ease. He lined them up midair, holding them tall like the pillars of an invisible courthouse, and then he set them down that way amidst a group of very similarly shaped stones. His placement was fast yet meticulous, quickly twisting their bottoms into the earth with just enough strength so that they stood upright in perfect balance. The entire crowd of large, tall stones, all together not much more than two dozen or so, stood aligned like the rigid ranks of game pieces on a chessboard.

"It looks a little odd and it takes up more space," Scrolldozer continued to explain, "but I think they're easier to count like this."

"Whatever works for you, works for me," Desk Job replied. Her own magic was busy handling a quill and a page, writing notes as she watched the stallion work.

Her, him, Hailstone, and Bookworm were just at the outskirts of town, only a few short paces past the very final buildings on the edge of Stony Nook, where the wide street quickly tapered into a thin road shooting west towards the mountainous horizon. Meager fields of brown grass sat on either side of the road, and nearer the river was piled a broad smattering of rocks in every shape and size; a dumping ground of sorts for the stones which for months had been brought back from the new quarry by Crumble Pie's crew. They were to be the starting stock for new development, until a larger workforce could migrate into town and harvest more.

It was a menagerie; a mini-quarry unto itself. Boulders to bricks; cornerstones to curbstones; everything useful had been brought back over the last several months. Together there might have been enough to build several small buildings, but ten different ponies would have brought with them ten different estimates, so an official inventory was needed. Scrolldozer had only just begun sorting the stones, and his little military parade was the first set he had pulled out and arranged.

Hailstone knew the task of getting everything sorted was going to be a cake walk thanks to the stallion's powerful horn, and she assured the mayor in conceited confidence, "It looks a mess right now, but we'll be done before you know it!"

Desk Job scratched the side of her head with her quill, leaving a little blot.

"How long exactly, do you think?" she asked.

Hailstone passed the question to her coworker with a shrug.

Scrolldozer twisted his neck to quickly scan the dumping ground. He mumbled a few fast estimations before he finally looked back at his pegasus partner and guessed, "We could probably do it in... four—five hours?"

The mayor did a double take, popping her eyes agog at the small demolished castle which littered the riverside.

"If you say so...," she hesitantly accepted.

"You've never really seen Dozer here in action," Hailstone draped a leg over her partner and boasted. "He could rip out one of the Pearl Peaks if he wanted! We'll get the job done in four hours, including the lunch break!"

The oversized praise turned Scrolldozer bashful. His red face all but melted onto the ground.

Mayor Desk Job said, "Well, if you're really that fast then I suppose I should just leave you to it. On you go; work away. Don't mind me, I need to jot down a few more things."

While the mayor scribbled away, the two workers acknowledged her – Hailstone much more confidently than her partner – and then they began to get back to task.

Yet Scrolldozer stopped before he even started.

Bookworm had stood through the whole conversation eyes down and ears closed, sometimes having taken aimless steps nowhere and other times having lifelessly kicked about tiny pebbles. She had won the earlier argument to avoid going to school too soon, but already she regretted the victory prize. Every moment more of it she greeted with a grumpy huff.

The worst part was that she had given up her wonderful storybook to the post office. True, it meant that her mother would mail her a new storybook soon, but it also meant that the only company she now had was her father.

"Hey, honey...," Scrolldozer bent down near her. He pressed all his nervousness into a ball in his stomach. No doubt her dismal mood now was only a prelude to what it was going to be like when they took her out to the quarry for real.

His daughter didn't give anything back more than a single, sharp moan.

"Come on," the father couldn't put any reassuring notes in his voice as he reached in desperation for a solution, "let's go grab the next set of stones. I'll show you how I quickly judge the shapes to determine isomorphism. Won't that be interesting?"

Bookworm hummed bleakly. She didn't give him a glance as she picked up her little hooves and shambled along towards the dumping ground.

The nerve-knackered Scrolldozer followed behind her.

Mayor Desk Job paid no heed to the father and daughter, or to the not-so-subtle fractures between them. There was too much paperwork to do! But at least unlike those blasted legal documents, some accounting work was well within her wheelhouse. Whether counting coins or stones, doing some quaint math reminded her of her days before moving way out west and getting tangled up in government (even one so small that it was only herself!).

But even besides that, there wasn't anything in Equestria she found quite as soothing and heavenly as dashing an ink-wet quill across a crisp sheet of paper! She could keep her nose to the grindstone writing numbers all day!

Such a wonderful sound!

The blunt bop of the pen landing!

The satisfying whir of its slide!

The pleasing pats of crossing t's and dotting i's!

Some penstrokes she purposely took slower, simply to enjoy the way the floating paper hummed in reply.

That was why, as she leisurely scratched one particularly long stroke across the page, she was startled from her meditation when the pen growled instead.

She jerked the quill away from the paper, turning and spinning it about in the air to study it. There was no usual dryness. No dulling of the tip. Nothing that would have invited such a hard sound. The lack of any obvious answer had her squinting at the troublesome feather.

Then another growl came despite the quill levitating idly, and this time she felt the sound press into her with a rumbling heat. Sweltering air flowed across her nose, and it came not from the floating quill but from somewhere directly ahead of her.

Tenderly she peeked up over the paper hovering in front of her face.

Emerging from between the rows of standing stones before her was a set of threatening eyes which smoldered like coals, themselves mounted over bared teeth which ran wet with boiling slobber.

Another growl.

Louder.

Fiercer.

"Mayor!!"

Hailstone tackled Desk Job in the nick of time, shoving her out of the way of the snarling monster's sudden lunge. Both ponies tumbled over the street, struggling to recover from the shock. The monster, though surprised by the unexpected evasion, was fast to turn towards them and growl ferociously once more.

The vicious rumble came from deep within the creature's immense bulk, slightly bigger and huskier than even the largest of ponies. His massive forelegs ran down to paws tipped by bone-slicing razors. His shoulders were beastly – the thickest part of him – and they held together a chest and back that were enormous and muscular, far more so than the rest of him. He was front-loaded with power, built like a furious bull.

But he wasn't any kind of cattle monster. Rather, his face was incredibly dog-like: sharp ears, a short snout capped by a crispy-skinned nose, and lips like hammocks for slobber. Within his eyes there was no friendly canine charm but instead an aggressive glow like a whipping inferno. Wisps of black smoke puffed from his nostrils with each of his angry snorts, and the hot drool that dribbled out from between his cage of fangs landed on the dry road with a sizzle.

Most his fur was a fiery red, though there were many black streaks that ran wildly down his body. The hairs stuck out ragged and sloppy, curling every which way, especially so at the top of his high withers where the scruff spread upwards like the licks of a roaring blaze. Down at the end of his unexpectedly thin hindquarters, his tiny tail almost looked like a tuft of flame.

The unmerciful hostility he leered with terrified the two ponies. Then, all his muscles snapped with tension as he lowered and readied another pounce.

Hailstone tightened her hold on the mayor and then frantically beat her wings, bouncing them both into the air. They just narrowly jumped above the fire dog's chomping jaws.

The monster made a nimble landing, not off balance by even the thinnest measure. His eyes chased his airborne prey as they flocked away, and streams of angry steam blasted from his snout.

Other townsponies who had heard the commotion turned to investigate, and quickly their frightened shrieks started to flood the village street. Their cries only drew in more curious ponies who likewise started to scream. Ponies began to recoil in fear, stumbling backwards down the street or streaking crazily into the air, spilling over unnoticed obstacles or even their fellow townsponies. Doors slammed. Windows crashed shut.

The frightful ruckus of so many ponies screaming at once reached every corner of the town, and certainly it woke up anypony who had still been asleep, no matter how tired and exhausted they were.

Crumble Pie and Home Remedy darted out of the doctor's office, drawn by the noisy panic.

"Well throw me down a mineshaft!" the gray mare gasped.

"What is that thing, Crumble Pie?"

"I have no idea, Doc!"

The fire dog stalked along the target-rich street, weighing which of the many tasty-looking ponies he should mangle first. There were several to choose from, as some of the townsponies were too paralyzed by terror to escape. He moved side-to-side, drifting closer to some townsponies just to sniff their fear as they cringed, and then turning away to threaten others on the opposite side. Each neck seemed meatier than the last!

Thinking on her hooves, Crumble Pie spotted Scrolldozer on the far side of the prowling monster, back near the set of standing stones. The stallion's jaw was hanging aghast, just as frozen as the rest of the frightened townsponies.

The gray mare threw her voice high over the beast, "Scrolldozer! Get something to trap him with!"

The instruction blew by the dumbfounded stallion. What did snap him out of his stupor was his young daughter's excited bouncing and shouting.

"Woah!" Bookworm lit up. "Dad, look! Look! Do you see that?! That's an honest-to-goodness, real-life—!"

Magical light suddenly surged from Scrolldozer's horn, spraying in all directions until it frayed into a dozen arms of magic. Most of the glittering streams seized some of the large stones behind him, but one of them grabbed Bookworm and frantically hoisted her into the air. The filly and the stones swirled in a storm of light until the tiny pony was swiftly but carefully set back down on the street, and then immediately the tall stones fired themselves into the ground in a circle around her. They were packed perfectly tight, leaving her unscratched but with no way to climb out or slip through her new cage.

The father kicked his hooves against his construction in a quick test of sturdiness before he planted an eye against the closest crack he could find, and he called inside, "Bookworm! You stay right there, okay?!"

Already the filly was reared up and pressing against her confinement, searching for any gap she could possibly squeeze through, or at least catch sight of the action through.

She bitterly complained, "Dad, come on! I wanna see!"

"No!"

His heart was seized by suffocating dread, and it very much came out in his broken, shaky voice. It was only his singleminded focus on his daughter's safety that kept him functioning at all.

Even in the middle of that dangerous moment, Crumble Pie heaved a puff of exasperation. She truly did sympathize with Scrolldozer's desperation to protect his daughter, but his delay only served to put the peril onto the rest of Stony Nook.

There was the crackling reverberation of a nasty growl.

Crumble Pie noticed that the fire dog was tucked low, building power in his legs, and his hostile glare was fixed on her. Her loud shout down the street must have seized his attention, and he was readying a charge.

"You might want to step away from me, Doc," the gray mare said calmly but seriously. She dug her hooves down, locking them into the dirt.

Obediently Home Remedy sidled towards the nearest open doorway, nervously watching the monster.

But the beast had only Crumble Pie in his sights. He licked his chops, he snorted smoke, and with one paw he threw up a splash of dust.

Then he charged.

The gray mare held still. So long as she had the monster's attention, it wasn't elsewhere. Even so, the sight of those nostrils billowing like a chugging coal engine, and the sound of his paws slamming like thunder into the ground, roaring closer like a speeding train, made her tail twist into a knot. She kept a silent prayer for herself.

All she could think to do was try and dive out of the way at the very last moment.

The fire dog raced ever closer in large leaps, and as he neared he opened his jaws wide, angling for the mare's neck.

Crumble Pie choked on the lump in her throat while she counted down the agonizing seconds, watching the beast grow larger every time she blinked. She held her breath, readied her legs to leap, and waited.

She waited as long as she could stand the painful tension.

She waited through the freezing ice falling down the back of her neck.

She waited for the very latest moment she could; for the end of all breath just before the needle pierced deep.

And then she jumped.

Not aside, though. But up in surprise.

A hooded and cloaked pony smashed into the rushing beast from the side, intercepting him a bare few strides before Crumble Pie.

The stranger had bolted out from a nearby alley, head down and spine straight like a shooting arrow, and with perfect timing he had collided with the fire dog's shoulder. The beast spun up into the air, twisting and crying a shrill whine, but the heavy blow also ruined the stranger's balance. He staggered badly, barely staying on his hooves as he stumbled to a stop. (He hadn't helped himself by taking the time to yank his hood down tight, ensuring that his face stayed covered.) The fire dog crashed on his side and, from his momentum, skid to a stop at Crumble Pie's hooves.

Fortunately the hit left the beast momentarily disoriented; the gray mare was able to safely step around him in a hurry, casting aside her own shock at what had just happened. She took fast stock of Stony Nook, and thankfully everypony else was using the distraction to run for safety. The last ponies in the street with the dazed monster seemed to be her and the stranger.

"Are you alright?" Crumble Pie asked the cloaked pony.

He responded only with a foul grunt, and it sounded more from frustration than from fury. When he tried to lift his neck he winced from a new grinding pain which loudly crunched at the base of his skull, but nonetheless he forced himself through it and stood up straight.

"Sir?" the gray mare asked again.

Suddenly the stranger moved in front of her and, still shaky on his hooves, pushed his body backwards into her.

"Aside! Stand away!" he ordered.

"Hey! But-!"

Yet Crumble Pie stopped protesting the instant she saw that the fire dog was already standing and shaking off his fog. She started to backpedal carefully.

But the now-even-more-rancorous beast had turned his fervid glower entirely onto the new cloaked troublemaker. Burning hotter than before, he reignited his harsh growls and began to stalk forward carefully.

The stranger took calculated steps backwards, deliberately adding a small twist to each so that he slowly bent the pursuit away from Crumble Pie. Eventually though, he found himself backing towards a building face. Before long his tail was going to bump against an abandoned wagon left by one of the fleeing townsponies, and then there would be no more retreat from the monster.

For every two or three steps the stranger took, the fire dog more than covered the same ground with but one of his massive steps. The closer he hunted, the more he ramped up his spiteful growls until they became a rumbling quake, and when the distance between him and his pitiful prey shrank enough, he soared forward in a deadly lunge, claws front to pin the pony and pry meat from bone.

It was the exact kind of attack the stranger had hoped for.

The cloaked pony reared himself up, standing high with his forelegs pulled in defensively as a blunt shield, and he allowed the sailing fire dog to slam into him. He was knocked off his hooves and fell back but, rather than being pinned to the ground, he rolled with the hit, exploiting his attacker's powerful momentum. His top wheeled smoothly down while his bottom whipped up with a mighty buck delivered right to the stomach of the airborne beast.

The counterattack bounced the fire dog right over the stallion. The monster flipped through a perfect arc and landed upside down in the back of the wagon, into a cargo of pots, jugs, blankets, and quilts. The wagon bed was hammered so hard by the crash that an axle beneath snapped and the whole wagon collapsed. There were shrieks of splitting wood and the ceramic screams of shattered pots.

Meanwhile, the stranger couldn't quite come out of his maneuver with sufficient polish. His great upwards buck pulled him through his roll enough to leave him standing tall on his forehooves, but then an elderly shake rocked his burdened legs and, instead of dropping into a clean landing, he cringed through an awkward twist and simply flumped down onto his side, splashing up a cloud of dust about him.

Crumble Pie scampered up beside the downed pony.

"Hey! Come on now!" she immediately attempted to pull him to his hooves.

It took her only a single strong pull to yank the stranger up once she had a good leg around him, despite his attempts to refuse her help. Once standing however, he wrenched himself away from her only to nearly tumble all over again from his unhealed stability. Crumble Pie caught him and, this time not shy about turning her frustration into force, sternly anchored him to herself. The stallion berated himself quietly and angrily, but this time he didn't resist.

The fire dog writhed wildly atop the broken wagon. His whole body thrashed, kicking and slashing and snapping indiscriminately. But for all the fury, there was something else buried underneath. He was irate with discomfort, yipping and howling with a sort of boiling, damp panic.

Shallow water was pooling in the broken bed of the wagon. The hard crash had burst several jugs, spilling their liquid load, and many of the quilts had begun to soak up a share.

In his furious flailing, the fire dog had managed to tangle himself in wet quilts, and that desperately enraged him all the more. He exploded out of the wagon wreckage, throwing frenzied kicks to cast off the soggy quilts. Even after he was free, all of the quilts torn or thrown off, he continued to violently dance about in a tantrum. He didn't stop until every last drop of loathsome moisture was finally off of him.

Like a campfire splashed by a small spill, little trails of steam rose off of him. He heaved in anger as he turned his burning glare back onto the ponies.

"Stand aside!" the stranger cried again. Vainly he tried to separate himself from Crumble Pie and stand in front of her as a shield.

"What, again?" the gray mare complained incredulously, refusing to let him go. "That stunt back there hurt you more than it hurt him! Besides..."

She shot a glance at the ruined, wet wagon and the vanishing steam coming off the fire dog's back.

"... I have an idea..."

An infuriated roar came from the monster. He had reached the limits of his patience and in his frothing rage didn't bother with another careful hunt. He hurtled himself at the ponies, sparing no vengeance.

There was a sharp yelp.

An abrupt shriek of pain from the fire dog.

A high shout which popped out of him when the wall of flying boulders plowed into him from the side and sent him sailing to the ground.

The wide array of tall stones were enveloped in a magical light which was tethered back to Scrolldozer! He came chasing after his crude construct.

"Will this do, Crumble Pie?" he gasped, earnestly concerned. Even knee-knocking terror wasn't enough to dilute his desire to do a good job.

Though surprised by his sudden appearance, the gray mare was more than thankful for it, and she swiftly inspected what he had brought.

It looked like he had grabbed maybe about a dozen of the tall stones he had earlier sorted. Crumble Pie doubted that they could imprison the monster the same way that Bookworm had been imprisoned; the fire dog had already shown himself capable of some tremendous leaps. But perhaps it was still enough. She only needed the monster restrained until she could enact her new plan.

"Should do fine!" she answered her friend.

Then she pointed at the fire dog and ordered, "Pin him!"

Scrolldozer took a look at the large beast, already recovering from the last blow, and the pony gulped. But, ordered to the task by his boss and best friend, he went for it.

He arranged the stones tightly together in the air, stacking them two rows high. In each row they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, and right in the middle, where the heads of the bottom row touched the feet of the top row, he applied a slight concave bend. It was an impromptu tool he had created and used many times in the past, mainly to push around piles of rubble or plow mounds of soil; a magically animated earthmover.

Taking his great stone-blade, he quickly whirled it about and lined it up such that the fire dog was between it and the sturdy facade of the nearest building.

The unprepared monster looked up just in time to see the blade barreling towards him, and he was caught in its maw before he could dodge. It carried him backwards until the whole setup crashed against the building, trapping him in the thin hollow formed by the curved blade and the building face.

"Yes!" Crumble Pie shouted. "Hold him there!"

"I'm trying!" Scrolldozer responded.

It wasn't easy. The fire dog resisted his imprisonment with unrelenting ferocity. He pushed back against the stone-blade with every last bit of his sizable might, and all the while he tried to scratch his way towards escape out the thin gap on the side of his makeshift cage.

Scrolldozer focused intensely to hold the stones together with his magic, but nevertheless the beast made slow and dangerous progress with every burst of resistance.

"Hold him!" reemphasized Crumble Pie. She let go of the stranger and started to dash westward down the street. "I'll let you know when to let him go, then lure him this way!"

"H-How?!" pleaded Scrolldozer.

But the gray mare was already too far gone to respond.

The stallion whined in fright, and he flinched each time his rebellious prisoner smashed against the stones; Scrolldozer felt the furious blows even through his magic. The struggle eroded his strength in a vicious cycle: he would doubt himself, then see and feel another formidable push from the fire dog, and hear the terrifying snarls erupt from under the stones, and it sank his hopes further. His failing willpower made each of the monster's succeeding strike seem that much more powerful than the last.

After an exceptionally potent thrust – it felt like a bolt of lightning to the stallion's horn – one of the fire dog's mammoth forelegs managed to pop out from the gap between the blade and the building, and it seized a strong hold on the nearby building face.

Scrolldozer whimpered.

Another heavy crash against the stones, and this time the monster's muzzle poked out, baring fangs and oozing foamy saliva.

The stones shook on their own as the magic tethers binding them began to fray.

Every bone in Scrolldozer's body found a way to drum against each other in terror, rattling him corner-to-corner and joint-to-joint, and what little tattered threads of confidence remained blew away in the wind. The sight of the sharp, glistening teeth was too much. His normally languid imagination found unexpected new life in vivid visions of death, rapidly torturing him with thoughts of all the ways he was about to be torn apart.

But amidst the fast nightmares there was another image that blinked in his head:

His daughter Bookworm.

A second wind suddenly hit the father. The magic lashed tight around the stones again, and there was a loud yip as the stone-blade thrust against the fire dog with renewed force.

Though the monster's grisly barking continued, and his violent pounding went on and on, the blade held.

Scrolldozer concentrated so hard on his magic that the mental pushback was like slamming his head to and fro inside a bronze-cast bell. All the different fluids inside his body began to leak out of whatever cracks, pores, and holes they could find.

He only just barely, through the flood of sweat and mucus jamming his squinted eyes, noticed the stranger abruptly walk past him, striding casually towards the trapped fire dog as if nothing were wrong!

"S-Sir!" Scrolldozer called, though in his state even speaking was an enormous strain, "You-, you should pr-probably stay back!"

The father was surprised when he thought he heard a disdainful snort come from under the stranger's hood. The cloaked pony did also briefly turn his face Scrolldozer's way, but because of the shadowy hood the father saw nothing of the harsh glare underneath. He saw none of the spite being aimed at his glowing horn.

The stranger kept on, brazen and unheeding, walking up near to the fire dog's exposed muzzle and leg.

The sight of the cloaked pony fed the monster's rage all the more. He snapped his jaws and swung his paw at the pony, though the stranger was just safely out of reach. All the same, the ignited fury gave the beast a surge of strength and he thrashed against the stone-blade suddenly enough to bounce it back a step.

Scrolldozer was quick to desperately realign and thrust the blade back against the wall, keeping the fire dog pinned, but the small delay was enough for the monster to better position himself. The next pushes the beast made were fierce and potent, each one earning an inch more of freedom.

Meanwhile, the stranger simply stood there and drew a twisted pleasure out of watching the monster overpower such worthless magic; such abominable power; such false strength. As the fire dog squirmed closer and closer to escape, the stranger spaced his hooves out and tensed himself, ready for another skirmish.

He would show them all where real strength came from!

Scrolldozer's second wind rapidly flew out of him under the fresh assault. The stones wobbled, threatening to pry loose, and likewise the father felt himself coming apart, body and spirit.

Despairing, he cried out, "Crumble Pie! Help!"

Whatever the gray mare shouted back, he didn't hear; he was too demolished, and she was too distant.

Flail after angry flail, thrash after fearsome thrash, the fire dog edged closer to victory.

The ready stranger waited eagerly.

The magic light shimmered weaker, fading, and the stones trembled from gravity's growing touch.

And just as the monster got his second foreleg up to the gap, a hair from squeezing it free, he stopped struggling.

No more slobbering barks.

No more crazed writhing.

Almost no movement or sound of any sort.

He still growled viciously at the cloaked pony, but he kept it very low and in the far back reaches of his throat.

The stranger stood up straight in confusion and actual disappointment. Frustrated, he took a cautious step closer to try and provoke the beast.

Although there was a nasty crackle which entered the fire dog's growling, he otherwise didn't respond.

Again the stranger took a distrustful step nearer, close enough that the monster might have reached him with the swipe of a paw.

And again the fire dog wasn't incited, though once more his growl changed, adding a strange hiss; a sizzle. It grew louder.

The stranger didn't hesitate to nudge even closer.

And unfortunately for the careless pony, the crisp popping in the monster's growls was the only warning before the fire dog suddenly belched a searing ball of flame.

The blazing fireball flew right at the stranger's face. Luckily his reflexes were sharp enough to swiftly turn his head away in response, and the fireball only glanced against the side of his hood before it sailed on and ultimately dissipated. The weary cloak was thankfully not so given to being easily set alight, so the stranger was spared any serious burn. However, the blast was still quite a hard blow, and it staggered him backwards like he had been struck by a heavy chunk of stone.

The unexpected flash of fire also made Scrolldozer jump in fright, and it severed his concentration completely. His horn blinked off, the remaining glitters of magic scattered like wind stealing sand, and the tall stones came apart and toppled to the ground.

The fire dog was freed, and he quickly reignited the fury he had so slyly and patiently suppressed.

Inside the stranger's one good eye, a blinding spark of light lingered. The image of bright fire wouldn't clear from his vision without time, but fortunately his ears heard plainly the loud tumbling of the stones and the monster's triumphant howl.

Very quickly the stranger tried to get back into a fighting stance despite his temporary blindness. He threw his legs wide.

But where he expected to feel his hooves solidly gripping the ground, he instead had the most bizarre sensation of the earth giving way below him. Jarred, he squinted painfully to diminish the swirl of colors interfering with his sight, and he was very much surprised to make out the shrinking shapes below.

The ground actually was receding.

The clues came together quickly: the falling street, a strange lightness to his body, a tugging against his waist...

"Set me down you wretched, winged cretin!" the stranger ordered the pegasus who was carrying him away from the monster, and he spat his curse with quite an unsavory amount of viciousness given the circumstances.

"Oh, hey, you're very welcome!" Hailstone grumbled, bitterly sarcastic.

She bore him through the air, not prepared for how seriously he struggled to free himself from her hold despite the height. Fortunately she kept her grip and he didn't plummet, but his thanklessness truly soured her rescue.

Down below, the fire dog snorted contemptuously as the flying pegasus again flew off with one of his morsels.

"Scrolldozer!" yelled Crumble Pie. "This way, come on!"

The monster whipped towards the noise.

The gray mare was far down the street, standing besides the water tower on the town's edge. Her stallion friend was already making a jumpy, reckless retreat towards her, wheezing and panting as he ran. Yet he didn't need more than one peek behind him to see the terrible fire dog in pursuit, hissing and dropping burning slobber, to spur him into the fastest gallop of his life.

"Come on!" Crumble Pie shouted again. But though she cheered her friend, her eyes were intently fixed upon the rushing beast. She measured precisely every beat of the monster's paws, and in her head she was counting down. "... Come on..."

As fast as Scrolldozer ran, the fire dog was faster. The distance between them dwindled sharply. The stallion felt the roaring heat coming up behind him much more quickly than he saw himself reaching the waiting Crumble Pie.

He begged in distress, "Help!!"

But Crumble Pie merely stood still.

Waiting.

And waiting.

And paying close attention.

And when the moment was right—when the fire dog was close enough to snap at Scrolldozer's tail, but more importantly, when the monster was at the perfect distance from the gray mare...

... she let fly a stone-shattering buck against one of the water tower's flimsy, unrepaired legs.

Effortlessly her kick ripped through the wooden beam, rot-weakened as it was. The three other legs groaned as they valiantly tried to take on a greater share of weight, but the huge barrel on top – full to the very brim with water – bent towards the broken leg regardless. Then, in an instant, the three remaining legs splintered horribly in unison, sounding a wooden rip of thunder.

Scrolldozer was so frightened by the monster behind him that he almost didn't catch sight of the collapsing tower ahead of him. One last warning shout from Crumble Pie saved him; he made a panicky leap out from under the fast growing shadow.

The whole tower smashed into the street. Chunks of wooden boards and mangled supports were hurled into the air, casting a shower of splinters. The large barrel flew apart the moment it rammed into the ground. The heavy iron bands holding it together were nowhere near strong enough to contain the bomb of falling water inside. The unbound torrent exploded out, most of it flowing in a stampede eastward.

And it gushed right over the bewildered fire dog.

The monster vanished under the massive tide, but the flood quickly spread thin across the wide street. The waters washed away down the alleys on either side, and the stone bodies of the many buildings shrugged off the waves as easily as rain. When the splashing subsided and flattened away, all that remained in the middle of the dark and muddy street was the soaked dog.

Amazingly the beast had shrunk to almost half of his former size. What was once big and burly had become all bony and scrawny, like he had been starved for ages. His fur was left in matted, wet clumps, and the blast of water had somehow washed away all of the monster's burning reds and oranges, leaving him entirely a dull, extinguished black. Even his eyes had lost all of their ferocious, crackling shine; there was only an ashen, cowardly light left in them.

The wet dog sat up, but clearly something was very wrong. He shivered as if he were out in the dead of an icy winter being frozen stiff by dry winds, and he labored to breathe. He wheezed and coughed, expelling a soggy smog from his belly.

Crumble Pie had hoped that dousing the monster would have been disorienting; at least, that had been her guess given how aggressively he had reacted to the small splashing he had taken when thrown onto the wagon. But even she was astonished by how thoroughly defeated the creature had now become, from fire to fear, all with a slap of cold water.

Wary that there might still be danger, but emboldened by the wimpy sight of the wet dog, she took one solid step forward.

The sloshing clap of her hoof on the soppy mud made the drenched dog suddenly jump and cower like a puppy startled by a fire cracker. Submissively he hugged the ground.

The gray mare took another step, this time deliberately slamming her hoof with all the force she could, almost growling herself.

There was a shrill, wheezy, terrified yelp as the wet dog jumped up and bolted. Streams of water were shed from his soaked fur as he scrambled westward down the street, making a wide berth around Crumble Pie and putting the wreckage of the water tower between him and her. He didn't even stop when he hit the edge of Stony Nook. Panting harmless smoke, nearly tumbling over himself from tremors of fear, he scurried away down the long road towards the Pearl Peaks.

The gray mare watched the wet dog flee, skirting around the broken beams of the crashed water tower to get a look. Once she was certain that the troublesome pup wasn't coming back, she turned around to check on Stony Nook.

Scrolldozer was unharmed. He was on the ground with his hooves over his head, only just beginning to peek at the scene and catch his breath. Everywhere else, eyes and faces were already beginning to appear from around corners and within windows, cautiously stealing looks.

Crumble Pie raised her voice.

"Is anypony hurt?"

Chapter 4: The Best Defense

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Only the boldest townsponies did more than peek from the safety of their cover.

"It's alright!" Crumble Pie shouted, blasting her well-recognized voice down the street. "He's gone!"

Several times she repeated herself before finally the rest of the ponies began to emerge. She recruited the first few who appeared to knock on doors and call into windows, spreading the message.

Before long everypony in town was gathered in the middle of the street, clustered not all that far from the crashed water tower. In many ways it resembled a normal Stony Nook town meeting except that their hooves were sinking into thin mud. But there were no civic issues to be discussed. Chatter in the crowd was widespread, but restrained and nervous; a visitor to town might have thought they had stumbled upon a village of paranoid thieves plotting their next big heist.

"I say again: anypony hurt?" asked Crumble Pie, continuing to peak her voice to make sure it reached absolutely everypony.

"Yes, speak up! Come forward!" added the somehow-still-grouchy Dr. Home Remedy.

The troubled crowd continued to simmer in low conversation, and nopony stepped forward.

Crumble Pie, thorough as ever, scanned across them one pony at a time as quickly as she could, and thankfully nopony seemed hurt. The townsponies were all rattled, to be sure, but the rampaging fire dog hadn't destroyed anything that couldn't have been replaced.

The gray mare next checked on Scrolldozer.

He was recovering his daughter from the stone cage he had trapped her in. Frantically he pried apart the stones, working in obsessive terror as if the monster were still after him. His heart was only settled once his magic lifted Bookworm out and spun her about this way, and that way, and upside down, and right-side up, inspecting her snout to tail, and he confirmed that there wasn't a single misplaced hair on her body. He crushed her in a relieved hug.

For once, Bookworm wasn't terribly upset by her father's obsessing. The instant the stones had come apart she had emerged already rambling excitedly about the whole encounter. Through the midair spinning and flipping, she had bombarded her father with breathless enthusiasm. And even when he pulled her in for his hug, she still brightly unloaded muffled words into his chest.

Monsters and fighting and heroes and action! What an amazing story! And it was real! It had happened right before her very eyes!

Real adventure had finally come to boring Stony Nook!

"You!"

The sudden shout snagged Crumble Pie's attention and she turned away from the father and the filly.

It was Home Remedy's voice. The doctor had also been searching through the townsponies for injuries, and apparently she had come upon a pony who maybe needed medical attention.

Far, far to the side, well and away from the rest of the town meeting, stood the cloaked stranger. He was almost tucked away in one of the alleys, and he might have gone entirely unseen if Hailstone hadn't been standing nearby glowering at him, much as she had been doing from the very moment she had set him back down on the ground; his hostility towards her rescue hadn't endeared him to her.

"Yes, you!" Home Remedy shouted again, marching right up to the stiff and silent stranger. "I thought I saw that monster strike your face with a fireball. Lower your hood; let me see!"

But rather than obey, the stranger tucked his face further into concealment.

"I'm unharmed," he very lowly but rigidly insisted.

"I'll be the judge of that. Come on, drop it now!"

The doctor pushed in, as usual dispensing with the sacred tenets of personal space.

"I'm unharmed!" the cloaked pony's voice hardened with militant objection. He wound his neck aside to further hide his face from the attack, and he took a fast step backwards, but a lingering weakness from the recent battle caused him to lightly shudder and stumble through his step.

The obvious fumble only triggered more benevolent aggression from Home Remedy.

"Sir, I'm a doctor. You're clearly unwell: instability, perhaps even dizziness, slight tremoring; these are troubling symptoms! Let me have a look at you!"

Again she pushed in, and again the stranger resisted by weaving his head. But through their odd dance, Home Remedy for just a moment caught a glimpse of light which pierced the darkness underneath the stranger's hood. Her sharp eyes made out something wrong with the right side of his face. A dark contortion was there which plainly didn't match his visible snout at all.

"Were you burned?" she gasped, for once revealing some bald compassion. "Take this off immediately!" she ordered, though of course she didn't wait for him to do it himself. She reached for the hood of his cloak.

"Stay your hooves, physician! I have no want of help!"

The stranger slapped the doctor's hoof away with unnecessary force, growling just as fiercely as the monster which had so recently invaded Stony Nook.

Hailstone was at the cloaked pony instantly. She inserted herself between him and the doctor, puffing out her wings as she pressed herself into the stranger.

"Hey pal," she warned harshly, "you better watch who you touch! What's your problem with ponies trying to help you?"

Unmoved, he snorted back in derision and mocking sarcasm, "So it is now that you find your bravado, after the monstrous threat has retreated?"

"What?! I saved your butt!"

"Alright, enough!"

Crumble Pie wedged herself into the quarrel. Unlike Hailstone, she didn't have to physically separate anypony. Her authoritative presence and heavy voice together brought everything to a standstill.

The stranger might not have listened, even to her, but when he turned to glance at the gray mare he saw behind her the full crowd of townsponies watching him. The loud tussle with the doctor and Hailstone had one by one drawn all their eyes his way.

Old fool...
Wiser it would have been to have fled the instant his hooves had touched the earth again.
Wiser it would have been to have skirted Stony Nook altogether!

...

But then...
... would they have been safe?

He froze. Strangled by the unwanted stares of the crowd, lined up as they were like a vast firing squad, he lowered his head and shrunk until he was hidden completely beneath his cloak and hood, leaving nothing of himself for their gawking eyes.

Crumble Pie said to Home Remedy, "Doc, just forget it. He doesn't want any help."

"I'm not going to leave an injured pony-," the doctor dispassionately argued.

"I know you wouldn't, Doc. Trust me, I know. But he's not having it right now. And he seems alright enough." She deftly sought to distract the doctor, asking, "Could you maybe make some rounds and check on everypony for me? I know they're not hurt, but plenty of'em are spooked out of their wits. Maybe our stranger here will be more agreeable afterwards."

Home Remedy understood exactly what Crumble Pie was up to, and she used her most displeased grunt to accept the gray mare's compromise. After one last suspicious glance at the stranger she turned and walked back into the crowd, shouting directions and medically mangling everypony she came across.

"Next," Crumble Pie turned to her pegasus coworker, "can you please ease up, Hailstone?"

"Really?" the other pony moaned.

"Yes, really," the gray mare didn't give an inch. "You know, he did jump in and help even though he didn't have to."

Hailstone grumbled, but she didn't misinterpret her boss's request as some kind of betrayal. Far from it; Crumble Pie the peacemaker was entirely expected. The pegasus was simply sore over all the ingratitude she was receiving.

"Ugh. Fine. Whatever," she surrendered. Away she floated, letting her dissension be known with a surly sigh.

Now left with only the stranger, Crumble Pie said to him, "I'm sorry about that."

He didn't respond.

The gray mare held her tongue for several long curious moments, certain he had heard her but somewhat bewildered by his motionless silence.

"Listen," she eventually said, "thanks for the help back there. That thing might've knocked the rock right off my shoulders if you hadn't showed."

This time there was the mildest nod from the stranger.

Very faintly he uttered, "... Not for thanks did I act."

"Ah, well," Crumble Pie was pleased that he had said anything at all, and she smiled welcomingly, "thank you anyway."

She gave a gracious nod of approval and then returned to the crowd. After all, it seemed very obvious to her that he preferred to be left alone, and she was happy to repay his help with some seclusion.

She joined Dr. Remedy in spreading calm and comfort throughout the townsponies, though many simply refused to be settled, and not merely because of the doctor's bullish behavior. A low, fearful furor lived inside the crowd, and any time it was chased away from one corner it only spread back as soon as the gray mare and the doctor had gone. Wild speculation traveled fast through everypony, and it fed on itself more and more until every townspony was muttering terrifying tales about what had just happened.

In due time Mayor Desk Job's voice rose above the crowd's dread-filled murmuring.

"Crumble Pie! Crumble Pie!"

"Right here!" the gray mare pushed through the crowd and met the panicky mayor in the center. "Glad to see you're alright, Mayor."

But ‘alright’ was relative. Her inkwell was nowhere in sight, but there was plenty of spilled ink staining her saddlebag and flank. More the half of the papers she had been carrying were now missing, and she was uncharacteristically unconcerned about it. Her body was intact, but she was beyond frazzled.

"What in the name of Nightmare Moon's chaotic ledgers was that thing?!" she sought any desperate answer from her crutch-pony.

"I don't know," Crumble Pie responded. "I've never seen anything like him before."

"You haven't?" Desk Job slumped down in despair. If such a frontierspony as Crumble Pie knew nothing, then what hope was there that anypony knew? She turned to the crowd, which had quelled some of their gossip to listen in.

"Did anypony recognize that beast?" the mayor helplessly asked.

"That was a heckhound!"

The rest of the chattering townsponies fell silent as great gasps moved through the crowd, erupting like rolls of thunder bouncing between stormclouds. Quickly it faded into echoes. Then, the grunts and murmurs of plain confusion.

What was a heckhound, anyway?

Nopony knew. They just didn't like the sound of it!

Everypony's attention turned to little Bookworm, who was the one who had shouted the answer. She was bouncing up and down in an ecstatic frenzy.

All the storybooks! All the incredible tales! All the nights her father had tucked her in with bedtime stories which in her sleepy little head had turned into vivid dreams of adventure!

Finally, finally, they were coming true!

She babbled loudly as she bounced, positively electrified, "He was totally a heckhound! I'm sure! One hundred percent! Did you see him spit fire?! That's something heckhounds can do! It's cause they're from Tartarus! They're one of the three kinds of pups of Cerberus! Oh, and they're the worst ones, too! They're born with a dark fire inside that makes'em mean and nasty all the time! That's why they're kept down in the underworld and not allowed out! They're not nice to anypony, not even each other!"

Her enthusiasm didn't spread into the crowd. Quite the opposite: each new awful fact caused more ponies to clutch each other and whine in fright. Even the bravest amongst them only mumbled their skepticism in the same way that a faithless pony whispers a prayer when at the darkest bottoms of their doubt.

Finally the prattling filly was locked down. Magically shimmering shapes like bear traps snatched her hooves and held them firm to the street.

"Bookworm!" Scrolldozer chastised his daughter in a shaky tone. He was as disturbed as the rest of the unnerved crowd. "This is serious! Now is not the time to be spreading your silly stories!"

"But Dad, he really was a heckhound!" the filly immediately turned frustrated and combative. She tried angrily to tear her hooves out of her father's magic, though she couldn't, and she fumed, "He looked just like the heckhounds that Star Swirl the Bearded had to face when he descended into Tartarus to collect a fragment of King Sisyphlank's eternal boulder for his perpetual motion spell!"

"Bookworm, please calm down!"

"Star Swirl described'em just like that! He drew pictures and everything!"

"Bookworm, this isn't helping!" her father reproved weakly.

"But Daaad!"

Scrolldozer inhaled a big nervous breath and screwed in all the parental authority he could find within himself (which was disappointingly little).

"Baby, that b-b-beast couldn't have been one of your storybook m-m-monsters! The gates of Tartarus are nowhere near here, a-and everypony knows that Cerberus himself guards them! H-How would one of these ‘heckhounds’ have gotten by Cerberus, hm?"

"I don't know how he got out," Bookworm admitted, "but I'm sure that he was a heckhound! Cross my heart, he was!"

"Oh, honey, no more!" begged the father, and just like the night before with Mrs. Totaler's terrible tale, it became too much for him to bear. His magic tightened around his daughter's entire body, freezing her like a statue. "J-Just... stop it right now!"

Crumble Pie seized the stage again, speaking to the whole town as soothingly as she could, "It doesn't matter what that thing was. What matters is that he's gone and everypony is safe."

"Oh, but gone for how long?!" Desk Job worried in an unhelpfully loud voice. "That beast was audacious enough to walk right into Stony Nook and attack us! How do we know that he won't be back?!"

Crumble Pie cringed as many townsponies quickly picked up the mayor's remarks and murmured their dark agreement.

"Well, we frightened him off pretty badly," she tried to project shining optimism. "Maybe he learned his lesson?"

The glum whispers of the crowd failed to subside. If anything, they grew worse.

Scrolldozer likewise wasn't convinced. His mind had so many dreadful images seared into it: a muzzle dripping with bubbling slobber; furious claws ripping and tearing wildly; burning, heartless eyes. Most especially haunting, however, was that nightmarish sound: the growls that had come from underneath the stone-blade, like the crackling of a hungry inferno surrounding home, chewing on the walls to try and get inside and mercilessly consume everything within.

He looked with a trepid eye at his magically paralyzed daughter.

"Crumble Pie, that monster was vicious!" he said. "Surely he'll come back, and nopony is safe with something like that out there!"

They weren't the words the crowd had needed. They only fed the fire.

The gray mare shoved her hoof into her own face, grinding it against her nose. Yet again she understood her dear friend's desire to safeguard his daughter, but lamented that it made him work against the greater good of Stony Nook.

To overcome the rising voices in the crowd, she shouted, "I'm not saying we should just forget about him and carry on like nothing happened!"

It was Mayor Desk Job of all ponies – the pony whose official job it was to lead the town through all of its most important decisions – who first threw themselves down at Crumble Pie's hooves and pleaded, "Oh, what do we do, what do we do? How can we protect ourselves from that monster's return?"

A silence invaded the town.

Everypony stared at the gray mare, looking to her for a magical solution.

"Well, Mayor, I-," Crumble Pie carefully tried to conjure a rational, calm, well-thought-out answer.

"Mayor!"

Scrolldozer was far too frightened for slow solutions and complicated plans. He recklessly beseeched Desk Job, "Can't you send an emergency dispatch to Canterlot? We need Princess Celestia's help! She'll save us!"

At that suggestion, a wave of relief washed over the crowd. They all knew of the bright glories of their legendary sun princess. Every mare, stallion, filly, and colt knew by heart the tales of her wisdom and power, and how for centuries she had kept safe the lands of Equestria, even as far back as her defeat of Nightmare Moon! Instantly Scrolldozer's plan felt to be the right one, and it put them all at ease.

Yes, of course! Sunlight to banish the darkness!

But no sooner had the townsponies given a collective sigh did their newfound peace get blasted away by a divergent, angry voice which bellowed at them.

"And what it is you hope she might do?"

Ponies parted, beginning from the outside of the crowd and heading inwards. They trembled from the intensity of his shouting voice as they moved aside and nervously watched him storm past.

Into the center of the crowd stomped the stranger, and seething fury flowed from his cloak, and his every motion was flavored by rage.

"What help do you dream she would save you with?"

Everypony, from youngest foal to oldest nag, was aghast.

The very unprepared Mayor Desk Job tried to respond, "S-Sir! I don't know what you're trying to suggest! She is-... she is the Princess of Equestria! Of course she will protect us!"

"Yet lo, have you not already been attacked? And when came that despicable sun to shield you, hm?" the stranger demanded to know. He roared the question not only at the flustered mayor but at the entire town.

"That's-... that's not fair!" Desk Job stuttered. "She couldn't have known!"

"And think you this to be her first such failure?" the stranger continued to huff and howl at everypony. "No! Had she known, no preventions would she have readied! Had she known, still would she have failed you!"

Hailstone soared down from above, striking a hard landing before the ranting pony.

"Wow, what is wrong with you?" she rebuked him. "It's like you want to make trouble!"

The stranger stood his ground, but even under the concealing folds of his cloak it was clear that he was about to boil over.

Crumble Pie delicately moved in and tried to broker peace, "Could everypony please just step back and take a breath?"

But even the greatly regarded gray mare couldn't hold back the building resentment of the crowd. Several townsponies began to grouse audibly about the stranger (too cowardly to even show his face!) and his outrageous proclamations. A few loud voices in particular cried above the rest of the choir.

Hailstone yelled, "This guy threw himself at that monster like some kind of suicidal idiot! Why should we listen to him?"

Home Remedy complained frankly, "We were fortunate nopony was hurt, but we might not be so lucky if that beast comes around again. It's nonsense to leave this situation untreated."

Mayor Desk Job shouted, "This is a meager frontier town! Stony Nook doesn't have any guards on payroll! Or even a militia to marshal! Who but the Princess could protect us?"

Even the kindly Mrs. Totaler joined in, saying, "Princess Celestia defeated Nightmare Moon and saved ponykind! She is the Keeper of Harmony! For over six hundred years she has alone kept Equestria safe from evil! How could anypony doubt her goodness?"

Scrolldozer spoke aloud, but specifically to the stranger, and he was courteous only because he was so scarcely capable of disdain.

"I don't know where you come from, friend," he said, "but these are our homes, and our families, and our foals! How can you just rudely come up here and scream at us that they won't be safe?"

All of the townsponies contempt couldn't smother the cloaked pony's anger, but he also wasn't a blind fool. He tamped down on his outward fire, not biting back against the shouts that were coming at him. Instead he started to push away from the middle of the crowd, towards one side; the ponies there were wary enough to him to move back so as to give him space.

Again he lifted his voice, this time adding a conciliatory note to his heated proclamations as he urged the townsponies, "Embrace your own strength, for have you not already proven its worth in your protection? Behold your water tower! Felled by hoof, but for a foe now vanquished! Saved were you not by magic or Sun but by your very selves! Why now abandon that independence for a prayer of salvation to an absent, faithless Sun?"

Crumble Pie couldn't shake the sense that, from underneath the shadow of his hood, he was staring at her specifically. Pleading at her, even.

But more than anything she needed to restore order.

"Sir," she approached him another time and said, "I really do thank you again for your help, but if you could please just-"

"No!" he overpowered her simple request. "Let them not abide fearful languor, waiting powerlessly for others to save them!"

Yet by the sudden, forlorn way he implored her, it made her all but certain now that he was appealing to her personally. His discontented fury, for as loud as it was, sounded so superficial; was concealing, but no more so than his cloak was. Perhaps she was the only one he had any faith in to see things his way?

"Sir," she tried again to be reasonable, "if you please-"

"More strikes there have been on the road, yes?" the stranger recalled Bookworm's remarks from the evening prior. "Ergo the monster must have a local source! Find it, and this threat you can end! No patient cowardice! No weak Sun! Simply your proven strength!"

"Sir-"

"Please!"

"This is ridiculous!" Hailstone scoffed.

None of the crowd was quite so enamored with the stranger's absurd suggestion either.

"We need the Princess's help," Scrolldozer agreed.

He turned to Desk Job.

"Mayor? A dispatch?"

"R-Right, yes, of course...," the mayor nodded, overwhelmed by the whole situation still. "I'll-... I'll prepare a message right now."

Left to right, from the very front to the furthest back, the relieved townsponies had mixed reactions to the decision finally being settled. Many sighed, fearful still but at last able to take their first hopeful breaths. Others were more joyous, smiling in the certainty that were now saved. But regardless of their differences, they were all uniformly set against the unwanted outsider and his insane proposition. About the crowd there were small showings of contempt towards the cloaked pony, and a few hardly even bothered to mask their derision at all, sneering at him openly.

They were all silenced when the stranger's hoof unexpectedly and furiously clapped the mud, hammering down like all the crush of a waterfall smashing the pool below at once.

"So be it!" he announced, snarling and unrestrained. "Where you will not, I will hunt this beast!"

He turned a cold flank to the crowd, marching westwards after the monster. Those ponies nearest to him stampeded away, scurrying to either side and clearing his path.

Nopony there truly knew how to take his unforeseen, incomprehensible proclamation. They all stayed silent as they watched his cloaked backside stomp away from them. And even for how much antagonism he had earned, it still felt disturbing and wrong to merely allow somepony to walk themselves into mortal danger so foolishly.

But they were not quite so concerned that they spoke up. The dark threat which continued to hover over them, coupled with the mystery of the stranger's unreasonable anger, locked them up too tightly.

Only Crumble Pie was courageous enough to speak her distress. She galloped up alongside the departing pony.

"That's awfully noble of you sir, but please don't do something so rash. I understand there's a danger here that's a little more immediate than these ponyfolk would like to believe, and I agree something has to be done. But even so, the Princess really should be informed about-"

"There's no strength in her hypocrisy!" the stranger retorted. Again he was violent with his voice, bringing enough harsh volume to assault the ears of everypony there, but again he also had a desperate plea for the gray mare buried beneath all of his hot rhetoric. "No hope in her vanity! No defense in effete magic, whether hers or yours! If your strength you do not know, then I will show you it by way of virtuous example, if I must!"

He marched harder, moving ahead of her.

"Wait not to be saved, lest you die of hope!"

He started to stride past the remains of the broken water tower. Its wreckage clogged so much of the street that he had to move far to the side.

Crumble Pie used the opportunity to try one last time to intercept the cloaked pony. She slipped through the cracked, split, jutting beams of the water tower in order to cut in front of him.

"Please, sir. Can't you wait just a minute?"

"In his flight the beast has left a trail!" he pointed out, highlighting the soft mud that had served as fertile ground for pawprints. A clearly distinguishable trail of wet marks ran down the road, even past the soaked earth, right out of town. "Soon he must be followed, or not at all! Pay witness to your imagined frailty: I will track him to his source, discover what lay there, and return with news good or ill!"

From the watching crowd Bookworm suddenly broke free, chasing him and crying out eagerly, "I'll help! I know everything about heckhounds and-"

Once more her father's magic froze her. The rigid glow hoisted the filly's stiff form and dragged her back to him, close enough so that he could throw one of his legs over her as a shackle.

The stranger paid no heed to the outburst, and he blew past Crumble Pie. His rapid swing around her briefly lifted up the ends of his cloak and flashed his dirtied, bruised, white legs.

"Sir-" the gray mare said.

"They must learn!"

That very last call to her finally had no disguise of blazing anger. All that was there was a streak of pure sorrow.

Crumble Pie didn't pursue him again. She sighed as he powered away and left behind his own trail of muddy tracks. Eventually he curved behind the ruins of the water tower and disappeared, leaving behind only his wet clops fading with distance.

"Good riddance!" Hailstone said over the returning murmurs of the crowd. She snapped her wings once in scorn.

Scrolldozer shook his head.

"Mayor?" he once again exhorted Desk Job.

"Ah, y-yes," she replied, "I'll return to my office right now and-"

"Well just hold on a second..."

A falling boulder crashing to a stop at the bottom of a ditch had less impact than Crumble Pie's startling words. Everypony looked back at her with mouths agape as she returned to the council at the crowd's center.

"Crumble Pie," gasped Scrolldozer slowly, "you can't be serious. You aren't actually thinking of listening to that pony, are you?"

"I didn't say I was," the even-tempered mare answered. "I just said, 'Hold on a second.'"

"'Hold on' why?" Mayor Desk Job trembled with worry. To be countermanded about this matter by Stony Nook's most valued citizen was both disheartening and mindboggling. "Crumble Pie... this beast, and all the danger...! We need the Princess!"

"Nopony is saying we shouldn't tell her what happened here," the gray mare assured the perplexed townsponies. Yet she spared no stern leadership in dictating to them, "But before we just stamp a letter and forget about what's going on, listen for second: let's think this through all the way."

Nervous stares abounded between the gathered townsponies, but not one of them raised a voice in protest. Deliriously scared as they were, they were all a community of few mortared together as one sturdy wall, and they trusted their cornerstone.

Crumble Pie, after giving them all several moments to collect themselves, started to pace. While she roamed about the center circle she explained herself directly to each of them.

"So... we write a dispatch and send a pegasus to race it down to Mule's Head. From there, Pony Express speeds it all the way to Canterlot. Just that much is going to take over a day. Any response from the Princess – guards, or wizards, or even just a letter of advice – is going to take at least the same time to get back. That's three days before anypony shows up to help. And that's all assuming that the Princess gets the message in front of her and does something about it right away once it reaches Canterlot."

"Wait," Desk Job interrupted, anxious and confused. "Why wouldn't she read the dispatch right away?"

"I don't know!" Crumble Pie pointedly admitted. "I've never met the Princess! Seen her a time or two, but never met her. I have no idea how she goes about any of her business. Now, I've run a quarry before, so I know how I go about handling emergencies. But how does she?"

The question hung for a moment in the silent air.

To prove it wasn't rhetorical the gray mare asked the mayor directly, "Do you know?"

"I... um...," Desk Job faltered under the unexpected pressure. But eventually she shrunk and replied softly, "No."

"Does anypony know?" Crumble Pie made her point by asking the entire crowd.

As expected, there were no answers and only uncertain, uncomfortable glances back at her.

But then there was a rustling. A few ponies at the edge of the circle shifted aside, allowing Mrs. Totaler to enter the center.

She was very uneasy. Whatever it was she wanted to share she held close enough to her chest that she came forward practically in a crawl. If her remarks were even worth adding, she doubted their real value, or at least that the ponies of Stony Nook would find her opinion very pleasant.

However, Crumble Pie warmly beckoned for the bartender to stand and speak her thoughts. There was a familiar love and respect which the gray mare treasured and trusted.

The older mare, accepting the encouragement, reached back through her years and shared warily with the crowd, "Only time the Princess was ever actually here was twenty-five years ago; gave Stony Nook her blessing at our founding celebration; that was it. I was there for it; been here from the start, and haven't gone anywhere. She hasn't come back since."

Unwanted doubt took the stage with the bartender.

"... I'd sure like to imagine she remembers us... but... hm...."

The fears which went unwhispered troubled the townsponies, and Scrolldozer especially. His leg clamped tighter onto his daughter.

"But she has to help," he limply argued at Crumble Pie. "She's the princess. She couldn't just ignore us..."

And even tighter went his leg.

"... could she?"

"I don't know," the gray mare said again. It hadn't been her intention to have driven her friends and fellows into abject despair. She tried to inject some fresh reality into everypony, purposefully conjecturing, "It doesn't have to be that much. Maybe she has some official system she uses to process these kinds of emergencies, and it takes a little time to get the boulder rolling? Maybe she's not in Canterlot right now and out on some fancy diplomatic trip so she wouldn't get the message right away? Heck, maybe a stray wind snags the dispatch and it gets lost in transit?"

She came out again with her entrusted authority, "All I mean to say is that once we send that letter... we don't know what happens after that. I'd like to imagine the best, just like the rest of you, but we don't know. What we do know is that it'll be at least three days before we get any possible response, and that's three days that we'll be on our own, without help, regardless of anything we do."

Without a storm, or a chilling breeze, or a single flake of snow, winter ice froze over the town.

"There's plenty to disagree with about what that stranger was saying," Crumble Pie addressed the icicle ponies, "but he was right about one thing: we can't afford to just send a letter and then sit quietly hoping to be spared more trouble."

She stamped a determined hoof.

"We have to do something!"

Hardly a stir came from the frigid townsponies, all of them too lost in their wishes for the Sun to magically appear and melt away the cold fear that the gray mare had put over them.

It was finally Mayor Desk Job who thawed just enough to ruefully ask, "... So what should we do, Crumble Pie?"

Not far out from Stony Nook, the stranger slowed. His stormy march fell back into a walk that believed itself a trot, and not long after that it ebbed again into a tired amble. It carried him only a shallow distance further before it gave out as well, and his hooves refused to pick themselves up anymore.

Teeth-gnashing fury was only a short-lived thing, and the power it had given him to have ignored the poor shape of his battered body hadn't lasted long. Now again he felt the score of minor injuries which left him as no sturdier than standing rubble, and most especially he suffered the full howling of his great hunger. His fragmentary, torturous sleep had done very little to heal him, nor had his startled awakening straight into a battle helped him in that regard, and while a fast departure with righteous anger might have felt good, it had robbed him of all opportunities to have solved some of those problems.

Here he was now, again traveling somewhere aimlessly without any food to soothe the torquing in his stomach, and in desperate need of rest.

Behind him Stony Nook had only begun to shrink, veiled by the slight contours of the land. In the middle of the road he quietly stood, a pony out in the open sun yet shrouded entirely under a darkening cloak, showing only a snout leaking dribbles of sticky fluid, the dirtied ends of thin tail-hairs, and aching hooves with deep scratches. Morning winds strolled over the land softly, making themselves known everywhere through the synchronized waves of dry grass and the tiny tornadoes of dust dancing down the road, but only a ripple or two touched the still stranger's cloak.

He wasn't so little in strength yet that he physically couldn't have carried on; he was one whose bodily will had enough stubbornness to persist until the very moment of dropping dead by exhaustion. What stalled him was the torment of his spirit, still ongoing after his encounter in Stony Nook; after his flight from Dryearth Forest; after his years in self-exile; after his life bearing a dragon-wound which always and forever throbbed and burned painfully.

He still didn't know why he was there on the Equestrian side of the Pearl Peaks; which of his one thousand pointless, impossible hopes he had obeyed to have come there. He couldn't contend with the fears lodged in the cracks of his heart; why, after his decision to have left Dryearth Forest, he had dared to again have brought himself anywhere close to other ponies. And, more simply, he also grumbled with plain frustration over the ill turns in his fight with the beast: the imperfect balance of his aging body; his close brush with fire because of his careless guard; even his inability to break free of the craven pegasus' grip.

But above all those other things, his dragon-wound felt on fire once more as he seethed over the town's cowardly rejection of their best selves.

A victory over evil! Yet they, unhappy ponies, would erase it into a defeat!

He burned, hot with anguish.

How inspiring had it been to have seen the noble gray mare fight back in the heat of great crisis? She had even outwitted and outperformed the stallion who had faltered relying on contemptible magic! For all of her town she had won the day!

But once the immediate threat had vanished even she, the best of those ponies, hadn't been able to lift her fellows up in strength. She had acceded to their worst weaknesses, letting their strength and independence wilt in the face of fear.

A golden platter they would lay themselves down upon! Set themselves out as a feast for hungry enemies while waiting and praying for providence to pour salvation over them!

How does one put more faith in the invisible than in themselves? And when love was on the line? When those they adored were at risk, and when they had even seen bravery demonstrated firsthand, how was merely the presumption of further threat enough to surrender everything to absent forces of fate?

How does anypony who has love not also have heroism?

Murderous abandonment of love! Suicidal faith in untested dreams! Self-castration of sacred duties!

The fire blazing across the wound on his face roared a whisper of the new lesson it had long ago seared into him: life and destiny were best entrusted to oneself. Why was that lesson so hard for others to take up? So difficult even for ponies with proven strength?

But the wind – breezes roaming down from the Pearl Peaks in the northwest – spoke to him in soft whistles of what they remembered having seen on the other side of the mountains. They reminded him about the rampaging freedom he had fled from. About the berserk strength unleashed upon defenseless innocents by his shadow-self.

About life and destiny entrusted to every oneself.

... Old fool...

Under the stranger's cloak sweat had been building, now a sea because of his hard battle, and sweltering anger, and fast march. Thick droplets crawled down his face leaving slimy trails of salt. He almost started to choke on the oppressive heat which was trapped under his hood.

First imbuing himself with a military calm, he stood his legs straight and the slowly peeled back the hood, letting it gently float down onto his back.

Prideheart caught the fresh breeze as it came down to greet his revealed face, and with a cooling touch it stroked away some of his toil. He released all of his tension and guard, and with ease he took new air into his lungs.

From within his cloak he withdrew the canteen he had refilled the night prior. It had lost its refreshing coldness since then, but the bland water was still soothing as it went down his scratchy throat, and it replenished what he had lost in sweat. He drank only to satisfy his immediate thirst though, and far less than he knew he could hold.

After all, there was a journey ahead of him on which he might need to ration his supply.

He had, after all, sworn a promise to the ponies of Stony Nook. True that he had done it only because of his blinding outrage. But vows made in moments of foolhardy anger were vows all the same. He would not and could not abandon his promise to them.

Yet even if he hadn't have been bound to them by his own words, he could not have turned aside. They were innocents imperiled, and they needed protection. Badly he wished they would have recognized their own strength and shouldered the burden themselves, but never so long as he had a beating heart would he have punished their lack of resolve by himself choosing vindictive inaction against evil.

Inside, a strange sensation. A memory of an old lesson, from long ago; from before fire: those who can, must, for the sake of those who cannot.

He shuddered, feeling beset by an unclear, unresolved conflict.

But his course was set, and Prideheart readied himself. He shook his aching muscles loose, and he tapped his hooves on the dirt to get them ready for walking again. The way forward: follow the trail, find the den of the beast, and thereafter do whatever had to be done.

Better that he at least try to resolve this matter himself than allow the ponies of Stony Nook to be at any risk because of their blind faith in a faraway, undependable princess. Maybe his example would be enough for them. Maybe enough for the gray mare's eyes to be opened; enough for her to discover a way to inspire their inner strength.

Enough for her to find a means to do right what he had done wrong in Dryearth Forest.

On the road before him, the wet pawprints still ran straight ahead. Already, even so short out of town, their color was beginning to change. They were fading. The wicked morning sun was growing stronger, and it was making a fast effort to burn them away.

Prideheart needed to carry on while the clarity of the trail was still strong enough to be followed. Leaving his hood down so long as he was now alone, he began after his quarry once more. Hooves, bones, muscles, and gnarled stomach all made their many loud complaints known to him right away, but enough heartfelt purpose quickly settled into him that he was able to drive his enfeebled body forward in a slow, consistent trot.

Chapter 5: To Light a Candle

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Despite the fatigue buried deep inside his bones and the constant distraction of his complaining hunger, Prideheart soldiered on down the road.

The countryside wasn't painted in lush greens, nor was it dotted by the vibrant delight of flowers. Everything far and vast resembled dull, tough, dry earth. The scarce trees and their sparse leaves, the wide patches of reeds and grass, the low tangles of shrubs; they all were colored like tawny stone. The hardy landscape was an old picture long-faded by time and sunlight.

Not far out from Stony Nook the land gently began to move up and down, rising and dipping with the final ripples of the foothills coming down from the Pearl Peaks. The mountains themselves were still many distant miles ahead, silently watching over the countryside from their western perch high above the horizon. What a bizarre coincidence that, after those craggy mountains had nearly killed him days early, Prideheart found himself lumbering back towards them.

The road didn't wander far from the river; they followed each other like faithful companions. Around Stony Nook the river had been so broad, quiet, and calm, like a lake curved about a corner post, but the further from the village the stallion went, the more the water narrowed. It began to chatter; quite noisily, before long. At its worst it lashed and foamed, angrily crashing about its most uneven bends, but nowhere was it ever truly a monster. The river's undercurrent wouldn't have devoured any but the poorest of swimmers, and anypony who could at least paddle stably could have swam themselves across it, or even have simply let the current float them down to Stony Nook.

Over time, the riverbank opposite the roadside began to climb rapidly. What once had been a mirrored view of open country became a jagged, vertical cliff face. How high the cliff reached varied from place to place, but overall it steadily grew with distance, getting as tall as three to four stories. It was as if the mountains' roots had chosen one side of the river over the other.

Eventually, more than an hour into Prideheart's journey, the dirt road finally did abandon the river; or perhaps it was the upstream river which had no more need for friends. The ground bulged more than before as the road wore on by itself, taking greater influence from the coming hills. More rocks made their homes in the increasingly heavy earth, crowding out some of the dry grass, yet somehow regardless a sparse forest managed to sprout up to replace the missing river.

The trees themselves were robust, with granitelike bark about their trunks and mighty roots that dug past the stone-choked surface to lick the richer soil underneath. Their leaves looked less stout, all parched, shrunken, and patchy, but they tenaciously clung to life with the same resilience as the land that was their home. Each tree was a bit of an unneighborly, solitary creature, selfishly needing all they room they could hoard in order to survive, but all the trees in the thin forest had each other's begrudging respect. It was a forest more like a quiet weekday at a diner, more than every other booth vacant.

Another whole hour on, the road still weaved gently up and down, and the loose-knit forest lingered on Prideheart's right as he plodded along. The stallion was satisfied that he had never resorted to limping, not even once. The aches and pains had spoken their piece plenty before having finally given up and settled, waiting for a better moment. Even the void in his stomach had taken to only grousing quietly to itself.

Thankfully the long trail of pawprints which Prideheart followed hadn't been erased by wind or time. All the signs of dripping water had ceased quite some ways back, but the road nonetheless kept an articulate record of the hound's flight. Stamped in the dirt were clear indents that still ran rapidly westward, as they had from the very start at Stony Nook. The beast had never once changed course or lost his pounding haste.

Not long after, something new was added to the roadway scenery. An addition both ominous and unnatural.

Prideheart slowed.

A mound of wooden debris laid forsaken in the reeds which sprouted up about the small stretch of rocky earth separating road and forest. At first it seemed to be nothing more than a derelict wagon; the kind that can be hitched and hauled by a single strong pony. Even from a distance it was plain to see that it had broken down in some fashion. Perhaps, Prideheart guessed, it had been abandoned on the roadside as dead weight because of an unrepairable wheel or some other such common trouble.

Only once he was close did he see how violently its skeleton had been splintered, in a brutal number of places; grotesque damage beyond the extent of a mere broken wheel. Moreover, there weren't any signs that nature had begun to reclaim the wreckage: no young weeds playfully climbing over it, no termite-hollowed homes, nor even any carnivorous rot biting at the wood. It was not an ancient gravesite. Rather, it was the grisly scene of a fresh wagon murder.

Quickly something came to Prideheart's recall: the ponies of Stony Nook had whispered rumors about attacks on this very westward road. Beyond doubt this was a site of one such strike, only days old at the most. And likely, therefore, it had something to do with the monster hound.

He set about inspecting the vicious aftermath.

The bed of the doomed wagon was more or less in one piece (mostly less), but it was overturned and empty of cargo. One of the two axles had been snapped and discarded beside the bed. The other axle was missing entirely, lost or buried somewhere further out. All four wheels had been torn off and scattered, and not one of them was round anymore. Cracked, bent, split; many of the spokes had been ripped out and flung about. Only some of the wagon's hitch was present, and like so many other things it was in several pieces. A few bits of it still lay dropped on the road itself, sprinkled back in the direction of Stony Nook. There was little there which was wooden and not covered in bitemarks; some parts were chewed so badly that they had been whittled down into pulpy, deformed twigs.

For all the carnage the poor wagon had suffered, the cargo had been savaged worse. At least most of the wagon's remains were still clustered together, but all the destroyed barrels, boxes, and other loose items had been spread in a wide radius. Prideheart felt as if he could have wandered a mile out from the epicenter, in any direction, and still have come across bent boards, rent metal, shredded cloth, and cracked containers. They had been spread like a sack of seeds spilt open in a windy sky.

The total amount of damage was sickening and cruel. Far in excess of what any one beast would have ever needed to do.

After a minute of exploring the wreckage, an incongruity caught the stallion's notice:

There should have been more.

More supplies, specifically.

For how many destroyed containers there were, the bits and remains of supplies to fill them did not add up. It was possible the wagon had been coincidentally hauling more empty vessels than full ones, but it wasn't safe to dismiss robbery where such thorough destruction had been employed.

Some items remained behind in what could have reasonably been their original quantity, though they were all smashed or playfully ravaged in some way: fabrics and blankets shredded into tatters; the heads of rakes and shovels, only in marginally better shape than their broken handles; sharp snowfalls of glass and clay which had once been whole bottles and jugs, splashed dangerously across the earth or hidden in the reeds.

But certain other items were assuredly missing.

Prideheart took an interest in the ruins of one particular barrel, thrown on its side and cracked apart like the shell of an egg for its yolk. Inside it was completely bare except for the smell of its former contents, still quite strong. Just one sniff plugged the stallion's nose with a pair of sweet, dried strawberries. Greedily he forced the disemboweled barrel open wider, but not a leaf or even a seed remained.

Intensely curious, he moved on to a crate which had only three of its six faces intact. Before its death it had been filled to the top with many smaller packages, all identical; something he deduced easily by finding their ripped remains strewn about the immediate area. A few of the packaging scraps still had readable labels: hard, flavored biscuits, from a faraway bakery in Trottingham. Again Prideheart put in a thorough search around the crate, but again not an edible crumb had been left behind.

He went on to the next broken container and searched it anxiously.

Nothing.

And the next.

Again, nothing.

Box after busted box, barrel after broken barrel; he tore them all apart further but still found no food left behind.

With each failed search his stomach grew more and more disgruntled, complaining to him loudly. In his deepest, most murmuring, most foul whispers the stallion argued with his own grumbling belly, insisting that he was searching out of diligence for clues and not scavenging for himself as a plunderer would. But even that lie fell apart swiftly when he severed the loosest side from the final crate and found it empty as well. He gave the piece of board he had pried free a heated, angry toss away.

What bitter mockings of fate!

A wagon forsaken, once so laden with food it could have fed a small company, yet behind was left not even one nourishing scrap for a starving pony?

Gluttonous hound! Corpulent beast!

For a long while the sour stallion simmered, standing idle and enduring the protests of his weeping stomach. But in time it finally accepted the hungry reality it faced and halted most of its tears, bothering Prideheart less with only its famished sniffles.

Glum, but governing his self-pitying anger, the stallion returned to the road so that he might resume the hunt.

Only he couldn't find the beast's trail again.

Ready to begin his marching anew, he looked down at the dirt and realized that he saw nothing to follow. There were no pawprints anymore.

Confused and suspicious, he stepped to one side of the road and followed anyway, scanning carefully as he went. The wrecked wood and tattered supplies dwindled into nothing after only a few dozen yards, but nowhere along the way did a single pawprint appear, not retreating or approaching.

Prideheart doubled back.

On the road immediately neighboring the wagon debris there was a horrendous amount of disturbed dirt, but no clear markings. The recent ambush had obliterated the road's fertile ground to the point that it wouldn't remember any travelers for some time to come. The wind would need weeks to meticulously smooth the dust flat so that it could once again keep records.

However, back the way Prideheart had originally come from, the same pawprints he had first followed were still there.

The trail ran up to the ambush, but not out of it.

The stallion turned painfully around and followed the pawprints towards the ambush site once more. He counted the marks in the dirt, one by one, hoping desperately he had made some kind of simple error in tracking them, but again they shot into the unreadable mess of disrupted dirt and did not appear out the other side.

Prideheart crawled to a stop. Lifelessly he stood. His blank stare watched the empty road stretch far away towards the mountainous horizon.

It made no sense.

The attack on the wagon was fresh, but not that fresh. There was no way the fleeing hound had interrupted his escape to have mauled and ransacked an unfortunate traveler. There hadn't been the time to have done all this damage.

But then where? Where had the hound gone? It had run up to the wagon it had days ago destroyed and then... vanished?

The ordeal was a worrisome blow to Prideheart's confidence. After all the outraged oratory he had spat at the townsponies of Stony Nook, he needed to learn something about the beast before he returned to them. If he were to have come back in swift defeat...

He waded back into the wagon ruins.

There had to be a further clue; something to point him towards where the hound had gone. He should have been more vigilant when he had first searched, instead of having greedily rooted about for food!

As weak as his own hunger! Bah!

Old fool!

Once more he searched amidst the broken debris, but he felt hopeless. While the moderate trail of pawprints on the road had been clear enough to have followed even for an inexperienced tracker like himself, the stout clay, rigid stones, and wavy reeds were not nearly as courteous as the dusty road. They needed a far more talented tracker to coax their secrets out. All his untrained eye saw was mangled wood and shattered stores, strewn over grass, weeds, and reeds that had in some places been bent or crushed by-

Prideheart blinked.

The grass and reeds grew in patches anywhere that they could squeeze between the heavy stones embedded in the earth, and there indeed were small clusters that had been stomped down in the ambush. But near him was a bed of reeds which had been thoroughly flattened; something no amount of furious combat could have leveled with such a clearly defined shape.

...!

Here the hound had made his bed!

Prideheart dropped his nose close and tasted the air.

No foul scent lingered. Nothing at all but earth and grass, and certainly nothing close to the smell of wet dog. It must have been days ago when the hound had laid down and rested there, far enough in the past for his scent to have dissipated.

Looking about yet again, this time newly aware, Prideheart quickly spotted more patches of smothered reeds and grass. There were over a dozen such beds. Apparently, after his great feast, the beast had perhaps napped around? His freshly gorged stomach had pushed him to find the perfect place for a small hibernation?

Consider: a hound overindulged wakes from his itchy slumber, and then? What first course of action does a beast, full on an enormous banquet and arisen after hours of repose, take to?

The stallion thought on it hard, until his good eye turned slowly towards the adjacent forest.

Towards the lonely trees and their meager shade.

Towards the only nearby place where such a bloated creature would have found at least a modicum of privacy to do their natural business.

Prideheart trotted towards the forest's indistinct tree line. Hope welled up in him.

Under the trees the stony chunks in the earth were just a tad more looser and lighter, allowing to grow just enough more grass to reveal a faint trail! Dappled here and there were little sections of trampled grass, none as large as the flattened beds next to ambushed wagon, but present enough to see confidently that something heavier than a pony had passed through in recent days.

The stallion tried to swallow down any premature sighs of relief. The new trail was a fortunate discovery, but it didn't read nearly as finely as the one on the road, being harder to decipher in both direction and age. There was no telling if the hound he was chasing had gone this way today or if, as his gut told him, this trail was something leftover from after the wagon attack.

Regardless, he set his mind to it and pressed beyond the first trees. The trail was all he had.

It was no hard trek through the spacious forest. The ground was not terribly uneven, and certainly it was far from rough. Moreover, generous volumes of sunlight pooled beneath the thin canopy, often in whole gallons; rarely did the crowns of any two trees overlap.

Progress was slow however, owing to the meticulous care needed to follow the hazy trail. Several times Prideheart almost lost his way, his mind sent adrift in idle daydreaming because of the thin forest.

A paltry woods. Infantile against the home more familiar. Decades long in Dryearth Forest he had lived. Strange it was, after so many years, to now be amidst a forest so... bright, and young.

The stallion found it difficult to keep his eye down on the trail when all he wanted to do was look up. Memories were trying to break through the fog. After all the years in the heart of Dryearth Forest, he hadn't recalled that woodlands could ever be so quaint.

Where were the monstrous trees, taller and thicker than stone towers?

Where was the verdure endless, run amok?

Where was the sky of black leaves, sewn invincibly shut and holding back every last ray of forsaken sun?

Where was the darkness, cold and all-consuming, yielding only to the glow of numbing crystal light?

Something about the natural color of the bark under sunlight almost hypnotized him. His memory was too full of tree trunks stained by the gloomy rainbow colors of the magic-eating crystals of Dryearth Forest: the somber, lurking blues; the quietly bleeding reds; the falsely fertile greens... Every crystal beautiful in their ability to have recycled foul magic, and grim in the world of shadows they had illuminated.

A world so dry of magic, and without any Sun.

A wondrous place where only real strength should have mattered.

A way station which should have welcomed safety, and virtue, and unselfish love.

... So evil...

... Please... the shadow lord has now gone...

... Please... at last, he has been taken away...

... Now, please...

... Shine brightly...

Fortunately Prideheart's wandering mind didn't veer him off the trail before his nose was pricked by a peculiar and very unsavory scent. Sweet in texture, but overtly foul once it took hold, it caused him to squinch as it assaulted his nostrils. He endured whiffing large gulps of the unpleasant odor until he was sure he had found the direction it was coming from, and then he closed his nose as much as he could and followed.

Even without breathing through his nose the undesirable smell grew stronger, confirming that he was heading in the right direction. Quickly it became strong enough to be rather discernible, and right away he made a fair guess as to what the source of the stench was. His certainty only doubled once his ears started to pick up on a rampant, whirring buzz, like hundreds of very tiny saws grinding through wood.

Passing a few trees further proved him correct.

The hound, after having awoken from his nap, had come into the forest to do what any creature naturally needs to do after such an tremendous meal.

And certainly there was a wagon's worth of what the creature did.

Numerous piles of the reeking substance were scattered about; enough to make counting them all difficult at a glance. Each mound was also fairly sizable and would have swallowed the hoof and ankle of any unfortunate pony blind enough to have stepped in one. Simply being able to see the lumpy hills of detritus instantly made their odor that much more nauseously repugnant. Whatever infernal gut-fire burned inside the hound's belly had left behind some uniquely putrid waste, like a barbecue gone to rot. Only the noisy army of buzzing flies found any good flavor in the feast.

It was almost frightening how much of it there was. All of it combined would have been more than the body weight of the single monster himself.

But Prideheart wasn't willing to battle the battalion of jealous flies or endure long the awful stench just to make some up-close observations about the hound's biology. Only pursuing and finding the hound mattered.

Breathing as little as he could, Prideheart swiftly searched the area for any continuation of the trail he had been following and, unfortunately, he found nothing. The only marks were the ones that had first led him into the dumping grounds. If there were any further trails, they were too illegible for his untrained eye to read.

He was at the same dead-end as before.

Quickly he departed, heading back down the same path he had entered from. As soon as he reached cleaner air he took several deep breaths to renew himself, but the crisp new wind in his lungs hardly blew out his frustration. Simmering dimly, all he could think to do was return to the wagon wreckage and search again for anything he might had missed, and so he began to make his way towards the road.

His stomach growled.

Each hard clop against the earth agitated the aches in his legs.

He blinked his eyes, and the dead one prickled as his eyelid washed a layer of slime over it. Underneath there was a painful smolder; his dragon-wound ensuring that its presence was never forgotten.

He felt the moans coming from each part of himself. He echoed their sounds.

Old... Insufficient... Worthless...

Prideheart halted, hitting a sudden whip of a stop. He had not yet exited the forest when his ears snapped up stiff, whispering a warning to him. Moving not one muscle, he peered deep through the spread of trees before him.

There was motion ahead.

More than anything which mere gentle breezes could do.

Somewhere a field's worth down the way, shape and color was moving about between the tree trunks. Subtle stomps and the cracking of twigs came too, growing faintly louder.

It was approaching.

Precise and perfect, Prideheart lowered himself close to the ground. He floated his hooves along, planting them flat, firm, and softly, making not even the most silence hush of a clop. To the side he retreated, a cloaked shadow soundlessly shifting between the trees until he was able to cover himself in the thickest darkness he could find.

At least all those years in the thick brush of Dryearth Forest had be useful in teaching him great stealth.

He waited and watched.

His pursuer didn't show any overt sign of having detected him or his act of hiding. There was no change in their approach at all. In fact, once they came near enough if was clear that their own efforts to tail him weren't particularly stealthy or careful in the least. They ambled along with all the mellowness of an afternoon stroll, oblivious to the clapping of their steps against the rocks and the crunching of the reeds they pounded over.

As the pursuer passed by Prideheart, never once batting an eye in his direction, the stallion slowly emerged from his hiding place. He turned the chase around, pursuing the pursuer, but kept his hooves silent still.

The oblivious pursuer didn't catch any gleam of the shadow stalking them. They shuffled on, jaunting through the forest. Not a peep or a rustle broke their illusion of loneliness.

Not until Prideheart's hoof came down firmly but carefully upon her tail, snatching her.

"Ahhhhhhh-! Oh! Hey, mister! Glad I caught up with you!"

Bookworm donned the grandest smile.

Prideheart released the little filly's tail and scrutinized her.

She was sweating, warm in her face, but it wasn't any product of nervousness. The long two-hour trek over the road had been rather taxing for her young body, but her endless enthusiasm had powered her through with ease. There was so much cheerful vigor pouring off of her that doubtless she could have swam on for two hours more. By the dust smeared over her hooves she had probably been trotting and skipping down the road like it had been a Sunday race. Certainly nowhere in her mind or attitude did she see herself on a dangerous hunt. The only things she was equipped with was her smile, her inexperience, and her school knapsack still slung around her.

Had she followed him out this far? Or just the hound's trail, as he had? And how sluggish had he been that a filly had caught up with him? Maybe he had only snuck up on her because of her own unmindfulness, and not because of any skill of his.

Old fool...

"Young Bookworm," Prideheart had no trouble recognizing her. His kindness was stern; concerned to find her far from home, but relieved to see her again, and for more reason than merely his pursuer not being something more perilous. "Why are you here?"

"I came to help!"

For such an upbeat reply, the stallion found it somewhat disturbing. But a small spark of hope flickered within him.

"Where are the others?" he asked. "Who accompanies you?"

He glanced about, searching for more movement while praying that Stony Nook had lamented their cowardice, found their strength, and had sent help.

But the filly revealed the obvious truth in her innocent reply, "Others?"

Prideheart sighed. The sickly hope expired.

"You are alone?"

"Yeah," she nodded. Then, face aside with apology, she added, "I don't think anypony really liked you very much, because of all the yelling and everything..."

Yet immediately a genuine smile wiped out any sign of her sorrow, pity, or regret.

"But I like you, mister!"

Much to Bookworm's dread, he didn't respond except to sigh again more quietly. Slowly she let go of her grin.

Suddenly the stallion announced, "An error it was for you to have come alone. Now, revolve your course and return home."

As ever with young foals, there was no such thing as moderate rejection; only crushed dreams.

"What?! Mister, no! I want to help you! Please!"

"Admirable. And appreciated," he soberly praised her.

But his decision was unchanged. He put a caring hoof onto her and gently guided her around, spinning her back towards the way she had come from.

"Nevertheless, too great are the dangers of this task for the likes of fillies and colts. Away now."

"Danger? B-But that's why you're here!" she resisted his hoof's soft pushes. "If a hero like you can fight off bull weevils then I'm sure you can keep me safe from a heckhound or two!"

Prideheart flinched curiously, pulling his hoof off of her.

He had forgotten entirely the impromptu tale he had spun for Bookworm at the tavern. After all, it had been a spontaneous, whimsical fiction, conjured out of the air simply to entertain the delightful filly enough to see her smile.

Battles with bull weevils! Ha!

Narrow dodges of boulder-smashing charges, deft strikes again invincible plated hides, and the central foe a burly behemoth not actually found in any pony-dwelling portion of Equestria; it had all been very silly on the face of it. Yet, that Bookworm had so faithfully adopted his obviously fanciful story despite its absurdity, enraptured him. It was difficult to gauge how sincerely she believed the false tale or if she more appropriately understood its truth of character, but only a miracle such as a foal could have enough bright and bold imagination to embrace it so wholeheartedly.

The innocent devotion sprinkled him with some much-needed joy.

Helpless against grinning, Prideheart held his head high and threw out his chest in a gallant pose.

"Verily! Such a skirmish would be a respite from the usual perils," he playfully fed her exaggerated assessment of his prowess. "Yet," he continued to tenderly admonish her, "one does not draw innocent fillies into their conflicts for no thoughtful reason."

"Not 'no reason!' I can help you!" Bookworm pleaded yet again. Grasping at any straw she could think of, she tried anxiously to assert herself, "Nopony in Stony Nook knows more about heckhounds than me! I read all of Star Swirl's Travels, and about how he dealt with heckhounds in Tartarus! And I read his Bestiary of the Dark and Dangerous too, front to back! I can tell you everything about'em!"

"Again, impressive scholarship! But little of need is there to know, other than beware fang, claw, and fire."

The filly, ever more desperate and distraught, almost to the point of teary-eyed frustration, urgently tried to prove herself, "W-Well did-, did-, d-did you k-know that the heckhound ran away before cause the water put out his inner fire?"

Prideheart's voice slid back into his throat as his good eye fell on her curiously.

"Y-Yeah!" Bookworm pushed the sudden opening for all it was worth. "Every heckhound has a dark fire from Tartarus inside them! It makes'em really really really mean! But water puts it out and then they don't fight anymore! A-At least, until they light it again with fresh heckfire."

Slowly the stallion's puzzled look melted away to reveal yet more honest admiration for the filly. Beyond just how remarkable the depth of her knowledge was for her tender age, he also didn't doubt the truth of it; not in the least. It matched exactly what he had seen in Stony Nook.

"Indeed your wits are keen, young Bookworm," he gave her praises unblemished. "Useful will be this insight you have shared. My thanks!"

Bookworm's frantic trembling calmed quickly. Fast breaths waddled from her nose, falling just short of being cheerful sniffles. Hope started to smile.

But Prideheart, with words so courteous and considerate and mild and mollifying, slammed her, "Yet still, I cannot allow-"

"Mister, please!"

Suddenly the filly was up against him, reared and clutching at the front of his cloak with begging hooves. Her clawing twisted the fabric, pulling Prideheart's neck down while trying to hoist herself up, bringing their noses together. She poured her frightened pleas into him.

"I really want to go! I've read about all sorts of amazing adventures that heroes like you go on, and now a big adventure has finally come to Stony Nook! Please! I can't miss it! I know everything about adventures! I can help you!"

Her upset entreaties didn't catch the stallion off guard. He remembered well her same panicky perseverance at their first meeting in the tavern, reckless and enormous in the same world-shattering mold as so many tiny fillies and colts; the biggest, littlest despair.

But what did strike him newly was the unexpected swell of sentimental exhilaration which flooded his heart. Normally the adult maturity to manage the excessive personalities of foals was found plentifully in him; certainly so with the grim sense of responsibility his dragon-wound had dealt him so long ago. But it had been so many years since he had last been face-to-face with an outpouring of such whimpering sweetness, and he had forgotten what a powerful weapon it could be. It pierced him, sharp and sudden.

Yet more than that, he was so close to the filly's worry-soaked eyes that he could see his own face in them. Distinctly the mirrors showed him his ruined image: burnt scars of poisoned skin, grotesque growths living atop his shredded horn, an eerie film over his dead eye which collected in the corners as a sticky scum; the mask of a dragon-wound that had become his face.

But underneath the reflection of his ugliness was her pure stare. Her gaze swallowed the shadowy mirror image whole. On the other side of the glass, in the hearts of her eyes, she didn't see a single one of his hideous deformities. Even so close to him, confronting him without an inch to spare; she didn't see them. For him, what she saw was unmistakable in the glorious light.

'Hero,' she had innocently called him.

"Young Bookworm...," Prideheart spoke lightly, almost in fear of the filly. He stuttered and hesitated, unable to steadfastly reject her anymore, and he stretched his excuses, "More than caution of combat and clever wisdom is there to undertaking a journey."

"J-Journey?" His resistance continued to daunt her, but his word choice excited her. "I-, I-, I can do a journey! Uh, uh... look, see? I packed for it and everything!"

She dropped down from him, unslung her knapsack, whipped opened the flap, and tilted the mouth towards him.

Inside was most certainly not any supplies for a journey, but only the ordinary lunch of schoolfilly: an unremarkable and thin sandwich, an apple, a small cookie, and a short cup with a sealed cap that was probably a juice drink. It all sat on top of a bed of school supplies which likewise weren't anything useful for the hunt ahead: papers, feather pens, workbooks, a tiny inkwell, and so on.

Prideheart couldn't hold back a tickled smile. Absolutely she was reaching for any validating excuse, and it was doubtful she had 'packed' anything at all but had merely stolen away with her usual school accoutrements. That hadn't kept the earnestness of her fib from being so endearing.

When Bookworm saw him actually frozen and thinking on the matter, with the slightest smile under his snout, she made an extra effort to push him over the edge. Down into her bag went her hoof, and up it came with the apple.

"I'll even share with you!"

She held it out to him.

A bribe.

"Please, mister, can I come?"

Right away the stallion's stomach roared to life. It thrashed its way up his throat, trying to leap out of his mouth and snatch the delicious fruit on offer. Rivers of saliva came before it, gushing over his lips before he managed to seal them tight. To try and keep temptation at bay he turned somewhat aside, but his good eye didn't move with him. It stayed locked helplessly onto the apple, as if through his sight alone he could consume it.

The filly noticed the signs immediately, not that the earthquake in his stomach could have been missed by any critter in a hundred miles. His loud hunger came to her as a bit of a surprise, but once the realization set in she had no trouble discarding her fears and dismay. She pushed aside her knapsack, wiggled forward on her three legs, and brought the apple up closer to him.

"Here, mister," she said generously, bribe no more.

One charitable gesture. Free of bargains, and selfish bids.

Prideheart's rear sunk to the ground slowly, taking a seat. Without a comment his hoof emerged from under his cloak and reached towards the apple, plucking it carefully from the filly like a delicate grape taken softly from the vine. His stomach demanded that he tear the fruit apart savagely; that he crunch and chew and chaw and chomp as fast as he could until there was nothing left, not even a stem. But he held back, keeping the apple at a safe distance from his drooling mouth.

Instead he studied again the little filly before him.

So young. But nevertheless so beautiful, in courage and benevolence! Was she the only of Stony Nook's citizenry to be so?

None of the town had risen up to demonstrate independence, except her. There had been potential in some of them; the gray mare came to mind, and even the coward with magic had at least stood and fought for a time. But only the tiny filly had found the bravery to have continued on, even if she hadn't been equipped for it. Only she had shown the spirit to care wholly and free about another, enough to do what was necessary without giving a thought to cost or recompense.

As simple as standing before dragon fire.

As plain as gifting away an apple.

"Many thanks for sharing, young Bookworm," he mumbled, still holding the apple at bay so that he wouldn't look like such a starving fool by sloppily engulfing it, "but were this apple to be mine then would there not be food enough to sustain you?"

No strict 'never!' No hard 'absolutely not!' No cruel 'go home!' No crass, overbearing, fatherly admonishment of any sort!

Bookworm beamed.

"Nah, I'll be okay," she said easily. The turnabout from dismay to joy was stark.

Then suddenly, in absolute certainty, she said, "It isn't very far, after all!"

It startled even Prideheart's stomach into silence. The apple almost fell out of his hoof.

"... Not... far?" he asked, mystified.

"To the old quarry!" Bookworm said. Her tenor was upbeat and her delivery was straightforward, not having any pretended reassurance or foalhood exaggeration. Again, whatever it was she was certain of, she was certain of it.

"I... do not understand," said the overwhelmed stallion.

At that invitation, the filly rambled speedily and openly, "Well, I haven't been there much except when I was really little, so I don't remember it at all, but Dad and his work friends used to go there all the time! Ms. Crumble Pie closed it down awhile back, and now she and Dad and the others have been working on a new quarry on the other side of the river, out the other way from Stony Nook. So nopony's at the old quarry anymore, but it's this way! I think if you stick to the road then it's only five or six hours from Stony Nook? We're probably almost halfway there! I don't think I'd get too hungry even going down and back-"

"Hold, Bookworm. Hold," requested Prideheart. Everything she was babbling about was so entirely disconnected from him and his task with the hound. He couldn't piece her logic together.

"Begin again," he asked after a moment of head-shaking ignorance. "What is it you are speaking of? What purpose holds this quarry? How ties it to the diabolical hound?"

"Oh. Well... the heckhound must be going there."

Prideheart, still dumbfounded, put his good eye to work on the filly. He analyzed, inspecting every hair and reviewing every glance, but there wasn't a speck of childish doubt on her. Not a blind hope, not a wild guess, not even any shred of disingenuity played as part of a scheme to win him over.

"How can this you claim so adamantly?" he asked.

It seemed obvious to her, and so she shrugged, "It's the only place to go out here. Especially cause the heckhound's tracks stopped after the broken wagon. If he came through these trees instead of going on down the road, then he's gotta be heading there."

The stallion found himself utterly helpless, unable to confirm her suggestion but also unable to reject it because of her austere sincerity. All he had for her was his confused, lackluster stare.

At first it genuinely didn't occur to Bookworm that he shared none of her local knowledge – she had spent most of her life cooped up in tiny Stony Nook after all – and she only returned his lost stare. Eventually the discomfort of the silence woke her up to his cluelessness and she started shoveling coal into her brain, burning for a better explanation.

"Uh... uh... uh... Oh! One second, mister!"

It was like a starter pistol had popped and sent her on a race. She seized her knapsack and dove into it, hooves first then all the way up to her face. A small unicorn, she didn't use an ounce of her magic to rustle through the contents, preferring instead to toss and spin and flip everything within using her hooves. (Whatever talent her father had in dexterous magical manipulation hadn't been passed down to her.) Finally after much shuffling and shifting and shaking, out came the filly, and she brought with her a crinkled piece of brown parchment and a feather pen. She then went back in and this time withdrew – much more carefully – the tightly-sealed inkwell; she had sadly learned such caution from having once carelessly ruined the pages of a beloved storybook.

Setting aside the knapsack, she threw the blank parchment flat onto the hard ground before she opened the inkwell and primed the pen, once again preferring to do it all manually instead of using her magic. With the wet pen carefully tucked between her teeth, she grinned at Prideheart.

"Here. I'll show you!"

In the very center of the parchment she drew a messy scribble.

"Ok. This is the forest, right here..."

Next she put down a jumpy line which started way off at the top corner and wormed erratically down across the page, passing just above and around the center scribble.

"And this is the river."

She scratched a quick X down at the end of the line.

"It goes right to Stony Nook eventually. That's here..."

Then, two lines. One shot from the town straight left, passing below the forest and blasting off the parchment. The other line emerged from the middle of the first, rising to the left of the forest before it met and followed the river.

"Here's the road that we've been on. And then there's this road, which goes off it up to the river, and then right to... the... old quarry..."

She hovered the pen upriver for a moment, bouncing about several times as she couldn't decide where exactly she wanted her symbolic quarry to sit. Eventually she gave up, dropped the pen down at any old place, and looped a fast circle.

Laying the pen aside, she scooped up the paper between her teeth and let it hang for Prideheart to see clearly.

"So," Bookworm explained, pointing at the map in her mouth while awkwardly balancing on her other three hooves, "the forest is surrounded by the river and the roads. He can't cross the river cause he's a heckhound and he hates water. If he didn't go past the wagon then he's gone into this forest, and there's no reason to do that unless he was going all the way to the old quarry. I mean, it's the only thing out here anyway. Trust me, I've read lots and lots of atlases and there's nothing else."

Prideheart brought his eye up to the parchment. Bookworm, meanwhile, waited anxiously for the teacher to review and grade her work.

"... Keen wits indeed, young Bookworm...," the stallion said, quietly astounded.

He understood now everything she had been relating to him, and he agreed with her guess. Unless the hound had some kind of warren hidden out in the wilderness – a hideaway which would have been nearly untraceable to Prideheart – then the quarry was a logical guess at a destination. At the very least, if the hound had cut through the forest then it might have been possible to pick up the trail again on the quarry-bound road.

For a filly, she was beyond remarkable. He couldn't have been prouder; not even if she were his own foal.

The parchment helplessly drifted to the ground as Bookworm's mouth broke open into a big smile.

"Does this me I can go?!" she gasped.

"Hmmmm," the stallion made a purposeful show of overacted pondering. It pleased him to no end to see her shiver with delight each time he gave a tentative hum or a thoughtful nod to his head. She was hoping, hoping, hoping with all of her joyful hope for one particular answer, and the wonderful sight of her writhing in happy anticipation gave him no rush to respond.

Meanwhile, his rumbling stomach bitterly reminded him of the fresh apple sitting right there on his hoof. To continue to tease Bookworm, he delayed answering her by taking a slow, enormous bite.

A rainfall of apple sweetness accompanied the crisp snap, each and every steady chew gave out another full shower, and the taste was more delectable and nourishing than even the mug of apple juice he had so swiftly downed yesterday. It was enough to draw him out of the world for a moment, particularly at the first swallow when the mashed chunks of apple hit the pit of his stomach like a single stone being cast into a glass lake. He couldn't hold himself back any more after that, and he went mercilessly after the rest of the apple. The relieving pain actual food brought to his belly was a welcome sensation compared to the agonizing emptiness it had long suffered.

At first Bookworm had an easy time keeping her spirits afloat while waiting eagerly for his answer. But after awhile all the lip-smacking crunches and greedy chewing started to drag on and on, until a single seed of worrisome doubt was planted within her.

"Uh, if-... if it makes you feel any better about deciding," she said with distinctly imperfect confidence, "I have permission to-... to go to the quarry."

"Indeed?" Prideheart croaked between bites. Flecks of apple fell from his busy mouth like thawing snow broken from a rooftop, and he was so lost in his tasty bliss that he hadn't been fully attentive to her. Still, he had managed to pick up on the shady-salespony nature of her statement.

"Yeah!" she tried to enthusiastically reply. Her eyes became evasive. "Dad and Ms. Crumble Pie said that-... that I could go to the quarry."

Prideheart had to swallow his current mouthful again before he could ask, "To this old quarry? Unescorted?"

"They-, they said... I could go to t-the quarry, yeah."

"Hm..."

Humming with deeper thought, he continued tearing through what was left of the fast-disappearing apple.

A false tale, surely. Her departure was not granted nor known by anypony. Crafty irresponsibility, so marvelously foreseeable from a foal!

She could not rightly go.

So young; so pure; to her, no harm could be allowed! None; not even by a dream of a hazard! To bring a foal so flagrantly danger-towards? Selfish! Reckless! Stupid!

Yet...

Of all Stony Nook, only she had right courage; had right charity; had right wisdom. Only she had followed boldly; cared magnanimously; solved prudently.

The best hero among them, a filly.

Suddenly there was no more apple left to eat. Flesh, fruit, core, seed; all gone, and all that remained was the stem sitting lonely on his hoof.

The stallion cast the small stem to the earth and wiped his cloak across his sloppy mouth. When he again regarded Bookworm, all his humor vanished. His brow curled, his gaze grew heavy, the golden-red in his good eye shined and the sick color within his dead eye swirled.

Judgment.

"... If an order I give... then an order you follow, to the letter, without exception. Understood?"

The threat: but one extinguished heckhound! Infinitesimal risk!

Glittery fireworks burst inside of Bookworm; a grand finale of happiness.

"Yes sir!" she cheered. And her response could not have been more perfect for the old stallion: not quite sitting, not quite straight, and not quite with accurate aim, she threw up slapdash salute.

"So it is decided," Prideheart grinned at his little soldier. "On your sincere promise to obey, you may accompany me."

"Yes! Oh, I promise, I promise! Thank you, mister! Thank you!"

She rushed forward, catching a surprise hug around the stallion's leg even though it was hidden behind his cloak.

Caught unprepared by the loving assault, Prideheart was left momentarily breathless. Awe held him stiff while she swayed and snuggled, thanking him again and again, and only slowly did his senses return. He managed to slip his other leg out of his cloak and, with some initial hesitation, he tenderly embraced her back.

"I have your promise, then?" he asked for confirmation.

"Oh, I super promise, mister!" she declared emphatically.

"'Super'?"

"That's the biggest kind of promise I can make!" the filly explained, simple and direct.

The stallion laughed and tightened his hug.

"Very well," he said. "Your 'super' promise is accepted, young Bookworm, and held to my heart."

More he tightened his hold, softly; melting against her.

Was this why he had crossed back to Equestria? Why he had survived the Pearl Peaks?

The filly was not her.

She was gone. She had been failed shamefully. Had been punished unjustly.

But...

Here regardless was this blissful filly; this wonder of a foal; this flowing spring of clear love; this dream resurrected from a possibility killed. Here, despite his failures.

The hug would be temporary, but forever would he hold onto her.

Not another will be lost.

Not one more.

Not like her.

The filly's assistance outvalued any threat to her.

He could keep her safe.

It was only a gentle hunt of a near-vanquished beast.

Anything to share her presence but a little longer...

A warm minute passed before he delicately peeled his leg off of her, and she did the same for him. Leaning himself low, he brought the tip of his hoof an inch from her nose.

"Remember the promise. Keep it," he instructed her closely.

For just an instant his mismatched eyes drifted up and over her. Fractured sunlight spilt down through the leaves of the nearest tree, beams of it crossing his dead, sightless eye.

"I gaze with no favor upon those whose promises prove empty."

She snagged his attention again with her shining smile.

"You bet, mister!" she swore.

Prideheart turned gladly towards the further depths of the thin forest; towards the northwest; the old quarry.

"Then, young Bookworm, gather your things! Much marching we have to do!"

"Yeah!"

She scrambled excitedly to return all of her items to her knapsack. All in one bunch she dumped everything back in (except for the small inkwell which she meticulously resealed and securely placed inside) and then she slung the bag once more over herself.

"Ready!" she declared.

But in her happy haste to trot alongside him, her clamorous hooves broke a fallen twig with a clear and sharp snap.

"Tender steps, Bookworm!" Prideheart reprimanded her, free of any actual wrath or disappointment. He chided her cheerfully, "Such noise does our hunt ill!"

"I'm sorry," she said. She turned up the offending hoof to inspect its underside as if she might find a poor animal trapped there.

"Little difficulty I had in preying upon you without your notice, as you recall," he warned her playfully. "Were I the heckhound, your tail would have been more than snatched."

"I don't know if I can be any quieter," the filly worried.

"Fear not," Prideheart was pleased to reassure her, "for I shall teach you the fundaments of silent motion. So long as the quarry is far, let us move longer through the forest and use it for training. This I swear: by journey's end, you will go where you wish unseen and unheard!"

Bookworm squealed.

This was better than getting a brand new storybook!

Four ponies were needed to hoist up the weighty stone, but together they hauled its great bulk high and set it firmly down onto the waiting mortar. Ponies on either side tweaked the alignment to perfection before pegasi came down from above and pressed the stone in.

That was one more in place.

Crumble Pie marched by.

"Good work, fellas! Keep it up! The other side is making good progress too!"

All of them replied faithfully; nodding, cheering, lifting their spirits high. They then went to grab the next huge stone, and meanwhile another team stepped in to clean up the agitated mortar before slapping down a fresh layer.

The gray mare, through with another whole round of inspections, made for the nearest building. She took shelter in a block of cool shade provided by the building's short overhang.

It had taken some doing, but she had successfully convinced the townsponies of Stony Nook to build a protective wall around their village.

A wall had made the most sense after all. It was quick and easy to construct, it only needed to cover two sides of the village (Crumble Pie had keenly noted how the hound had despised water, meaning Stony Nook was already walled on two sides by the river), and – most fortunately of all – they already had the ponies and resources there with them to build such a thing! The materials and expert craftsponies they had been gathering for weeks had been intended for expanding the village, but they could be used for any such job in a pinch! Now instead of big homes, they were building big defenses!

Under Crumble Pie's direction everypony in town had been split into teams, each with specific jobs and most led by one of her own crewmembers or one of the new craftsponies. To speed construction, they had started on the wall at two ends and worked towards connecting them in the middle. Properly motivated and well-guided, the townsponies had gotten a strong start and, by the end of the morning, each beginning portion of the wall was already reaching far from their respective riverbanks. It was good, measurable progress, all thanks to the feverish pace they had put themselves to.

Everypony was on board. Even those with misgivings, who had been trading whispers of their doubt with likewise-frightened neighbors. It hadn't taken much hard listening to have found ponies who hoped their new wall would never be tested, or worried that eight feet of stone wasn't high enough, or prayed that Princess Celestia would bring swift salvation. Though the timid fears were plentiful just under the surface, nopony had come forward with objections.

Not when their faith in Crumble Pie had been so strong.

The gray mare's rest was interrupted when a very tired Mayor Desk Job came her way, calling her name. As best she could, Crumble Pie transformed herself into a vision of optimism.

"How you holding, Mayor?" she asked.

"I don't even know, Crumble Pie."

Desk Job's hooves dragged as she trudged under the overhang and plopped down next to the gray mare. She hadn't been one of the ponies lifting, pushing, and dragging heavy things all morning, yet she was besieged with weariness anyway. There wasn't any escape from the gloom her spirits were mired in.

"I just can't even begin to assess this situation."

Crumble Pie, making a show of hope, responded, "Hey, keep your chin up. We're all in this together, and we're doing good so far."

The bright words didn't shine any light on the mayor. She hummed drearily.

"Did you take inventory like I asked?" the gray mare continued on naturally. "Buckets, lamps, bells; everything?"

"I-... Yes."

The nod she gave was no more affirming than a fiddler finding their fiddle without strings once onstage, but nevertheless she was earnest. A longer answer waited on her lips for a moment before it trembled out.

"Everypony's... offered whatever they had. It's all behind the general store now. It-, uh... it needs to be sorted still. I don't recall the totals exactly but... I-... I wrote everything down."

"Good, good!" Crumble Pie quickly encouraged her. "I don't know how much we'll need, but it could all come in handy."

Desk Job bobbed her head weakly.

"Hey," Crumble Pie said warmly. She gave a supportive pat to the mayor. "If we do the best we're able then it'll work out the best it can. Simple as that. Don't you worry."

Slowly the mayor took in the advice, absorbing it alongside one big, almost bottomless breath. When the exhale finally came out, the troubled air which exited her was smoother and calmer than it had gone in.

"Right. Thank you, Crumble Pie," she said. "Now then, is there anything else I can do to help?"

"Yes, absolutely!"

The gray mare slapped some trusty encouragement into Desk Job's back.

"Could you start working on a schedule for me? For patrols, once the wall is done. It won't do us any good if we don't got ponies on top keeping an eye out for trouble. No need to get crazy; I figure eight ponies at a time should be good enough coverage. Maybe more at night, with lamps. Could you work out who's willing, how long their shifts would be, and everything like that?"

One more concentrated breath came from the mayor.

"Sure," she then replied. "Give me a minute and I'll get on it."

"Great! Thanks, Mayor!"

At last Crumble Pie brought out a little bit of fresh good news she had been holding in reserve, for just the moment when she really needed to give Desk Job a boost.

"Oh, and you should know that Hailstone returned just a short while ago. I know, I know: probably a new record for a down and back to Mule's Head! Anyway, the message is in the hooves of the Pony Express now; emergency dispatch, fastest transit, direct to Canterlot."

"Oh, good. Yes, good," the mayor heaved off some of her worst weight. Still, her smile was incomplete. "Though it's like you said, Crumble Pie: we can only hope for a response, at soonest, three days from now."

"Well, all the more reason to focus on our wall, right? It'll keep us until help arrives."

"How is the wall coming?" Desk Job asked. "Any trouble?"

"Not at all," returned the gray mare with confidence. "Everpony keeps working as hard as they are, and we'll get it finished tonight. And I know things seem to be going a little slower at the moment, but that's cause Scrolldozer's on a break to see his filly. He's the real workhorse of the crew; half our strength easy."

Pleasantly the mayor accepted the report. But she worried, "Will it be done before dark?"

"I think so." Again, Crumble Pie was confident.

"Alright, phew. Good."

A short lull followed, with both ponies taking respite and sharing their friendly solitude. In the end only one of them was actually a leader, but that hardly meant that they couldn't briefly commiserate over the responsibility.

They were serenaded by the heavy sounds of stones being scratched over dirt and stacked one on top of the other; the music of construction. Singing along were the voices of the townsponies, calling and responding to each other as they worked together to get the job done. The only other noises came oddly from the opposite direction of all the work. From further in town came a distant banging on wood, a distorted voice, and a rapid dashing of hooves to and fro, none of it terribly loud or distracting.

"You know, it's funny how things work out," Desk Job spoke up faintly. It all emerged with a breezy lament. "I used to manage the finances of this tiny investment firm in Manehattan. 'This is a rinky-dink, dead end town,' they said. 'Go west and make something of yourself,' they said. So I did."

She smirked in sad amusement.

"And no more than a year after I left that town did I hear that the largest finance boom in Equestrian history hit it. Did you know that now they're erecting buildings so tall that they had to invent a new word for them? 'Skyscrapers' they call'em. Big as the towers in Canterlot, or so they say. 'An engineering revolution!' If I had stuck around, I could have had a corner office overlooking the birth of a new modern metropolis!"

"Mayor!" chuckled Crumble Pie. Some fun grabbed her grin and ran away with it. "What would we have done if you had never come along? How could we have gotten by without you leveling the road for us? Without you lifting us up on a pedestal? Without your seal of approval stamping all those forms that collect dust in your office?"

"Without my sore butt to keep the seat behind the mayoral desk warm?" the other mare laughed along. "Probably shrivel up in debt, I guess."

The mayor stood up, fresh and reset with calm.

"Well... I'll get on that schedule for you now, Crumble Pie," she said. "Thanks again. For everything."

Appreciative, Crumble Pie dismissed the undue thanks with a modest swipe of her hoof.

Just as the mayor was leaving she was stopped by the kindly Mrs. Totaler. The bartender had a tray of mugs on her back, balanced with expect ease, and small kegs were hung on each side of her. The taps stilled dripped with delicious moisture from their latest pours. She offered the mayor a drink, was declined, the mayor went on her way, and the bartender at last cheerfully approached the gray mare.

"Something for your thirst, Crumble Pie? Water's on the left, cider's on the right."

"Aw, I haven't been working hard enough to earn it," the gray mare got up and dusted herself off. "Thanks, though. And I appreciate you breaking out some of your tavern's stock to keep everypony sated, free of charge. You're a blessing of bedrock, Mrs. Totaler."

"Always glad to be of service."

Ever the proud bartender, the older mare straightened her apron and jiggled the tray on her back to precisely shuffle the mugs into formation.

After her moment of basking, she said limberly, "You know, first I thought I might open that case of Cloudsdale Rainwater Mead; the stuff I bought from that poor pony what got jumped by the monster. Figured we had ourselves a good excuse as any to serve up a special occasion kinda drink like that; thought the sweating ponies would appreciate it; some spirits for everypony's spirits, as it were. But then I thought – unnatural as it might sound – maybe it'd be more proper to serve the Rainwater after the storm."

A smile just a little too old to put up with hopeless pessimism came right over her.

"After all, these clouds'll clear right on up eventually, hm?"

"That they will," replied Crumble Pie. "We all hold together, then straight as a stack of bricks they will."

The racket coming from the east side of town, away from the all the construction, clamored on. It grew louder. Hooves pounded, chaotically almost, like a drum sent to tumble down a hillside.

Crumble Pie took actual notice of it at last, but gave it no more than an aside glance. The street appeared empty.

"You save me some cider for when the wall's finished," the gray mare returned her whole attention to Mrs. Totaler. "And you and I'll toast some of that Rainwater once we're in the clear."

"Will be a pleasure," the bartender said. Then, motherly in demeanor, she dug in an honest tease, "And, if you don't mind, I'll make a little toast to everypony's hero: Crumbaloo Samantha Pie!"

Happily embarrassed, Crumble Pie shook her head.

"A toast to everypony," she offered instead. "To Stony Nook."

There was a loud rattle, nearer than ever. A door slammed. More thunderous, irregular clopping.

It was impossible to ignore now. Both mares looked.

"Just what-?" the gray mare began.

Scrolldozer bolted across the street, a pony possessed. He could hardly run straight, moving himself more by throwing his body here and there than by working his legs. Into the door of the next nearest building he charged heedlessly, almost ripping it from its hinges as he crashed through it. There was a fast earthquake inside; a rumbling like every furnishing had been turned upside down at once; then he scrambled back out into the street in anguish.

The crashed water tower still littered the road, and it became his next target. Rushing up to it, his magic flared from his horn and set upon the ruined tower viciously; lifting, flinging, tearing, ripping, shredding. With terrible, terrified force he demolished his way through the debris, leaving no plank unturned no matter how small a splinter it was.

Taken aback, Crumble Pie called, "Scrolldozer! What in the name of-"

"Crumble Pie!"

His horn blinked off and a rainfall of broken wood dropped where it had been floating.

Immediately he dashed for the gray mare, running through the remains of the fallen water tower while ignoring every scratch he took by carelessly doing so. Again he ran so desperately that he nearly rolled over himself in his reckless charge. He skid to a stop in front of Crumble Pie, bumping up against her and snagging her in a frightened, forceful grip.

Before he even spoke Crumble Pie felt the whole world blacken. There was a cold numbness coming from his hooves, his blood having already been long-frozen into ice.

"Crumble Pie! I can't find her!"

"Who-?"

"Bookworm!"

Slowly the gray mare's jaw peeled open as the news pierced her.

Mrs. Totaler let out a quiet gasp.

"I-, I-... I went to the schoolhouse to see her for my break," the grief-stricken stallion burbled. His body quaked, vibrating every word into near-incoherence. "But-... but the schoolmare said Bookworm hadn't been there all morning! She thought I had been keeping her with me!"

He tried to stand up straight but his strengthless knees couldn't lift him. Tight he held onto Crumble Pie, to keep himself steady, and his shaking shook her.

"I checked at home," he wheezed, "and I checked the post office, and the grocer's, and-, and-... and everywhere! I've asked everypony I've seen! Nopony knows where she is!"

His hooves clawed in desperation at his friend's chest.

"Have you seen her, Crumble Pie? Have you? Please..."

"Scrolldozer..."

It broke her heart to answer him truthfully.

"... I haven't."

Wordlessly, hopelessly, the stallion looked to Mrs. Totaler for her answer.

Grim, the bartender shook her head.

Scrolldozer started choking as his throat tightened, letting in no more air, and his stomach turned upside down. More of his weight fell onto Crumble Pie.

Into her he started to gasp and beg, "... Where is she...? Where...? Please... Help me..."

The last floodgate holding the tears gave way.

"... Help..."

The gray mare almost succumbed as well, the compassion beginning to dribble from her eyes. But she kept her thoughts orderly; she spun and maneuvered all the pieces about, trying rapidly to solve the puzzle. Her fast deductions led her gaze westward down the road, where the dirt pathway stretched out towards the hills and the Pearl Peaks sat quiet, painted upon the horizon.

"... She followed that stranger."

"What?" Scrolldozer picked his pained face up.

"You know how curious she is," Crumble Pie said. Every second more found her confidence increasing. "You saw how excited she was by this whole fire hound deal. She jumped at the chance to go with that stranger... She must have slipped away after him instead of going to the schoolhouse, while we were all scrambling around to get started on the wall."

Scrolldozer's legs, hooves, body, and all began to tremble as if his very bones were made of ice, but the cold actually gave him the rigidness to let go of Crumble Pie and stand on his own. He gazed down the road himself, looking at the maw of the ravenous hills and the brown tongue of a road which led up to it. Slowly the terrible truth drilled into him.

"... No... No! No no no nono!"

He suddenly snapped forwards, racing haplessly after his lost daughter.

Crumble Pie grabbed his tail with her teeth and threw her hooves into the ground.

"Wait!"

"I have to find her!"

"Wait!"

"I have to-! Before-!"

"Just wait for a minute! Listen to me!"

"Crumble Pie, she's out there! She's-! She's-! And-!"

His eyes saw it all again: rows of ferocious teeth, searing white and glistening with boiling slobber. His ears, too, were haunted: smoldering and hungry growls, sometimes whipped into beastly howls.

The stallion's voice cracked, "She's out there, and-, and there's a monster out there with her!"

"I know! I know!" the gray mare sympathized. But her own rationality screamed in competition with her friend. Mercifully she pleaded with him, "Hang on, though! Think this through with me!"

"Think?!"

He just kept tugging, for all the good it did him. It hurt his tail more than it did Crumble Pie's jaw.

"There's no time to 'think!' I-, I have to get her back!"

"I know," Crumble Pie said again. Then her leadership suddenly appeared, and she very specifically warned, "But you're our best earthmover. The wall is never going to get done in a timely fashion without you. We need you here, to finish it."

"The wall?!" gasped Scrolldozer. "I don't care! Crumble Pie, it's Bookworm!"

Still he failed to stumble forward, held back by the gray mare. He may have been the best earthmover of all the quarry crew, but that was all in his magic. Compared to Crumble Pie and her earth pony brawn, the unicorn father was tough as talc to her durable diamond.

Crumble Pie gave a good, hard yank and threw his rear to the ground. She moved around and in front of him, blocking his path, but then she laid a tender hoof onto his cheek, to show her honest concern and to hold together his broken attention.

"Listen to me: I love Bookworm too, and we've got to find her...," she assured him, squeaking not a drop of compromise into her promise. But she didn't hold back the truth. She didn't even offer it with pity, saying resolutely, "... but we have to protect everypony. Bookworm and Stony Nook. In order to do that, we need to use everypony's best in the most sensible way possible. You're most useful working on the wall, not scrambling about in the wilderness."

"B-But-!" he sobbed.

"The pegasi can search from the air one hundred times faster and better than you can," she emphasized. "They won't be missed as much here as you would be. We'll get Hailstone to lead a few in a search, okay?"

The clarity of her logic cut through to him, at least a little bit. His breathing become barely more controlled, going from painful gasps to shivering heaves.

The gray mare continued, "I know it'll be hard for you to stay here working like nothing's wrong, but you've got to keep it together. The ponies here need you and this wall. It doesn't make any sense for you to search and them to build when we'd all do better turning it around the other way."

Weakly Scrolldozer nodded, though nothing she had said had stopped his tremendous hurting.

He moaned in despair, "She's-... she's-... I'm not much of a father, but she's my daughter. My only-... My-... I-..."

"I know," Crumble Pie said again, and she embraced him. "But what's best for everypony, Bookworm included, is that you stay and work on the wall. That way, she'll be safe when she gets back, right?"

He held onto her tightly and wept.

"Alright," the gray mare softly said. "We'll get the others out looking for her right now."

She looked to Mrs. Totaler.

Right away the bartender volunteered, "I'll flag Hailstone down; tell'er everything."

"Quickly, please. Thank you, Mrs. Totaler."

Off the older pony went, galloping away while shouting for the pegasus. Even still, not a mug jumped or rattled on the tray still perfectly balanced on her back.

"Crumble Pie... please...," Scrolldozer whispered.

"Just try and focus on the wall, alright? Keep everything else out of your head for now. Hailstone's got it."

"... Okay... okay...," he managed to huff.

The gray mare made her hug strong and secure, and the aching, heartbroken stallion depended upon it.

He still cried quietly, "Oooh... Celestia, save her..."

Chapter 6: Cast the First Stone

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So many long years had passed since Prideheart had last marched so proudly.

One, two, three, four!

His hooves worked like pistons, and his body like a well-oiled engine humming a beautiful tune. Each forward step gave birth to a ripple which rolled through his cloak, washing across him and lapping at his tail like the ocean shore. High he held his head, with his face liberated from the confines of his heavy hood, and the wind greeted him welcomingly. It brushed through his thinned mane; with care, it caressed cool relief over his dragon-wound.

No fatigue great or small could have stopped him. Not the aches in his legs, nor the haze of his inadequate sleep, nor the protests of his hunger (a generous apple's worth milder). He was invincible now that bliss itself followed along behind him in a steady trot of her own.

He and Bookworm were on the riverside road which led directly to the old quarry. They had first meandered northwards through the forest for over two hours before they had found the river. The journey would have been shorter had Prideheart not spent a careful amount of time instructing the filly in stealthy movement.

The impromptu class had hardly been high-level tutoring, but he had taught her all the essentials: flat hooves, exact steps, distributed weight; move one, by one, by one, by one, slowly. The young filly, much pleasing Prideheart, was a rapt listener when truly engaged and had shown no shame in trying her best to master the fast lesson no matter how much she had stumbled. None of her mistakes had diminished her merry laughter, and for that happy dedication the stallion had given no reprimands.

By the end of the forest she had in fact improved in ability, graduating from her stick-crunching tromp to a meager stealth which was worthy of a clumsy lion cub. The guarded fortresses of the world were still safe against the new filly sneak, but it had become a real possibility that she might one day vanish from under the watchful ears of a supervising adult.

Prideheart himself was not an inexperienced teacher. During the decades in Dryearth Forest he had taught the same stealth lesson to many Dryponies. Moreover, even before his self-exile he had been a volunteer instructor for the fillies and colts of Canterlot's many schools, and he had taught more subjects than mere physical training. Reading, writing, arithmetic, history; anything any foal had wanted to learn, he had wanted to teach. Most of his hours outside the duties of a Royal Guard had been devoted to those young ponies.

Loving and protecting others had always been Prideheart's greatest duty; his dedicated faith to being a defender had set his life's course and had even earned him his cutie mark. But if he could have chosen any other path for himself, then it would have been guiding the young. There weren't the words to describe the experience: the heartswelling smiles they put on whenever they learned something new; the breathtaking light that came from their eyes as they felt themselves grow; the undeniable wonder of watching their potential blossom.

Foals were amazing; extraordinary; beautiful! Each and every one of them! In a way, it wasn't so far off from the mission of his cutie mark: purely innocent and infinite in potential; they, above all others, had to be loved and protected.

A horrific curse upon anypony who failed to dote, guard, and love every foal with all their heart!

... A horrific curse upon such a failure of a pony...

After having found the river, the two ponies had followed it upstream and had come upon the road, exactly where Bookworm had predicted it would be. It hugged the waterway, and together road and river disappeared somewhere into the northwest hills.

Yet more important than the discovery of the road had been the discovery of the fresh pawprints etched in the otherwise long-undisturbed dirt. The tracks had pointed up the road, towards the quarry. Again, Bookworm's prediction had been borne out so perfectly.

The rediscovery of the heckhound's trail had greatly renewed Prideheart's faith and, so wonderfully pleased with his eager young companion and her accurate intelligence, he had gayfully ordered the chase resumed.

Bookworm, of course, had made no objections in the slightest.

And so for a quarter-hour more the two of them had been walking the riverside road, kicking through dust that hadn't seen pony traffic in a good long while, and nothing about them to survey but the river and the abundance of stone which littered the rolling hills. The rocks almost grew from the very earth like wild gardens, many of them no heavier than bricks but some clearly the children of boulders. And ahead – mountainwards – the stones only seemed to be getting larger.

Prideheart's spirits were high. Happy memories found a home in him once more; lost dreams lived again; the love which had always been there, hidden, let down its hood. And all because a heart-sweet filly had seen his ragged age, his strange shadows, his gruesome dragon-wound; and had still right away called him 'hero.'

His stride strong and steady, he twisted his good eye back to observe his tiny tagalong.

She trailed a few paces behind, matching his speed only by scrambling her legs to offset the disadvantage of her dinkier size. Keeping up the hard effort had her in a trance; her drooping gaze always watched only her next three or four steps ahead, counting them with exhausted nods. She was huffing heavily too, a sign of just how long the hours and miles had been on her short body. After every few breaths, her tongue tried to moisten her mouth but it only ever took one heave before she was spitting dry air again.

The delightful sight tugged at the corners of Prideheart's mouth, but he let show only a dainty dab of it.

"How fare you, young Bookworm?" he asked her.

Losing not a moment, she swept her attrition behind a tremendous smile and looked up at him.

"Doing pretty good, mister!"

But right away she was in her trance again, leering at the road and audibly burning her nostrils with each wheeze.

"Do you thirst?" Prideheart questioned her. His grin was getting harder to hide, building a home on his face. After all, he already knew the fib she was going to answer with.

Again she picked her head up, though this time she couldn't flaunt her smile as broadly as before, and she looked inwards at her shame rather than outwards at her hero.

"O-Oh, n-no. I'm-... I'm okay, mister."

"Hm..."

At last, the weaselly teasing couldn't stay out of his voice.

"Have you no more drink left?"

Secretly he had observed her during their brief stops in the forest. There hadn't been a short rest in which the filly hadn't picked at her school lunch and sipped at her small drink. Rapidly she had finished her hoofful of snacks and, not long after, she had gone for another sip and had quite obviously found her sealed cup dry.

She hadn't breathed a word of her expended supplies to Prideheart.

It charmed him to no end to see her so worried over disappointing him. She had, after all, so audaciously insisted to him that she had packed and prepared for this journey.

"I'm-... I'm not thirsty," she hid behind her meek answer.

The young evasiveness was a joy for Prideheart, but he couldn't actually have her remain so dehydrated. He brought his march to a professional halt, swung around, and sat down in the middle of the road.

Bookworm became wary, and she slowed to a guilty freeze before him.

From his cloak the stallion produced his canteen, still plump with Stony Nook's river water. With his teeth he popped the cork, and he pushed the canteen towards the filly.

"Share from mine," he offered.

His generosity – and not dissatisfaction – was a big surprise for Bookworm. Yet it was an even bigger relief, and she didn't wait to gladly grasp the canteen, yanking it to her lips.

The thirsty tug pulled on Prideheart's neck, still wrapped as it was by the canteen's strap, but he was more than happy to lean in closer to her.

The filly hardly had to lift the vessel to roll out the first splash of water. However, as soon as she got a taste of the water's staleness she turned her mouth away. Her face closed up, wincing so shy of childish retching and tightly squeezed with exaggerated rejection.

"More," Prideheart kindly instructed her to drink again, re-guiding the canteen towards her. "Warm, yes, but its purpose it still fulfills."

Bookworm needed a moment in order to pin her courage in, but then she obeyed. She forced herself through a large swig, taking in a mouthful which she swallowed down in three big gulps. She also did a much braver job of taming her reaction; it was only water, after all. Then, as if to convince Prideheart that he didn't need to punish her with another taste, she finished with an overdone, soothed sigh.

"Good. Very sufficient," he praised her through a chuckle. Retrieving his canteen, he tightly forced the cork back in.

"... Sorry I drank all my juice already...," the filly confessed her guilt.

"All is well, young Bookworm," Prideheart said. "Judging water by time and distance is a skill best taught through experience. Experience, well-reinforced by our many mistakes along the way."

The very cultivating answer perked Bookworm right up.

"Is there going to be enough water for both of us?" she asked him as he shuffled the canteen back under his cloak.

"Yes. More than enough," he said easily. And, glad for her curiosity, he went for another lesson. "Two reasons ensure such. Do you know them?"

"Nuh-uh," she shook her head but nonetheless buzzed with interest, paying close attention.

Mischief once again crept into Prideheart.

"For the reason first: the canteen holds much and, rationed appropriately, many days will last. Even through our hours now, it is heavy still. Yet Bookworm, heed closer the reason second..."

Eagerly the filly waited for him to continue, only he didn't.

"What?" Bookworm finally asked, still bright.

He held his silence, communicating only a rascally grin.

Tickled, she pressed more giddily, "What's the second reason?"

The stallion generously leaned into her, savoring the last licks of his playful prank, and then he pointed off aside.

"There lies the river," he said.

For a long moment the puzzled filly stared at the running water, no more than a short amble away. The swishes and gushes were actually pretty noisy, and were certainly great roars compared to anything else on the empty roadside; an impossible landmark to have missed. Embarrassment slowly started to nibble her as her own blindness became obvious: she had been so tremendously thirsty, yet this whole time she had been trudging along besides a boisterous channel of fresh water!

A comfortable sense of betrayal quickly pushed out her bothersome shame. She whined to Prideheart, "Then why'd you make me drink that yucky warm water?"

"Because, young Bookworm," his grin went from wily to wise, "you have now made the unhappy mistake, and so will you better remember the valuable lesson. Mistake and lesson are sibling sages; attend their teachings closely."

It was a groanworthy trick, but Bookworm's grumpy indignation didn't get the chance to take root; not after the stallion concluded his lesson by giving her such a warm touch to the cheek.

He invited her, "Drink your fill from the river, if thirst still nettles you."

She was still thirsty, but not nearly enough to overpower her reinvigorated enthusiasm.

"No thank you! I'm good!" she smiled, and she even boasted her mastery of the lesson, "I can always have a drink later."

"Verily!" he answered, quite proud.

Bookworm bounced with fresh initiative, forgetting immediately that she had briefly been upset, and even the little trick which had caused it. She was part of a real storybook adventure at last, learning from a real hero! She couldn't wait for the page to turn!

"Now we keep going?" she eagerly hinted.

"Just so," Prideheart said, and faithfully he leaned upon her, asking, "What road remains between us and the quarry?"

"Uh... I think... it'll be... maybe an hour until we get there?"

"An hour?" he tugged carefully at her obvious uncertainty.

"Uh, yeah, I'm... pretty sure."

Her knees shifted; her stance tilted. All her unbalance came from inside.

What was most frustrating to her was that in her head she could see the map so perfectly, as if she still had the atlas open before her. The squiggly river rolled, the road bent and curved alongside, spattered about were little landmarks with silly names like the Kid-Knee Stone and Wipe's Butte, and in one corner written in a fancy script: "Here there be no dragons. Phew!". She even could picture precisely where the distance scale had been drawn!

Yet none of that crystal clear recall translated into something her young legs recognized, and so she had only guesses to answer Prideheart with. She deeply hoped that he wouldn't notice she had borrowed her answer from her father's recountings of the trip, heard many times over in the days when the old quarry had still been open.

Fortunately Prideheart showed no shortage of confidence in her. Right away he took her judgment as sterling truth, and he declared, "Ah, then there is no concern for concealment now. When nearer, we will we take caution. For now, we march gallant!"

"Yeah!" Bookworm shouted.

Twirling his cloak with a flourish, Prideheart faced the road ahead. His stature shot up tall like the grand marshal of a parade. There wasn't a thought given to the possible dangers ahead or to any of the misery he had left behind over the Pearl Peaks. His dragon-wound was cold and silent. The only moment he knew was now. Now, where – whatever his direction – a beautiful drop of angelic bliss followed so closely; one he wouldn't leave behind.

"Onwards, my little pony!"

And together the two resumed their march. Once more the stallion took a natural lead because of his bigger strides, and the filly, panting happily, whirred her smaller legs in order to keep up.

Before long however, their rhythm fell into the same trudge as earlier. Prideheart moved well, fueled by his old-but-trained strength and also the merry invigoration Bookworm had brought to his heart, but regardless he had to restrain his pace for the sake of the filly. She had only made it so far from Stony Nook because of the vigor of her youth, and she again lagged from fatigue after her energized imagination had run out of buzz.

Mindful, the stallion looked back and asked, "How fare you, young Bookworm?"

"I'm," she crammed small huffs between her words, "doing pretty good, mister."

"Need you rest?"

"No, I got it," she said, determined and optimistic. A little extra spring kicked into her steps.

Prideheart studied her exertion.

Immediately clear to him was how far beyond she was compared to anything she had ever done before. If she had ever traveled away from Stony Nook in all her entire short life, she must have done so riding wagons or being carried. This difficult physical effort was a new sensation for her.

But nevertheless, she endured. More water might have soothed her better, and also a healthy period rest, but there were no serious signs that her strength was breaking.

A whisper came to Prideheart's ear. Strangely, not from a dark shadow as he was so miserably used to, but from some unsatisfied ghost of his younger self. The voiceless words unshackled something which his imagination had hardly allowed him to remember for a long, long time.

"When the body tires, the spirit can bear one along," he suddenly told the filly.

Confused, she peeked up at him.

He reiterated, "Strength can stumble, but our will can fortify! We have but to summon it. Care you to hear a song fitting for our steps, young Bookworm?"

"Oooooooooooh!"

The filly flew into the air like a firework.

"Yeah!" she burst, and already she adopted a more animated pace.

He was just like all the heroes in the oldest stories which she had read—the legends!

Like Rosy Carol, who serenaded her lover with a song so powerful that it united the torn kingdoms!

Or like Little Lamp, who sung out with all of her purity to the stars so that they could follow her voice back to the night sky after having gotten lost!

Or like Star Swirl, who shared a ballad of wisdom so divine that it inspired a whole new generation of magical studies!

Mythical heroes always sang at least one song in their tales!

"Very well," Prideheart said, secretly overjoyed by her effusive enthusiasm. He ordered, "Attend!"

His well-honed march became even more formal as he piece by piece ironed out any errors in his movement, no matter how small. Head up, eyes forward, legs rigid; he tuned himself with exacting precision, becoming an instrument shaped by discipline. He took in three thick, full breaths; again, orderly and regimented, each more precise than the last.

And then he sang.

So many mute years hadn't meant a day in lost ability. The words came out flawless and bold, fully realized enough to catch the sunlight and shine it back at the sky. The stallion's body worked like a superbly drilled unit responding to a commander's call: the hammer in his throat struck loud in matching time to his mighty steps; the notes rang like reverberating brass hit dead on the mark; each syllable moved in formation with their fellows, parading out of his stirring chest.

But though it all came in a military form, the living melody which filled the air was something more than that. More vivid; more avowed; more virtuous. Around the noble stallion no cloak billowed softly, but heavy golden armor clanked in luminous glory.

Hum-ho! Let's go!
Stamp your hooves, hard and low!
Hum-ho! Don't slow!
Beat the drum, march and flow!
Hum-ho! Hum-ho!
And lo! We go!
With no fear of any foe!

Join the song, each heart loud!
Add your call, full and proud!
Thus our spirit will endure
Endless days of marching more!

Hum-ho! Halt no!
Courage firm when ill winds blow!
Hum-ho! Through snow!
No harsh storm can us winnow!
Hum-ho! Hum-ho!
And oh! The glow!
A clear dawn does us follow!

When darkness tides, we stand tall!
No evil shall crest our wall!
In love's name we will defend!
If we must, our lives we spend!

Hum-ho! Hum-ho!
Let's go! Don't slow!
There's nopony we forgo!
Hum-ho! Hum-ho!
Through snow! Our glow!
The bravest hearts shining so!

Hum-ho! All crow!
Hum-ho! And go!
Hum-ho! Halt no!
Hum-ho! We go!

His words and voice were a lifetime younger than he was; a drum freshly skinned, thumping clear and deep.

And his song accomplished exactly what it had been meant to. Something new was painted over all the world around the ponies, changing the color of river, ridge, rock, road; and Bookworm too. Enraptured, she transformed. Golden armor clad, a wind-whipped banner on her side, a dozen other identical soldiers moving in unison about her; it all was there in her head, at least. Her fatigue drowned under the surge of her overwhelming enthusiasm, and she caught up besides Prideheart in a magnificently peppy march.

When he finished, the echo and energy stayed in the air, and the little filly applauded the stallion by mashing her hooves.

"Wow! That was perfect!"

"I am pleased!" Prideheart said. He bent towards her and prompted her heartily, "How fare you now?"

She bounced, and kicked, and sprang, and soared.

"I'm great!" she shouted. "I feel like I can take a bull weevil head on!"

The stallion chuckled, "Hah! Inadvisable! But, praiseworthy courage all the same!"

Bookworm beamed. Her mind was a carnival of old stories with brand new fanfare to enliven it, and as she looked over the living hero besides her she lifted him to his proper place in the brightest lights on the biggest stage.

A rush of eagerness hit her, and she asked him, "So was that your song?"

The question seemed so silly to his ears, and he answered her simply, "It is a song sung by comrades to remind each other of duty. In decades long past I learned it."

"Ooooh, that makes sense," the filly bobbed her head, "but what I meant was: is that your song?"

Now Prideheart knew he had misheard her question, and he peered at her.

She clarified herself, "You know, your song, like all the best heroes sing. Your song to let everypony know who you are and what you do!"

Recognizing her meaning, he thought a moment on it before he quickly became delighted by her interest in his creed. He snatched up the opportunity to endow her with another lesson; a more important one; the most sacred one.

"Verily!" he declared. "To standard stalwart between innocence and darkness? To defend sweet life from defiling wickedness? To be the shield for those who haven't one? Your heart will find no cause more worthy!"

Bookworm bounced along on her hooves.

"That sure sounds like a hero to me!"

And then, perky beyond even a foal who had found a forest of cotton candy, she asked him a question which she felt so certain she already knew the answer to, since his heroic tale was of the same shape which she had read and loved a thousand times before.

"And that's why you came to Stony Nook, right? To be our hero?"

Prideheart stuttered a step.

He responded, suddenly more solemn than before, "... With what strength I have, I will resist all harm to your home."

His dragon-wound, which for some time had been soothed and at rest, abruptly sizzled. The painful, hot itching flared just under his skin before tendrils of it started to worm through his muscles and stretch down his back and legs, tiring his march. Behind his neck a crawling fire climbed; no more than the hood of his cloak slowly sliding up with the help of his sweat. His head sank so low, and the hood slipped up so high, that even his haggard hobbles threatened to help the hood leap over his head and ensnare him. The predatory bounce of it filled his periphery with a creeping sensation, like a stranger coming up from behind.

He spoke again, but this time as something dark and indignant.

"... Yet heed me, brave Bookworm: why should your village have need of me? Should not they cherish their lives and loves enough to themselves defend those blessings? Pitiful fools look to outside powers for salvation."

The shadowy change in him bothered Bookworm. She asked skeptically, "But a hero is supposed to save everypony, aren't they?"

"And when danger lurks and there is no hero about?" Prideheart questioned her in turn bitterly, curling his lips. "What more have they than but to perish shiftlessly, and those innocents to whom they are beholden, in unjust doom, are cast to the fire?"

"What?" the filly flinched at his unexpected hostility. "But-, but... there is a hero. You are here."

Sparing no hesitation, he slid a dagger right through the rigid covers which bound her thick adventure story.

"By chance alone did I stumble into Stony Nook. I would not have come had better decisions I made."

Bookworm retreated a sudden step to the side, and she frowned sadly.

But still, he was the hero of the story; he must have known some fundamental truth which she did not. She tried hard to reconcile the strange new beliefs he was spouting with the storybook reality she loved so intimately.

"A hero always comes and saves the day," she worked through her confusion. "But... I guess-... I guess sometimes... an ordinary pony has to stand up and-... and be the hero instead?"

Prideheart continued to simmer in his shadow, holding his head low, and he murmured in a hiss, "It is a matter not of 'ordinary.' Nor 'extraordinary,' or anything such. It is a matter only of what must be done in crisis, with all one's strength. Apathy and cowardice depend on strength outside. Love and courage; within."

He glared at the little filly with his dead eye.

"Your home, for their own sake, should rise and save themselves. They are not safe if always they hide on their hooves until I or anypony rescues them."

In silence they walked on while the troubled Bookworm absorbed, churned, calculated, and wondered.

At last she spoke, coming to her conclusion in just that same moment, "So... sometimes the right thing to do... is to be the hero instead of waiting for one?"

A few quiet steps followed, as if the stallion hadn't heard her at all.

Then suddenly, latently, it hit him. His ears jumped with energy. He picked his whole head up, renewed. The strange shadows fled his face as his hood flopped back down his neck and came to rest on his back.

"Yes! Well spoken!" he awakened with praise. "Keep in your heart those words! Let such be your lodestar, young Bookworm!"

The banishment of his shadow instantly brightened the filly as well. She bounced and grinned eagerly again.

"Okay, mister! I'll try!" she promised.

"No doubt of it have I!" he said.

The extra dash of praise again blew away any doubts and confusion which had seeded in Bookworm. She came back to bounding along jubilantly.

They marched on, Prideheart the steady soldier and Bookworm the frolicking follower. But while the stallion distracted himself by singlemindedly focusing forward, the filly was drunk with thoughts of his amazing story and all the chapters of it she had yet to read.

He was the greatest story she had ever gotten her hooves on! A hero worth a hundred books—no, a thousand! And even better, he was real! He wasn't just words on a page; histories and fictions which were bold and breathtaking in her imagination, but ultimately no louder than the quiet solitude of her bedroom. Him she could see, and touch, and experience! A hero and a heckhound; excitement and danger, just like all the greatest stories! And she was finally a part of it!

In silent exuberance she tried to puzzle together the pieces of his tale: what she knew, what she didn't, and how it all connected. The puzzle took shape in her head, piece after piece linking up, and she delighted at the largest holes which appeared; the delicious secrets which would fill in sooner or later (like any good book!). But what really made her curiosity itch were the portions which were missing only one or two pieces; pictures so guessably close to complete that she was eager to try forcing in every extra piece she could get her hooves on until one finally fit.

Gently but hungrily, she followed one guess which she felt particularly confident in, asking, "Mister. You said you came from the other side of the Pearl Peaks, right? I mean, you lived there?"

Happy to answer, and his mind largely still fixed upon the road ahead, Prideheart replied, "Many years I dwelled there."

"'Many'?" she really wanted to tweeze out something more specific.

"Some decades," he said. "More there than at any other home."

At that, Bookworm jumped with a tremendous thrill. Snap! The puzzle piece fit just like she had thought it would! All she needed was for him to look over work and confirm it, and she chased that confirmation with zealous enthusiasm.

"So were you ever in the Royal Guard of Canterlot?"

Prideheart stopped so suddenly that he might have fallen into an unseen crack in the earth.

Inertia carried Bookworm forward a few extra steps before she wound down to a stop in front of him.

"... Mister?"

Already she regretted having opened her big mouth. She became haunted by what had happened at the tavern the night before, when her excitement had gotten the better of her and, because of it, he had eventually driven her off.

One of Prideheart's forehooves made a jumpy twitch; not to continue walking, but more as if it wanted to reach for his hood. It never quite committed to the act and instead hung restlessly in the air.

Finally it lowered, touching down onto the dirt with the soft drop of a fallen leaf. Slowly he started walking again, though it was no soldier's march. Passing around Bookworm, speaking not a word of acknowledgment to her, he trudged forward. No notes of song animated his aching steps.

"Mister," the filly had a much simpler time keeping up with his now-lethargic speed, and she earnestly tried to smooth over her unknown mistake, "I'm sorry... I just really wanted to know..."

"What is it you do know of the Guard?" Prideheart asked in low and unforceful words. He didn't spare her so much as a half-glance.

"Uh, well, that was their tune, right?" she was almost afraid to explain herself. "I mean, that song you sang? That was the tune of The Canterlot March, right?"

So knowledgeable and insightful for but a foal.

So blasted an old fool was he for having indulged in an ancient, departed past.

Bookworm, as if to answer the questions his silence was asking, rambled on, "I've heard it before. I don't think the words were the same, though. Maybe they changed the song since you learned it? There was this big parade with the guards, and they were all singing that tune. Uh, in Canterlot, I mean; I saw the parade in Canterlot. Dad took me there last year to see Mom."

Her mouth took fearful stumbles as it ran, ever worried that she would spill out another wrong word but also too immature to endure any amount patience. However, nothing she said produced any sign of listening from Prideheart.

"Mister...?"

"... Your mother is not here with you...?"

The filly wasn't ready for his feebly voiced question. It was such a diversion; a retreat; an irrelevant aside from what she had been persistently pursuing. Moreover, his tenor was so withdrawn and defeated; not heroic at all like he should have been. Most pointedly, she came from the small world of Stony Nook where everypony had common knowledge of her parents' situation; the simple question was so new to her ears!

Needing escape from himself, Prideheart pressed on weakly, "... The gray mare, with the mane short and pink. Is she not your mother?"

"Oh, you mean Ms. Crumble Pie?" Bookworm said. "No. She's just Dad's best friend. And his boss. She's not my mom."

His silly mistake started a light giggle in her, but with speed it thinned and vanished. The filly became vast and serious. In her head she turned over the idea of a surrogate mother.

"... It'd be kind of great if she was my mom," Bookworm moaned sadly.

Once again she began copying him, though this time not as adoration. His tired, melancholic clops passed into her; her spirit joined his in defeat.

When for a moment she glanced up, she saw his ears were still watching her. Unsettled, she hesitantly stumbled into an outpouring of precious, pure, so-little-spoken feelings.

"Ms. Crumble Pie is awesome. She's always super nice and she doesn't yell, she tries to spend time with me whenever I ask her, and she shows me all sorts of cool stuff! Like she taught me how to use a blasting charge to blow up rocks! Dad would throw a fit if he knew, hehe. Most of all though, she listens. She listens to me when I talk. If I have something to say, she treats me like a real pony."

A fast shame fell over her and she hastily added on, "I mean, Mom is pretty good, too. She's always sending me books from the big library in Canterlot. Stony Nook doesn't have a library at all, so I wouldn't get to read so many great stories without Mom. But-... but Mom—..."

She had words at the ready, but her every instinct politely fought with her not to say them out loud.

She didn't hold them back.

"—Mom is never here. At least Ms. Crumble Pie is actually around sometimes..."

"... How came it so?" Prideheart's voice limped low and hoarse.

"Uh, well, Mom lives in Canterlot... or, she does sometimes," the filly explained unevenly. All she could do was try her best to mimic the way she had sometimes heard her father explain the situation to others. She didn't quite ably know the minutia of it herself; her parents were no heroic story. "Dad says she travels a whole lot because of her job, and that's why she doesn't live with us and can't really visit. He says she's got lots of ponies that she heals and it's very important."

"... A physician?"

"Like Dr. Remedy? No," Bookworm shook her head. But there were cracks of doubt in every word. "I don't think so anyway. Maybe kind of? Dad says she helps ponies who-... who... are hurt in a bad way and... they don't ever get better, even with medicine? Like, she goes around and makes them comfortable, he says. She can't fix whatever is wrong with them, but her healing magic makes it not so bad."

A stagger attacked Prideheart's knees, though he balanced himself out quickly. Slowly the listlessness seeped away, and shivers of anger began to flavor his steps.

He muttered, "Selects her foul craft over her own foal. Hmph!"

Bookworm heard none of it. She was beside herself with sighs, and she moaned aloud, "I wish I got to see Mom more... but... I guess she just can't come to Stony Nook. So I'm stuck here. With Dad."

Again something unseen tackled Prideheart, interrupting his stride. Yet this time the blow was much different, striking not at his legs but at his chest. No anger beguiled him. Instead, cold perspiration turned to icicles behind his ears and down his neck. A bubble of saliva popped when he finally opened his mouth, breaking the moist glue which had trapped it momentarily shut.

He asked the filly, as if he needed her answer to affirm his flagging hopes, "... Though your father... for you he cares well, does he not?"

Bookworm looked at her mentor, then at the road, then him again, and then another time at the road. The answer inside her tumbled about with each turn of her head, sometimes landing unhappy face-up but other times showing an obedient, merciful face.

In the end a sorry frown came upon her.

"... He's not really around a whole lot either..."

Prideheart asked nothing further. No clarification, no matter how gentle and understanding, would have softened the grinding of his teeth.

The filly struggled to stay quiet. To speak out of turn was misbehavior, especially with a quarrelsome voice; every filly and colt knew those rules well. But for once there was somepony with her who wouldn't reprimand and moralize her with parental authority, and the invitation to finally release some of her long-held pressures had her rumbling.

There was a sudden snap inside her when she could hold it in no more. Her face took on a foul grimace and she began to shout, loudly crashing back and forth between lament and complaint. The more she ranted, the worse her remorse and resent became, and the more confident she was in her howling.

"He's away so much working at the quarry, for days at a time! And every time he goes, I have to stay with different foalsitters around town. And they're all very nice ponies but they're not... interested, you know? In me. Like, they take care of me good but you can tell that they're just waiting and waiting for Dad to get back. They don't even try to be friends like Ms. Crumble Pie does. And then-! And then, anytime Dad is back, he won't leave me alone if I want him to! He's everywhere when he's back! But if he wants to be left alone, well then he just tells me to run off to school, or home, or to my room to read! He always gets to have his say, but he never listens to me when I try to say anything!"

She finally hit the farthest end of her anger, and her hooves gave the dirt a furious kick.

"I have a lot of things I want to say, but he never listens!"

For as righteous and vengeful and anguished as her fierceness was, it didn't find a permanent hold in her. The short bout of outraged shouting and the painful kick against the earth exorcised most of her ferocity. Right away she started to sag in a sadder grumpiness.

"Though... I guess...," she said, "he does read me bedtime stories all the time. Any night I ask him to, he does. Even when he's really, really, really tried. He reads and reads until the story's done. And... I like that."

The shy, happy thought didn't erase her frown, but it took her sourness by the reins and walked it away. Everything sharp dulled, everything hot cooled, and only a foal's broken heart remained.

"I just wish he'd be more like that most of time: around when I want him. And also that he'd listen sometimes."

Prideheart's dragon-wound ignited, each and every unslain nerve prickling painfully before they together went furiously ablaze.

"Indeed," he said in a strained and buried voice. And the more his wound sizzled, the more a churning fire crackled and popped in the back of his throat until it suddenly erupted out of him. He snarled, "Demand better of your father."

Bookworm blinked at the suggestion. It was immensely novel to her, but also profoundly uncomfortable.

She faltered, "Can-... can fillies do that to their dads?"

The stallion only continued to spit fire.

"Slack parenthood! Cowardly abandonment! Crime unforgivable!"

Yet even as he was venting flame through his outraged pronouncements, his dragon-wound kindled ever hotter, unbearably burning. The inferno underneath his corrupted skin spread far and fast, a liquid fire which streamed through his veins. Every pore on his body – down his neck, across his flanks, along his legs – became a blistering fount of burning agony. For all the effort he made to heave the wicked fire out at the world, it stayed trapped inside, cremating him from within.

The agitated filly reflexively defended her father, "He's not... mean, or anything. I just-... I wish that he-..."

"Guardianship is a duty sacred!" Prideheart yelled over her. "I have seen it failed before, young Bookworm! By neglectful betrayers, villainous in their aversion to self-sacrifice! Wrath and woe upon those heinous evaders of ordeal; those indolent fiends who step aside so that evil my fall upon those they should belove!"

Violently he shuddered, again and again, until heated tears started to come to the corners of his good eye. But from his dead eye, a filthy rheum emerged instead. Thick and nauseously green, it crystallized quickly into a sick crust which grew and grew as ever more discharge got caught up in it. He staggered as he reached up to scratch away the irritating obstruction; a distraction which finally silenced his uproar.

"Accept not your father's contemptible failings, young Bookworm," he commanded the filly when his self-control returned. His voice was withered and damaged; the fire gone but a raspy charring left in its wake. "And of yourself, always walk the righteous path. Remember your duty to those you must love, for it overrides all things; even the self!"

"O-Okay, mister. I'll try," she promised, if only to move him past his very unusual, and not to mention very unheroic, episode.

Prideheart himself seemed so exhausted by his outburst; more so than from even all the long miles walked.

"Good," he said. "Now... onwards. Our goal awaits."

And he shut out the world, fixing himself on the road ahead. His pace was still off slightly, some of his legs moving forward without coordinating with their comrades, and he continued to clean his dead eye periodically; not soldierly in the least. His dragon-wound, at least, eased to its usual, uncomfortable simmer.

"... Hey mister?" Bookworm called softly, with all the humble grace that she could muster. Clearly she understood that he had already ended the conversation.

He gave a dull hum and a weak, sideways glance.

"... What's your name?" the filly tried again. She almost flinched asking it, recalling how she hadn't been able to earn the hero's name before.

A burdensome silence laid upon them, slowing them down. Only the river sang, and their hoofbeats accompanied it, but each pony played a different rhythm; too discordant to join together into any kind of music.

"... It is not relevant," Prideheart replied at last.

"So...," she reluctantly accepted, tucking her disappointment away under her buried face, "... it's still a secret?"

"... Verily."

On they marched, none too proud.

The large, heavy stone wouldn't sit right.

Scrolldozer again lifted it into the air with his magic, where it wobbled nervously. When he tried another time to properly set it down, it once again jittered so severely that it flew to the side at the last moment, landing askew. The waiting mortar took another deep bruise, spreading even thinner.

Several impatient townsponies, waiting with fresh mortar, scarcely hid their groans. Their grumblings by now had worn quite weary.

"I'm s-sorry, everyp-pony," Scrolldozer mumbled. "I-I'm r-really sorry. L-Let me try again."

"Scrolldozer."

"T-This time I-I'll get it."

"Scrolldozer."

Home Remedy already had a hoof on him, and she delivered a strong, vigorous shake.

"Set it down, Scrolldozer."

"Doctor, I n-need to get this r-right."

"You need to take a break," she sternly corrected him.

Scrolldozer picked the enormous stone up again, but it still swayed and shook with little control. Yet its tremors were serene compared to the earthquake which battered the stallion himself.

Another time Home Remedy jostled him, and in her official capacity she ordered him, "Set it down; go get some rest."

The stone did drop – not as carefully as it could have, but at least well out of the way of anypony – and the quivering father turned to the doctor.

"P-Please," he begged, "I r-really have to w-work on the wall. I-, I-, I-... I have to..."

"No," she once more overrode him. "Go home. Rest."

Scrolldozer's teeth chattered. A choking sound came from the back of his throat.

"Doctor... I don't kn-know if I can-... if I c-can... go h-home to an empty house..."

It was a rare day which saw the usually-churlish doctor show some profession-appropriate compassion so nakedly, but there it was. Her hoof softened, she smoothed out some of her patient's shivering, and she spoke boldly.

"You're a mess, and you really need to rest. But you're at least partially right: you absolutely should not be alone right now."

She whistled, calling out, "Crumble Pie!"

There wasn't a moment's hesitation from the gray mare. She broke from the workponies she had been speaking to, shouting instructions back to them even as she dashed away. When she arrived, Home Remedy shared Scrolldozer's prescription and then left him in her care.

"You did good work, Scrolldozer," Crumble Pie gently tugged at him to guide him away from the busy worksite. She caught and supported much of his stumbling weight. "I'm confident it won't be too far past moonrise by the time the wall's done, all thanks to you."

"I-, I can d-do more..."

"No, no; come on, you heard the doctor. These ponies will keep on just fine while you rest, don't you worry. Let's find somewhere to sit down, hm?"

They reached a set of tables which been put right on the town's main road; on it, Mrs. Totaler and some of the other elder townsponies had laid out a spread of food for any hungry workers. There, Crumble Pie helped her friend ease his weight off his failing legs. She only gestured at the food, but he shook his head immediately. He hadn't eaten all day, and it was too obvious to the gray mare that his frightening exhaustion hadn't come from the diligent work he had for hours put into the wall; she had seen him labor harder and longer at the quarries many times before, to much less of a tiresome effect.

"How're you holding?" she brought such a loving calm into her voice.

"I d-don't know..."

Each of his fragile breaths shattered before they even got past his lips, and he began weep lightly.

Immediately Crumble Pie had her legs around him, laying his head onto her shoulder.

She spoke quietly, "Hey now. It's alright. It's alright."

"Any n-news of her?" he heaved. "Anything at all?"

"You know if there was I would've come running to tell you right away," she said, stroking the back of his mane.

The reply hurt him as much as she had known it was going to; he gasped and shuddered.

His broken whispers spilled against her neck, "Wh-What I am going to tell Mercy if Bookworm-... if s-something happens to-... if I let something h-happen to our daughter..."

"No no, none of that," Crumble Pie softly squeezed him. "We're still looking. Stony Nook hasn't ever lost a foal as far as I've heard, and I know plain as pyrite that we're not starting now, you hear me?"

A faint squeeze came back to her, but she heard him lament, "She m-may have b-been right..."

"Hm?"

"Mercy Mild. She-, she may h-have been right. That-... that we weren't fit to be parents..."

Crumble Pie didn't bother counting the minutes. She let the powerless father have all the time he wanted clutching her while treading unevenly back and forth between his harsher sobs and quieter sighs.

It was safe to give him a sorry reprieve: she was convinced that the wall could be completed without him now. He had done enough to speed the construction along for everypony else to finish. Stony Nook would be secure.

With her friend embraced, the gray mare listened to the townsponies as they worked away: shouting, pounding, checking, chanting. She watched them: hauling, hoisting, sweating, swarming.

Her eyes moved to the Pearl Peaks far off over the horizon. Their mighty arms were up and open, ready to catch the sun as it began the last leg of its daily journey. The blue sky hadn't yet begun to tire, not even showing the secretest hints of purple, but it wasn't going to be long.

Soon, Celestia's day was going to fade, and the world would be prison to Nightmare Moon's unguarded night.

It was up in the mellow sky starved of clouds that Crumble Pie spotted Hailstone. The lone pegasus was soaring her way back to Stony Nook from the west.

Scrolldozer must have sensed it too; he peeled himself off of the gray mare in order to take a look. Whatever little hope was in him tried to outshine his grief but quickly flickered out upon seeing just one pony in the sky; half a dozen had gone off to search for Bookworm.

Crumble Pie waved Hailstone down as the latter approached, and the pegasus landed before the gray mare and Scrolldozer. She folded her wings, silent and somber with no happy news.

"Well... anything?" Crumble Pie was already reluctant to ask.

Hailstone took a deep breath and then painted herself as optimistically as she could.

"We, uh, haven't found her yet," she stuck as much hope as she could onto the last word. "The others are still looking; I just wanted to report back and let you know how it's going."

"And?" asked Crumble Pie.

"Well... on the plus side, nopony has found a single sign of that monster running around out there. I mean, except for the busted wagon from days ago. But... no sign of Bookworm, either. Her trail goes to the wagon, but after that... no idea. We're spreading out and trying to cover as much ground as we can in all directions. Though, I mean... um... there's a lot of ground to go over..."

"Right...," the gray mare nodded sorely.

She looked at Scrolldozer. His ears were limp but listening.

"There is one thing," Hailstone piped up. "I mean this is just a guess, but... from the looks of it, anyway... I think Bookworm may have actually caught up to that guy. That crazy stranger."

Scrolldozer stirred, just barely.

Crumble Pie tried to sound encouraging.

"Well that's good news, right? She's not alone?"

"Yeah, maybe," Hailstone struggled to agree.

It drew a frustrated stare from her boss, who said, "Don't forget he jumped in the way to save me."

The others might have pictured the moment where the stranger had tackled the heckhound, spoiling the monster's attack on Crumble Pie. But Crumble Pie more specifically recalled when the stranger had selflessly placed himself between her and the dangerous beast after the hound had risen again, more bloodthirsty than ever.

"Right, well," Hailstone ungraciously brushed past the stranger's suicidal heroics, "that weirdo's out there hunting the beast, remember? And if he's found Bookworm, it doesn't look like he's stopping his dumb hunt to bring her back."

Crumble Pie's glare turned even more irked, and the terrible leer actually enough weight to slap some sensitive manners into the pegasus.

"Uh, sorry," Hailstone apologized to Scrolldozer.

The father mustered an indistinct, feeble acknowledgment.

Crumble Pie asked the pegasus, "Is that all then?"

"Yeah," Hailstone said.

However, an evening shadow fell over her.

"Crumble Pie," she restlessly warned, "the day's dragging on. Thing'll dim before too long, and—"

"I know."

"—that'll make searching much hard. And—"

"I know."

"—once the sun is gone, then there's no chance that we'll be able to-"

"I know!"

The gray mare sealed her eyes shut for a moment, regretting her minor outburst, but she had to have muzzled Hailstone somehow.

She felt more of Scrolldozer's weight drop onto her again.

"Look. Hailstone," Crumble Pie laced her tone with apology but otherwise directly commanded, "the wall's coming along pretty good here, so why don't you round up two or three extra pegasi to help search. Keep looking with everything you got."

"Right."

Hailstone bowed her head and then readied her wings, but she stopped just short of taking off.

Turning an apprehensive look towards the gray mare, she cautiously asked, "And... if it gets dark, and we still haven't found her?"

Crumble Pie's breath held frozen. Just once, she slowly swallowed.

"... Then you come back here."

A mangled, bereaved gasp came from Scrolldozer. They both heard him muffle his further sobs.

The gray mare continued, "You come back here and pick up the search immediately first light tomorrow. Got it?"

"Gotcha," Hailstone said quietly.

Another time she readied her wings, and another time she halted. She darted instead to Scrolldozer's side and caught him in a fast hug of her own.

"Gonna find her for you, pal."

The father only trembled and cried softly as he touched his head to her in thanks.

At last Hailstone rose up, and she zipped over to the largest cluster of ponies, seeking a few extra wings.

Crumble Pie refastened her hug around Scrolldozer, and she once again guided his head to her welcoming shoulder. He wept into it, and she laid her own cheek delicately against his.

Chapter 7: For the Hardest Victory

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More and more the stones in the earth changed as the road went on. What had long been the natural bricks and endless droppings of clay which commonly littered such hills became, bit by bit, something different. They aged; they grew larger. Joining them came broken protrusions of rock which burst from the ground like insidious weeds of stone running rampant. The earth fortified itself, road and hill alike hardened, and the slow transformation began to strangle all signs of green: grass, flower, bush, tree. The foothills now were verdant with stone; the true roots of the Pearl Peaks. Yes, the old quarry wasn't far.

But as the lushness was traded away for coarse rocks, danger equally seeped into the air; at least to Prideheart's senses. 'An adventure,' his sprightly filly companion had called their outing, but that was only the disguise her presence had created; the deception he had allowed even himself to have temporarily believed. For every ounce of softness the world lost, a foreboding encroached further upon him, and the unhappy truth reasserted itself only more clearly: this was no jolly romp alongside an inspiring foal. This had started as a hunt, and he still now pursued an insidious monster to the forsaken source which had spawned it. All this way he had been on the trail of fire and darkness... and he, old stallion fool that he was, had duped himself into towing along a defenseless foal.

The dreadful corners of the deep journey closed menacingly in, choking off all escapes. If he were to have commanded her away then could she have made it back to Stony Nook safely on her own? She had astounding wit for her young age but also tremendously vulnerable inexperience. Would a lonely order to return have been no different than callous abandonment to the wild? It was so far a trek for a foal, and passage would last into the dark hours of Nightmare Moon's rise. Was the monster ahead truly the greater danger to her? Perhaps, as the filly herself had insisted, the heckhound had retained his weak form even after drying off. If so then any peril ahead may have been blunt enough to permit her company.

Please, make it so.

He couldn't release her to wilderness. He couldn't, physically. Not another foal. He would not survive that again.

"Quit the road here," Prideheart suddenly ordered.

Because a long period of desolate silence had been camping between the two ponies his sudden words surprised Bookworm.

"Huh? Okay, mister," she said, following him as he slowed down and veered off the long-worn path. "Why?"

"The quarry nears, yes?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Then now we dress our approach with utmost caution," he instructed her.

"Oooh," the filly at last grasped the situation.

Fresh excitement fast paved over any weariness or worry in her, and she tried hard to control her bouncy energy so that she might be able to treat their fun circumstances with the same seriousness he now evoked. But it was a monumental, even impossible, task for her. She would move with gleeful quickness, charging along to the horn of her own enthusiasm, before she would catch her speedy errors and grind herself down to stealthy slowness. Yet her silent stalking was always overdone, owing to concentration so fiercely fixed on perfect movements. She would lag behind Prideheart and, so trailing, would have to race to catch up again. Thus the cycle repeated.

Her back-and-forth chase did nothing to diminish her thrill for the adventure though. She was the long tail of the dog wagging wildly behind the head. Her thin but sunny voice rambled the whole time.

"Quiet as we can now! Hoof flat, then down, right? Focus on your weight... one leg at a time... and always mind the cover. It's as much about not being seen as not being heard. Isn't that right, mister? We don't want that heckhound to even suspect that we might be here. Of course, he's not dangerous if his fire's still out, but this is more fun anyway!"

Leading her, Prideheart was able to keep his small smile hidden. He had to allow her bubbling to run free a few minutes more, even despite how easily it shattered the secrecy of her movements. Only after he had gotten his final taste of her joy did he bring out the parent in him and request her complete silence.

Their weaving path across the rocky terrain was a significant change of pace from the relatively smooth and straight climb along the road. Everything as far back as the forest had always had a casual tilt uphill, with the Pearl Peaks forever crawling closer in the distance. But the nearer they dared to the quarry the more rigid steepness the land gained; a shift which occurred belatedly but quickly. Things never became impassible but, between the extra strength required to make the climb and their new efforts to minimize their profiles, a cumbersome load had been placed on their progress. The last inches of the journey were to stretch the longest.

As they further penetrated the hilly depths the air became crisp with dust. The hard ground, and the endless stones dressing it, broadly radiated back in dry heat the warmth they had absorbed long-baking in the day's sun. Their bumpy surfaces spread the open sunlight about freely. The land burned without fire.

It made Prideheart feel vulnerable.

The regular road had stayed low and close to the river after their departure from it, and it had vanished from their immediate sight as they had wandered up and on. But the infinite gurgling of the river itself had never been far enough to fade. When a completely new sound finally rose above it and reached the ears of the stallion he snapped to a stop, giving Bookworm a hoarse command to do the same.

Faint, ongoing, but decidedly not far, the noise was born not at all from the chattering of the natural world. The ponies held and listened to the indiscernible rattling, rumbling, drumming, and chirping which, being so distantly near, blurred together into a droning soup. Nothing about it changed as they waited with attentive ears; it only rang on and on without pattern or crystal distinction.

In his mind Prideheart still felt pinned by a trap of his own making, unable to release the filly to the road back but dreadfully wary of his bothered suspicions for what lay ahead. He gave the order to continue onwards, but he slowed even more and made certain to always keep his little companion only a step behind.

In short time they reached a sudden ledge where the land dropped vertical before them. It was the first drop into the old quarry. However, before both ponies even dared to take so much as a peek over the edge they ducked behind a stationary boulder which rested there.

The sound they had followed hadn't abated at any point; it had only grown stronger with each approaching step. Now on the threshold of the quarry they could tell without mistake that the sound rose from within. Distinction chiseled out individual shapes from the wall of noise, giving it more diverse form and color, but the greater clarity also revealed that the cacophony wasn't the toilsome churning of a reopened quarry. They heard no sharp chipping of picks, or heavy grinding of stones, or loud crumbles of broken rocks. What climbed out of the quarry were growls, and endless scrappings which gnawed their way through dust, and angry tumbles like soft bodies being flung back and forth.

The stallion stood up on his hind legs, leaning his weight carefully onto the boulder so that he could twist his good eye around it. Bookworm did her best to wiggle under him and take a gander of her own. From their height on the top level the two intruders gained a view over the entire quarry.

The old quarry was hardly the vastest expanse. It was no inverted mountain hollowed from the earth, nor a gaping pit grand enough to have swallowed all of Canterlot. Instead it was a perfect fit for Stony Nook: quaint, country, remote, and just sizable enough to have served the small population of ponies who lived their free lives out on the frontier. Even in its heyday it had probably never hosted more than four or five dozen industrious ponies.

Terraced like many quarries, there were three drops and therefore a total of four levels. Each drop didn't fall tremendously far, but were far enough to be a nasty, painful, disabling spill for anypony careless enough to take blind steps. Through its many years the old quarry had yielded great volumes of fine stone, and it was at this point fairly well dug out. The lowest level was easily the largest in raw area, with each successive terrace up resembling mostly a thin outline of the basin's wobbly, curvy, but roughly circular shape.

The rising land surrounded the pit on all sides except the north. On that side the tall walls of the quarry opened up to the river. Water powered immediately by the site, surging southeast. But rather than giving the quarry a harsh slap as it passed, instead a gentler part of the river reached out and twisted up against the open side of the pit, and there it formed a tiny bay of sorts. The water of the alcove was restless but not nearly as hungry as the river itself, and that was by design. Years ago the ponies of Stony Nook had carved out that bay and built a dock there; one simple enough to host sturdy barges. In fact an abandoned flatboat was even now still moored there. Though the old quarry was distant from the town itself, it had been quite a boon to have been able to have floated its stone bounty straight down the river to Stony Nook.

Around the quarry were further signs of the labor which had once made the economy of Stony Nook sing. Scuttled piles of waste stone sat here and there about the place: overburdens, tailings, rejected rocks; from bits as small as pebbles to bulks peeled right off shattered rock faces. Wooden sheds still stood dispersed among the quarry's terraces. Their decaying signs were held in place by less than a full complement of nails, and they read out their former purposes with all the health of a sickly cough. On the far side from where the two ponies hid, a few rudimentary buildings also had remained standing through the years. Built with the same quality as the structures in Stony Nook, they were places where workers had once bunked, washed, and ate. Lastly there were several metal tracks inhabiting the quarry. All the separate lines were nearly straight shots which rolled from the higher levels down into the basin, stopping near the dock. Each track had somewhere on it a trolley which was now only a bin for spider webs; in the old days all that had been needed to ferry out good stone was a single strong push towards the dock.

Time alone hadn't done terribly much damage to the quarry. Were any quality stone still to be found there it almost seemed like it could have opened again.

Yet it was so busy, and the sight of the bustling activity was unsettling.

"Look at'em!" Bookworm gasped.

Two heckhounds, bright in colors which were burning and quite unsoaked, tussled with each other in an aggressive match near one side of the basin. Another heckhound laid on the ground and gnawed angrily upon a broken and overly-nibbled bone, envious of yet another heckhound who nearby was touting up the fact that he chewed on a bigger prize. Out in the open center of the pit were nine heckhounds who wandered intently up and down two conspicuously parallel lines of small stones and another bending line of specifically-placed rocks which curved around two sides of the strange setup. Even more heckhounds were to be found elsewhere in the quarry: some racing and some stalking, some sleeping and some sitting; most in the basin, some on the second level, a rare few on the third; and virtually all hissing, growling, or barking at their fellows in a noisy show.

"... A cringeworthy count...," Prideheart leaked out a dreadful breath. Pictures came back to his head: the ravenous devastation of the traveler's wagon; the waste site in the forest...

"... Eighteen... twenty-three...," the diligent Bookworm enumerated, "... twenty-six... Almost thirty, I think! It's a whole litter!"

"Cerberus has litters of this size?" the overwhelmed stallion questioned.

The little filly hardly seemed fazed by the frightfully dire situation, though she wasn't unserious. Proud that her knowledge could be of continued assistance she answered him, "Well, he's got three heads."

Prideheart tore his stare away from the quarry to counter her nonsense reply with a senseless stare of his own.

"Three times the kissies!" she helpfully spelled it out for him.

"... Indeed," he blinked before returning his eye and mind to the trouble before them.

Each heckhound in the small army seemed just as aggressive and hostile as the lone beast who had stormed into Stony Nook. They hardly even showed courtesy towards each other! Likewise all were at least as large and as brutishly dangerous as the first. And just the way in which they bided their time down in that pit... They were antsy; restless in bloodthirsty waiting...

"What grave misjudgments we have made...," Prideheart warned himself, dark in his voice.

Bookworm suddenly squeezed out an inch more, throwing her hoof down towards the basin.

"Mister, look! There he is, down there! The one from Stony Nook!"

Following her direction the stallion caught sight of the specific heckhound which they had been hunting all this way. The beast was still shrunken in size and dull in color, washed out despite the water which had defeated him having long since dried away. He also still shivered terribly as if he were drenched, suffering from a freezing cold without his inner fire to provide any furious heat. Unlike the other heckhounds who were busy with their meatheaded roughhousing he sat upright and at attention, or rather he did so as best as his shaky, frozen body could manage.

Before him paced a unique heckhound who stood out by how commanding and fearsome his presence was. This heckhound was larger than all the others in raw size, though he was also leaner and more trim. To a pony cowering before him he would have towered to twice their height. His searing eyes burned darker than the other hounds, a fire just a little bit more unforgiving and sinister. And all the boiling intensity of his gaze was fixed upon the beaten heckhound. In front of that miserable wretch the goliath strode back and forth, and whatever harshness the bigger dog was spitting out of his muzzle was accompanied by wisps of angry flame.

"Oh, and that one...," Bookworm pointed out the unique heckhound, "... that big one must be the leader! See his horns?"

Prideheart scrutinized the awful hound again, this time noticing the two horns that grew from his skull. Curved and thick, they twisted up and forwards like a bull's and whittled down to piercing points. Spears lodged in his head, trained upon whatever he chose to look at.

"See, he has those horns to show that he's the big dog," the filly continued, "and he doesn't let any of the other heckhounds grow their horns at all. If any of them were to ever break his horns then that'd show how much tougher they are and he'd have to step down."

"An alpha?" the stallion asked for confirmation.

"Yeah," she replied. Again she studied the huge heckhound and watched how he marched about in a fury. Jittering with some amount of glee she said, "I bet he's really laying into that poor heckhound that we beat. Taking away his dessert, or grounding him, or something. He's probably a real villain." Her own words snuck a grin onto her face and she pulsed with excitement. "Oh, this is just like Star Swirl's stories and everything!"

Prideheart shrunk down behind the boulder, and he snatched Bookworm's belly with a hoof, drawing her back with him.

"Calm yourself. We-... we are ill fit for this encounter. We withdraw. Come-"

"Oh, look!"

The filly slipped effortlessly from his grasp and pointed down into the quarry again, leaning out further than before.

Below, the alpha heckhound finished whatever business he had with his shriveled subordinate. He snorted into the beaten hound's face and then delivered a demeaning slap to the muzzle before he finally stood aside. The other heckhound, head slung down and tail hidden between his legs, hobbled away.

Bookworm followed him intently, stretching along the cliff edge as far as her neck could take her. She encouraged the older pony, "Now watch this, mister!"

To the far edge of the quarry basin the beaten and tired heckhound limped. Nestled up against a tight bend in the terrace cliff there sat a great crack in the ground. The earth was split wide apart by one thick and sharp cut, and the wound had many smaller splinters springing from it. Aside from some gnarled stones which jutted up from the edge it appeared that the ground had collapsed inwards. Yet out of the hole came gaunt strips of crimson light which were baleful and faint. From some unseen source under the world they splashed up like the rare sparks escaping a half-buried fire.

The exhausted heckhound crawled up to the edge of the crack and very carefully tread his paws in, climbing down whatever rocks served as the best path inside. There he vanished below the ghastly light.

"Aha! I knew it!" the filly rattled her elated hooves upon the earth, kicking pebbles down into the quarry. "That crack must eventually lead down to Tartarus! That's how they got out without having to go through the official gate and alerting Cerberus!"

The stallion's mind was so busy being invaded by unpleasant things that he wasn't sure he understood why the discovery was apparently significant. He again secured his grip on the young pony and tried to haul her back, but while he did so he idly asked, "And thus the quarry is their source?"

"Yeah, see? That soggy doggy just went down inside that hole in the ground cause he needs to get his fire back!" She finally allowed Prideheart to pull her away from the edge, and she turned to face him while still bearing such runaway, happy pride for how easily the facts came to her. "Only the fires of Tartarus can light him up again, and then he'll be back to being the snarling heckhound who attacked us. A heckhound can't work up their meanness without their fire."

Prideheart released her and glanced again at the break in the earth from which had poured all this trouble, and finally he understood.

"... This is their weakness."

"Yup!" beamed Bookworm. "If we can seal the crack then any heckhounds who get wet are washed out for good!"

"Hmm," his hum was thankful but grim. "Important news to carry back to Stony Nook."

"Back to-?" the little filly started to gasp with disappointment. But she recognized his point immediately, and her head folded down heavy like a book shutting too soon. "I guess we should...," she moaned.

He offered an approving nod, and then one final leer over her head at the threat which inhabited the quarry.

This danger was horrifyingly real. One heckhound alone had been vicious enough to have confidently attacked Stony Nook; thirty of them was a frightening force of disastrous potential. The ponies of the village may have had the laudable strength and will to have succeeded in driving one back, but they were still ordinary ponyfolk in the end. A true battle for their lives was a tall order; a task it would be unwise of them to face in any circumstance except for the utterest end of final desperation.

They had to be protected.

He had to protect them.

Him? Him, the old fool?

What use were his victories of the far past in this beaten present? What use were his songs and shining ideals against this? What use was his decrepit, tired, burnt body, hardly capable of scaling a mountain now? What use was a failure of a pony who hadn't stood and protected those innocents – the most innocent of innocents – who had so needed it?

The idiot pony who, after all his failures, hadn't learned and had now dragged a filly to the very threshold of ultimate danger; had carelessly brought such youth to a place where, again, he could wind up being responsible for another unforgivable tragedy? And for what reason had he been so slack in his greatest duty? Why? To have selfishly pleased his aching heart?

Worthless 'hero.'

All he could do was carry warning back to Stony Nook; warning timely enough that they might still have available good options to save themselves...

"Make ready," he quietly commanded. "Our long march back must be swift."

"You know," Bookworm spoke speculatively, straightening the knapsack about her neck to ensure it was ready for travel, "we should get my Dad."

Preoccupied, his watching eye still on the dire activity below, Prideheart was hardly able to conjure a mental picture of said stallion.

"Is that so?" he paid the filly little attention.

"Yeah. He could bury the crack like that. I mean, he's super good with earthmoving magic."

"... Magic?"

All of Prideheart's attention sprung in alert, though he at first showed none of it to his companion except for a dark glare from his mismatched eyes. Underneath his dragon-wound a fire spread, bubbling with painful anger.

Yet the unannounced change in him didn't evade the filly.

"Mister...?" Bookworm called.

At last he brought his face fully around to her, boiling without any noticeable simmer. When he touched his hoof to her shoulder, leaning into her, she could feel the intense heat flowing off of him. She saw swirls of sickly colors pulsing under his wound and the diseased light wedged inside his shattered horn. That putrid, beamless luminescence moved about chaotically inside of him, its storm visible behind the marred glass of his dead eye.

"Earth magic...," he growled.

A hind hoof beat itself once against the stony earth, landing with enough fury to chip the ground. Then he launched a detesting sideglance down into the quarry, pulling the filly's face with him. The burning dogs still roamed and busied themselves, hiding inside each of them an evil flame stoked in the underworld.

"Fire magic..."

Even the sun falling westward towards the mountain peaks seized his ire. He watched the odious orb drift for several sore moments, its sinking light such a reviled reminder of evil.

"What good ends does any magic arrive at? Huh? What end save ultimately harm?"

"I... don't know?" Bookworm spoke quietly back at him. It was so much easier to follow him when he lead the way by walking.

"It is a weakness," the unhappy word squeezed through the gaps of his clenched teeth, carrying flecks of spit with it. His face swarmed around the filly's, laying siege to her. "It is a weakness as much as any fissure in the earth is to creatures who need passage to wicked fires." As he pressed in on her his cloak shuffled and rolled, the hood swinging about loosely. His hoof snatched it and he stood up stiff. "Never solve with magic what should be solved with one's own strength!"

Turning again towards the ledge and the quarry below he threw the hood up over his head.

"Strength alone is the answer that endures!" the stranger hissed.

Careful to still keep most of his body hidden he snaked his nose around the boulder and scanned the whole quarry once more, thoroughly. His filly companion, not quite in tune with his rash change in judgment, crept closer to the cliff edge as well. She did her absolute best to follow his jumping, sweeping gaze in the hope of cluing herself in to his thoughts.

But she never gleamed anything from his wordless search. The empty moments passed by sourly until he finished and, snorting, he finally shared his mind.

"There...," he said.

His hoof drew a short line over the scene which Bookworm eagerly followed. It began at the crack to Tartarus, climbed up the rock wall behind it, and stopped on a large and messy heap of rejected stones sitting just above. The weight of the heavy mound kept it at rest, safe from spilling despite how precariously close to the edge it was.

"... an avalanche awaits..."

The stranger shot his hoof aside, guiding it along the thin track which made the second level until it came to one of the dusty storage sheds. He tapped the air, highlighting specifically a sign that still hung on the building, bright enough to be seen at that distance. The painted triangle had plenty of red and yellow stripes entwined in warning, and it prominently featured a shape bursting in silhouette.

"... and the trigger," he heaved in an unpronounced snarl, deadly serious as any vow pledged in reckless vengeance. "This threat I will end now."

The filly took her eyes back and retraced the cloaked pony's plan again, from the fissure to the rubble to the explosives shed, and she lit up in understanding once she had reviewed everything.

"Oh! You're going to use a blasting charge to bury it! Good thinking, mister!" All the energy of a puppy pooled into her, accompanied by the bouncing of the springiest goat. She gushed, "Yeah, that'll definitely work! And I know how to use those charges, too! Mister, if we get one of them then I can-"

Reality cut deep enough into the stranger that he flinched, and the jolt rustled his hood such that it slid back and revealed a sliver of his face.

"No!"

Around her he hooked a leg and he dragged her fully behind the boulder with him. She wheeled herself around and faced him only to find his commanding hoof buried into her chest.

"This task I will handle unaided. There is no safe part for you."

"Mister!" Bookworm exploded with her young, anxious anguish, coming on hardly any different than in the daily struggles against her father. "Crumble Pie really did teach me how to use the charges right! I can do it! I can! Just let-"

The stallion pulled her even closer and pressed his pointed hoof up into her chin to seal her mouth, trying to control her outburst.

But she moved to swat him away, still protesting.

"Mister, I can be a hero too! An ordinary pony hero, just like you said!"

"Now is not your time for that!"

If only he had somewhere safe to put her away! Somewhere she might be removed from harm while he alone shouldered the danger until the work was finished... or he was. Even-... even if such an action was solely to placate himself with the knowledge that he would have to be burned first before she was at risk... But there was no place of safety out here where he had stupidly dragged her.

In still trying to render her silent he pulled her about in struggle, and it was then that he spied the rocky hill they had first ascended and arrived from. Looking back, the earth rolled away from them and so provided a vista over the landscape: the retreating hills, the forest many miles back, and somewhere beyond was Stony Nook.

"There-... there is a useful task which... I have need of you to do," he forced himself to speak through the tangled webs of his many regrets. His gaze never left the long return road through the wilderness; never ceased dreading the lonely path back.

"What is it?" the filly nearly sniffled.

He hesitated badly, and even when he finally opened his mouth he dawdled, as if he could stuff so many words into what he said that it might keep his inevitable suggestion pushed away. He hated every single thought of it. He hated himself for thinking it. For saying it. He hated; hated with his most sorrowful hate.

"... As your wisdom well knows, these beasts threaten still even after the fissure is sealed. Stony Nook will not yet be safe until their fires are quenched. So-... so as I act here to close them off from Tartarus, you-... you-... you-..."

Idiot. Fool. 'Hero.'

"... you must yourself bear news of this place back to Stony Nook. I... desert you here. Navigate your own road back home, and apprise them of this danger. This-... this is your task."

Only for a moment did she peek at the hill passage back. She then threw her face at the boulder, for a longer time looking through the solid rock and perceiving all the heckhounds whose nasty business she could still hear below. Worry flooded into her.

"And leave you alone?" she pleaded to him.

"... Yes." The stranger swallowed hard, ashamed at how she was nobler than him. "Waste no time. Slip away now."

"But mister-"

Yet whatever wise objections he wished she would have voiced he could not have allowed. No matter how unhappy and uncertain he felt at this outcome, no matter how utterly he had to gut himself in order to believe in her safety down such a long road alone, no matter how much past agony drove itself through his ribs and into his heart again and again and again... he thrust his miserable will upon her. It was less evil, if only barely, to repeat this wretched mistake than to bring about a worse one.

"No!" he countered her, "We each serve our own part, and your task now is to endure a lonesome return!" Not significantly overcoming the hollowest of his wishes he attempted his best effort at encouragement, telling her, "This tough road is not outside your power to traverse, even through the dark of night which will overtake you. Focus, move with haste, veer not off the road except if you fear you are followed, and do not stop. I need you to-... Your home needs you."

But again she squirmed with reluctance, and deeper still with sadness.

"Mister..."

"Make good your promise to me: follow my order," he reminded the filly, but rather than stand before her with tall authority his face and body instead had fallen almost prostrate in begging. To hide, he turned himself about and again peeked out at the quarry, only in pretense. Unfocused on sight or sound in front, he concerned himself only with listening behind and with pulling forward his loose hood. "Now go."

Behind him disconsolate clops finally started to retreat backwards, but they came like a change of seasons, taking weeks. The stranger, with an ancient movement of his own, cut a glance over his turned shoulder and past the lining of his hood. Bookworm was indeed crawling away one sad step at a time. But she walked backwards, never turning a misty eye away from him, and she was saved from blind stumbles only by her enormous slowness.

It was enough.

Please let it be enough.

He gave his eye to the quarry one more time, storing a map with marked targets in his mind, and then he dashed out from behind the boulder.

Fast, mashing soft hooves against hard stone, he crept silent around the quarry's edge. He also pushed himself wide, fading from the cliffside. The distance his path took from the lip was more than great enough to block his cloaked image from being sighted by any wary heckhounds below, yet he still bothered to sneak from cover to cover, slipping behind rocks and between shadows, traveling low. Every drop of concentration he spent on the mission spared him from himself, and he chose not to glance back even a single time.

When he reached his best estimate he stopped and approached the ledge once more. As there was no boulder for cover there he threw himself onto the ground a crawled up to the edge, peeking his hooded head over.

He was close enough to where he had intended. Though the shed storing the blasting charges was his first target it was two levels down from his current position, so he had to have a concealed place to descend first. Unfortunately none of the ramps plowed into the quarry's terraces offered suitable cover for a convert entry. That was why he had come here: just below him was another wide wooden shed. The slim space between shed and cliff was ideal for cover.

Down in the basin the stallion observed that the heckhounds remained a rowdy company. No two of them could seem to get along in any amount of amiable camaraderie. Their wrestling was not some form of fun-filled play or sparring for practice, and nor was it even fair or sportsponylike in the least. They delighted in interfering with each others' matches, and victories no matter how unethical won them the right to claim prizes from the losers; usually the best specimen from their lot of bones. Not that the treasures changing paws mattered much in the long run: the faithless monsters weren't above stealing from each other either.

The closest feeling to respect which they knew of was fear; something they all showed towards the leader of their pack. The alpha heckhound stalked the pit, his mere presence disrupting any activity he passed close to. Hounds paused mid-claw and mid-bite just to tremble in anticipation of any harsh growls he might have flung at them, and he was rather liberal and reckless with who he did choose to heave fire at. The old quarry now lived once again, but the new forepony in charge favored the cracking of whips to the cracking of stone.

To the best of the stranger's surveillance there were no dedicated patrols who walked about. Here and there a heckhound wandered away from the group and around wider portions of the quarry, probably to temporarily escape the coarse company of their fellows, but they weren't guards enough to build a secure fence. They would only catch an intruder by incidental, misfortunate glances.

Seizing the moment the cloaked pony fast secured his forehooves onto the ledge and swung his bottom half around and off. His hind hooves landed softly on the rock face and slid, scraping down until they finally caught a grip. Yet their hold was icy, and when he tested giving more of his balance to them they slipped. All his weight fell upon his unprepared front legs still latched onto the ledge top, and instantly the heavy strain of catching himself surged through them, stretching his bones.

He held, but he had to swallow a hurt groan and grit his teeth. Quick and light he kicked his lower hooves in a silent attempt to find a fresh hoofhold, to no avail. Any strikes failed to cling, slipping off before he could relieve an ounce weight from his poor forelimbs. Moment after moment of continuing failure found the stress on his forehooves pinching ever tighter, and his grip started to unwind. Recognizing he had no more chance for a slower descent he gave up on fixing his hold and instead let his body hang as low as it could go. Tensing every muscle in preparation, he sucked in a breath and then unlocked his forehooves.

The ground hammered his hind legs, and as he crashed he twisted to his side in the hope of using his other legs to spread the blow. But his first forehoof to come down missed its mark and folded inwards, smashing his knee forcefully against the carved earth. The stunning pain caused the stallion to nearly flop over, his body shocked stiff as gravity pulled on his uncentered weight. Yet his blunted strength mustered just enough resistance to halt him from crumbling, rolling his body against the direction of his potential fall.

His lips locked tight, a vault within which any audible agony was banished. It was worse than just a fresh sting; the hits to his legs and knee called out to sharp memories of pain. Echoes of his many tumbles suffered during his navigation of the Pearl Peaks only days ago resounded in his tired and sore muscles. His nerves screamed at him for having repeated the same falls that had torn up his body once already; for having only secured meager, unfulfilling rest after that impossible trek; for having now allowed wounds to be inflicted on top of unhealed wounds. But he still didn't permit a whisper of his pain to escape to the air.

He hefted himself up and shot out his legs, forcing himself to stand despite the twisting daggers it buried deeper into his bones, and he hobbled up against the wall of the shed he had landed behind. Sliding to one edge of the structure he tipped his good eye out.

From his lower position he had no view of the whole quarry, but of what he could see there were no signs of investigating enemies. The pit below produced no unusual or different noises; only yips and thuds and snaps of the same heckhound horseplay.

Turning, the stranger moved to the other side of the shed and peeked from there as well. Nothing.

Since for the moment the coast was clear he loosened the bite on his lip and pressed out a quiet moan of pain, shifting his weight about and bending his legs to find whatever tiny comforts he could. Yet how dare he spare time for recovery! The limits of the body could not impede the power of the soul! He needed to show Stony Nook why they should have no want of magic. He needed to show them what a spirited pony could do with only themselves. What they could do despite their old... worn down... failing body.

Again his eye looked out from his cover, this time to inspect his path ahead. Mounds of discarded stone, small and large, littered the area; useful for stealthy navigation. And he only needed to reach the trolley tracks; they lead right over the edge and descended down to the next level. It was a better place for him to climb down, as the trestles supporting the inclined track were dense and concealing. Further, the landing wasn't far from the explosives shed.

A little more the stranger stretched his neck out, and seeing no hostile eyes he bolted. Swift, though limping, he maneuvered through whatever cover he could while trying to keep back from the visible edge of the terrace, and without noticeable trouble he reached the tall, broad wooden stop which marked the end of the tracks on the third level. He passed behind it, lowered himself to the ground once more (the stretching of his legs again flaring his pain,) and crawled alongside the wrought iron tracks until he reached the ledge.

Still the heckhounds busied themselves in the same unfriendly way, unaware of any schemes going on about the quarry. The alpha had joined with the biggest group them, collected together at the odd arrangement of stones on the basin floor. He was in a fever, stomping down the line between the two parallel rows of stone, snorting and snarling instructions or information of some sort at his cohorts. Every now and again he'd flick his horns at one of them specifically and growl, drawing cowardly and deferential flinches from each dog.

At one point the alpha heckhound make a swift vault over the northern row of stones and came to the line of rocks which curved around the model setup. He very furiously barked something about it, then snarled some more while launching his horns towards the crack to Tartarus just a short jaunt away. One of the other heckhounds, ears down and tail curled, came forward and raised some sort a question. But in answer he received only claws raked across the side of his muzzle.

Strenuously unhappy, the alpha heckhound let loose a bellow which brought the fights in the pit to a halt. His howling command seemed to summon almost all of the beasts, and they lugged their unlucky selves over to their master under the leery watch of the few remaining heckhounds who knew enough to sit back and stay silent. The alpha meanwhile stood himself tall, casting his head high to scan the whole quarry and ensure that all were coming who should have.

At this the stranger faded from the edge, surrendering some very long moments to hiding back before he pulled himself forward and stole another glance.

Nothing.

The alpha continued to fume and lecture at his heckhounds both old and new while he stormed about the stones and otherwise showed no awareness of intrusion. His pack of scantly loyal monsters had no choice but to abide him and suffer listening.

It was the opening the stranger needed. Still burying every sign of pain he stepped out onto the inclined track and swiftly lowered himself off the side, safely out of view of the heckhounds in the pit. He scaled down the woodwork trestle as best as his banged-up legs were able, and ultimately he arrived softly on the second level floor with no extra damage; only his existing pains had been aggravated by his haste.

There was little leftover waste rock to use as cover there so he instead stuck close to the inside wall of the quarry as he snuck along. Fortunately the target shed was not far from the tracks he had lowered himself from, and after only a minute's quiet traversal he was there.

He threw himself against the side wall of the building, too eager to jump across the vulnerable gap from quarry wall to shed where he might have been spotted, and the careless blow rattled the unexpectedly loose wood. The whole wall wobbled and flexed with a wave centered on where he had struck, babbling as it bended. Much more cautiously the stranger leveled his full body against it, hoping to absorb the shock and calm the agitated wood, and meanwhile he leveled upon himself only unspoken curses.

Yet the clacking of the pulsing wall didn't sound terribly loud to his hooded ears and it fast eased into a simmer; almost perhaps too quickly. He brought his bulk off of it and soothed it the rest of the way with only a single tender hoof, scrutinizing it closely. Rot was very evident – unsurprising for something abandoned – but the whole section of wall he had struck in particular seemed on the verge of breaking. Weakness infected it, robbing it of the stiff sturdiness that might have otherwise turned the accidental rattle into a wooden earthquake.

With the wall settled the stranger crept up to the front corner of the shed. Looking out he saw no signs that his mistake had been caught and, lower in elevation once again, he only vaguely now could make out some of the heckhounds below. They were still in assembly. He peeked further to verify that no guards or wanderers could be found nearby on his level and then he wasted no time. He ducked out and crawled to the shed door.

Security obviously hadn't been a pressing concern during the quarry's glory days: there was no space for a strong lock, and the swinging door was barred only by a heavy wood bolt that sat free in its hooks. The stranger lifted the obstruction out silently and then turned his back to the door in order to keep a lookout while he entered. One tiny push with his rear brought the door a crack open and then he reversed into the gap slowly, barely stretching the opening as he slipped backwards inside. Once in he immediately creaked the door shut again and set the bolt down on the ground behind it; a measure to prevent any revealing drift.

He sighed a breath loaded with as many poor measures of empty content as he could muster. Only half the task was complete. He still had to sneak a charge into position and bury the crack down to Tartarus under an avalanche of rubble. After that... well... after that was of no immediate concern.

He pivoted about on the less achy of his forelimbs, turning to see what his hard approach had earned him.

Dim light flooded up from under the walls of the shed, the boards' longest splinters only licking the ground. The leaking sunlight washed clean across the dirt floor; one big, wide, shallow, unobstructed puddle of warm gold pooling at the bottom of a font. Each stray beam which came up from it was a spotlight for one of the endless particles of dust that danced gingerly through the enclosed space, and the troupe's united performance was unhindered by any obstruction thin or thick. Their whole stage laid free of setting or scenery. No box, no crate, no tin, no bag; nothing at all save the rusty pegs jutting unburdened from the walls and the shelves lined with corpulent layers of dust.

The shed was barren.

Of course.

Of course.

It was an abandoned quarry. Why have left behind any still useful charges? Why had he ever thought he would have found any here?

Idiot.

Mistaken idiot.

These are the simple, common errors that destroy the works of singular 'saviors,' as he should have well known. A selfish reliance on one, paying the costs unto others...

In the under-glow of that dark little prison the stranger stood motionless in long, cursed silence. The air was musty from too few permitted breaths of freshness allowed in over the years, the outer world having been some time ago locked behind an unlocked door, and the stale starvation saturating each inch of that place's hampered atmosphere bit at the wounds on his face. It oppressively shoved a thick hoof down his throat. He was suffocating, but the empty gagging could never kill him of course; it was only air. The eternal pain of his dragon-wound prickled and popped again and again and again, piercing hot as it ever was, and each suffering sensation from it he experienced so loudly—so incredibly tortuously!—in the distractionless face of his small, confined, sealed, gloomy, quiet, empty, meaningless, unlocked cage.

And moment after moment, time upon time, he simply stood there in it.

Eventually his bitter sarcasm awoke to berate him. Perhaps if he stood there long enough an explosive charge would materialize from the dirt? Maybe he was waiting for one of the shelves, dangling on its last decayed legs, to suddenly fall in this perfect moment and drop the sole forgotten charge? The successive stabs of bitterness only sharpened, every thought whetting the blade, yet equally the protective sarcasm which served to lighten the thrusts withered away.

Maybe he was trash who failed everypony time and again because he chose to be cowardly and idle when his mistakes left him with only impossible actions to pursue; after all, the only time he had actually ever saved anypony – and not disgustingly and monstrously abandoned them to brutally undeserved fates – was when he had stepped up to the confront the impossible; when far, far back in Canterlot his better self had done right to resist a dragon at any cost; at every cost.

Do something, fool!

He breathed, coughing up a block of dust. He had to find a way to trigger an avalanche without an explosive.

Quickly he began to wander the small room, using little steps that still found him limping from his earlier fall. He took stock. There was nothing of any use, except for perhaps the wood of the shed itself which he might utilize as a lever. It was a poor hope with his failing strength, yes, but just maybe he could slink over there and find the right rocks to loosen for such an effect. At the very least he had to try, even to such an end as burning fangs being buried into his body.

His good eye halted suddenly, the search interrupted by movement below. Shadows danced in the pool of light which flooded the floor. The lines of darkness were many, rolling along like a marching column of soldiers. They passing from the back of the shed... towards the front. Accompanying them was the matching sounds of claws patting dirt.

The stranger turned about and held stiff in his legs as a scrap ran along the shed door.

A soft press made the wood tremble, and then with simple ease a stronger push came. The wooden bolt he had left on the ground skittered and kicked about as it was helpless to block the creaking sweep of the door. Smoothly it swung inwards, opened near its hinge by the push of a powerful paw. Red light saturated the small room as the sun slipped its rays through the fiery fur of the three glowing shadows which occupied the doorway.

At the center of them was the alpha heckhound, his horns lowered and ready. But once he saw the shed's lone occupant his head raised, and the dark features his face slithered away in favor of an expression that was far more pleasantly menacing. His demon eyes cooled their flames in deceptive invitation to draw closer to the fire, and the blades of his big grin were as polished and professional as any polite executioner.

"Hello," he said, in a formal voice baked smooth and deep.

Chapter 8: He Who Fights

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The stranger stayed firm, giving none of his limited ground and saying nothing through voice or body.

Behind the alpha heckhound the two others growled, but their leader had only to turn a sharp eye to them and they were choked into silence. Ears folded and short tails turned down, they backed off. But from beyond the shed door they kept a dark watch on the trapped stallion.

The alpha donated all of his undesirable and curious attention back to the stranger. It was the lack of any response from the pony that intrigued him; whether from stoicism or fright, he didn't yet care. He turned his head half-aside and leered at his prey with one suspicious eye, and then his neck rolled across so that his other eye could have its turn. At last he took one, and only one, wholly confident step forward.

Still the pony offered no answer of any form.

Through the quiet moments which ticked on by the alpha continued to visually search the stallion statue, from the tips of his peeking hooves to the hood of his ragged-refurbished cloak.

"Well then...," the big beast seemed to shrug with heartless indifference at the refusal to respond. His voice was a deep hiss of warm steam, pleasant on the ears at first but disguising something charred and crackling.

He straightened out, crowning himself with the stance of a regal lord. Forelegs stiff to buttress his brawny chest, hind legs bent like almost a sit, together they gave a smooth curve to his back. The sizzling red mane sprouting from his scruff curled like greedy hands of flame reaching out from under a furnace. Though he appeared so immensely formal he didn't make any polite effort to holster his razor claws or to keep the piercing pinpoints of his horns aimed away.

"I'm Kerby," he greeted.

The fiery flicker in his eyes brightened as they narrowed on the pony.

"And you?"

Still the stranger surrendered not a word. Not any readable clue came from him, not even a twitch or turn, his face hidden as it was in the double-shadow of his hood and the shed's underlit darkness.

It wasn't foolishness or indecision that had him so serenely tense; he understood well the threat hovering over him and what hopelessly few choices he had. Nor was he possessed by a confident calm, snuggled in the hidden motions of a master plan. Rather the great stillness which seized him was molded out of fear. Not the obvious fear; not for himself. These heckhounds could chew him up and spit him out as slobbered shreds if they wished; his individual fate meant little.

The fright which sutured his mouth was very different.

For after his meaningless demise would these monsters not be wary enough to scour a wide perimeter for other intruders?

This encounter had to take as long as possible.

The cloaked pony finally gave a belated response to the huge heckhound. Nothing much: only a slight movement of his body, measurable in tiny inches. He made himself an odd mirror to his adversary's tall showing. He likewise took on a refined character, not lordly but something almost heroic, all without masking any of his defensive readiness.

"Hmph," Kerby shot a humored snort. "No name, hm? That's fine. I don't mark my buried bones with gravestones anyway." His muzzle twisted into a smile deliberately broad enough to reveal his every last fang.

He began to pace, moving with graceful menace while still observing the stallion keenly. His steps had the rhythm of torture: gradual, precise, purposeful to a sensitively exact degree. Near the open door he stopped for a moment to eye the wooden bolt that had been kicked out of the way, it worthlessly sitting on the ground against the rotted and weak boards of the shed wall. Then back to wandering he went, never approaching the stallion closer but nonetheless infinitely stalking his victim.

"So," he intoned in sinister bass, "if not your name... will you tell me this:... what are you doing here, my– little– pony?"

From the stranger, still no answer.

"You're the one from the village, no doubt," the monstrous hound continued, huffing once in detectable displeasure. "The pony in the dirtied cloak who helped wash away my poor, bungling scout." Slower he paced as he narrowed his eyes another time, flaring their wicked intelligence. "Followed him here, did you?"

Silence. Motionless silence.

The now predictable quiet began to bore Kerby, and his charming disguise proved paper-thin as his burning impatience peeled it back. He ebbed to a hard stop, stomping closer one threatening step.

"If you have nothing to tell me then I have no more time to waste with you. But at least you can whet my horns."

And the monster brought his neck down, leveling his weapons and glaring at the holes he intended to pierce into the stranger.

Underneath the shadow of the pony's hood his nostrils flared.

Purchase more time, old fool!

He broadened the spacing between his hoofs and aligned his body to the hound, presenting a more defiant target. Ready bends entered his legs, for parrying or kicking, and the back folds of his cloak were lifted by his fighting tail.

A growling deepness came out with his voice as he commanded, "Stand down, pup."

Run, Bookworm. Run!

The appearance of such new resistance instantly reignited Kerby's interest. His simmering irritation received a fresh smothering of civility as he lifted his head nobly again, a fascinated and ferocious grin taking hold. Still cautious, he took yet another step towards the pony.

"Or what?" he delighted in hissing.

Behind the veil of his terrible teeth the light buried within his throat flickered and changed color. The low growl which roamed out of him clicked with unseen sparks.

A flare lit in the stranger's mind, flashing great twinkles of memory: the heckhound pinned against the building face this morning; the crackling growl in his throat; the burst of fire that had popped from the tricky monster's mouth...

The pony's hooves shuffled. Not for a blink did he take his eye off the heckhound, and he prepared himself for defensive action. All he waited for was the right moment to spring.

Kerby's lungs expanded like a filling bellow, broadening his chest, and his lips pulled back. But suddenly at the final instant he underwent a strikingly cold change. His tongue rolled up in his mouth and pressed against his teeth while a spasm erupted in his neck. Tightly controlled, the rocky muscles there pulsed in an irregular rhythm, accompanied by a sloppy gagging sound.

His lips snapped shut tight except for a small hole in front aimed for the cloaked pony. Out of the way his tongue slid at last, but it wasn't flame that came spewing out. A steaming smog, ashy in color, blasted from him. The billowing gust shot from his muzzle with some force, not unlike the explosive trail belched from a fired cannon.

Again entangled by surprise the stranger's protective readiness failed. Instead of flighting from the line of fire he only flinched ineffectively. The soaring cloud of hot smoke flew into his face, streaming across and into his nose. Its smell was rancid with whiffs of burnt coal, and it spilled through him into his throat where its hideously black taste made nest, gagging him. The rest of the awful smoke ran past his face and pushed against the back of his hood, lifting it. Hacking heavy coughs he spewed the foul cloud from mouth, and shaking his head hard he tossed off his cloth prison to release the noxious gas trapped about him. His hood itself grabbed one of his ears in a final effort to hold on, but the tickle of it made that ear flick and throw down the concealing cover at last.

Prideheart was freed.

A pony undaunted he immediately corrected his posture to stand soldierly again, ready for war if it came to it, and his nose spat out the last bits of disgusting smog with a defiant snort.

Yet the mighty heckhound hardly seemed threatened at all by the stallion's relatively fast bounce back from the 'attack.' His reaction to the revelation of the pony's damaged face was one of amusement, with humming laughter buried not so far back in him.

"Ahmhmhmhmm. My goodness, is that contagious?" he chortled and took a much-less cautious step forward. "Is that why I should be keeping my distance?" And another confident step he took, absent any careful fear of the stallion.

"Old wounds from an enemy more calamitous than you, pup," Prideheart said in a sober, muted growl.

The warning had no effect on Kerby, predictably deflecting off of his entertained grin. He continued approaching without a sliver of hesitation, stalking along with such ordinary evil. Immediately before the unshaken pony he stopped, his powerful body a high tower looming in the sky and raining down his awful sneer. The two stood close enough to each other that at any time he could have simply dropped his neck forward and sunk his fangs into the pony's face.

"You followed my hound here," the smug beast conjectured with undoubting certainty and in a voice so maliciously soft, "so that you could be the big hero, because you thought he was all alone. But... now you've really fallen into the fire, haven't you?"

In his sweltering mouth his hungry tongue sloshed about once, and his teeth made a sharp click when snapped them together to refresh his vicious smile. In he leaned, just one dangerous inch.

"And now you burn..."

Behind him his two heckhound flunkies laughed eagerly. They both set paws through the open shed door, anxious for a piece of the action.

But their master launched a glaring eye back towards them, hot with violent displeasure. Instantly they were punished by his stern stare, shrinking from fierce monsters into frightened puppies. They withdrew from the shed one hundred times quicker than they had slunk in, and outside they returned to waiting, now with heads lowered in fearful shame.

Swiftly wiping every trace of brutish hostility from his face Kerby turned again towards Prideheart, waving a self-satisfied smile. He indulged in gloating, "There's quite a lot more of us here than you reckoned, right? Hmhm. I don't know what was going through your mind descending into this quarry. Whatever it was that you had hoped to do by tucking yourself away in this shed... well, it certainly didn't work out for you. But it makes me wonder... oh do tell me: caught between the tinder and the flames, what terrified thoughts are you left with, hm?"

The pony seized his chance to draw out the confrontation.

"How did you evade Cerberus?" he demanded, using anger to deftly conceal the truth which he already knew. "He would not have let you out of the underworld willingly."

In a small way the large heckhound was impressed with the stallion's apparent knowledge, though it little showed since in fast time every muscle in his face came to be dominated by a glower of annoyance. Not for Prideheart; no, the monster's eyes shot far off elsewhere. Out he looked, yet his sore sight somehow tunneled down through rock and fire, perceiving the twisted black iron and the deadly jagged crown of spikes which composed the Wretchful Gates of Tartarus. And before those blasted gates his mind's gaze, roiling with hot frustration, saw the guardian parent ever watchful there.

"Oh, Daddy never lets us do anything," the beast groused, his foul mood almost again spoiling the refined demeanor he had been cultivating. "He makes us stay down there separated from others, with only ourselves for company. All we have to entertain us is fighting each other or roaming the mazes of Tartarus alone." The inklings of dour attitude drained away as his cleverness came back in full force, and he smirked at the pony, "But sometimes... when you least expect it... a little surprise can 'crack' the doldrums of imprisonment."

"He knows not that you've escaped," Prideheart surmised.

"Not yet," muttered Kerby, naughty and pleased. Still he simpered, saying, "Guarding the gates of Tartarus is a busy duty. He can't always keep one of his six eyes on us."

Again anger fanned his fire, a seemingly inescapable mood for the infernal hound. It seared a boorish scowl onto his face and prodded him to resume his pacing, only now he wandered with scornful urgency through a much more constricted loop. The five steps of dirt he roamed back and forth over started to bake from the heat he left on them.

"But honestly," he ranted at Prideheart, "why shouldn't we be let out for some fresh air now and again? Hm? Our less-fiery siblings he lets come and go often enough, but us? The unwanted hounds of Cerberus? Pffh. Just because we're born with this fire inside he treats us differently. He seals us away from others. He rejects us."

Abruptly the monster halted and jumped back into the pony's face. Mercilessly incredulous he asked the stallion a fiery question, but so strangely it came out with an undercurrent of honesty:

"Can you imagine: a father condemning his puppies... just because of the way they're born?"

Like before Prideheart returned no answer, yet this time it was because he hadn't one. His silence sat cold without its former determined comfort. The defensive strength he presented took a blow despite there having been no attack.

"Oh, I'm venting," Kerby complained to himself, in the same breath restoring his dark civility and raising himself up fully over his prey again. "What would you even know? There's nothing a pony rejects. The only things inside of them are rainbows, and sugar plums, and gumdrops, and golden sunshine. Just magical things. Isn't that right?"

Despite his impatience over it earlier, now the stallion's muteness amused the monster more than anything. The beast lifted a paw and gave a light, playful slap to Prideheart's cheek. It rendered no damage whatsoever, but it did quite surprise the pony who had been ill with icy thoughts.

"You wouldn't know," the hound assured him, weighing his remark down with a chuckle. "You wouldn't know the unloving cruelty of fathers."

Never in all his remarks had it truly sounded like Kirby had been fishing for sympathy, and if the stallion had perceived any illusion in that regard it fizzled away quickly when the monster spontaneously filled his air with a diabolical change. A trained illusionist throughout his trick plays the story's mystery upon his face, but always at the height of his act does his true feelings surface, whether they be that of a magnanimous showpony or a clever huckster.

This demon's character wasn't one of a charitable entertainer.

"... But... of course... Daddy's right. He's quite right to keep us separate. He doesn't approve of the kind of trouble he knows we'll get up to."

Everything the beast said now slithered out with a delicious hiss.

"Sooner or later he'll discover we're missing, of course. He always checks on us during his infrequent breaks. And once he finds out that we're gone, oooh, are we going to be dead dogs. So, really, we need to have as much fun as we possibly can before he shows up and drags us back to Tartarus by our scruffs three at a time.

"And what fortune! We've found a lovely little town of ponies to play with!" he exclaimed, lit up with wry sarcasm. He flashed his big, toothy smile at the stallion. "You caught us just as we were in the middle of planning them a party."

Prideheart squinted, suspicious, until the terrible realization swiftly struck him with all the blunt sensation of a shovel's broad side being plowed into the back of his head.

He had seen it. Their planning; he had seen it in the quarry basin! The two lines of stones laid parallel... like rows of buildings divided by a street. The arc of rocks curving around the setup... like a hugging river.

Stony Nook.

And the heckhounds! He remembered the dreadful sight of their army gathered around the crude model. Fresh in his mind was the leaderly movements of their atrocious commander, stalking about while pointing here or there and barking his orders; a general laying down his callous conceit of conquest, his devilish design for domination, his sickening scheme for slaughter! It had been not a speech of inspiration for the troops; no, nothing of the sort had lived within those heinous howls. Only a blasted battle plan: scorch the earth.

Quite obviously Kerby could perceive the horrible understanding which wormed its way into the pony, and he scarcely made a secret of reveling in it.

"I really think it's going to be an exciting affair. Hounds and ponies mingling freely, without some wretched gate to divide us. There'll be plenty of shouting, I'm sure... and screams. We'll light up the town."

"Too lightly you regard them," Prideheart immediately warned the hound.

Yet it was a bluff for show. Secretly inside, his doubts had already festered and bloomed as a putrid ulcer, feed by the long trail of disappointment he had walked for decades. So lucky were the townsponies to have had even a favorable few among them; ponies with the heart to have stood up and driven the one heckhound back. An army of these beasts was a whirlwind inferno to the ponies' dry grain silo.

Kerby puffed a wad of dismal smoke out of his nose, wobbled his head, and moaned in blunt disappointment, "Yes, clearly I underestimated their ability to send old, magicless, diseased unicorns after us."

They were more words that were hardly intended as a penetrating attack, tossed away with such flippant disregard, yet the pony reacted as if they were a knife forged for the very purpose of penetrating between his ribs. Silence strangled him again. The only air which left him was a blistering sigh which bled from his nostrils, and he fought to counter the shameful drooping of his head.

The mighty heckhound, meanwhile, hardly noticed. His look darkened and a grim growl started to accompany his voice.

"Maybe they did wash out one scout, but all of us? No. They're just little ponies, after all."

His malignant attention became cutting pincers on Prideheart's throat.

"And they especially won't be prepared since word won't get back to them of how many we are. It's as you've feared, hero. Dash your hopes; you're not going back. You're going to join us here for the night. Or," his sinister fangs took the shape of another treacherous smile, "what's left of you will, anyway. I'm afraid you won't be attending the party tomorrow."

The threat buzzed right past the stallion without answer or wince. The only things he felt were the cursed fire bubbling under his dead eye quietly and in his heart the deathly chill of his long failure.

But Kerby's eyes saw nothing but the stone silence again, and once more he began to grow so unsatisfied with how little the pony buckled under the taunts and stings. Quickly his grin dropped into a sneering frown.

Uncooperative morsel.

"Alright," he growled.

But then very unexpectedly he turned his back to the pony. Lazy he approached the two heckhounds waiting outside the shed door, and he spoke to them in a voice which didn't echo with stern command. Instead his words had a very bored quality, save for certain punctuated stabs which seemed to shoot from him backwards.

"This one won't make a good snack; not with the rotten meat on him. One of you go look around the top rim. Catch the other one. The little foal."

A sharp gale of sheer terror rushed into the stallion's lungs for a split moment.

The gasp was just audible enough for Kerby to hear. Sweet cruelty started to spread over him, spilling out with malevolent glee from the heckhound's every fiber.

Prideheart, from his place behind the unforgivable beast, only heard the savagery through the sadistic timbre of the monster's torturous instructions.

"Actually," Kerby suddenly and viciously purred, "go after her, but don't hurt her. After all, once Daddy hauls us back to Tartarus he's going to keep us on a shorter leash than usual for a few hundred years. To survive the boredom we'll definitely need a chew toy."

"Also, some ice, I'd suggest," the stallion abruptly said. His voice moved. "For your eye."

"My eye? What?"

Kerby pivoted back, so surprised by the bizarre comment that he needed the sight of the pony's face to understand what had been meant. Yet all his eye caught was the jagged points of Prideheart's broken horn, driven hard like a spear into where socket-flesh overlapped with bone.

"Aghrgh!"

Briefly blinded, the hound threw his paw about in defense but cleaved empty air. Again he was struck, this time by the full weight of the pony crashing into him with a shoulder tackle that turned into a continuous push. Backwards through the door he was carried until he was thrown into his two startled cohorts, knocking over all three heckhounds.

The furious snarl which came from Kerby shredded any words he might have been trying to say. His gentlehound manners were thoroughly disposed of. Fast he clawed back to standing, shoving the other tumbled heckhounds out of his way heartlessly, and the fires flaring in his eyes (including his squinting, injured one) came straight from the red depths of the underworld. Immediately he saw the pony's half-cloaked tail disappear behind the shed door before it swung shut in scrambling haste.

The big beast rushed forward and flung himself into the freshly-closed door, intent on knocking it back open and indulging his hungry anger. But a second time he was caught off guard for, though the whole shed loudly buckled with his blow, the door didn't blast open. It jostled and jumped, rattling with a wooden groan and chittering at its metal hinges, but it stayed fastened shut. Grinding his teeth the monstrous heckhound smashed his paw into the door for another strike which sent a shock wave through the flimsy building, and this time he heard distinctly the clunky bouncing of the heavy wood bolt trembling in its inside hooks, barely holding the door locked.

First spitting a few ugly barks at his still-recovering subordinates, Kerby realigned himself with the unhinged edge of the door and targeted the vulnerable bolt on the other side. Once more he blitzed against the shed, and once more its walls screamed with cries of flexing wood and frightened metal. But the door, its whimper lingering a bit longer than the rest, didn't give. Blowing steams of smoky fire from his nose the heckhound lowered his horns for his next charge, and with ease he pierced the wood entirely, cutting straight through door and bolt.

Accompanied by a brutal cry he tore himself free, his horns ripping apart whole chunks of the door boards as they came out. He punched the door with his paw whereupon it at last started to race open. Yet not fast enough for the bloodthirsty hound. As soon as he saw that the lock had been successfully broken he pushed himself into the still-turning door, whipping it the rest of the way as he entered the shed with his two growling heckhounds behind him.

The swinging door slapped the side wall of the shed in a heavy strike, wiggling the building with a single loud bang; a tickle compared to the previously rending blows. The hounds blinked at the darkness while fresh daylight re-flooded in around them. Yet, quite unusually, they felt brightness also coming from in front of them.

There was no pony inside the shed. There was only a hole in the weakest section of wall, scantly stallion-sized and profusely pushing through sunshine. The rotting wood had been bucked through.

Kerby turned around, incensed far beyond the typical limits of his ire, and he slashed back through his heckhounds while snapping at them with his words and jaws. All three hounds emerged from the shed, and the alpha fast spotted the fleeing pony. Again the large beast hissed and bit at his lessers, directing them towards their prey while swearing them to misery worse than their imaginations could ever conjure if they were to fail. It was all the encouragement they needed to bolt after the pony in raging, vicious cowardice.

Prideheart ran. Every ounce of strength his body had he put to that effort. His short mane waved as the speeding wind brushed it, the tail of his cloak battered about in a frenzy, but yet his galloping gait was weakened and off. Each fourth beat he dipped, fighting against a tumble as his bruised knee buckled under the force of his flight. It pushed a current of hot pain out with every fast clop it endured, begging the pony to relieve some the agony with a cry, but he kept his lungs busy with only the many desperate breaths he needed to power his distraction.

This encounter had to take as long as possible.

Far and fast, flee! Flee, Bookworm!

The stallion raced clockwise around the quarry terrace, rushing back towards the descending trolley tracks which he had first climbed down from. He needed no glances back to feel the pressure of his pursuers, their perfect strides pulling them closer to him one paw at a time. As their heat came increasingly upon him he made a sudden veer inwards, moving not towards the landing to ascend but instead straight at the wooden net of trestles.

Behind him the two heckhounds followed, snapping their jaws and nipping at his tail, but ultimately falling short of grasping him before he dove into the jungle of wooden beams. Sliding between and slipping under the crisscrossing mess Prideheart squeezed through quickly. However, the fatter bodies of the brutish heckhounds slammed up against the thin holes in the framework.

Out the other side the pony popped, staggering as he tried to build up speed again. But the disappearance of the fire on his tail, the shortness of his breath, and the blaring pain of his damaged knee all caused his effort to wane. He slowed and heaved an aching gasp before he looked back.

Inside the trestles he could see the twisting bodies of the heckhounds. One of them still tried fruitlessly to claw his way through, perhaps more frightened of the master behind him than of any splinters from tearing free. The other whined as he failed to extract himself from the knot in which he had gotten tied up.

But above them, upon the sloped track, Kerby appeared. The alpha heckhound had a hateful stare for the pony, matching good eye to good eye and dead eye to swollen eye.

Prideheart creaked a step back, about to turn and run. However the large monster didn't spring down to chase. Instead he threw his head up, and out of his maw came a howl which demolished the pony's ears; a baying deep as the ash left after a bonfire and sharply piercing as a glowing-hot blade.

Down in the quarry basin the pony saw the terrible sound jerk the ears of every last heckhound there, from underworld crack to Stony Nook model to northern dock and boat. All turned towards the awful noise, and thus shortly every light in the field of fiery eyes fell upon him, the intruder. Their alpha split the quarry air with one additional commanding, vengeful bark, and his nose marked the target.

Again the wind roared through the stallion's mane and his cloak flailed like a storm-caught flag. Still his knee impeded him and still he ignored its stinging warnings all he could. As he scurried he tried to work his mind for the longest-lasting solution; he tried to add up every spare second of theoretical resistance he could make. Place to place his good eye jumped, hunting almost helplessly.

Save for the three behind him all of the heckhounds seemed to be in the basin below. However, they were breaking for different paths of ascent in an attempt to surround him. Most dashed for the nearest ramp, one the pony was presently passing by. Eventually they would join Kerby in pursuit from behind, though the alpha himself now seemed in no great hurry. He had jumped down from the tracks and, menacing as ever, merely ambled after the stallion. Easy he let himself lag behind the pony, angrily content to watch Prideheart be ripped to pieces once caught.

Any heckhound not going for the close ramp was instead making for another ramp up, one on the farther side of the great rock pile which loomed over the crack to Tartarus. Between those rocks ahead and the trolley track behind there were no ramps ascending away from danger. Unless the stallion intended to take a careless leap down into the basin – likely to a landing which would have shattered his already fragile knee – he was going to be caught in their pincer.

Nowhere to run, Prideheart ran regardless. He darted towards the craggy mound of stones, the only feature on the barren stretch of terrace that wasn't heckhound-infested. Maybe something of it offered him hope to draw out the inevitable; how thickly it occupied the thin pass, perhaps. The outmost pebbles teetered on the very edge of the drop into the basin, just above the red crack to the underworld, and the largest and heaviest of its boulders meanwhile were stacked haphazardly against the quarry wall. All and all it was a lazy half-hill slumped to one side, difficult to squeeze by on the short end and treacherous to climb at its steep heights.

... Treacherous... to climb...

... A hill of rocks. A pile of fragmented, broken steps leading up...

A stairway! One just barely high enough to reach the next terrace!

He went with all his wounded speed, but his eye he kept mostly to his rear. The raucous crowd of heckhounds had grown dense all racing for the same ramp up. At that bottleneck they had morphed from a pack of hunters to a slovenly brigade of selfish ants all trying to swarm the same anthill. Their careless pushing and shoving of each other had plugged the ramp, and a only stream of one or two heckhounds at a time trickled from the clog.

Facing forward again, moving full tilt towards the stone pile, the pony closed in on it. But he was too heedlessly focused on his small luck to have kept up with the lighter group of heckhounds ahead of him. One stray beast had pulled far ahead of the others, ascending the front ramp much earlier and having reached the rocks just before the stallion did.

The swift monster scratched his way over the low end of the pile, appearing very suddenly before Prideheart, and he lunged off the stones at the pony. Yet he sailed a sliver too high, allowing Prideheart just enough room to weave under.

But the sudden dip and redirection of his body staggered the stallion's legs, and his suffering knee failed to lock when he attacked the ground with a braking strike. Through an awkward turn and near tumble he pivoted about, barely keeping upright.

The hound landed and scrambled back around for another go, his powerful forelegs seizing earth as his weight swung around and then shot forward. His slobbering jaws opened, and his running body tucked lower for another lunge.

Prideheart, unready for any new dodge, saw split-second familiarity in his circumstance. The sight of the forward-rushing beast about to spring was memory to him. He recalled his hard awakening in Stony Nook that very morning.

Like a tilted rocket the heckhound launched himself in an arc through the air, his claws forward to pin the pony. And repeating his morning performance the pony responded, rearing himself up with his forelegs tucked in. When the monster crashed into the stallion they both fell backwards, and Prideheart followed through with a smooth roll and a strong kick, punching the beast into the air. The flung hound, after flipping head over paws, crashed upon the low end of the stone pile where the loose rocks beneath him immediately fled downhill. They rolled, he was carried, and his yelping wheeled in pitch as he spun round and round down the pile until he turned right off the terrace, falling into the crack of Tartarus below.

Such was the still-fresh fruit of Prideheart's religiously-practiced self-defense training. It was another exemplary show of dexterity for the elder pony... except, of course, his old body again failed the landing. Like before his buck carried him through his roll until he was standing tall on his forehooves, and like before his balance didn't steady him enough to prevent a twist from sneaking into his form. He curved as he fell, his flank slapping the hard ground.

In haste he pushed himself up, fighting through the prickly tightness that quickly coated his slammed side. The gruesome whispers which dribbled from him merged moans of pain with dark curses, and somewhere there too he released a sore gasp of panic. Fast approaching was the long train of heckhounds who had been following behind him, whistling ferociously while about to tear into the station.

No time to rest nor time to breath Prideheart stumbled his hoofs on top of the piled stones and started to climb. Each pull hurt worse than his steps while racing had, and the situation was not at all helped by how the new ground sometimes shifted under him suddenly. More than once he clamped his hoof down only for stone to roll or turn in his grip, the stutter in his climb throwing his belly into the pointed edges of the rocks below him. But he let each slip steal no time from him, keeping on relentlessly in no small part thanks to the bounding heckhounds who were lightning devils in his peripheral.

The first beast caught up quickly and vaulted straight from his sprint onto the rocks, thereafter tearing his way up the stones in pursuit of Prideheart. His more reckless climb tore rocks free worse than the pony but his tenacity paved over any faltering, and in moments he brought himself into biting distance.

The stallion threw out a buck to defend himself, missing as the heckhound slunk his head aside. But the pony followed with an immediate second effort that did land, though it only butt against the beast's nose with weary force. The monster hardly flinched and, unfazed, he countered with a bite that snared the pony's cloak. Cutting his front fangs into it he growled as fiercely he pulled, jerking wildly.

Around Prideheart's neck the leaf brooch which linked the cloak together stabbed his throat and shoved his apple high, gagging him. He clung to the rocks, trying simultaneously to twist his way out of being choked while also not allowing himself to be yanked backwards. If he could have he would have fired another buck to dislodge the fiend remotely strangling him, but every inch he loosened his hold by felt like the last one he had to give before he would fall.

In short time the more intense pulls of the heckhound dug the brooch in until it began to pierce him so deeply that he sensed the warmth of broken skin. The last of his air popped out as his throat sealed completely shut, and the slipping of his conscious resistance felt like fat stones forcing themselves through every artery in his body. The drowning world started to smear its colors and slur its songs, a fog closing in and eating up his senses.

But the hard clack of rock skipping off rock stood out sharply to his dulled ears. He shot his eye uphill to see a melon-sized stone whirling towards him.

Down and aside he dove, as far as he could manage. The rolling rock bounced a hair over him and nailed his captor heckhound square on the forehead. There was a barking whine from the beast as Prideheart's cloak slipped free of his jaws, and the monster lost his footing as a murky tarp fell over his burning eyes. His inert form flopped down the rock pile, colliding with the heckhounds who had started to climb after him, and those who weren't thrown off to feed the underworld pit became a nicely mangled train wreck at the base of the stones.

"Come on, mister!"

"Bookworm!"

At the top of the climb, standing at the edge of the next terrace up, was the sacred filly. She waved her hoof energetically in encouragement, summoning the stallion.

Despite the bloodthirsty heckhounds swarming below there wasn't a shine of fear in her eyes. No cringe stood ready to pounce on her. But such strength – strength which held nearly a smile on her – wasn't the glue of bravery. Her shout to Prideheart had resounded with thrill. She was the foal in the front row of the theater, so excitedly close to the stage action that she could reach up and tug at the hems of the actors' costumes.

"Come on!" she repeated brightly while bounding in place.

The stallion, however, was frozen. He still clung stiff to the rocks halfway up the pile, hopeless hooves being slowly eaten by the cracks they were slipping into, and through the silent death of his heart his gaze laid upon the most precious filly. The pupil of his good eye faded into the tiny depths of fear. Under the crusty film which choked his dead one the withering color of poison swirled about in distraught anger.

"Quit standing, mister! Come on!"

Blackened barks roared up the rocks behind the stallion. Thumps pounded, scratches shrieked, and many heckhounds were advancing over their spilled brethren to begin climbs of their own.

But the stallion held motionless.

His despondent will had been to have spared the filly, purchased through his own hide. He was to have waded into the inferno as lengthily as possible; to have taken their flame all for himself... But despite his actions the fire was now going to claim her as well...

...

Despite...?

...

Because of his actions.

Another filly! Another filly... a filly just like her... Another one – more than unsaved – betrayed by a feckless fool.

A happier tale of yesteryear would have seen stronger venom in dragon fire; would have told of a pony who had shielded a city at the joyful cost of his own body and soul rotted into dead waste by unendurable corruption.

"Mister, come on!"

He pulled his hooves from the stones' crannies and pushed them forward. Eye ahead, teeth grit, every bodily pain compressed into his gut; he carried himself up rock by rock.

He was the final barrier between hounds and filly.

"Alright!" the triumphant little filly cried. She had one jubilant bounce of victory in her before she was peering around the climbing stallion at the snarling faces of the monsters scaling after him. And then she grinned her clever grin.

"Hold on, I'll get another rock!"

Bookworm disappeared from the edge while Prideheart climbed. Somehow he was faster than before, with all his inconsequential aches now maintaining an obedient temper. His more rapid ascent threw stones recklessly about underhoof yet he clawed his way up evenly, slithering along and cutting his belly when he had to. As he grew close to the peak of the pile he heard ahead of himself the distinctive thump-thump-thump of a fat stone wheeling over its flat faces.

The rock appeared in front of him, pushed along by the filly, and when she sent it over the edge he readily slid himself aside. Down it hopped, and it cracked loud when it skipped off the face of an unprepared heckhound. The struck beast tumbled over backwards, catching a few of his fiendish fellows with him as they were cast down the stones. Some hounds were spared from the tidal wave, and more ever continued to jump onto the pile.

The stallion reached the top, hauling himself to a stand before the beaming filly. Without a word in greeting to her he leered his good eye back at the approaching hounds and then bent his forelegs, packing them with energy. Moments later the first heckhound to make it up caught lightning with his face; a swift kick delivered with far more grounded power than the cloaked pony's earlier efforts. None of the beasts below quite expected the leading hound to be blasted down so violently, and they were all caught in the cascade of dominoes.

"Yeah!" cheered Bookworm. "Alright, mist-"

"Why have you remained?!" Prideheart, despite threat looming so dire in every wisp of air about him, couldn't prevent his dread-filled fury from spilling out. "Your promise you had sworn to me! To obey!"

"I couldn't leave you alone!" the filly actually chuckled, explaining herself as one explains the simple sunrise to a foal. "You said it yourself: 'remember responsibility to others; it overrides all things. Even the self.'" As she puppeteered his own words about in front of him she was shining with an adventurous grin. "I'll protect you, and you can protect me!"

"I cannot protect you if you do not heed me!!" he screamed, lashing out with wild indignation at the affront to his anxious authority and crashing his hoof into the earth. Though for all his fire there quite visibly was a pall over him; a fear-filled cloud masking the royal rays of the sun.

In turn, a sourness started to play with Bookworm's smile. Nothing of his huffing and puffing sounded to her any different from the paternal bellowing she felt she knew well. It was the same stern rubbish, unfair and hypocritical.

Still she tried to be reasonable, for a filly at least, in whining, "Mister! I'm doing the right thing and being the ordinary pony hero everypony should be! A hero just like you! These heckhounds won't get us! At the end of the story the heroes always come out on top!"

Upon the stallion's dragon-wound every patch of sickly skin seared in flame. Every nerve was set ablaze, every twitch was a lash from a whip of fire, and the boiling behind his dead eye flooded backwards to every bone and muscle in his body, subsumed by white hot agony. Desperate, dark, despairing, and full of pain he cried out, roaring into the filly's face.

"SUCH IS NOT THE NATURE OF HEROISM!"

The sudden attack was so unsparing in its brutality that Bookworm tripped a step back, rendered mute and with the buds of wounded tears instantly coming to her eyes.

Were he not burning so badly and all the world around him swirling in a vortex of fathomless danger Prideheart might have rushed to make amends. Such vehement and destructive command was not his preferred method with which to instruct foals. In fact the hurt she openly displayed stung him quite deeply, building high a tower of regret against the backdrop of prouder memories; all his years of rearing such foals earnestly with slow and guiding love.

But time lent no allowances. The rocky hill behind him called out warning with every scratch of climbing paws against it. The chorus of baleful barks which rose from the pit was only growing stronger. And, by far what snapped the stallion back to attention and flared his immediate alarm, another insidious heckhound had strayed from the crowded pack and found a different way to the third level. The monster, a distance away around the terrace but hardly distant enough, was already surging towards the ponies at breakneck speed.

"Go!"

The stallion pushed the little pony, turning her about in the same motion. His weight pointed to a nearby ramp up.

"Go!"

Obedient, she ran, first in a fast trot but then a full gallop after spotting the heckhound and receiving another push from behind.

Prideheart followed close, constraining his own speed slightly so that he remained in back of the filly. For every guarding step he followed with, for every breath he sweated, he calculated and recalculated his options a thousand times. Any means – no matter how desperate – he searched for; a way to shepherd his little pony away from this nightmare.

But his mind was menaced by the fiery darkness fast encroaching from every direction. All his thought felt shackled, helpless to do any more than focus on one set of fangs at a time. He held his watch on the nearing heckhound who had changed paths to try and intercept them.

Fortunately all the beast's savage velocity wasn't enough, and the ponies reached the ramp with a few second to spare. The stallion started to usher the filly up, but once she was scrambling along on her own he turned away from her. He still followed, walking backwards, but was slowed greatly by erratic hobbling. Out of his cloak materialized his canteen still fairly heavy with water, and he wriggled frantically while backpedaling, trying to slip the strap fully over his head.

The heckhound skid into the base of the ramp, drawing down into a more scrupulous approach. Up the ramp he stalked, paw before deliberate paw, his eyes and ears deadly attentive to the stallion. Back and forth he slithered as he came, seeking a vulnerable opening.

Setting fire to the back of his neck Prideheart at last ripped the strap over his head and freed his canteen. In his mouth he gripped the looped end of the band and then rocked it steadily. The canteen swung below his chin loose, gradual, lazy, but ready.

The contenders climbed up the rest of the ramp, pony still pedaling back gently while the hound followed almost mesmerized by the canteen pendulum. At the peak the land flattened, losing Prideheart his height advantage, and the beast suddenly tensed in ambition to strike.

So the pony moved first, whipping his impromptu flail at the heckhound. Easily the monster evaded the reach of the weapon; a precise duck of his head. A second swipe followed immediately, but again the beast needed no serious effort dodge it.

At the third stroke the maddened heckhound pushed his ferocity and fetched the flying canteen nimbly out of the air with his teeth, snatched as perfectly as a well-trained mutt catches a ball. His squeezing fangs slightly deformed the item's shell, and his ruthless growl spilled bubbling drool over it. Triumphant, he brought his invincible sneer into the face of the now disarmed pony.

But Prideheart answered by simply dropping the strap and charging the monster. One solid blow under the chin and the beast's own jaws shredded the canteen.

The explosion of water splashed down the heckhound's throat, each drop sizzling loudly. Wads of wet, black smoke fled in clumps as a fit of hoarse gagging attacked him, and he collapsed onto his side. With paws clasped to his neck he coughed and hacked and spat, always finding more smog to spew while he struggled to breath. Tiny little tears of fire crawled out of the corners of his eyes.

Stepping back, Prideheart saw the horde of hounds down below emerging onto the third terrace. They never tired, they never slowed, and they seemed always only moments from his tail.

He wasted no time and went to rejoin Bookworm, disheartened to find that she hadn't gone far. Paused just a few paces from the ramp she had rather enjoyed watching the brief brawl between pony and hound, and such a proud smile pranced across her face for the hero's shrewd solution.

"Onwards!" he again tugged and turned her, pushing her ahead of himself.

There were no more tricky climbs left to exploit now that they were on the top level. The terrain instead spread freely away from them, transforming into the bumpy hills that mile after mile eventually grew into the Pearl Peaks. That open land was hardly a path of escape, especially with all the tiring ups and downs that would eat the strength of legs so old and so young.

However, immediately about the top of the ramp the ground had been flattened smooth; in fact, leveled perfectly so. Long ago quarry ponies had cleared it for their own needs. Another trolley track sat off to the side, complete with cobweb-coated wooden stop and parched ore cart. Identical to all the quarry's trains it shot straight to the terrace edge and vanished back down into the quarry. More prominent about the area was the four long buildings constructed in traditional Stony Nook style; muscled stone dressed with skimpy wooden frames and hay hats. They still stood in sturdy condition for all of their abandoned years. In their more glorious past they were once the lodgings of the quarry workers; where ponies had slept, eaten, bathed, and rested during their days-long excursions at the site.

Waddling along with unsatisfactory speed Bookworm regarded the structures as a ghostly mockery of her home. The windows were lightless, whistling a haunted tune wherever they were cracked enough to let wind through. The untended hay on top had for years been thinning, shriveling bald like an elderly mane or that of a decomposing corpse. Here and there lined against the buildings' sides were unloved batches of wood, once leftover beams or boxes or tools but now only unburied bones. Even the stone faces of the structures had a deathly cold to them, with slimy trails of green sneaking out from every nook and crack like on forgotten tombstones.

Not that the spooky scene wasn't interesting to her. It started her imaginative mind rolling.

"Maybe we could hide in one of them," she suggested pleasantly to Prideheart.

The stallion was too swarmed by chaos to waste time reprimanding her inexperienced imagination. Aimlessly he continued to push her forwards, his eye running wild over the area and begging each detail it came across to show him her salvation. But everything he searched contorted into nothingness in the panic of his mind, like screaming out into a vast canyon and hearing no echo. Every spouting thought was shouted down by a merciless howl, or bark, or snarl; awful noises plucked from the many examples closing in on the ponies.

It came to him late; an answer which glittered with the only hope this situation had; a realization of the only wall he could build between filly and fell-fire.

"Here! Here, come! Now, climb within!" Prideheart prodded and shoved the filly all the way to the quiet cart waiting for them on the trolley tracks.

Bookworm, though unable to read his intentions, gave no resistance. Rearing on her hind hoofs she stretched tall, but not nearly able to reach the top of the cart's high walls she bounced to try and catch their edge. As she hopped she remarked questionably, "I don't think hiding here will fool them, mister."

"Nevermind! In!"

He threw his neck under her and flipped her into the cart. She, of course, tumbled inside with a giggle.

Immediately he wedged his front into the tight space between track stop and ore cart, putting all his weight onto the cart to try and grow some room. Fairly easily the wheels creaked, grinding rust only in small amounts. As soon as the gap was large enough he stepped fully inside and rammed his leveled head against the metal cart. The ear-breaking gong it rang in his brain he ignored, the stiff surface sharply scraping against the sensitive tip of his broken horn he endured, and all his remaining menagerie of pains crying for equal attention he shut out. Pulling against the wooden cross-ties for better traction he pushed the cart forward, with each step imparting more speed into it as he rolled it towards the terrace edge.

From within the cart Bookworm was now tall enough to latch her hooves over its walls and peek out, first beaming at her laboring companion. She then shifted to face the oncoming avalanche of heckhounds which poured from the ramp top.

"Here they come!" she warned Prideheart, none of her immersed joy missing.

The stallion seized any last shred of strength he could find, taken from every corner of himself forgotten or not, and he launched his desperation into the cart hard. He was galloping when he finally felt gravity start to snag his invaluable load. Below him the ground disappeared, replaced with trestles as the tracks went into their downward curve, and the cart's blazing wheels brought it slowly away from the speeding stallion. Before it could escape he clasped his forehooves on its back and vaulted up, but his busy and tired legs produced an insufficient leap. Left hanging he fumbled against the metal frame and instead simply clutched tight for the ride ahead.

Heckhounds swarmed behind the fleeing ponies, and the closest of them went for a flying bite at Prideheart just as the cart swooped over the edge. The loud clap of his jaws was empty, but the chomp had been close enough to have nabbed any flea unfortunate enough to have been resting on the tail of the pony's cloak.

The cart rocketed down the slope so quickly it moved faster than its wheels could spin. They screeched as they slid hot until the whole vehicle, not obese with heavy stones like it normally would have been, lifted an inch into the air.

Crash!

The world shook when it smashed back onto the tracks, hitting the third level landing and losing none of its blinding speed. Prideheart was jerked but held as the bucket's steel shell rattled with thunder, and Bookworm laughed as she was tossed about inside. There was no moment to catch a breath; the cart blasted over the next drop almost immediately.

Crash!

The second level landing walloped the chart, freshly testing the stallion's tenuous grip and flinging the filly for another fun flip. Then the air floated them up one last time.

Crash!

They hit the basin still at full speed, nearly knocking Prideheart loose. He redoubled his grip and pulled himself up, peering into the wind blasting over the cart as it screamed across the quarry floor. The wooden stop just ahead seemed an oncoming train.

He braced, shouting for Bookworm to do the same, and only a moment later the cart plowed into the end of its track. Its burning wheels froze and its body rolled instead, the back-half turning end over front while taking the stallion with it. But as the flung cart went vertical its top rim slapped against the large stop, producing a explosion of long-settled dust from the lonely wooden structure. Yet the stop actually succeeded in its eponymous job; it repelled the cart, bouncing it back where it slammed its wheels onto the track again. Nearly all of its momentum had been robbed and it gently rolled backwards only a short distance.

At the peak of the crash Prideheart's forehooves had been pinched between wood and metal, and he was torn free by the hit. The old wooden beams of the stop cracked when he was thrown into them, but the pony too was ultimately deflected by the structure. He flopped down onto the end of the track with a thud, landing in the small space between stop and cart.

"Bookworm! Bookworm!"

Off the tracks he peeled himself quickly, a painful dizziness disorienting him and coughing from the dust invading his throat. But all his concern was for inside the cart, and he reared up to look in.

The filly lay on her back against the cold cart floor and, though her eyes had a little spin and some dust had spritzed her mane, she was quite alright. Still she giggled.

"Exit! Swiftly now!" commanded the stallion frantically. He lowered a hoof in to help her out.

While he hoisted the filly he left his eye on the enemy. The angry, flummoxed heckhounds were high in the quarry, but they were already breaking to pursue. Some tried to run their way down the tracks' thin slope, interfering with each other in their usual selfish fashion, and many others were doubling back to race down the ramps. A few very bold ones leapt straight over the edge down to the third terrace, seemingly to no lasting damage greater than momentary discomfort.

They were fast. Hungry. Relentless.

"Hurry!" Prideheart ordered.

Bookworm landed out of the cart and buzzed her head to free some of the trapped dust.

"Where?" she asked.

The ponies had crashed where all of the quarry's tracks led. No matter what level a track started on they all flowed down to this specific place at the north end of the quarry. It was the destination of all the quarry's bounty:

The dock. For shipment by river to Stony Nook.

Once more getting behind the filly Prideheart shoved her, urging her towards the dock and the lone flatboat waiting there. The river water was the only other shield for her besides the stallion's own body.

Spying the dock ahead Bookworm realized the stallion's plan. She grew quickly out of needing the older pony's exhortations and skipped ahead of him, remarking again about his heroic cleverness. Her clops changed from rugged claps to soft clunks as she went from rocky floor to wooden boards. Underneath, the water which swirled in the small pony-made bay forever mumbled in discontent, very eager to rejoin the rush of the river proper. For too many years it had been trying to pull the flatboat away with it but the barge had only ever waved and teetered in place. Two stumpy wooden bollards moored the boat, rope wrapped just under their bulbous heads.

"Enter!" Prideheart implored her, limping as he caught up.

The filly faced away from him to inspect the nearest bollard. She prodded the old, heavy rope tied about its scrawny neck like a fancy bow, still tight.

"Mister," she said plain and unworried, "we have to untie it first."

Again she looked over the knot, thinking of perhaps nabbing the loosest part with her teeth and tugging. Just as she was preparing herself for what was surely going to be a disgusting moldy taste she heard a frightening crack from behind, and she whirled about to see.

The other bollard's head had been torn clean from the rest of it by one fast buck. It flew away until the rope still tied to it snapped taut, and then it miserably plopped into the water.

"Enter!" begged Prideheart again. He hobbled around her and readied to destroy the other bollard.

The flatboat, now unmoored on one side, was tempted by the lure of the river. Its tickled front end tested the happier water, and with that small taste it only yearned stronger to sail as it once had years ago.

Bookworm for the first time actually felt a spur of haste inside herself and she skittered up to the dock edge near the intact bollard where the boat was still close. She bounced over its low siding, only briefly getting her hind legs caught.

No sooner had he seen her hooves leave the dock did the stallion fire his next buck. However by thoughtless mistake he leaned too much of his weight onto his terribly impaired knee, spiking his ache, and it spoiled his shot. His kicking leg balked from lost strength, his hoof only glanced the post, and though splinters were chipped it was left intact. The pony slipped into a fall from both the loss of stability and the awkward redirection of his deflected strike.

The self-damnation he but mumbled nearly overpowered the nasty noises from the horde of heckhounds rumbling across the quarry. Already the monsters were in the basin blitzing over it, and of the closest hounds the stallion could see the strings of spittle hanging between the fangs of their open mouths.

To his hooves Prideheart rose with a quaking shudder, and immediately he went into another buck. This time he was better balanced, fueled by enraged desperation, and the head of the bollard ripped straight off.

The river didn't delay in stealing the flatboat, and nor did the stallion with his jump. His effort was unfortunately weak, coming too fast after his buck, but as the barge was only just beginning to build speed he cleared the short gap regardless. Barely. Only his front half managed to make it over the boat's siding. Scrambling and kicking he eventually tugged himself over.

The flatboat was an ore barge of the most straightforwardly simple design: a level floor where stones could be laid or stacked in whatever piles made the most sense, sidings that were only leg high, and at the stern was a platform raised but one step up. Back there sat the boat's single steering oar mounted dead center; a sizable sculling oar. The whole oar had long been dry, the bladed end lifted out of the water and the greater share of the shaft cutting downwards through the plain Y-shaped rowlock which held it in place, the handle tip poking into the floor of the boat. Only one pony was needed to steer the barge down the river, but none too many would have fit on board anyway if it had been carrying the small cottage's worth of stone it could fit.

Prideheart grasped the oar in his mouth, leveled it horizontal, shoved it out, and then stabbed the water with the blade. Riding in a boat was something he had never done in his life, let alone steer one with a scull. But the water only protected Bookworm if the gap between bank and barge was big enough to be a barrier to the agile heckhounds, and the river alone simply wasn't pulling the boat away fast enough.

He angled the oar how he best hoped was correct and then the stallion pushed a stroke. The water's tough resistance he felt channeled through shaft, pushing back on him, but as he carried through he sensed the forward thrust his stroke had imparted.

However he also felt the bow turn slightly shoreward.

Fidgeting wildly he sliced the oar up out of the water, twisting it this way and that way in panic as he tried to work out the physics in his scattered head. It should have only been a matter of reversing his stroke, and he knew that, but the oppressive danger of the moment and the enormous stupidity of his blunder had stalled him into second-guessing each of his second guesses.

And then time ran out.

The first two heckhounds charged onto the dock, the flatboat not yet past the end of it, and without pause they reached the edge and leapt through the air. Arcing over water and siding they both crashed aboard the barge, their reckless dives eliciting a surprised shriek from Bookworm. One of them skid into the port siding after landing while the other had a much more nimble touchdown in the center of the boat.

Prideheart yanked forward the oar already in his grasp with one powerful pull, and it slid inwards until the bladed end smacked against the rowlock. Holding tight the base he snapped it in one direction with all his might, and the handle end concordantly whipped across the boat where it thwacked the portside heckhound square in the face. The blow carried through, shoving the beast over the side and into the water where he yipped and sizzled as his fire was quenched.

Swiftly the stallion swung his makeshift weapon back the other way, aiming for the remaining heckhound. But the further monster was more prepared; to stay safe he didn't have to do anything more than take a step out of range. The two combatants traded threats a few times, empty swats of the oar versus the snips of a fiery muzzle, but eventually the heckhound decided that there was an easier target: Bookworm behind him.

In the small boat he really only had to turn around to corner her, and his dreadful bulk looming over the tiny pony coated her whole in a red shadow.

But the filly didn't shrink back. Rather, in clear mimicry of what she had seen before, she unslung her knapsack and took its strap into her mouth. She put an easy swing into it, drifting it back and forth.

The monster wasn't perturbed in the least by her defensive showing and he stomped his paw forward, thrusting his glowing snarl into her face. She responded by slapping him on the cheek with her bag.

The weight of her school supplies gave the attack all the hardness of homework, but unfortunately it was fueled only by the fledgling strength of a filly; a pat of a pillow, and nothing more. The absurd softness of the hit did surprise the heckhound though, who stood his head up and merely blinked several times over while he pondered about whether that really just happened.

Prideheart rammed the hound from behind, driving the beast past the filly. His charge didn't end with his strike and he pushed the monster along, aiming to throw him over the bow of the boat, but the heckhound was able to right himself enough to resist. Failing to get the necessary lift the stallion instead held his foe in a fragile pin against the bow's siding, hooves locking down throat and paw as best he could while the violent beast thrashed about in struggle.

"Bookworm!" Prideheart called. "The oar! Steer us away from the bank!"

She dropped her bag and raced over to the stern where she pushed the oar back into the water, yet she didn't quite own the necessary size to take the reins like a real driver would. She mostly moved the oar about by wrapping her hooves around it from below and hanging her weight where she wanted it to go. But it was enough. And, unlike Prideheart's inexperience, the knowledgeable filly had read books before about the famous river traders of the Damazon rainforest and thus had the wits to improvise some impressively decent control over the boat. With a slow slush of the blade underwater the barge began to creak away from the shore.

On the dock heckhound after heckhound had piled up. The river had hauled the boat far enough from the small bay that the hounds in front had gotten too nervous to take jumps, much to the anger of their more eager (or less wise) brothers behind them. Harassing howls were traded around, but meanwhile other heckhounds had doubled back and lined up on the river bank slightly downstream, readying leaps for when the boat passed near.

And when it came, the first of the beasts crouched in preparation. He was about to launch when Bookworm's turn took effect. The zealous hound misfired, hesitating not enough to fully stop his spring, and he popped a small hop in the air before plopping into the shallows of the river.

On board, Prideheart's weary strength couldn't compare to that of the hulking hound's. Every time the monster unleashed a fierce quake it threw off the stallion, and he only managed to reassert him by recklessly disregarding the scratches his body and cloak were taking.

For the furious beast's part, even if victory was inevitable he lost the patience to wait for it. He changed tactics, making use of his blazing anger to ball up some fire in his throat.

The pony recognized the signs and knew enough to back off immediately. His early defense kept him relatively safe: the spat fireball burst against his covered shoulder without doing any real damage.

But the heckhound exploited the opening aggressively. He returned the stallion's earlier charge, knocking the pony off his hooves with ease. Teeth bared, eyes alight, the hound licked his lips and opened his maw for a huge, juicy bite.

From the riverbank came impatient baying together in a whole restless chorus. One particular howl rose above them all with unforgiving command, and like that it brought the attacking hound to a sudden stop.

Displeased, but frightfully obedient, the beast snorted some cinders onto the stunned stallion and then stepped over him. He approached Bookworm but made no attack or even threat towards the harmless filly. Merely he laid a bored paw on the end of the oar handle. Bookworm gave a tremendous effort to resist his pull, bringing every last ounce of her young weight counter to his direction, but of course it did nothing; the hound could have lifted a pony ten times her weight. The oar swiveled back and the flatboat started to turn towards the bank.

Paws scraped dirt and eager laughs boiled as the heckhounds lining the shore prepared to divebomb the barge.

Hanging under the oar Bookworm tugged and jerked and yanked to no avail. Now that the boat was on its dangerous course again the humongous heckhound felt free to get angry at her annoying wobbling. His paw locked the oar down and he once again brought his face to hers to press an evil growl into her.

A soft tapping on his side unexpectedly called his attention, and when he turned to look his cheek was greeted by the uninhibited force of Bookworm's knapsack, this time lashed with the strength of an adult stallion. The heavy hit lost the monster a few teeth, and though he again reacted with a high head and blinking eyes it was this time to vainly try and clear the stars from his vision before he stumbled over.

Paw no longer chaining it down, Bookworm drove the oar for another sweep and corrected the direction of the barge at the same time as three heckhounds on the bank launched themselves. The first cleared his jump, if barely making it aboard the boat. The second took a hard hit from the boat's lip right into his stomach as he landed only halfway on. A crazed panic took him immediately as the water tortured his hind paws and tail. Between painful cold, shortened breath, and frantic yelping he couldn't find the coordination to pull himself fully aboard. The third, unlucky heckhound said a prayer and held his breath as he plunged straight into the river.

Prideheart went for the fully-boarded heckhound, again and again swiping the knapsack at the monster and driving the beast towards the bow. When the stallion passed near the hound who was still struggling to climb aboard he detoured to not-so-gently persuade the monster to surrender, his convincing hind hooves adequately doing the job. The buck cost him the knapsack however, as the other heckhound took advantage of the distraction to rip it from the pony's mouth.

Then the hound went on the attack, turning the tables and pushing Prideheart towards the stern. Each time his fangs chomped through air flecks of hot slobber spilled onto the pony, and each time his razors sliced the wind they snipped a few hairs from the pony's mane. At last one of his paws landed; not on Prideheart himself but instead catching cloak near the neck. The heckhound tore the pony to the floor, ripping the clothe a little as he did so.

The snarling mad beast was about to dig into the fallen pony to pull out his bones when the handle end of the sculling oar bopped his ear. Again Bookworm had mimicked her hero, this time by having scooted the oar forward to wield it as a weapon. Yet, akin the knapsack, it in her hooves functioned much less effectively, being more like a scrawny stick used in foalhood games. The twitchy thing hopped around the heckhound's face like an irksome gnat, never doing anything more bothersome than pokes to his nose or wily bats to his chin.

At first the monster loosely swatted at it, pushing the pestering device away so that he could focus on the disabled stallion. But always the jiggling handle fast returned with an irritating vengeance, nudging his head painlessly again and again and again and again. Each little tap was another angry coin on the pile, building and building until the heckhound was absolutely wealthy with fury. He snapped.

Being a dog after all he trapped the oar in a style much as flailing dogs do. Paws lunged and crashed upon it from above, and he closed his muzzle over the handle in the course of a blink. Growling and gnawing with all the noisy ruckus of a buzzsaw, writhing his neck like a sprinting snake, he reduced the oar's tip to a pulp with hateful speed.

His blistering rage was so focused on the stupid, stupid stick that he didn't even acknowledge the filly controlling it. Nor did he catch Prideheart returning to his hooves.

The stallion tucked low and charged, ramming the heckhound's exposed underside, and he didn't stop. He galloped, monster torn from the oar and hoisted over him, carrying the beast all the way to the bow and launching the heckhound overboard when he slammed into the front siding. The water popped and sizzled as the heckhound sunk under, the flatboat burped as it rode over him, and Prideheart managed to stay aboard only because the sturdy siding bent and cracked without breaking.

The cloaked pony went to step back from the now-shaky siding but found he couldn't stand on his own. The blood sloshing back and forth in his brain played tricks with his balance, adding to the troublesome weakness of his legs. Fumbling he clasped a more solid stretch of siding and leaned on it while trying to stabilize himself.

"Mister!"

Crawling back to his paws was the dazed heckhound, much uglier now on one side of his face because of the flattened fur and gummy gaps between some fangs. His flaring temper provided enough clarity to overcome the ringing which still echoed in his ears, and however much he wanted to take out his frustration on either pony he again couldn't ignore the barking of his comrades on the riverbank. All down the river's edge they were dancing around each other, following the floating boat downstream while they waited for it to come close enough to leap aboard. Altogether their drooling anticipation was a waterfall of hot slobber into the river.

The heckhound snatched the oar in his maw, twisting it despite Bookworm's resistance so that he could scull the barge back towards the bank.

But as he went to pull Prideheart seized the oar too, standing on the opposite side right next to the filly. Together the ponies countered every one of the monster's rabid jolts (though admittedly it was the stallion who provided most of their strength). The tug-of-war stayed a stalemate, with the heckhound's grip on the handle only digging in as he pulled and pulled. Each effort found him growing more lucid and more fierce, gaining power if anything, while the stallion felt his own body loosening from exhaustion. Soon the heckhound would give a pull too large for him prevent.

Which is something the pony suddenly realized he wanted.

When the monster hissed his worst growl and snapped his jaws forward on the handle to take his biggest tug, Prideheart shoved the filly back while releasing the oar himself.

The heckhound pulled so hard that, with the resistance suddenly absent, he tripped over himself and stumbled backwards. The oar popped out of his mouth and he collided with the edge of the boat. Up he went, paddling paws in the air like he was doggedly trying to surface from underwater, and perhaps all of his efforts actually did buy him a single extra moment of enjoying the fresh air. Over the side he rolled and down into the drink, snuffing out his fire.

Prideheart grabbed the oar before it bounced out of its rowlock, and he scrambled to orient it correctly so as to reverse the heckhound's final parting momentum towards the bank. Though he still struggled with his confusion over steering the boat, Bookworm came next to him and reached up, taking a calm and wise hold of the handle. Wordlessly she guided the older pony through the stroke. It arrested their wrong motion and turned them towards the center of the river, away from harm.

The stallion stayed in position, holding oar and ready to nudge the barge steady as proved necessary, but Bookworm felt confident enough to let go. She wandered up to the stern and stood her forehooves on the siding, looking back.

The defeated dogs swam their soggy selves back to shore. Of the dry heckhounds a few were still trailing the boat on the bank, but their zeal was decreasing by the second. Most of the remaining hounds had come to a stop. It wasn't that they couldn't have followed; the barge was adopting the speed of the river but for a good while longer the hounds could have raced hard enough to have kept up. It was solely that there was no point; nowhere was the river going to be narrow enough to allow them the chance to vault aboard. And if there were any heckhounds dumb enough to have tried anyway they dared not. The clear, harsh signal not to continue the chase had been thrust into them with a sharp howl.

Standing out amongst the pack of hounds was Kerby, tall above the others and silent as death. He was frozen still on the bank. The lights of his eyes, one still swollen and dimmed, never left the cloaked stallion. They lingered like a long day's sun never setting, only instead of giving cool shine they smoked with the depths of smoldering charcoal.

It was a stare Prideheart returned with both his eyes – life and death – until the barge wound far enough down the river that the horrible hound's hostile gaze was hidden behind clouding scenery.

Bookworm waited in her spot too, watching for any heckhounds to reappear. But they never did.

"Yahoo!" she reared off the siding and kicked her legs in celebration. "We did it, mister! Just like Star Swirl the Bearded!"

She turned around and looked at him with eyes so full of fabled poetry but not the age to turn it into beautiful verse, except to tell him, "You really are the hero you said you were!"

Prideheart, still latched to the oar and determined to keep them in the river's center despite the passing of the danger, slouched down. Each gasp wanted to slow into a regular breath, but he labored as the feelings in his wounds slipped back into his senses bit by bit.

"Woah," Bookworm remarked, worried at the sight. "Are you alright, mister?"

The heart in his chest throbbed against his ribcage like its walls were going to burst. His long-suffering knee wept and wept and wept, even as all sensation faded away except for the sting which penetrated from skin to bone marrow. Every sound that entered his ear was distorted by the iron bubbles bouncing about inside his skull, tilting his dizzy head in either direction with their randomly shifting weight. A thousand ants with bladed feet prickled across his chest and belly. Bruises he didn't remember receiving clamored for his attention, he discovered a kink in his neck as deep as a canyon, and his famished muscles choked in anguish over their deficit of strength. His body would rather that he had crossed the Pearl Peaks again.

"Come on," Bookworm delivered with oddly uplifting cheer, "there's no way that was nearly as bad as fighting off a few bull weevils, right?"

The battered pony weakly lifted his good eye up at the filly. He took her in: her bright orange fur not stained with a single drop of red or discolored with any splotch of blue or yellow, her little tail sprouting full without a droop, her happy eyes pure crystals without flaw or scratch, the lovely braid of her mane twisted like rope completely unfrayed and having not a single thread poking out.

She was perfect and pristine, save for a smattering of stone dust over her which proved that she had approached the quarry fire and escaped unburned.

The spent, beaten, sagging, damaged pony grinned large.

"Verily!"

Chapter 9: From Out That Shadow

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Fortunately there wasn't much in Prideheart's stomach for him to get queasy over.

It wasn't long before the river seized a strong hold on the flatboat and bumped the vessel along its vigorously swift current. Though it was far from a dangerous ride (not nearly as perilous as the quarry itself had been, certainly) the river didn't care to shower leisure or comfort upon its guests. It barely recognized the concepts of 'straight' and 'smooth.' Again and again the jagged current rocked, jostled, wobbled, and rolled the bouncing boat in ways that were not nearly as large as an earthquake but were always frequent and unexpected.

Bookworm and her invincible youth didn't have much trouble with the shaky ride. Her rubber body handled the jumps and wiggles of the boat with counter movements so natural that it was hard to imagine she hadn't been born on the water. The stallion however showed no such ease. In all the last several days his one lonely apple had thankfully left him just below the threshold of strength necessary to vomit a stomach of empty air. As it was he still had to lock his focus down tight, concentrating on his shallow, strong breaths which came to him weaker and weaker as the journey dragged on.

He maintained a station at the stern where he never let go of the sculling oar, and as best he could he guided the barge down the center of the river. The river itself did a healthy portion of the work despite its bumpy grumpiness, and whatever more potential trouble there could have been was averted by Bookworm who was delighted to be of assistance. She had no trouble recognizing the stallion's struggle against unfamiliarity, and so she kept a place at his side with her hooves on the oar where she pushed and pulled to help guide the way. All the while she rambled happily, reciting everything she thought she knew about steering barges, all picked up from a dozen different books near and far from the subject itself.

Before long Prideheart had developed enough of a bare talent for the task that even in his weakened state he was able to handle it significantly better without her direct help. The smoother ride allowed him some focus on taming the wailing parts of his body, and he encouraged Bookworm also to rest for the drifting journey back to Stony Nook. Behind their eastbound barge the sleepy sun was fading, preparing to make its bed in the Pearl Peaks.

Free of responsibility the filly recovered her knapsack from the flatboat floor. But when she picked it up she immediately felt something wrong, and she set it back down before flipping it open and peering in.

"Aww," she moaned lightly. "My ink bottle broke."

She tilted the knapsack nearly all the way over, far enough for one of her school workbooks to poke its head out. Blue and black ink had granted the flimsy book a new, unreadable cover and had also soaked in thoroughly enough to have camouflaged the words on each page with exceptional secrecy.

But Bookworm ultimately found her tiny misfortune more funny than disappointing. In jolly spirits she lifted the bag back up, let the stained book slide back in with a plop, tucked the flap shut once more, and then thanked heaven for small favors.

"At least I didn't have any good books in it!"

"Be grateful to have broken only your inkwell," Prideheart said. A hoarse cough invaded his voice as he spoke.

"Nah, we whomped those dumb heckhounds!" she laughed. "They never had a chance!"

The weary stallion endured a cold shiver, troubled as ever by the filly's stubborn and fantastic imagination. He eased the oar lightly out of the water and let it rest, comfortable enough with the boat's course, and then he set his own tired body against the stern.

"To me you swore a promise that you would obey my commands," he reminded her grimly. "Such was the very condition on which I accepted your companionship."

"Yeah, I know," the young pony groaned. The frivolity she had been freely trading in fled quickly, leaving behind a wash of frustration. In a way she was truly aghast that the issue still bothered him, as if it hadn't all worked out well. "But what kind of ordinary pony hero would I be if I left somepony all alone with a pack of heckhounds?"

Prideheart forced an angry sigh through his teeth. The official reprimand of a commander and the disappointed harshness of a parent came out as he chastised her, "And what kind of pony are you now that you have trampled an oath underhoof? I have before felt good promises betrayed, young Bookworm, and I did not hope for such honorless disaster to come from you! I beseech you: be not like those I despise, who boast vows they cannot keep."

The physical memories of forty years ago came back into him like they always did. But this time, for once, even his dragon-wound seemed too fatigued to fully ignite its burning pain. It simply buzzed him with a heavy tingle.

"... inflated ponies whose bright and shining faces hide their failures unforgivable."

His accusation struck the filly hard. Not only had it been delivered with such emphatic venom, even if not intended towards her, but it had also been targeted so precisely at the places of honor and respect that a foal well understood. Frantically she pleaded in reply, "I wasn't lying!"

"You promised!"

"I know!" she gasped. "And I really meant it when I did!"

What hurt the stallion the most was her sincerity. His depth of experience allowed him to recognize when ponies her age were trying to peddle serious untruths, for they simply didn't have the practiced face for it like a charlatan might. Honesty was within her. She fully believed herself; fully believed that she had taken her promise to heart when it had first been sworn. Oh! If so, then how shamelessly fast she had been to have disregarded it as soon as it had suited her!

"What value," he asked of her sadly, "do your promises retain if your whims can slay them whenever you wish? What value, if you do not hold them strong when the choice is hard? Do you truly not see your mistake?"

"Mistake?" Her agitation greatly grew, reaching an age beyond her years. She stepped before him and stomped her hooves upon the boat bottom. "You were going to fight the heckhounds all by yourself!"

Prideheart's temper flared; or at least, it did what little it could to blaze up. So tired was he that he could hardly raise his voice, and what came out sounded like softened stones grinding in his throat.

"Yes, alone! And you away, so as to protect you! No hurt, no harm, no scratch, no scrape! None for you, on my life! That is why I commanded you away! Never would I have accepted your companionship had I not had your own promise to guard you with! Please, can you not understand this?!"

But though he ranted at her with sure authority, elsewhere in the thunder of his pounding head some part him told a different story to himself:

Liar! Selfish deceiver! Her mistake? What of your own, 'hero?' Leading a foal towards danger out of desire for happy company? She was no less a tool for you than your former canteen! And with the same abandon you would have thrown her into the jaws of Tartarus' dogs!

Her, like the rest!

"Mister!" the distraught Bookworm woke him up with her wounded howl. She had been trying very hard to claim his fractured attention.

She insisted, "Of course I understand all that! I know you didn't want me near the heckhounds cause you didn't want me to get hurt! Dad did the same thing! But it's like you said before: a hero has to do the right thing, no matter what else! And just like in the best stories, the hero tells their friends to leave but then they always come back and wind up being a big help!"

The brutality of the stallion's weariness was so fierce, the drain of his battered body so exhausting, the ache of his whimpering heart so frail; that he actually came close to weeping in distress at her continued confusion between fiction and reality.

"This is no fable, young filly!" he warned her.

And it was just about the most horrid thing he could have ever said to her.

The younger pony shrunk as she backed down; not in defeat, but in despair. She wandered away from the stallion, to the corner where the stern met the starboard side, and her every step had that impossible foalhood mix of sorrow and indignation: nothing so foolishly vengeful enough to swear that she would hold her breath until her face turned blue, but also not pouting enough to lose all control and burst open in tears. She stood and draped her hooves over boat's edge, her head lifted so low that her chin hovered just above the wood, and she gazed at the sparkles which danced upon the mountains' outlines as the hidden sun pulled more and more of its final color down behind them. It was a powerful and beautiful sight: the last light of the sun twinkling goodbye before the blue promise of night came.

But in the morning the sun always returned.

Aloud, with a shaky disappointment in her voice, she moaned, "I came back because I cared about you more than I cared about my promise."

"... Are the two not the same thing?" Prideheart claimed after a long and perturbed quiet, himself having supreme difficulty speaking at her cold and grieving backside.

"No!" she painfully insisted, gasping and turning her head at him. Her hooves scraped and scratched on the wood, her throat pulsed in shivers, and her tail threw itself down in an tantrum on the floor. A pack of a thousand heckhounds chasing her couldn't have upset her as much, and she filled with the everyday world-shattering distress of a young filly.

Prideheart, still quietly horrified at the sight of the distraught child even if he was otherwise so practiced in the most unbalanced moods of foals, had to labor hard to give the lesson, "If... you do not care to honor a promise to me... then... you do not care to honor me."

He watched reluctantly as his each hushed word drove Bookworm further away. Little did it matter how much kind wisdom he had weakly tried to levy; to her it still reeked of nasty accusation, doubting her motives and claiming to know her better than herself. She withdrew inwards, bubbling with the kind of pain that intentionally confused love and loathing, and because she had no rational thoughts to counter him with she only silently built her way up to an explosion of indiscriminate emotion. The way she shook was recognizable to anypony who had spent but a day watching over an immature child, though it still hurt him to witness her taking such a young, foolish despair onto herself.

And finally her bomb of bitter, reckless, ignorant feelings burst. Hoping to do maximum damage she cried out with loud, squeaking, wounded, vengeful, small anger:

"Well then my dad must hate me a lot!!"

Then with one great sour sob she huffed and faced away again, crashing all of her weight against the boat's side. There weren't any whimpers from her after that, but the breaths she took rumbled in and soared out with hisses of resent and sorrow.

No matter how predictable her sound, no matter how many times he had coached a foal in the midst of common angst, this particular instance wounded Prideheart deeply. And like all the times before with this filly, it wasn't her fault. She had plunged the knife so far in without even having realized it.

"... No...," he tried so hard to be the adult soundly rejecting her silly assertion. Yet he had no strength in him; not in his battered body, but even less in his sorry soul. "From a-all you have t-told me of him, much better could he t-treat you... B-But... you should not feel that he-, he-... that he-... You cannot believe that he-... he-..."

She lifted herself up only to slam her body again, and the hit broke open whatever wall had been holding back her outraged disappointments against her father.

"He makes a lot of promises that he doesn't keep either! Even after he comes back from being gone and makes me do everything he says and never listens; he still doesn't do everything he promises! It's always Miss Crumble Pie who tricks him into doing the stuff he said he was going to! And when I tell him-, when I tell him he said he'd do this or that but then he didn't, he always says he 'sorry,' and he always says he 'really cares,' and he says I'm always supposed to know that he's 'sorry' and that he 'really cares,' but if he's not any good with his promises then maybe he doesn't really care at all!"

It was hard to distinguish the truth from the natural embellishments that seeped into young worldviews, especially ones so momentarily contorted. Even after her blazing rant she still didn't sob or heave or bawl. She just again let her shivering, frustrated, furious weight slap against boat's edge.

"... No...," Prideheart whispered again, even weaker and more ineffectual than before. Bookworm scarcely heard it. She didn't heard it at all when his voice died further, becoming a ghostly echo as he added, "... about her I did care..."

His tiny denial did nothing to defuse the filly, and after several moments she rumbled and struck herself against the boat for yet another time. But then instead of crying out or spitting more fire she suddenly softened, slinking down lower.

"He does read me stories still, though... so he must care a little I guess...," she spoke sadly into the corner of the boat, letting in the first glimmer of real truth now that she had emptied out all her knotted frustration.

And then it was as if the sloshing of the river murmured some secret encouragement back to her. Her head snapped up, then her body fully, and she faced the stallion, strengthened by some firm decision within even if she was still sorely unhappy. Whether from his earlier guidance or not, no more was she going to bend to the inevitable will of fathers. She was going to demand better.

"I know broken promises hurt! But if keeping my promise was going to get you hurt even worse than breaking it was, then it was a bad promise! I don't want to break promises but I'll break every promise I have to, especially bad promises, to do the right thing. Just like you said."

Prideheart rendered no reply. His mismatched eyes had fallen onto the floor, and his strengthless hoof laid dead and quiet on the oar.

The filly waited a long time for something – anything – to come out of him. Her serious resistance had after all taken her into uncharted territory, and she had little idea of what kind of response she should have expected. But he had died, crushed by the stompings of his own demons and the spiritual superiority of an ignorant filly. Eventually she gave up, resigning herself entirely to her feelings of grief over how her first amazing adventure had come to such a stupid and upsetting end. After a low humph she turned away to sink into quiet sulking.

Until...

"... You are right..."

The new words entered her ears and tickled them in a way she had never felt before. Never had she been granted such genuinely submissive words; not in that fatherly tone he had given them over with. Rubbing her eyes she looked back at the stallion slumped over his oar in surrender.

"You... are right, Bookworm," he said again and nodded faintly. "Once... long ago... I too gave my promise in reply to an order. But in the darkest moment I broke my promise; I violated my order... and I was right to have done so. Many would have suffered... Many would have perished... How noble you are that you perceive such wisdom, again showing your great worth, though small and sometimes naif you otherwise are... Understand – oh do understand – that I still quiver from the danger you faced today, and wishing you away was only out of love. If I have many means to protect a dear pony, and means of absence is best, would I not be right to push that course hardest? Say please that you see my words' truth..."

She took a step towards him, then another, and then in one big rush trotted into him, vanquishing every trace of her riled sadness. She did her best not to interrupt his idle hold on the oar as she got her hooves around him and snuggled up against him.

"Oh mister, of course I understand! You were just being the good hero that does their best to save everypony! I'm sorry I made that bad promise to you. I guess I shouldn't promise to do everything you say. But I can promise – super promise – to listen to you about being an ordinary pony hero, since you must know what you're talking about cause you're such a real hero! And that's a promise I'll never have to break, right?"

Many worries spoke up in Prideheart's mind, but he pushed them to silence in favor of taking the small happiness for what it was. At least now she was no longer distraught. His leg was too stiff to properly return her fondness, so he only managed to drape the sagging limb a little around her.

"Mm... My little pony hero," he called her.

She squeezed harder, pressing her lifted chin against him and beaming up at him.

They stayed held together through the sways and the swishes of the boat until one untidy motion threw them enough to urge the stallion to regrip the oar. Bookworm again reached up to help him and together they dumped it back into the water and before quickly returning the boat to normal turbulence. When finished she left the oar to Prideheart's care, still smiling up at him.

"So, what do we do when we get back to Stony Nook?" she asked.

The stallion's weak legs gave the oar a feeble, corrective pull.

"Warn them," he said in his hoarse, battered voice. "The hounds have dark designs for your home. Tomorrow they send not one, but all their number to bring fire upon the ponies there."

"Ooooooh!" Yet again only imaginative concern came out of the filly, and she could barely hide the stars in her eyes at the exciting plot twist. "Yeah, Ms. Crumble Pie and the mayor should definitely hear about that! Okay, mister! Let's get back and save Stony Nook!"

And she stormed to the bow of the flatboat, looking ahead down the bends in the river at the far forest crawling closer in the deepening color of the evening.

The boat wobbled, then rocked with a heavy jump, and then wobbled again; all to little notice by the excited filly who absorbed the motions with ease. Prideheart continued his weary best to guide their ship smoothly, though he did shake and shutter involuntarily with each movement of the boat, and sometimes even when it wasn't so unsteady. So weakly tethered to the world was he that he started to sway far and jerk hard to each movement of the boat under him. His nose sagged over the oar, but he carried on with his limp pushes and lame pulls.

In not long Nightmare Moon began her rule of the sky from within her glowing prison, though she was weak and faint, especially compared to the night prior. She left a foreboding darkness over all the land, first upon the silent road running along the river and then tangled up around the trunks of the forest trees. Everything came under shadow except for the rims of Pearl Peaks which still clung to sunlight, but in the end they too finally surrendered and dimmed. The thick black was impenetrable enough to quiet even the usual critters and bugs who lived in night like it were day. None of them had any wish to disturb whatever could have been on the prowl under such a lightless moon.

And so the only noise through the night was the slush of the river, backed by the slapping of water against wood as the boat bounced along. Prideheart was unbothered by the unusual darkness, for to him it was better than the full brightness of an awful sun. Such searing light during the day angered his always-throbbing dead eye, so a thick night was a cold and welcome reprieve. However, the lonely silence that also came with late hours was a completely different matter. He felt fortunate to have the company of Bookworm's occasional babbling to beat back the especially brutal hush of that night.

There was just enough moon glitter on the river to keep their path visible; a sparkling road of wet stars which led back to Stony Nook. No more than weak pushes of the oar were needed to stay on course, and for over two hours the ponies flowed downriver. But even if it was a swifter and less tiring trip than their walk out had been, the stallion regardless slipped more and more from consciousness as the journey wore on. His body struggled badly under the combined weight of his earlier foodless mountain trek, the heckhound hunt over hours of road, and the freshly-escaped heated battle for a warrior too old.

When the river ran out the low hills the ponies at last saw the village again, not far off. Its sight was something of a surprise given the strict darkness, but the unusual visibility of it came from strange flickers of light which danced in front of Stony Nook like agitated fireflies blinking in rapid warning as they buzzed about in endless circles. Bookworm had never seen such a thing from her town and wondered aloud what it was. She nailed herself to the bow of the barge, stretching her eyes down the way in the hopes of catching every tiny detail as the village drew nearer.

It took many more minutes for the running water to carry them the rest of the way. The river grew wider and wider as it entered into its great bend around Stony Nook, and its fatness brought a sloth to the water which went from running, to jogging, to walking, to ambling. By that time the ponies had a clear enough glimpse of what had changed since they had left the town that same morning.

A sturdy wall had been built around the village, eight feet tall and reaching from river edge to river edge, surrounding every side not already guarded by the bending water. The lights that had been seen were no insects lost in the dark but ponies on patrol carrying lanterns in their mouths. Along the wall they paced, ten in number and spaced evenly to leave no gaps. In vigilance they marched, they stopped, they looked out into the dense blackness staring back at them, and then (usually after a faint breath) they marched again.

But for all their attention they were focused very much on the land around them, and they had not a single eye for the river. The shadowed flatboat slipped on by, catching notice from not one of the sentries.

Prideheart dimly recalled that Stony Nook had no place to dock, and as he doubted his ability to perform a proper landing anyway he did what the quarry ponies of yesteryear used to do: steered the barge straight into the shallows of the bank. The boat cut up onto the mud with only a quiet thud, and even without cargo the lazy river didn't seem interested in taking the barge back. The stern jiggled in the tiny waves while Bookworm skipped over the bow and onto the safe shore. They had landed just behind the sturdy structures on the northern half of town; in fact very near the spot Prideheart had filled his now-destroyed canteen the night before.

"Come on, mister!" the filly called in sleepless excitement, driven also somewhat by impatience for her now very slow friend.

The stallion moved worse than a snail's pace. His hoof slipped off the oar as if it had the entire weight of his body in it, stomping numb onto the boat floor. His walk towards the bow came one measly hoof at a time, dragging on so long that the night would have perhaps ended before his arrival. When he finally made it he got his forelegs over without trouble, but carrying his hind-half over was like drawing a hitched wagon up over a cliff edge. His legs wouldn't go high enough to clear. Eventually one of his careless tugs forward slid them over, but in the tumble that followed he planted his dead eye into the cold, moist earth.

The suddenness of his fall caught Bookworm unprepared with any amused laugh but she did momentarily smile. Yet it faded fast; the stallion didn't rise. Barely he even budged. His forehooves in paltry efforts pawed at the ground making no progress, and his hind legs as well twitched like branches without wind. The motions needed to stand up weren't in his bleary memory any more.

Carefully the filly crept nearer the disconcerting sight. She wanted to nudge him with her hoof, wondering if he was in fact the same strong hero who had fought his way through heckhounds hours ago, but she held back because of her imaginative fear that he might pop like a fragile bubble the instant she were to have tapped him. Instead she put her face up to his, trying to greet his half-open, glazed eye. In it she saw how faded he was; how he didn't even seem to perceive her despite that she must have taken up all his vision.

"Mister, I think you need to sleep," she worried.

His body shuffled, stimulated by the close noise, but most of his minimal new energy he pressed into objecting:

"... First... a warning..."

Bookworm grabbed the neck of his cloak and leaned herself back, giving him some guidance on which way to direct his wobbling body, and he finally started to right himself, though only tiny bits at a time.

"Everypony's probably sleeping," she said through her clenched teeth. "We can tell'em all about everything in the morning."

"... No delay...," his words mumbled out as soft as the thin breath they rode on.

A few more gentle tugs from the filly and he was at last up, though her final pull had almost enough power to throw him to the ground again. When she let go of his cloak he immediately seemed lost, wobbling with a sightless eye and numb legs. Unthinking he picked any odd direction and started forward, but after only four limp steps his worst knee collapsed. He didn't keel all the way over like before, tumbling merely into a kneel, yet he wiggled on as if he could still walk plainly; not from some inner determination but from simple, tired ignorance.

Fast, Bookworm renewed her grip. Only a little prodding was needed to straighten his leg out and get him standing once more, but she was growing rather troubled. Before he could stumble off again she rapidly assured him, "Okay, okay. I'll warn everypony. Alright, mister? But you need to go to bed!"

"... The warning..."

"I will!" she swore. "I promise!"

In an enormous effort Prideheart summoned some attention into his eye and actually managed to look at her.

"... Promise...?" he sought verification, delirious as he still was.

"I super promise!" She ushered some upset urgency into herself. "And it's not like there's any heckhounds here or anything to make it hard! I'll do it no problem!"

That pitiful amount of focus he had called up retreated. The vanishing of his strength left his face to curl down towards the ground until his lifeless nose nearly touched it.

"... Very well...," he wheezed.

"Okay! This way!" Bookworm perked up slightly, and she gently tried to pull him onwards. "We'll go to my house! I'm sure Dad can get you some blankets or something."

She had only guided him through a single step before he realized her intention. When she tried for another she was jostled by his sudden failure to move. Each of his hooves sunk into the earth with the dead weight of an anchor.

Though his head was fuzzy Prideheart remembered Scrolldozer quite clearly. But through that lucid break in his foggy mind his memory distinctly didn't show him an image of a detestable unicorn with a glowing horn. No picture came through of the pony who had flung abominable light about to wield magically-buoyant rocks as craven weapons. What did appear was a pony on a barstool whose spine had shivered at tales of roadway marauding enough to have clutched his dear filly in protective terror; a pony whose first order of business when fanged death had come was to have built a safe prison for what he had valued above life and home; a pony in love in the most frightened and loyal way.

He recalled a father. A father to a foalnapped filly.

"... No...," Prideheart whispered in weighty denial. "... No, not your home... An alley is near... It will do..."

"An alley?" Bookworm earnestly thought he was joking. But of his own will he started to move that way, threatening to collapse with every one of his uncertain steps. She threw herself in front of him to stop him.

"Oh, no no no, mister! What kind of pony sleeps in an alley?" she pleaded with him.

"... The night before, it served me..."

"What? No! No no, mister!"

Still he wanted to drag himself away and surrender his body to the cold ground. The filly reared up and put her legs on his chest, actually enough of a weight to hold his weak walk at bay, and meanwhile she racked her brain hard for a fast answer that wouldn't set off any sleepy anger he might have had.

"Uh, uh, uh...," she gulped, running her head around the back of the moon-shadowed village. Then at last, "Oh! Okay okay, mister! I know a nicer place where you can sleep and everypony'll leave you alone! Here, follow me!"

But she had no trust in his shambling legs, and rather than lead him she practically positioned herself under him and carried him. For his part he of course gave his best effort to haul his own weight, though it was very feeble because of how muddled he was by his exhaustion. Yet it was enough for the filly to nobly bear the rest of him. In many ways it wasn't different from riding the river, only now he drifted to her will than that of the water's.

They moved behind the buildings by the river, and she lead him eastward past a few homes and houses before they came upon one which had a large back lot surrounded by a low stone wall, set there to do scarcely more than keep minor river flooding out. A thin, swinging gate divided the lot from the alley. Nopony had ever bothered to have left a lock on it, certainly not in so small a town and definitely not for that short of a wall, and the filly shoved the gate open without trouble despite her load.

The night's heavy darkness made it difficult to pick out the many articles stacked about the lot. A pile of lumber might have been a miniature pyramid misplaced for a faraway desert, and the row of detached wagon wheels all leaning on one another could have been the neck of a slumbering dragon. However the filly seemed to know the layout blind and she moved right by the tricky moon-shadows, carrying the stallion towards the one big lump of blackness which was too large and solid to take any distorted shape.

It was set in a corner of the lot busy with discarded items and bullish grass grown too tall from infrequent trampling. Sprinkles of moonlight splashed off of its lumpy face, which aside from its broad bumps was otherwise smoothly curved. Up top it came to a hairy peak, yet overall it was squat and tucked low on the earth. Only when the ponies came a single step before it did its black coating recede enough to reveal that it was a round storehouse, no wider than the barge they had disembarked from and built of stone except for its hay hat and wooden door. Two skinny, tall slits were cut through on either side of the door to serve as minimal windows; the sharp but lightless eyes of a cat in the night.

Same as the lot gate, the door of the storehouse had nothing to bar intruders. Again Bookworm pushed it open with little fuss. A few moonbeams stole their way inside, but even added to the trickle of light from the windows it wasn't enough to clear the wall of black just beyond the doorway.

Prideheart felt the filly let go of him, and more by luck than design his weight fell upon the frigid and rocky doorframe. He tried to look for her – pathetic turns of his sagging head and limp winks with his eye – but his senses were so muted he couldn't perceive any distinctions between the darkness inside and the cold night outside. There was only dry grumbles in his throat, too raw and rough to be hammered into an actual call of her name.

Bookworm had hardly gone out of his reach though. She stood herself under where she knew a lantern to be, hung inside on a big metal nail just besides the door. She was quite used to not being tall enough to reach it and she didn't even bother trying. Instead, in one of her rare moments of magic, her horn glowed. Its light was small and deeply orange, indistinguishable from that of a candle's flame flickering only enough for stealthy midnight reading. Her magic groped its way up the wall and then jumped to the lantern where it found the flat metal knob which controlled the wick, and she dialed it up. After a moment longer, concentrating quite intently due to her crude and inexperienced ability, a tendril of her magic slipped inside the glass and sparked.

There was no outburst from Prideheart at the loathsome display of reviled magic. In his strengthless search for her he still hadn't found her. His dimmed good eye had caught only the odd flashing of orange color outside of his vision, something easily mistaken by his mushy mind for a more mundane lighting of the lantern.

And similar to him, even the lamplight proved sluggish and drained. The weak burst of fire from Bookworm had scarcely been enough to have lit the lantern, and its shine spread slowly. Stroke by thin stroke a brush dry with orange paint colored the scene one line at a time. Perhaps it was just the ponies' eyes being too in love with the moonlit darkness, but it seemed a long minute before there was any clarity to the scene before them.

The small storehouse, like the lot it sat in, didn't contain all that much. Mostly scattered about the dirt floor were light collections of unorderly things that were useful to such a frontier town, but not things so useful that their excess supply – tucked away in so forgettable a place – would have been remembered in an hour of sudden need. It was likely everything there had been long forgotten altogether, and new supplies had been acquired in their stead. Certainly the shelf of rusted metalwork told such a story: hooks, pegs, clamps, braces, tools; all turning in color to brown or black. There also was a pile of sewn sacks laid askew, collapsed on one side after one of them had been almost completely deflated; pillaged by a troupe of rodent thieves who probably fancied themselves quite the master criminals for their unknown heist. A leftover milling wheel, hewn from fine quality Stony Nook stone, sat by its lonesome self propped against the wall, and it looked so old that the dust piling around its chin was a longer beard than had by some of the wisest ponies.

"Sometimes when I want to get away from the sitters I hide in here," Bookworm explained. "Nopony uses this place much, so it's nice for reading and not being bothered. I don't ever hide here when Dad's around though. He'd rip the storehouse right out of the ground trying to find me!"

She gave a meek laugh, hoping that her friend might share it with her, but the stallion was slumped stiff against the doorframe and all but unconscious. Again and again his eyes squeezed shut and his head reached to touch the floor only to timidly pop up in a weak startle a moment later.

Quietly the filly took on much of Prideheart's weight again. He was even heavier than before, but it hardly mattered as there was so little distance left to take him. Just a few steps in and already they were near the other side of the tiny room, and set there on the dirt was a flat heap of hay laid down like a rug, mostly still in soft condition. It would have been good for patching holes in the town's roofs if anypony had remembered the extra were there. Not so tall as to be a pile, but also not so thin as to inherit the ground's hardness, it was perfectly wide and long enough for just one pony to rest on, as if it had been ready-made to act as a bed.

"Here; you can lay down here, mister," Bookworm said, and she let him go, biting her lip with the hope that he wouldn't tumble over.

The still-nodding stallion wobbled and weaved in place, and his hooves took tiny jumps like he might take a step in no particular direction. Eventually he seemed to understand he had come at last to his destination, and he entered into his cloak and drew up his small travel satchel. After a miserable effort he managed to open it, and he pulled on a tuft of his woven blanket which poked out. It came reluctantly, and not all the way at that. Again he tugged, getting a little more, and then again with his empty strength. One last pull brought it the rest of the way out, but the piecemeal pulls had gotten it out long and twisted instead of neatly wide and flat. However his numb mouth didn't bother with it, and he simply dropped over the hay where it landed in a tangle without taking any comfy shape at all.

That was the final sliver of willpower the pony had in him. As he bent low to lay down he merely gave up, flopping his right side onto the creased, bent, shamble of a blanket and the bed of hay underneath. No groan or grunt came from him; he fell with a cushioned thud and then there was no more sound save for the dry whispers of his weak breath crawling in and out of his nose at a tortoise's pace.

Many times over his ordeal Bookworm had fidgeted in uncertainty, thinking she should have helped him lay the blanket or have smoothed the hay, but her constant uncertainty had held her back. She had never read a story like this, with a battered and incapable hero. With him finally down she stood stiff for a time, watching him lay there lifelessly. He faced the wall, his back to her, and through the wrapping of his cloak she couldn't even see the faint pulse of his body breathing.

"Uh," she spoke up softly after many, many loud seconds of silence had passed, "do-... do you need a bedtime story, mister?"

"... The... warning..." It trickled out of him almost without purpose, like a little puddle of drool incidentally escaping during a snore.

"Right. Okay..."

The filly took a few backwards paces towards the door and then half-turned around. But then she stalled.

Maybe it was too sneaky a thing to attempt while he was so delirious and out of his good mind, but he had never specifically sworn her to ignorance on the matter. It was at least worth one last polite try. Another time she asked him:

"Mister... what's your name?"

At this his ears flicked, though with only a frail flutter like they had been pushed by the very first descending breeze of winter. It was enough of a sign to lure the filly into waiting for a bigger response even though he immediately made no further motion or noise except for his scratchy breathing. Then, finally, his cloak puffed up with one meager catch of wind, and he brought it back out as a long, spindly sigh.

"... It... is not relevant..."

Bookworm bowed her head with the disappointment she had been anticipating, but she jerked it up again when he quite unexpectedly rolled his neck about just enough to turn a slim cut of his good eye at her. His peek hardly lasted more than a moment and then his face fell back into the hay.

He sighed another time and mumbled almost incoherently, "... So tired have I grown... of hearing my name..."

Little twinges twitched him and he shook little shuffles, and then he was motionless again. His low rasping filled the quiet storehouse once more.

The filly was very slow to renew her retreat, but eventually she did with no more than a soft, "Good night, mister." Her thoughtful melancholy didn't keep her from recalling his training on silent movement, and taking what he had taught her she disappeared almost without a sound. The creak of the door going with her as she pulled it shut was the only noise she made.

Though all his senses were dashed into dust, all his mind was cracked apart in disarray, and all his body had reached the furthest places beyond exhaustion; there was no sinking into fast sleep for Prideheart. In fact, coming to stiff rest only made things worse. It gave him enough idle recovery to maintain painful consciousness as his army of injuries used the recess to make their war upon him. Ranks of prickling tingles led the charge before detachments of awful pangs pounded on any soft points they could find. While that front was blistering with battle his throbbing aches launched their arrows at him, sometimes using burning hot ammunition and sometimes freezing cold. Any effort to quell one rebellion only invited ambushes from others elsewhere, always with new weapons: hammers, and whips, and spears, and fire, and lightning!

The only escape the pitiful pony had was to close himself away from the world and fade into his unconscious mind; a place alone in the lamplight which for forty years he had always sought to avoid, often without success. In some ways the retreat into his own pit of despair was not even his choice; he would have stayed at waking war with his body if he could have. But once the threshold of his solitary mind had been crossed – once he had fallen from the edge – he tumbled into a sea of inky darkness.

In the blackest depths of his mind, in a place stuffy with the forever-fresh smell of dragon fire, there was only a long rope of history which slithered like a snake through the ether, glowing in awful colors and screeching hideous noises and as it weaved about. The floating trail of memory repeated itself to him in flashes, sometimes as blaring pictures shouted into his face but most often as palpable sounds which shoved him down and crushed him with their unbearable weight. The monstrous rope pulsed; it would unwind and expose its discrete threads of terrible history for horrible moments before it would collapse and entwine again with the clap of a heavy hammer back into the form of one oppressive and incomprehensible rope of personal agony.

And through the living nightmare which engulfed him the stallion was pulled, drowning in the current of darkness. The rope, braided of his sorrows and his griefs and his pains and his regrets, steered him along the helpless black path until it brought him to his abyss' heart. There was the source from which it was woven, twisted together out of an aura which spilled from a familiar and unrecognizable figure: a shadow of a pony white, with golden mane shining, body lifted tall and proud to the highest heights of noble heroism; some unreal ghoul that had claimed the name 'Prideheart.' The phantom spoke with many voices, all known no matter how old they were, and the stallion heard each whisper as if the sharpest points of them were being driven into his ears and breaking through his eardrums.

The first of them faded in from far in the past:

"Lord Prideheart!"

"Again, must I remind you? Do not call me that."

"Oh. We're sorry, my lord."

"Ah! You have no lord! We have left behind any corpulent throne-sitters or fatheaded crown-wearers; vile ponies thinking themselves regal with their filth magic. We all here stand for our own lives now! None is lord above another."

"Uh... yes. Apologies, sir."

"Hmph. What is your purpose?"

"We only wished to thank you, Lord—AHEM—Sir Prideheart. This forest is a wonder! Where is the sun?; yet we have light! Where is magic?; yet we have life! All magic is devoured by these native crystals, and they give back glorious glow to us, revealing the hidden depths between the trees where we have found bounty enough to survive! You have led us safely far from Equestria, over the perilous Pearl Peaks, and at this place we have found a quiet home which is forbidden to the ponies we once called sisters and brothers! Never will they, or the magic which befouled and endangered us, find us here!"

"Home this is not. It is well, what these crystals can do. But what evil they weaken they do not wipe out. See, there, how some of the unicorns can yet shine their horns if they bring all their focus to bear? Farther still we must travel, away and away until even the longest tentacles of magic cannot reach us!"

"But my lord-"

"—!!"

"S-S-Sir Prideheart! We are weary! Plains, then hills, then mountains! And now deep into this Dryearth Forest! We do not remember the start of our arduous journey, so long has the trail been since Canterlot! What good would more journey be if it wore our hooves down to the knees? Is not this place, with crystal shields, good enough?"

"Was the Arrogant Sun good enough? No, she was not! She grew complacent lingering in magic! Deathly complacent! And so neither should we linger, even where magic is so haggard."

"But please, at least some rest then? We are but little ponies!"

"And little ponies must rise to do big things if they are to write their own destinies! Faith; you will find the determination."

"But the foals, sir! Much harder has this been for fillies and colts! New lands are first an adventure, but in time the harshness of long roads breaks into their spirits. They have bodies built for growing years, not for walking miles and climbing mountains!"

"T-The f-foals? ... Y-Yes... yes, they have admirably given more than their share..."

"Will there not be some respite for them and for us? Truly we love you for having saved us in Canterlot and for having brought us so far, Lord—SIR Prideheart, and we would go to the very ends of this world for you if you were to command it! But what is your command?"

"I-... I command no things. I am one of you all. If your will is to rest, then rest; it is not my approval you need. And you ponies I love truly. Forever I will hold to my word of deepest promise which I swore to you when we began: never shall I leave you all, and always shall I fight to keep you safe. When our strength renews, then we push farther from Equestria."

"Yes, thank you Lord Prideheart!"

"Hmph!!"

In his makeshift bed the stallion rustled uncomfortably. But no wriggling of his brought him relief. It wasn't his external wounds which drove away any solace.

And the voices carried on after they had aged a season:

"Ah! Lord Prideheart! Thank our crystal light, you have been found!"

"You have found only Prideheart; none so lordly."

"Oh, yes, our apologies!"

"What is it you need? Where comes this urgency from?"

"A dilemma terrible, sir! You are most needed to resolve this!"

"—!! What danger?!"

"Some of the pegasi wish to level platforms higher in the branches, but the earth ponies are griping that they will not be able to reach! Right away we came for you so that this impasse might be resolved! Where do we find livable balance in this matter, sir?"

"... Am I a builder? Do my wounds sear from an errant pound of hammer or a miserable slip of nail? Why do you lay your personal trifles before me?!"

"You-... you are our lord!"

"No! Not your lord!"

"But your leadership, sir! Where else could we turn to settle our differences? You guide us!"

"Guide you? Through the rigors of putting food in your own mouths? Or finding a place to lay when sleep comes? Of speaking to your fellows when you have a thought? These are not the dangers of life away from the Sun for which you need me to face!"

"Many pardons are begged, my lord! We did not wish to anger you!"

"My anger is a love! I do set down a path for you: one of self-reliance! One of strength and answers within! Submit to that example, not to the one who sets it! I am not a new Sun, ruling your days from the sky! Rule yourselves!"

"Give us humble forgiveness, Sir Prideheart! We might yet try, though we are but little ponies!"

"Little ponies! Even the littlest try as they can to learn! If you fail, simply take lesson and try again! Meanwhilst, cease beseeching me for every answer! I will levy no more judgments on which direction the leaves should fall or which wind feels best in morning!"

"But who amongst us has the wisdom to guide us through thorny issue, besides you?"

"Gr! Form a council! Discuss your minds with each other! I care not, so long as it brings you to find decisions of your own! I share of your burdens; I do not bear them for you!"

"Is-... is that what you order of us, Lord Prideheart? A council, for decisions?"

"Rrgh, yes!! My final command! And then no more do ponies look to Prideheart – who is not lord – for answers! Such relief would make this delay in the forest bearable until our departure for lands further distant."

"Might we not... stay longer, sir? It may take time for a council to settle in."

"I fear how settled we are already. But... you must gain mastership of yourselves..."

More the pony tossed and turned, as if he were trying to wrestle the phantom of himself into submissive silence. Over he flipped, burying his good eye into the hay, and his blanket twisted around him like binding rope. But even with only his dead eye catching the low flare of the lantern he could not find silent darkness.

Still the whispers came, aged by ever more seasons:

"Esteemed council, I have found and brought our lord! We may now, after great wait, come at last to order."

"If I may put forward an immediate item?: that we again thank Lord Prideheart for his place on this council and his presence with us. Let us lay no blame on him for his repeated lateness to its meetings and seek no apologies from him for delaying our starts. Too eternal is our debt to him."

"I am late because I again sought to be not present at all. No place have I on this council, as I must for yet another time insist."

"But my lord, all Dryponies have called your name whenever the question was asked: 'Who shall take this open seat at council?'"

"Indeed! None were called louder! 'Our hero! Our hero and savior, Lord Prideheart!' they chanted brighter than our forest glow! They love you, Lord Prideheart, and they cannot help but pay back to you what you are owed in adulation and honor."

"Honor unwanted. For the best of all: it is still not my place."

"I do not understand, my lord. Many times you have asked the Dryponies to exercise their own will. Surely you would not deny them the high place they have chosen for you?"

"They seek 'Lord' Prideheart for their council, but I am not such! I am Prideheart their defender! My place in front of them comes only when evil skulks nearby, and elsewhen they should set their place in front of me, forging a path of their own design."

"And their design has your voice in this council."

"Yes. Who are we to tell the Dryponies that we have denied their great hero his rightful station as selected by them? Moreover, it cannot be hidden: you love them, my lord, and would not deny beloved ponies your promised service."

"... I love them, yes, and I serve them wholeheartedly, yes. But by my love I choose to serve them only where best I can. My voice serves none if it is to substitute for sovereignty."

"Such it is not, my lord! We seek only your thoughts, to better aid in determining our outcomes."

"Lo, I have been overjoyed to have seen some matters here resolved without my senseless approval! But many things merit only silence from me. What are so many of these debated matters to me? 'Dryponies' we are now? A new name does not put fresh distance between us and Equestria. Yes! That matter of our escape is the only one my voice has championed here, and it has yet to see debate and resolution!"

"It is too soon, Lord Prideheart."

"What count of months has it been since first council? What count, since we saw first the light of crystals? What count, since last hoof left mighty mountains?!"

"Please be calm, my lord!"

"You have asked for my voice! Now I give it! Where stand we on retreat to farther lands?!"

"It is too soon. My lord, your dream of leaving foul magic forever behind is also our dream, and we will pursue it when the time is right. But at present, let us not waste the words of our council on a matter the Dryponies themselves have determined they are not ready for. In vote, I say 'nay.'"

"'Nay,' as well. And I see the rest of the council concurs."

"Thank you, Lord Prideheart. Your dedication keeps such an important thing in our minds. But, for now, the motion sees no movement."

"Rrg..."

"My lord?"

"—!! What then if I accept this claim of lordship that has long been offered to me, and drive these ponies onwards by unopposable command?! What say you then?!"

"Lord Prideheart, it would be done, such is the loyalty and love you are owed. But this council, on behalf of all Dryponies, asks you: stay your wrath, and show your mercy."

"Mercy, such as no foe in magic would show you!"

"But you are no foe, and certainly not in magic! We beg you: do not ask for live roots to be ripped painfully from the earth; do not ask tired families to fold and carry their fresh homes far; do not ask the mares, bodies weighed down with foal, to suffer a hard and weary journey with no known end and no choice but to bear precious life somewhere unfamiliar."

"... Families... Foals..."

"Is it what you ask of us, Lord Prideheart? If by your command, then we stand ready and proud! Order us to suffer for you!"

"... No..."

"Great is your wisdom, my lord. And greater still your mercy. Thank you. Let all here accept it as settled then: the matter is for tomorrow, not today."

"... Rightful has the Sun has been left behind, yet I feel as though tomorrow will never rise..."

"... No...," Prideheart leaked the wounded whisper.

His good eye was already locked shut and buried in the blanket, but he pressed it in deeper, hard enough to feel the bends of hay beneath the wool poking back into his eyelid. He tremored, passing his shaking into his ever-tighter hold on his blanket, and in turn it tangled worse around him.

It was coming. He felt it. And he was helpless to stop it.

"... No... please..."

"Lord Prideheart, long have I been looking! From the council I was sent in order to-"

"... You may tell council to abandon their wait... Once again I will not be joining them..."

"—?? Uh, my lord, that is not—ah, I-, I have news."

"... News of council matters is of no concern to me... These 'Dryponies' lead themselves... As-... as is proper..."

"I-, I was ordered to share this news. Please open your ears. The destiny of Dryponies and of our beloved home Heartwood is bound to it."

"... Hmph... Destiny; ever claimed, never sought... Very well... What news...?"

"Much discussion has been had about the increasing number of vile Sunponies who have been skirting the borders of our Dryearth Forest. The council fears-"

"... More unheeded lectures does this council need?... Our former compatriots – the so-called 'Sunponies' – are merely harmless travelers... Always some have visited this far land, and never have they stayed or even breached the forest..."

"But their numbers have been growing greater! That is cause for alarm! My lord, the council whispers in worry: perhaps they scout, and in time plan to build! Near us! Too near Heartwood!"

"... If they build, they will fail and leave, to no bother of ours... The crystals ensure that fate... We have strength to survive without magic... They do not..."

"But Lord Prideheart, that itself is at the heart of the council's trouble: we have not survived without the curse of magic! Many years we have been settled yet some of the unicorns still have not abandoned using their horns!"

"—? For little more than moving gentle weights... They can do no greater in the presence of the crystals... It is little bother..."

"The council sees it different: that we cannot wean ourselves off the curse is a sign of weakness in Dryponies! And if it comes to dealing with Sunponies again, weakness we cannot afford! All agreed that stronger measures to free us from the curse are needed."

"Stronger? Ah!! Hope had fled me! Is it at last the time to depart this false home?"

"'Depart,' my lord? No! Our former home was spoiled by the curse; we shan't cede our new one to it! What good would departure be? If the Sunponies were not to follow us the curse still would, for the curse is in our blood. The council has realized this, and so voices did raise: 'We must bleed until the curse has been run from us.'"

"... What?..."

"This is our sacrifice: henceforth, all foals born cursed with horns are not Dryponies, and will be delivered in secret to the intruding Sunponies. Let them bear the cursed back to a land tolerant of such weakness."

"—!!!!"

"Drop by drop we will squeeze out this cursed blood until to us are born no more cursed. Thus our strength will free us at last. A heavy sacrifice, inspired by your example, Lord Prideheart!"

"...... No..."

"My lord?"

"NO!!"

"L-Lord Prideheart, I-"

"Reckless insanity! Abominable iniquity! Unstomachable evil! NEVER would I offer even one hair from my mane in approval of this!!"

"But my lord, your approval-"

"Has this confined forest suffocated their minds of all reason?! Has the fractured light of these crystals stained their thoughts incoherent?! Has the-"

"Lord Prideheart, please! Be calm! I cannot follow this rambling-"

"'Sacrifice'?! 'Bleed'?! Whose blood?! No! No, this wickedness is not going to be! The most innocent lives and the youngest futures are too holy for some wretched, errant council to condemn in an act of damned unwisdom! There will be no vote for this unspeakable lunacy! Take me to the council!"

"I cannot, my lord."

"—!! This INSTANT, to the council take me! By warmth or wrath I will disabuse them of-"

"Please listen, my lord! I cannot, because their meeting is long concluded!"

"What?!"

"So rare have your appearances been these late months, even when ponies are sent to retrieve you, that the council has given up notifying you of meetings and of also delaying for your sake. The matter of our cursed foals was deeply discussed without your presence and concluded by unanimous vote. It is the will of the Dryponies."

"It is-... it is-... No!"

"Already cursed foals under four weeks age are being gathered, and they will be left on the forest edge where the Sunponies can find them and rid us of them. The same fate is set for all such newborn foals, until we are purified. I was sent only to inform you of this news."

"How-? How does such a... judgment stand? Their crime is their birth? No! No... How has this been decided...? They are only foals..."

"... They are cursed, my lord."

"Ah... ah... no... What is this world I have come to...?"

"Your opposition is... much unexpected, Lord Prideheart. Your many harsh words against magic are well remembered. ... Shall I-... shall I attempt to regather the council, my lord? Too late it may already be... but do you wish them to hear your new words? Or if-... if you have some command greater than the will of the Dryponies..."

"Ahh... ahhff-ffh-ffh... No... no, no, no... ffh-ffh-ffah..."

"Lord Prideheart? My lord? M-My lord?! Can you not stand? Are-, are you injured? My lord?!"

Prideheart wept.

Like so many nights for nearly forty years, he wept.

Untold innocent lives in Canterlot... defended. But then, when the most innocent... the most precious... the most helpless had needed defense...

Standing before the pure ruin of a malevolent dragon had been a simple thing. There had been no unworthy costs to save them. But when the enemy had been his own beloved ponies and their twisted obedience to his corrupt shadow, where had his courage gone?

At the start of their self-exile he had promised them: he would never leave them, and he would always guard them from evil.

... Courage... Promise...

Even through his soft sobbing he tensed. This nightmare he had relived many times, and he knew full well he had not yet endured the worst of his phantom's sadism. All his haunted senses became slaves to the ghost's power, and it pulled away the world so that the catastrophic climax might hit the grieving stallion hardest.

"Where is she?! News came, and with all speed I have raced! Where is my cherished one?!"

"Calm, Lord Prideheart. Lower your voice."

"Where is she?"

"She is well, but resting. See, over there?"

"—Cherished!—"

"No, my lord. Do not go to her. She must rest. It was a hard birth for her to give, and she is exhausted. Even after such time, we are... still learning how to best handle these miracles without the help of... ah, well... I shan't name it."

"... It is over already then?"

"Yes. Fear not; she is safe and well. Some time to lay in soft silence is all she will need. You may resume whatever duty you were engaged in, my lord. Here I promise to look after your cherished one, and will send word when she is awake once more."

"—? And the new one? Where is the foal? ... My foal...?"

"Ahh... Ahem. Lord Prideheart, that-... that-..."

"... Where?"

"I... do not recommend it, but you may see if you wish. This way. ... Here, Lord Prideheart."

"—! Oh! My own! Dark in forest deep, vanished from Sun of old, given shine only by hungry crystal... But this one, in her eyes is the pure light that has long been missing from my life! How again I feel fullest, blessed devotion at just her sight! In this bassinet is placed all my last love. She is so beautiful!"

"My lord... I am so sorry..."

"—?"

"Do you not see the forehead? This one is cursed, Lord Prideheart."

"—!!"

"My heart shares your grief—but now comes the usual matter: a report has already been filed on this birth, and fortunately Sunponies have been spotted moving through the land only a day past. This one will be put out soon to be taken."

"No... no no nono no! Not her! Any but her! Please!"

"Long now have we cast all cursed from Heartwood and from Dryearth Forest, my lord. In these years that has not changed."

"But-, but-, but she-... she has done nothing! Nothing in her few minutes of life save for been born to me! My silence for the others has been shameful, but her-! For her, I-! Spare her, please!

"There... are no exceptions, my lord. Never have there been since we have first started the cleansing."

"... No... please... do not take her from me..."

"I see this hard response in all who suffer a cursed birth. Do not let it trouble you, my lord. You should rejoice! Many parents endure grief at the severing, but they will be most comforted to know that our great hero shares their pain."

"... I will not-... I cannot-! She is my-! She is my-! She-..."

"Do not touch it, my lord. That only makes the process harder. Here now; come away."

"... I am sorry..."

He coughed and sobbed into the tangle of blanket and hay.

"... I am unforgivably sorry..."

Out of his good eye came the ordinary salt of immense sorrow, trickling down his contorted face. But his dead eye leaked a crusty slime, bitter and poisoned, which stung with every drop squeezed out and burned as it scorched a trail down his cheek. Yet he was so deep into his personal anguish that he felt nothing of his body. He could not feel it at all when then pustules clinging to his ruined horn began to glow an ill color and when the sickly light within the cracks of his horn started to throb.

And then it fired. For just a flash – for one slice of a flickering moment – a light of gold tarnished a putrid green shined out from his diseased horn-stump.

"ARRGGHH!!"

His eyes crashed shut so fast that they blasted out the tears caught in the way. Onto his side he rolled, and he let go his blanket and the hay, instead throwing his hooves against his head. Hard he pressed them into his skull in desperate reaction. The sudden pain that had exploded within felt like it was prying his head apart.

Few ponies knew, but the broken hero's magic was not gone. Long ago the caustic dragon fire had clashed with his magic and had invaded him through it, shattering his horn and scarring his body, and at the same time injecting an incurable poison far into him. But it had not taken away his magic. The wicked toxin had merged permanently with it. The truth was so hidden to others because for forty years he had always elected to never use his magic anymore. Not only from contempt for the power itself, but because using his grossly poisoned magic was no different than using a broken limb to lift a heavy stone.

The irony of it all was so contemptible: the Dryponies had called unicorn foals 'cursed' despite their innocence, but for decades now the magic of their 'great hero' truly had been.

Between his bout of ultimate grief and the loss of the soothing aura of the magic-hungry crystals he had grown long-accustomed to living besides, his guard had lowered just enough to have let through that one reflexive spasm of his magic muscle; that one spark of light.

And instantly it had felt like the dragon himself had returned and begun raining down fire over him from above. Everything burned, from the sizzling fires erupting over the furtherest corners of his body to most especially the inferno which roared in his head. Every bit of the corrupt flesh on his face became hypersensitive, crying out to the touch of each fleck of dust which landed on him like a lightning bolt. Heavy claws, hot as lava, ripped open the top of his head and drilled down the center of his brain where they pulled the two halves apart. And as if his suffering were incomplete his recent wounds were empowered by the poison's influence; they piled on him anew with their magnified strength.

Although the height of the excruciating torment lasted only as long as the quick flash of his horn the lingering pain of it stayed like a powerful echo resounding upon itself in an empty canyon, booming for minutes after the first shout had gone silent. He laid there, holding his head and kicking his legs against the air while tortured moans slipped out of his clenched jaw and tears still poured from the corners of his shut eyes. When the thunderstorm of physical agony had finally quelled just enough for him to have opened his eyes again he wasn't able see much. His good eye rejected most of the light that came in, and the rest it distorted beyond comprehension. The orange glow of the lantern cast against the wall looked to him like only a vast smear of evening color, and the shelf of metalwork there was no more than a blur of shadows which danced in circles with a dozen copied images of itself.

Minutes more dragged on, and as the pain slowly faded his vision cleared. His broken gasps for air returned to weeping breaths. He heard again the diabolical taunts of his phantom shadow creeping back into the recesses of his scorched mind. It sounded like they had never been silent at all but that their loudness had only been drowned out by the storm. During the missed interval they had moved on many, many years:

"My love... It is late. Should you not take repose? Why do you pace?"

"I am restless!"

"For years it has seemed so now."

"Each day brings a new tale of nonsense to these Dryponies, and what one says others repeat until it spreads through the forest like wildfire!"

"What harm is there in it? They speak things to lift their spirits."

"My cherished one, they speak contemptible tommyrot which fiendishly undermines their spirits! What is this absurdity of the Sun 'hunting' us? Or of her having chased us helplessly from Canterlot? Such are not my memories of it!"

"None here love the Wicked Sun. Is it any surprise they speak of her so vilely?"

"It is how of themselves they speak that inflames me! They remember themselves as cowards, not as arbiters of their own destinies! We left of our own, to secure ourselves from her weakness!"

"We followed you, my love. If your vision we have ever failed to share, we have always trusted what you have seen."

"Make not any excuses for them, my cherished one. You only sound more like them when you do."

"I apologize, my love. I mean only to comfort you. You are beloved to the Dryponies, as you are beloved to me. The tales of your heroism and virtue are inscribed in our hearts: Prideheart who held fast against the dragon! Prideheart who leapt ledge-to-ledge through the mountains with ten foals on his back! Prideheart who shepherded us into the darkness of the forest to find the saving light within! We know you intimately, and you are the guiding pole around which we dance our lives."

"As I look, I see it not."

"Very grim you have grown as your years have waned on. I do not remember seeing this from you when our son you raised. Then there was light in you. You forgot this world and gave yourself fully to him."

"... Our son... The spot of bright love in a sea so dark..."

"There! I see it again now, if ever small: the light of your smile! My love, you remember how cherished he is, as am I."

"Mmm... Yes. My cherished one, thank you for giving him to me. The years of fatherhood to him was love overwhelming, more powerful than the sear of old fires and the weariness of worldly wounds. All the good I remember comes through him."

"Will you now smile full for those memories?"

"... But only memories they are. He is older now; the age of his own stallionhood is upon him, and much less he needs me. Though always he is my beloved son, he is not mine anymore. That-... that is the plain truth of growth, and I accept it."

"Then... perhaps there is another way I might return those happy years to you. My love... my love... we are not so old just yet. One more, my love. Come. Share this bed with me. One more foal I will deliver to fill your years with joy. One more heir for the hero of Dryponies."

"... Another...? A foal... a beautiful foal..."

"Yes, my love. Another light for you; another love for you. A foal. Our second."

"—? ... Second...? Third!"

"Third? There is only your son, my love-"

"The filly, my cherished one! The first!"

"Ah. Yes. I had forgotten."

"Forgotten?! Forgotten?! How is it not a nightmare conjured every time your eyelids fall?"

"That one was taken by cursed fate, and one who is cursed is not a Drypony. That one was not ours, and there is nothing for holding it in mind."

"How is it you can speak like that? You were put to sleep by birth and did not see her, but I did! I cannot forget the sight! Her eyes... her face... her love... Do you not wonder of her? What the world has done with her? Has it given her happiness? Has it given her grief? Did another father find her? Did he love her? Did he love her... more than I would have? ... D-Did-... did he only have to hold her but once to have bettered me...?"

"Have no tears for it, my love."

"... Less and less I feel I know you each day, my cherished one."

"They are hurtful words. I am overjoyed to be yours; closest to you of all Dryponies."

"... I am sorry... Not in anger I meant it..."

"I know. It is your gloom which speaks. But I will heal it. Come and embrace me with your love. For you, my love, one more foal."

"... I cannot... I-... No, I cannot endure it again..."

"My love?"

"That we ever had a second foal in our son bewilders me! I do not know how I survived it! Were the day of the dragon to come again I would have no fear in my heart. Were his fire to chew my flesh from my melting bones I would not be afraid. For never in my life have I felt more terrified than on the day of our son's birth! W-What if he too-... if he-... if he had been-... like the first... and taken... My cherished one, to suffer that fear again I could not... It would be my death."

"Too much to the past you look in fear. Bravely see instead the future you have made for all Dryponies."

"I see nothing but a dark forest, twisted by rioting crystal light. Within are ponies trapped under a ghoulish shadow lord, and while they falter there is a maw of nothingness which consumes their unadulterated foals one by one... !! Ah... What have I protected them from, my cherished one?"

"My love, I cannot understand your despair. There has never been more strength and hope in Dryponies! Whatever magic the Wicked Sun may chase us with will fail, and one day the Walking Desert, their wholeness unstained by charm or enchantment or spell, will come to show us a place beyond magic forever!"

"—? You too recite their drivel now? For decades we have been free to run, but never have we. Only here we have lingered, and lingered, and lingered while sacrificing our own and whispering insanities to ourselves in the darkness."

"No. We have stayed at Heartwood home to build lives in your legendary honor, my lord."

"—!! Your lord? Or your love?"

"My love, of course! ... My love? My love! Where are you going?"

"I am restless!"

No more did Prideheart weep, but not for lack of sorrow. Empty of strength and exhausted of tears he had no more life left in him worth living. He laid as a corpse in his bed of hay, still half-tangled in his twisted blanket.

One final verse his nightmare doppelganger became to recite, but even his shadow was losing interest as the broken stallion failed to response to any further jabs. The voices it took on now were not so very old at all; pulled not from across a great distance of mind but taken from the freshness of very recent memory:

"Lord Prideheart! Found at last!"

"... So you say..."

"There is wonderful news: the Heartwood Guard is fully organized! Our defenses are ready!"

"... There is little need... The 'Sunpony' village has long ago failed..."

"We would not take the chance that the servitors of the Wicked Sun would not return to try again. After all, even though they have retreated we still see their scouts surveying our lands outside the forest."

"... So you say..."

"My lord, I bid you to come and address our new Guard. Your words shall inspire them."

"... And what words would I share...?"

"I do not know, Lord Prideheart. But surely they would feel rather honored to be lauded by their hero. You remember the darker days we came from; the foul days of Equestria ruled under harsh Sun. But our strong, young Guard knows only the forest home they were born and raised in. Be the example for them, of the strength and sacrifice they must embody. Extol the Drypony greatness they must protect. And remind them of the evil they stand against."

"... So you say..."

"... Will you come, my lord? I should think you would be most proud to see your son installed as their captain. How proper that our hero's heir continues the legacy!"

"... He has chosen that path then...?"

"The Dryponies are on the grand course that you have set for us all, Lord Prideheart. Come now, and pour praise and honor onto those that will ensure our venerable and lasting future!"

"..."

"My lord? If... this time is not ideal for it then perhaps tomorrow at the celebration feast you could address them?"

"... Hard you must have searched to have found me here in my seclusion...?"

"—? Yes..."

"... You are dedicated..."

"Thank you, my lord. When called to find you, never would I rest until the whole forest was searched."

"... So you say... And so... if tomorrow you find me... then I will surrender my words to this Heartwood Guard..."

"—? Very well. Until tomorrow when I find you, Lord Prideheart!"

"... The Prideheart you will seek has long been found... But, this one..."

And that next day he had not been found.

The Dryponies had searched the forest whole: high to the topmost branches, low under the deepest roots, thorough between the darkest crevices, and far near the brightest edges. But there had been no trace of the pony they adored. For never would they have thought to have looked for him outside Dryearth Forest, on the hard trail leading up into the Pearl Peaks and back towards Equestria.

Forty years of promise. 'He would never leave them,' he had promised. 'Always he would guard them from evil,' he had promised. But only an old fool like him would have needed those decades to have figured out that those vows had excluded each other, and for all that time the stubborn pain inside him had told him to have valued greater the wrong promise.

His soul had been poisoned by toxic dragon fire... and by holding himself near them for so long he had passed its wickedness on to them.

Finally, finally after all those suffering years he had broken one promise to them so that the other might have a fighting chance to live, no matter how small. Without him there to helplessly act as a physical reminder – as a corrupting idol for them to worship around – perhaps 'Lord Prideheart' would in time wither and die.

How better would it have been if the dragon's fire had felled him completely? The ponies of Canterlot would still have been saved by his last act of true heroism, and those that then had become the Dryponies would never have been lead astray in darkness, and she-...

She-...

Was his betrayal so dooming that it were better she had never been born?

The lantern gasped, needing more fuel to keep bright its flame. In the twinkling orange light Prideheart laid stiff, still, and dead. Sweeter dreams would have seen him tortured by Nightmare Moon herself instead.

Chapter 10: Heroes May Not Be Braver

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The stallion was awake, though he hadn't felt his senses arouse. Nor did he recall having fallen asleep. He had simply found himself there, alert on the floor of the storehouse and with no memory at all of when his nightly torture had given way to some restless form of unconsciousness. The night had blinked instantly from endless suffering in the dark to dreary weariness in the dawn, as if he had just suddenly started existing again after an imperceivable period of inexplicit non-existence.

Morning light squeezed into the storehouse from the two thin windows. They shined as brilliant strips of pure white, enough to hurt Prideheart's good eye if he looked too directly. But their leaking illumination died too quickly to banish the murky stew of darkness inside, leaving most of the room coated in shadowy gloom. Yet the air, or what trace of it could fit through the windows, had the kind of chilled freshness that accompanied a new morning. The stallion could pick out its coolness from the old dust which polluted the stale chamber.

He worked his legs and mouth to untangle his blanket and cloak from his body, wriggling on his side. During his night agony they had wrapped him several times around in crisscrossed ways. The small workout that came with separating them allowed him a chance to assess himself.

He was hardly any better than all the days before. The ravages of long hunger and extended overexertion were again not erased by a single night of safe sleeping, and the battle yesterday had only further crippled his ability to recover. But he was at least stronger than the immediate night before, and much more lucid. Of the many pains still possessing him, the most poignant (outside of his ever-hot, ever-throbbing dragon-wound) was his smashed knee; its ache had set in deep, whispering threats whenever he left it alone but screaming murder whenever he dared to move it. His other pings, pangs, bumps, bruises, scrapes, and scratches all lingered on and leeched whatever little strength from him they could, but it seemed like they were generally just as fatigued as he was. And his immense hunger, though at first having grown ravenous after the simple apple had been demolished in his stomach, had fallen back into a rhythm which was ignorable from how everyday it had become.

Freed from the snarl of his things he finally stood up, no worse for the wear after a slow effort, though he did have to lean off his aching knee and shake away many sticky strands of hay. He folded and tucked his blanket away in his bag, and then he spent a minute to breath and stretch. On any other morning he might have warmed up for longer, even despite the aggravation it brought to his pains, but Kerby's sinister threat was an echo in his mind. Through each limbering exercise the stallion had dark words for himself, disgusted that he had wasted time sleeping when he should have ensured an immediate delivery of warning to the townsponies.

He hobbled to the storehouse door, concentrating with each step so he could smooth out his stride and hide his injured knee. The lantern hanging on the wall had died far earlier in the night, so much so that there was no whiff of burnt fuel left coming from it. He gave it only small regard, distantly remembering in a blur Bookworm having lit it somehow.

Bookworm.

She had promised to have shared the warning.

Prideheart quickly put his hoof to the door, but just shy of pushing it open he killed his strength.

Standing there with his raised hoof limp, he waited for nothing. His breaths lengthened and chilled, and he waited. The air, the light, the shadow, the gloom; all blended uncomfortably around him.

Finally he pulled his hoof back and used it to throw up his hood, tugging it down far over his face. Then the stranger sighed and opened the door.

Indeed it was morning, and not so young of one either. All traces of dawn's yawn had already vanished from the sky, leaving everything a crystal blue with few interruptions from snow-white clouds. The sun was thankfully still low in the east, but it had built up enough speed to begin its sprint towards noon.

What hour was it exactly? How long had the day been bright enough to allow the heckhounds swift traversal of road and hill? How close were they? No screams of panic and terror wandered between the buildings. No smell of ash or whiff of cinders drifted in the wind. No heat of heckfire made the cool morning blister.

Either the heckhounds had not yet arrived or they had already been fought off.

And the stranger couldn't find the hope for that latter possibility.

Carefully he skulked out of the storehouse, eye leery for any witnesses. But even in daylight the dusty lot the storehouse sat in was a deserted junkyard, and elsewhere he saw no signs of company. Every watchful window was shut by drapes, the river babbled lonely nearby, and not a soul was visible for as far as he could see down the buildings' backfaces.

However he knew he wasn't alone in Stony Nook. Nearby ordinary noises were humming with common activity. Ponies could be heard on the main road of town, blocked from his sight by stone and wood and hay, but none of the sounds rang as clamorous or dastardly. Clops walked, wood creaked under weight, and now and again voices peaked loud enough to hear clearly. It was everyday music, tumbling through the alleys like the wandering hush of wind rolling over a hill.

The stranger slipped out of the lot and peeked down the nearest alley. He caught a glimpse of the broad road which divided the town, and the busy noises came at him louder through the unobstructed channel. But the world was still solitary: he saw no ponies, or anything at all except for a vacant slice of dirt road which stretched until it hit the face of the opposite building. Tenderly he crawled into the alley and slinked his way tight along the wall.

But he had gone only a few steps in when a pony strolled by the alley entrance in front of him. The stranger fast shrunk himself against the ground, hiding in the open shadows, but the passing pony existed for only a blink. From right to left they crossed his view, ambling along the road as if they were going to ask their neighbor for a cup of sugar. Hardly had their tail appeared in full view before their nose disappeared behind the next corner, and then a moment later the pony was altogether gone. Regardless, the stranger stayed tucked and motionless while he watched the alley opening with an intent eye.

His effort was a waste, as the other pony never crossed back and no further ponies came. Somewhere amidst the light clamor coming from the street there was a voice which rose up in brief laughter, joined by others before it all casually faded. The ongoing morning murmurs of the town continued unabated.

Slowly the stranger peeled himself from concealment and started forward again, but his sneaking grew nervous and careless. Certainly the wobbly moves of his damaged knee were of no help to him, but his true trouble was born from something much deeper. His courage was frightened and hopes felt forsaken.

He had no wish to emerge from the alley and discover the aftermath of some vicious battle; to have found the slaughtered remains of innocents who had suffered fire and fang while he had shamefully slept. But neither had he a wish to have discovered what he thought he was hearing: happy ponies living a carefree Equestrian life, like they had always done since even times before he had left this world behind decades ago.

Slower and slower his approach to the main street became, as if the alley were growing longer and faster than his steps moved. But despite his struggle he did eventually slither up to entrance, and he tipped his good eye out ever so cautiously.

The morning was fairly usual for Stony Nook, or really for any town in Equestria. Many ponies ambled about their typical business or labored with the hardworking heart of a frontierspony. One hammered a fresh wheel onto his partially-repaired wagon, grumbling quietly about the streetfight yesterday that had broken it. Elsewhere a team worked together to finally break down the wreckage of the fallen water tower and clear it away, piling the debris high in another wagon. All throughout the street ponies stood or sat or paced in front of homes and businesses while watching the traffic, sweeping their door mats, or checking morning chores off their lists.

Yet there were a few unnatural hints in everything they did. Their clopping around had whispers of nervousness, and they always checked behind themselves twice as they entered or exited any building. The chatter they shared was slightly hushed for so bright a morning, restrained by something more than mere politeness. Every happy mumbling danced around an unspoken dread. And many, many eyes gazed often westward towards the town's new wall, and on it was a new set of ponies who worked the morning patrol.

Most noticeable of all was a small, tight gathering of ponies in the middle of the main road, their serious looks belaying their grim discussion. Immediately recognizable to the stranger was the gray mare with the pale pink mane. Very obviously she was leading their meeting, nodding at ponies to speak in turn and having open and attentive ears for every word said when herself not paving the way with speech. Some number of very loyal ponies also participated; underlings of some sort by how well-adjusted they were to her mature command. The remaining ponies still deferred to her quite readily even if they had no formal obligation to her: one whom the others addressed as 'mayor,' a mare draped in doctor's garb, an older pony in a stained apron who held a kindly if not quite optimistic smile, as well as a few ordinary frontier folk.

And also in the group the stranger saw the father he had stolen a filly from.

Exhaustion had become that Stony Nook unicorn, as if he too had climbed the dangerous heights of the Pearl Peaks and had fought off a pack of predatory heckhounds. His knees trembled with the same strengthlessness as an elder pony's, his eyes were absent of any sleep yet sharp from helpless alertness, and he twitched uncomfortably with every word traded between the gathered ponies. Worry and fear had broken him down, torn him apart, and afterwards shredded the pieces.

And that was all despite the fact that his lost daughter Bookworm stood right there next to him.

The little filly's usually freewheeling spirit had been crushed, and from tail to nose she was frozen in listless defeat. Her head hovered an inch above the road, so low that the very tip of her braided mane actually rested in a short coil on the ground. Only her ears showed signs of life, spinning from speaker to speaker as the meeting wore on. She was all but chained to her father; he had sewn her to his side and always kept one leg rested over her like an iron shackle. Never again was she going to be let out of his reach, let alone out of his sight. And somewhere inside her the young filly pondered over whether being grounded for life had been worth the adventure she had enjoyed.

The stranger's fixed attention to the hurt filly robbed him of all awareness. The morning village around him turned to pitch darkness, leaving only himself and her in spotlights...

... Right up until a loud gasp cut through the black veil and brought the tide of reality crashing back into him. A townspony just a few steps from the alleyway had noticed him lurking there, and in surprise she had nearly shouted.

Her cry began a chain reaction. One or two ponies snapped to the noise and then gasped themselves, their calls drawing even more eyes and producing even more gasps, and the infection of surprise jumped from pony to pony far down the street, even to the ends of town. In moments the cloaked and shadowed pony was the brightest beacon there.

No longer could the stranger hide, and there was little purpose in fleeing, so reluctantly he stepped out into the open street. He wrapped his limp in secrecy, hiding it behind enduring but false (and quite painful) steps, and he held himself confident like a master tactician who had planned his arrival for that exact moment all along.

The townsponies nearest to him carefully backed off, retreating to the doors of the closest buildings. Some of the more spooked ponies even ran inside, the lights of their eyes then appearing from the corners of the windows or through the cracks of the drapes. Very few had expected to have seen that crazy pony again, and he was only a reminder of things they had very much wanted to ignore. All of Stony Nook ground to a halt.

When Bookworm spotted him she tried hard to speak up, but before she could utter even a peep her father's magic had engulfed her and his earthy glow floated her straight to Crumble Pie. For the sake of her friend, the gray mare caught the filly and held onto the little pony tightly, advising Bookworm to stay hushed and wait. Not that Crumble Pie was encouraging of Scrolldozer to do what he was about to do, but if he still had enough goodness to entrust his daughter to her then she still had enough to trust in his less-wise choices.

Scrolldozer began to stomp his way across the road towards the silent stranger, the only Stony Nook pony who approached rather than fled. Each of his steps smashed his weight into the dirt.

"You...!"

For as much as his growl had an angered harshness it didn't escape a chill of anguish. A sad weariness was grafted to his bones and soaked into his muscles, and his march softened.

"How dare you...!"

All his rage couldn't suppress the tears that began to well up under his eyes. The memories of yesterday – of the worst day of his life – were so close to him that he couldn't fuel his fury properly; that he couldn't escape the terror which had haunted him so completely. All he could do was vent his hot sorrow at the cloaked pony while his stomps weakened more and more.

"Who do you think you are...!?"

At last he was directly before the motionless stranger, but his whole body sagged with unfaded grief. Over the short stretch which he had walked, the part of him that had been so ready to have strangled the cloaked pony had disappeared entirely. Doubtful that there had ever been a part of him that could've done it anyway; for all his boulder-heaving, magical might he was ever a gentle stallion. But the pain had piereced deep enough that he had to have given his suffering a voice, even if he cried at the stranger no differently than one who shouted awful questions at the sky when there was no hope for reasonable answers elsewhere.

"What gave you the right to take somepony else's foal away from them like that...!? How could you do that...!?"

From beneath his hood the stranger quietly observed the shivering pony before him. Agony came from the corners of the father's eyes and ran down his cheeks, marking the dirt with wet stains. Even with the worst of the darkness having already passed, a great fear still lived inside the pony; a terror which the stranger recognized: if ever the father were to feel the fright of losing his daughter again, he would not have survived it.

The stranger recalled this unicorn's story, as told to him by Bookworm. It was one of a careless father without enough love to give; of a traitor to the devoted mission of fillies and colts. Yet seeing the father's familiar face was enough to disarm all of the stranger's self-righteous disdain.

In what came as a surprise to everypony there, and certainly to Scrolldozer, the cloaked pony took a slow (to avoid revealing his aggravated knee) and submissive bow.

"I have no redeeming excuses. Unforgivable was my failure to return your Bookworm immediately," the stranger said. "You are entitled to whatever outrage you feel. I am sorry."

Scrolldozer, taken aback with wonder and blinking his wide eyes to wash away the remaining water, stared down at the capitulating pony. After all the raving the cloaked stranger had done yesterday, after all the thunderous shouting, after the stormy march he had departed with; hardly the father had known what to have expected from this encounter. But it had not been this!

"W-Well," some of the father's ordinary voice came back, "as long as you acknowledge it... I guess..." He wiped his eyes and shook his head, then gave the stranger another unknown stare. "She's my only foal. If something had happened-..." He stopped himself from crossing the threshold again.

Rising up, the stranger solemnly swore, "Were such a moment to have come, no hesitation would there have been in trading my life for hers."

His statement would have counted as a 'redeeming excuse' of the kind he had sworn off but for its unrelenting and experienced honesty. Scrolldozer faded back an extra step in unanticipated surprise.

"Ah... er... well... th-thank you," the father eventually managed. It was a bizarre graciousness to have ultimately come from all the doleful wrath he had bled at first. Polite gratitude was perhaps the only genuine response he had.

He started back towards Crumble Pie and his daughter, and his gait was interrupted several times by confused glances back at the stranger. Several times his teeth sunk into his lip.

Bookworm again tried to say something, but her returning father immediately hushed her once more while he gratefully retrieved her from the gray mare. His leg reassumed its secure place, clamping onto her and squishing her against him so tight that any of her breaths he disapproved of wouldn't have gotten in. Her resistance again crushed, the filly stayed quiet and hung her disappointed head.

Crumble Pie didn't consider the matter of the foalnapped filly quite settled just yet, and she nodded a request for everypony to wait a moment.

They acquiesced, and likewise they weren't shocked when she began to approach the stranger to have her turn. But they, along with all the witnessing townsponies, were absolutely flabbergasted when she came before the cloaked pony gracefully and spoke to him in a calm tone, showing not even a faint sign of any expected indignation, resentment, or anger. Few of them even made out what she said to him; only if they were close enough to read her lips or hear her soft and private voice.

"Hey, sir...," she greeted, and then she armed herself gingerly with a glum sorrow. "... It wasn't right, you know?; not bringing her back straight away. It killed Scrolldozer, how he couldn't do anything for his daughter..."

But the shallow grief made a sudden turn into gratefulness, and the mare bowed her head, speaking plainly, "But... a mountain of thanks for anything you did to keep her in one piece. It would have really been the end of him if anything had happened to his little wiggler. And also... well, I sure am glad to see you back in one piece too."

The stranger at first returned no answer, but after a long delay his hooded face tipped down in acceptance.

Crumble Pie flashed a small smile before she eased around to return to the others. But, again surprising all, she openly nodded an invitation for the forgiven stranger to join them. Murmurs of startled suspicion flew about, and even the cloaked pony himself seemed none too certain about her unexpected gesture. Yet his hesitation only made the gray mare amble more slowly, and she beckoned to him all the stronger; no demand, just hopeful encouragement.

Timid as a fish walking up onto shore, the stranger eventually assented. He followed behind Crumble Pie with little enough wary speed to keep his knee silent and to allow his good eye time to scan the faces of those he was approaching. Their disagreeable looks told him all he needed to know. Even Bookworm seemed detached from him, though in her case there was no hidden scowl or concealed derision. She only cowered as he neared.

Once back into her place amongst the gathered ponies Crumble Pie motioned for some extra space to be made for the stranger, and the others uneagerly obliged. Room opened up next to the gray mare herself – far more than necessary to accommodate a single pony – and the cloaked pony took his spot there as Crumble Pie's guest. He held himself half-a-pace back, slightly outside of their circle.

The rest of Stony Nook began to crawl curiously out into the open, cautiously intrigued by the appearance and acceptance of the stranger. They still stayed far back, only daring to observe what was happening from a distance, and by number alone they weren't quite a full town assembly like had occurred yesterday. But more and more ponies joined the spectators as they came by and saw what was going on or as the speedy rumor mill churned out invitations to every corner of the tiny town.

"Alright," Crumble Pie tried to resume the meeting as if they had never been interrupted. Her cheerful tone did little good; most of the group's stone cold attention was being unfavorably spent on the silent newcomer. "Mayor?" the mare called, then louder, "Mayor! You were saying, about the patrols?"

"Hm? Oh. Oh yes. Ah." Desk Job's scattered wits gradually collected back together, and she covered herself with a cough. "I... think we might need to compel a few more ponies to share patrol duty. The ones who have been doing it so far are no Royal Guards, and they've found all the pacing, and turning, and keeping a sharp lookout, to be very tiring, which is no good. If a few more ponies helped then it'd be easier on everypony. I'm just worried bcause it was hard enough to draw up any volunteers to begin with. I don't know how we're going to get more without twisting legs."

"Hmm... I'd rather not force anypony do anything they weren't up for," the gray mare replied. "We'll cobble up a few ponies who might be willing, and see if we can't talk them into it."

"Sure, Crumble Pie. Whatever you think is best."

"Good, good," confirmed Crumble Pie, "let's do that, then."

She then turned to halfway face the stranger, leaving herself able to still fully address the group as well.

"Now, before anything else," she announced, "and as long as we've got our friend here back, maybe we can learn a thing or two that might be helpful." Her effort to sound wholly inclusive of the cloaked pony were earnest but almost overdone. She pressed on more effusively when the others initially responded with doubt. "Or maybe we might even have some good news! What do you say, sir? Anything to share about what you saw out there?"

The quiet stranger turned his head up, lurching light up his snout and almost revealing himself.

"... You have heard nothing?" he asked in a ghastly and dim voice.

His statement could have benefited from more grace, and many of the ponies there heard it as insulting and foul. Hailstone in particular frowned, showing her clenched teeth, and her wings flexed aggressively.

Crumble Pie refrained from dealing out harsh yells but she still wielded enough loudness to command order, and then she generously explained to the stranger, "We've all been here this whole time. You're the only one who went out. Well... besides the wiggler. But she-... she came back late in the night... without you... right?"

This time the stranger flung no incidental insult as he furiously gasped, "Have you fools done nothing to prepare?" And though his utmost outrage was spat at the group as a whole, it seemed he almost directed it squarely onto little Bookworm. His hidden gaze snapped to the cringing filly.

She suddenly pressed again her father's restraint, very distraught, and begged for forgiveness, "I tried, mister! I really did! I tried to tell'em! But-!"

"That's enough, Bookworm!" Scrolldozer admonished. A strong squeeze with his leg wasn't enough to settle her so he took control with his magic to lock her down. Once she was imprisoned in his glow he put his face in front of hers and patted his hoof over her artificially-sealed lips, emphasizing, "Enough of your wild stories!"

Fearful darkness flooded the stranger's heart, but at the same time the whole of it ignited with savage fire.

"Have you not listened at all?!" His scream sprayed indiscriminately, but yet the heat of his harsh attention seemed especially narrowed onto Scrolldozer. "Injudicious varlets! Ineffectual; unthinking; willfully blind!"

The past twenty-four hours already hadn't done well for Hailstone's patience, and far less of an affront would have been enough excuse to have hung that mouthy stranger by his own cloak. She didn't wait for a word more and she stormed across the circle, scowling directly into the darkness of the stranger's hood while flaring her wings.

"Oh, here we go again, huh?! Of all the rude nutcases out there this one had to stumble into our town!"

"Craven nag!" the cloak pony spat back, remembering her from the battle in Stony Nook yesterday. "Do what you are well at and cease spoiling my presence!"

"Holy leaping mountain goats!" Hailstone snapped. "What a piece of work! That's it, buddy!" Her wings rolled each other up like sleeves drawing back before a tussle.

"Hailstone," Crumble Pie commanded.

The name shook the earth, even without the might of rage or the blaring blast of a bellow. It froze the rambunctious pegasus, and even every other grumbling voice in the group down the tiniest whisper also went cold. The stranger too, in fact, was quelled.

"Eyes in the sky, Hailstone," the gray mare continued, hard without grating sternness and with authority as solid as granite. "Check in with the scouts."

"Crumble Pie, you've got to be kidding-"

"Now. Go." Far from any jest, her air was as deathly frigid as a polished tombstone.

Hailstone moaned in exasperation, having one last frustrated stare for the stranger, but then she obeyed. Up off the ground she floated and then out into the sky she soared, zipping westward in the direction of the mountains.

Meanwhile, the change in the gray mare's demeanor had already spread a chill through every other pony, both in the gathered group and amongst the spectators. Their faith in her was a bridge through which everything was allowed to flow freely, good or bad. Mrs. Totaler was one of the few who stayed steady enough to speak.

"Now, Crumble Pie," she tossed the question out with nervous maturity, "you gonna let us know what you're thinking there? Sure as sunshine everypony here could use a calming explanation or two; that ain't a look of content you're wearing."

"I think," the gray mare responded to Mrs. Totaler, though her gaze held to the cloaked pony, "we shouldn't be taking any chances."

Her silent focus became theirs, and again the watching eyes and open ears of Stony Nook turned upon the stranger fully. Crumble Pie faced herself completely towards him and stepped closer, coming before his unpierced veil. Quite formally but very soberly she addressed him.

"Yesterday we had pegasi out looking hard for Bookworm. They didn't turn up anything before it got dark, so they came back for the night and gathered early this morning to try again. But before they could leave, Scrolldozer showed up with his wiggler. So... 'no need anymore,' we thought. That should've been that. However..."

A turn came upon her voice; a generous twist that fit her naturally but still made everypony twinge with confusion. They hadn't understood it when she had said it the first time earlier that morning, and they understood it no better now that she was saying it again.

"... I told'em to go out and scout about anyway..." Innocently the gray mare peered at the cloaked pony. "... to look for you."

The stranger gave no response. Or at least none visible outside of his cloak anyway.

"So," Crumble Pie went on, "they're still out looking right now. When Hailstone comes back with'em maybe they'll have seen something... but in the meantime..." All of her was earnest; was open; was inviting; was pleading politely. "... it sounds like maybe we missed the avalanche for the boulders. So I have to ask again: please sir, can you share what you found out there?"

Her request cleared the air, banishing muttered doubts and leery glances from everypony. They waited for an answer.

But the stranger seemed almost unwilling to give it. And what reason he had – good, ill, innocent, or awful – was as hidden as his face under his hood. Yet as the silence sharpened it poked at him further, and suddenly his voice spilled out from his shadowed face. It was much softer than before, but still it smoldered.

"Young Bookworm had joined me many miles out, and to my side she held for the journey entire. Your questions she could have answered."

Bookworm didn't understand his intent and, mistaking his words for a mantle of blame, she tried yet again to desperately plead her innocence. But this time, rather than be silenced by her impatient father, she quieted herself when she saw the stranger ask for forgiveness from her with a humble tip of his head.

What she didn't catch was how his hidden stare moved immediately on to Scrolldozer, lightning and fire ready to shoot from his eyes and burn a hole into loathsome father.

Crumble Pie cast a glance at Bookworm as well. The opportunity had been there earlier to have questioned the filly over where she had been and what she had seen, but regretfully the gray mare had forgone it in favor of giving Scrolldozer his space for recovery after his heart-shaking ordeal. To have so soon pried his daughter away from him again, for interrogation? Or worse, to have made him stand by and suffer through the recounted details of every danger she had been through? That had seemed too big a cruelty to have visited upon a father and a friend; at least without some time for healing first.

A prick of grim humor touched the gray mare. Again her dearest friend's love for own his daughter had justly but unhappily interfered with protecting Stony Nook.

"A little late to ask her now, I guess," Crumble Pie moaned the quiet thought. "You going to fill us in yourself now, sir?"

This time, after but a single heavy breath, the stranger was forthright.

"Northwest along the river the beast's trail led us, finding its way to an old quarry. It is yours of old, I was told. There we saw the terrible extent this evil threat."

An icy wind crawled down the road of town. Everypony listened closely.

"It is not one monster which preys upon you... but thirty!"

Pony upon pony punched out gasps at the revelation, even as far away as some of the homes on the other end of the street. But though some had certainly sobbed from sheer terror, not every gasp was the product of fearful surprise.

"That-... that can't be right!" Desk Job ardently disbelieved.

Home Remedy, adjusting the fit of her white coat after the ruffling moment of shock, concurred aggressively, "I haven't had to treat a serious burn in all my years here. How could there possibly be thirty of these things running around out there?"

"We worked in that quarry for years and never saw a monster like that," Scrolldozer joined in. He was slightly more agitated than the rest but still no less resolute in his doubt. "I think you're confused, sir." Yet his hold on his daughter tightened, squeezing her like hooves clasped in fevered prayer.

However, the filly suddenly resisted. Through groans and squirms she shouted, "Dad, he's telling the truth!"

"Hush, baby. No more from you about strangers, and adventures, and fire dogs-"

"Heckhounds, Dad! They're heckhounds!"

"No, darling," still her father suppressed her, though his own inner-parent increasingly fumbled as her tantrum swelled. "I know you think you know so much about this because you've read all these books, but honey those are just stories! The gates of Tartarus are guarded by Cerberus and he would never let-"

"I told you! There's a crack in the quarry floor! That's how they got out!" erupted Bookworm. Her voice peaked at some of her highest registers, shredding the ears of everypony there, and her eyes started throwing out bitter and disgruntled tears. Her violent thrashes changed form, going from genuine efforts at freedom to forceful pushback against her father for its own rebellious sake, becoming almost hateful as her disgust grew. She fumed at him in one piercing shriek, "You never listen!"

Scrolldozer's leg had no trouble absorbing her spasms (and if necessary he could have always fallen back on his magic), but something in him changed. He threw no more faked paternal wisdom at her. A silent distress issued from him, told not with any words or actions. It was so much louder than his daughter's precisely because of how lifeless it was.

But his short, cold eternity shattered to sound of one frightening hoof-clap against the street.

Awakening, Scrolldozer found the darkened face of the stranger pressed into his own. Even underneath hooded shadow the scowl assaulting him burned bright like a flare.

"A wiser pony might love their foal enough to value her gifts!" hissed the cloaked pony. His infuriated fire absolutely seethed with profound indignation. He cared not at all how dangerously he wielded his tongue like a dagger, "If any threat there is here to her wellbeing, it is you!"

The insult alone slapped Scrolldozer so hard that he was almost flung back. Bladed words, swung to slice deep; it was how personal and specific they were that allowed them to rip into his body. The father, however insulted he might have been, didn't come back with even the shyest flick of aggression. Noiseless, the smallest of mists clouded his eyes; the well of his tears had run too dry from dipping so far into grief yesterday.

It didn't take a pony familiar with him to see that he feared a truth had be spoken to him.

But the soft submission he showed was not found in Crumble Pie.

The stranger suddenly discovered a gray hoof sunk into his chest, violating the safety of his cloak and blocking him like a brick wall. For the very first time he saw something on the mare's face that resembled genuine fury, and it was frightening, like the flashing crags of a mountain taking terrifying shapes in the crackling illuminations of a wild thunderstorm.

Yet, much like a burst of lightning, her full anger disappeared in an instant and only the rumbling echo of thunder lingered. With a great displeasure, bordering on rudeness, she shoved the stranger two steps back.

"That's not helpful," she managed to rebuke him with only a growl.

The stranger said nothing. Nor did any other pony there dare to speak up in the wake of her rare, dominating authority. Even Bookworm, just moments ago so rebellious, had her face down in silent shame and her lips pulled tight over her teeth, struggling no more.

Accepting control of the situation, Crumble Pie allowed the quiet to rest a spell. Then, bold before the cloaked pony, she did not attack him further but instead stoutly asked for confirmation, "... Thirty?"

"... Verily...," the humbled stranger returned, and then in a wintry whisper, "... and having now found this village, they mean to strike here with all their fire."

No words came from Crumble Pie as she stared hard at the cloaked pony, but nor did any doubt spring from her as well.

The reaction was quite different from her fellow townponies, many of whom were still petrified with disbelief.

Seeing this, the stranger again appealed to them with an unhelpful anger soured by their blind lust for self-destruction, though his hostility was oddly tempered by watchful glances towards the gray mare.

"Scheming in the quarry we found them! Making designs for your destruction! Ages have they been caged in Tartarus' sweltering pits, their evil ferocity devouring itself in hunger, and they will not waste this chance to revel in the butchery and mayhem they have desperately craved all their imprisoned lives! At their head is a leader so cruel and unmerciful, and to him I spoke! He swore to relieving his bloodlust on you!"

"What?" the still-recovering Scrolldozer nervously scoffed. "You just sat down and had a chat with one of them? No. No! This is crazy! Crumble Pie!" He actually loosened himself from his daughter and groveled before the gray mare, laying his fearful hoof onto her shoulder. "Crumble Pie... I am begging you not to believe this..."

The hoof she placed over his was warm, but the tiny smile she gave back was loud with sorrow, and it wordlessly asked for his forgiveness.

Scrolldozer gently started to weep.

"Crumble Pieee!!"

Raining down over the village came Hailstone's anxious voice. And her return sent a similar unease into everypony; her absence had been far too short for her assigned task. But the reason for her speed came descending with her.

Behind her flew a flock of five other pegasi; the scouts she had been sent to retrieve. They were all red in color but only because of how much breathlessness had painted their faces. Each of them beat their wings into blurs like hummingbirds, casting off so much sweat it made a small sun shower. Regrouping with them hadn't taken long because they had already been scrambling back to Stony Nook in alarmed panic when Hailstone had crashed into them.

The pegasi all came down together and landed before Crumble Pie, the town meetings spreading out to give them space. While the scouts heaved, sputtered, and all but collapsed from their overexertion, the quarry pegasus hurried to relate the dire news.

"Crumble Pie...," Hailstone wheezed, choking on dread more than air, "... we got problems."

"They're coming," the gray mare assumed, grim and slow. And her prediction put a shiver in everypony there. Most grabbed somepony close, holding tight to try and keep their hope from leaking away.

Hailstone, only briefly taken aback by the accurate guess, realized what she had likely missed while away and glanced at the silent stranger.

"Yeah," she nodded at Crumble Pie in dismay, "there's some two dozen of those things blazing a trail down the road right for us."

The terrified townsponies cried out, some soft and desolate but others loud with despair.

Yet no voice rose greater than the stranger's, who furiously but unhelpfully scoffed at the report's undercount, "Their pack numbers more; a score and a half!"

No danger could dull Hailstone's dislike for the cloaked pony.

"Hey buddy, they know what they saw!"

Crumble Pie didn't have the patience, and fast she came between the two ponies as they growled and moved towards each other. She didn't need a temper, and it only took a strong stare and a few solid words to halt their advances.

Order restored, she quickly questioned her quarry pony, "How long until they get to Stony Nook?"

"Uh, ah... Thirty minutes, maybe? If we're lucky?" Hailstone's glance threw the question to the still-recovering scouts, and they shook their heads in exhausted agreement.

Although it was critical information, knowing the countdown to doom was little help to most of the townsponies. Again they began to wail with fright, dismay, and grief.

"Quiet, please!" Crumble Pie drowned them out. Her shout had the blunt impact of a fallen boulder pummeling the earth, blasting away all other noise and seizing everypony's attention. "We don't have the time to be cracking apart. We need to figure out what we're going to do."

"T-T-The wall!" Desk Job cried. She frantically pointed down the road at their recent construction. "W-We have the wall now! I-It'll keep them out! R-Right?"

From his spot in the street the stranger studied their eight-foot wall, the patrol ponies on top no longer pacing because they were worriedly watching the proceedings in town. Stones were stacked high, mortar was laid thick, and no doubt the talent of these stone craftsponies had built something solid against breakage or shattering; a defense concrete against the muscular force of any heckhound...

... But in his mind the cloaked pony had a far different worry. Clearly the sights of yesterday came back to him: heckhounds leaping down quarry terraces without so much as an uncomfortable twitch to their thick legs; and heckhounds vaulting high and far over a gap of water, from dock to barge.

"Of its own that wall will not help you," he suddenly warned the townsponies. "Over it they would scale as indifferently as a cat passes over a tall fence. Only defended will it earn you anything."

Again many ponies there read his grinding tone as rude disdain, offering back foul leers and offended stares. But, if only out of fear, and especially because Crumble Pie gave a cheerless nod to it, they trusted the warning.

Mrs. Totaler spoke up, "Then we've wasted our time! And speaking of, we don't have enough; two days at least until any help from Princess Celestia comes."

Nopony heard the stranger growl, though a few may have incidentally caught the angry way his hood shifted to stare daggers at the older mare.

"Well, m-maybe the message went faster than we thought and the Royal Guard are already on their way here-" rambled Desk Job.

"We can't count on something so unlikely," Crumble Pie cut her off.

"Then-, then-, then...," Scrolldozer burst in, seizing his daughter as tightly as ever, "... it's hopeless! If the Princess can't save us then we're defenseless! We have to leave! We have to get out of here right now, and make for Mule's Head!"

The stranger's deadly glare shifted to the father, sharpening. But again few noticed.

"Yes!" the desperate mayor agreed. "We need to flee! Just... gather everypony up quickly and abandon Stony Nook!"

As more ponies joined in to echo the same terrified sentiments, the incensed grinding of the cloaked pony's teeth grew louder. His reddening gaze bounced from pony to pony, furiously listening: 'home was already lost!'; 'the only prayer was to run far, far away!'; 'their only chance had been the Princess!'

Behind his dead eye, in the base of his horn, a blistering and painful fire blazed. An oily, black spark flared.

"NO!!"

Everypony cowered and cringed as if the heckhound attack had already started. Raucous, wailing with rage, and utterly antagonized beyond any reasonable measure, the stranger pushed into the center of the road and screamed at the whole town. Never since the halls of Canterlot, when a vain princess had been before him offering a worthless apology for having foolishly endangered the lives of so many innocent ponies, had he been so inestimably infuriated. For each and every pony there he had the endless vitriol to paint an image of Stony Nook's sins, dropping an embittered canvas before them one by one and splashing out portraits with his unrestrainable vehemence. Yet he had no mind or control for it, and he took his many madnesses, compounded them all together, and unleashed them in one unstoppably massive outpouring of fiery torment and lunatic indignation.

His dragon-wound opened like a shattered dam, spilling out waters boiling; a searing tide so overwhelming it would wash over the world.

"Again and again you slither from your responsibilities, trying to pawn away your ultimate duty towards each other to absent and false hopes! But the truth bites you now: no Sun was ever going to guard you from darkness! In throwing your lives before her you have only been spoiling your own chances to protect yourselves! That hesitating cowardice consuming you has let this final hour sneak up upon you! Do not flee from it further! Defend your home! Defend your lives! Within you already the courage has revealed itself, trying to cry out to you so you might seize it! Did you not hear it, when your wall you labored to build?! When you defeated the first of the monsters on your own?! In your hearts there is the strength to face this disaster, whatever end it leaves you at! If your love for each other is not a lie then fight for each other! Leave it to nopony else!"

This was now the second time the assembled ponies of Stony Nook had stood in trepid silence and listened to the frothy ravings of a pony who hid himself under cloak and shadow. And they were no more amenable than the first time to his suicidal ideas, answering him with their dark glares, their turns-aside heavy with contempt, and the way their whispers – even in that moment of existential threat – were crusted with such derisive scorn.

But Hailstone, of course, didn't shy away from taking her answer straight to his concealed face.

"You're nuts!" she spat. "We had to drop a water tower on just one of these things to stop him! We don't got any more for the other two dozen of'em!" Her striking hoof left a bruise in the dirt below. "If we stick around, these things are going to sweep in here and cook our pony hides!"

Right back the stranger returned her hostility, cutting his own hoofprint into the road.

"If you have nothing to die for then you've had nothing to live for!"

"Oh, golly, brilliant plan! 'Line up like a buffet for them!' 'Roll over and get eaten cause at least that's noble!'"

"Wings ever make a pungent coward! Flap away to your clouds, if you have no legs on which to stand!"

Hailstone's wings did come out with a furious snap, though obviously not for escape. She swung them a hair away from clipping the stranger across the nose.

"Okay, first," she snarled, "the only reason I haven't slugged you yet is because I'm nice enough not to! Second, it takes a real coward to say we should just give up and go out in a blaze of pointless glory!"

"It no longer matters what becomes of you here!" Again the cloaked pony was screaming at all the town, even if he did channel it directly at Hailstone. "The hour of avoidance has long passed! The pale haze of profane evil is already devouring your home! Now is left only the question of how you will face this baleful moment of destiny! With strength and love for each other?" His exposed nose nearly stabbed the pegasus. "Or with the same surrender and spinelessness that led you to this fateful choice?"

"Or – better idea – we can show some brains and actually try to save our tails by getting out of here!" Hailstone shouted so loud that she actually lifted off the ground.

And to the stranger's chagrin the supporting chorus of the town joined her.

"I love Stony Nook plenty," Mrs. Totaler said sadly. "Been here since the start; breaks my heart to see it end like this! But heck if it wouldn't be worse to lose somepony 'stead of just some rocks and wood! I can build another tavern, old as I am!"

Home Remedy grumbled, "I practice medicine to heal ponies so they can live longer lives, not to bury them on the battlefield of their own home!"

"Bartenders, doctors, accountants," Desk Job bitterly enumerated, "builders, quarryponies, foals, fathers, mothers. What do we have to stop monsters with?"

"I don't know what you're expecting us to do, sir," Scrolldozer said, backing up the mayor. "We're not any fighters. Look at us!"

Every muscle in the stranger tensed, clinging tight and strained to his bones. His teeth had almost been whittled down to the roots, and so much steam puffed from his nostrils that a distant observer might have mistaken him for a chugging train engine. He felt he loved their innocent lives so greatly that he could see only cowardice and villainy in their reserve, supremely despising their ordinary pony hearts and the sanely-selfish choices they made.

And suddenly, his hoof flew up and tore his hood down.

"Look at me!" Prideheart howled.

Look the townsponies did. Stares were disgusted and horrified, when not simply startled by the sheer shock. Gasps were small, too interrupted by trembling mouths which tried and failed to find the words to describe the revolting sight.

Skin blackened with incurable decay. Lost eye slimy and sickly, and crusted with the condensation of pure nausea. A horn nub more cracked than the driest earth, and more diseased than a bilious swamp; the pustules on top pulsing with glowing poison.

Unseen was the thousands of protected lives.

"Who you are matters not," Prideheart roared over their silence, now blending his outrage with his own desperation. "Fright matters not; nor courage, nor might, nor body, nor blood! If you cannot find the will to turn and stand before an evil, whether all-powerful or of ignorant malevolence, then the world will be swallowed by darkness. If not here, elsewhere; and if not engulfed all at once—"

A cold and brutal quiet stung him, creating a pause of defeat, if ever a brief one.

"—then one foal at a time..."

The townsponies did not answer him. Many of them still stared at the horror of his injured face. Nowhere he looked did he see agreement with him.

These ponies, too, he was not one of. There was no reason he could possibly give for them to soundly listen. His language had been too changed.

Scrolldozer at last came forward, not to Prideheart but to Crumble Pie. He was so subdued as to be cowering, and in a dead whisper he spoke for all of Stony Nook:

"There's so little time. We need to leave right now."

No possible preparation there could have been in him, nor in anypony there in Stony Nook, for the gray mare's heartbreaking answer:

"Well now... hold on a second..."

The father's jaw dropped at her hesitation. His words pilfered, he only bent low before her and tried to grab her hooves; to plead for her to revoke her ill-considered joke; to beg for her to stop all the world, nod in agreement, affirm his beliefs, and save his daughter. And he cried because he knew that she did only the things she believed were best for all, not the things she knew others wished for.

Tenderly Crumble Pie helped her friend to his hooves, standing him up gently before she gave a soft rub of her cheek on his neck. Then to the rest of Stony Nook she turned, and she addressed them firmly:

"Listen up! These... heckhounds... are some thirty minutes to storming over Stony Nook; maybe less. Mule's Head, on the other hoof, is a few hours away even if we hoof it. And we can't do that. We got older ponies, stiff as rocks. We got foals, with their pebble legs. We're not going to be able to roll our whole village down that road with any speed. When the heckhounds hop the wall, race into Stony Nook, and find it empty, are they going to just stop and have a picnic? No, they'll come after us. They'll find us on the open road, well before we ever make Mule's Head. And then what kind of position will we be in?"

"Th-Then we-, we-... we smash the bridge!" Scrolldozer came besides her and still, with all his desperation, tried to flee around the hopelessness of the situation. "Once everypony is across we just... tear it apart! Then we'll be safe! They can't cross the river!"

"Can't touch the water," Crumble Pie dismally corrected him, loud enough to share it with the whole town. "They can cross the river just fine if they find a way over it. Now, I can't think of how they'd do it without the bridge, but... it only takes them finding one way and then that's it for us. I can't, in good conscience, bank everypony's life on them being too dumb to beat some rocks together and come up with a solution.

"But," she continued to address her ponies, though she moved over before Prideheart, letting him know that she was speaking to him too, "that doesn't mean we got to let everypony stay here like some kind of feast for'em. I don't agree with everything our friend here said but he's right that we can't just run, and also that our new wall won't do any good without ponies on top it to keep those monsters off. So... some ponies should definitely leave for Mule's Head; the elders, the foals... But other ponies are going to need to stay behind and hold the wall for all they're worth. That'll give time for the rest to hopefully get to Mule's Head. Understand?"

Nopony spoke, but nor had Crumble Pie expected anypony to.

She moved to the side of the road to a building whose face had a front porch one step high. Climbing it, the extra head of height gave her a clean look out over the crowd and at the faces of all her sister and brother townsponies.

"I love you all," the gray mare told them, "and so I'll stay here and keep those beasts back myself, if I have to. But... I don't think all alone I'll be able to stand for long. Despite how much you all praise me for it, I've never started a quarry here by myself. It takes a lot of ponies working together to do something big... So, if there are any of you who are willing... please... help me."

From the silent and still crowd Scrolldozer was the first to emerge, leaving his daughter back with the unvolunteered ponies.

He was a mess, already sobbing and with snot running from his nose. As he walked he wobbled, hardly able to carry himself. But regardless he stepped up onto the porch with Crumble Pie, turned, and stood next to her, even as he wept over his abysmal fate.

The gray mare was fast to embrace him, wrapping her one leg around his and holding him close against her, shedding a few small but happy tears herself.

Immediately, Hailstone and the rest of Crumble Pie's quarry crew came forward and gathered on or just in front of the low porch. The out-of-town builders also joined them, though most were new residents who had only been with Stony Nook for a few weeks or even just a few days. That short time had been enough to have let them know Crumble Pie well. They came up with the same heart as any one of her crew.

And then, from the remaining crowd of ordinary townsfolk, many ponies started to break and approach.

Central among them was Mayor Desk Job, who held her disbelieving head low and murmured grimly to herself. To think, at that very moment she could have been far away in a comfortable, magically-cooled office in a Manehattan skyscraper listening to the soothing sound of an inked pen scribbling over a beautiful financial spreadsheet. It would have been quieter, calmer, more lucrative, and above all safer.

Though, perhaps, far more lonely.

Crumble Pie was delighted to see Desk Job coming forward. She leaned down off the porch and greeted the mare with a silly, heartfelt, faithful tease, "Mayor! What would we ever do without you?"

"Probably blunder about like a headless corporation, I guess," the mayor sighed, resigned but amused.

The stream of ponies peeling away from the crowd only increased, until the greater share of them had stepped up. The gray mare took heart in seeing so many come forward. Not only were they that much stronger together but each also had individual talents they could bring, like the noble Doctor Remedy. (Whether one thought that her primary talent was her medical knowledge, instead of her uncannily dark ability to motivate ponies, was a separate issue.)

One of the many ponies to volunteer was the quiet Mrs. Totaler, who almost slipped in under Crumble Pie's radar. For her the gray mare stepped down from the porch, confronting her.

"Now, Mrs. Totaler," apologized Crumble Pie, "I'm moved by your willingness, but I think twenty-five years is enough for anypony to give one town. You might be the only pony in all of Stony Nook who's been here since the beginning!"

"All the more reason to stick it out to the very end, I wager," the older mare replied.

"I appreciate it, but I think you've earned your ticket out of here. Besides, I need somepony respected enough to head up those ponies who won't be staying. They'll need a clearheaded pony to hold'em together and lead'em down the road." The gray mare gave an aside glance at Scrolldozer behind her, the stallion still weepy and shivering. She emphasized, "You know... to make sure all our foals make it safe to Mule's Head."

"... I understand," Mrs. Totaler nodded. She didn't waste any more words and hugged Crumble Pie, more like mother to daughter than like pleasant acquaintances. The many messages in it were clear: 'I promise,' 'I'm sorry,' 'Good luck,' 'Goodbye,' 'I love you.' After it the older mare returned to the very thinned crowd.

Those left with Mrs. Totaler didn't seem so perfectly comfortable with their choice to be the saved. But most were either fillies and colts—who in all the blessed names of princesses and all the cursed names of demons would never have secured their parents' permissions to have stayed behind anyway—or were elders—experienced enough to know how much less their older bodies could now bring to a fight, even if their spirits were still young.

Gazing over her large family Crumble Pie bowed in approval of the division. And then every silent pony watched as she stepped from her group and approached the one pony in all the town who still stood apart from the rest; who hadn't joined either camp.

Prideheart had watched the whole proceeding as if he were outside of it all. And now, with Crumble Pie before him, he remained cold and silent. He noticed readily how the gray mare couldn't seem to meet both his now-revealed eyes at once. Alternating she stared at the dead one, foggy with its toxic cloud of color and sunken into its pit of rotten flesh, or focused on his good one, the blazing red-gold of it still clear enough to shine with some amount of young heroism despite the withering age of the face it was set in.

"Sir...," she began, "... certainly you don't owe Stony Nook anything. But that didn't stop you from jumping in the way of that monster when he came for me, or from chasing out after him for our sakes afterwards. Now I'm sorry that I can't agree with you that ponies should live up to this... mountain of a noble standard that you have, and there's nothing I'm going to do to ask you to come down off that peak for us. But... well, just looking at you, I'd imagine you know something or another about handling fights and maybe laying battle plans. If you still have it in you to offer whatever help and experience you have... well, I'd turn over every stone in Equestria to find you the proper thanks. You're welcome here with us."

She held her hoof out to him.

"There's no such thing as a stranger in Stony Nook."

A frosted wind slipped down through the road of town. Everypony watched closely.

But he did not take her hoof.

He bowed before her instead, descending low to the road. Openly he struggled to get down, not hiding his weakened and aching knee as it quaked hard to hold his shifting weight. All the way he went, stooped in front of her with the crooked fracture of his horn touched to the dirt and the long length of his cloak folded up around his sides.

"Come whatever fire, here I will stand unshaken," Prideheart swore. "If the hounds break this line to pursue those innocents of yours, then they shall have to give chase slowed by the weight of my corpse gnawing on their paws."

Chapter 11: Preparing to Fail

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"There. That will take some pressure off and relieve quite a bit of the pain," Dr. Remedy finished snuggly fitting the knee brace over Prideheart's worst leg.

The device was hardly of the modern fancy design available in a proper hospital like those in Canterlot would have offered, but the doctor had plenty of experience wringing the most value out of meager or less up-to-date supplies. Old medicine wasn't always bad medicine.

"Likewise the medication should bring down the swelling."

Prideheart only gave a soft harrumph and pulled his leg away, but immediately he felt a difference upon bending it. All the taut fabric, and in particular the tight squeeze of the firm bands above and below his devastated knee, was a new and odd sensation. But dangling and flexing his leg in the air suddenly no longer awakened the same growls of pain it had used to. Prior, even the wind brushing against his knee was enough to have sharply tingled him with jaw-clenching soreness.

Doubtful of the miraculous relief, but more than that almost too eager to test it, he put his hoof down and took a solid step forward. He even leaned heavily into his braced knee. The wound was there; that he felt without trouble, and working on it as he was sent a warm wave of irritating crinkles running up his leg. However the bothersome squeaking of a irritated mouse was not any comparison to the former roaring caterwauls of a vicious lion. The injury was still wild, but had been comfortably caged.

Home Remedy, foul-mooded by nature but now even more so in light of the cloaked stallion's poor patient manners, warned him, "Just remember: that brace eases the symptoms but it's not a cure. You should be off that leg and letting it rest; for a long time, really."

A stiff kink had developed in her neck from having bent so low to slide the brace onto him, and she stretched herself while standing high to loosen the tightness, but all the while her doctor's gaze never veered from the stallion's exposed legs. His mangled knee may have been the worst damage down there but goodness! All those bruises, cuts, and scratches which coated his legs almost made them more red, black, and blue than his natural white!

It was hard for her to resist the impulse to throw water at a forest fire.

"I have some ointments that will help with the-"

"It is well enough," Prideheart beat back her offer swiftly, though he had little attention for her as he was still slightly enamored by his newly empowered knee.

"Fine," the doctor hissed.

That grotesque wound on his face required attention also, or at least it probably had needed it some decades ago, but why should she have bothered demanding an examination? Fussy, irresponsible, know-nothing ponies! All of them! She tugged at the lapels of her physician's coat to straighten it out; a little act of disdainful decorum to counter his rudeness with.

"Another pony who won't do what's needed to take care of themselves. Fits right in here."

She turned away and started stomping off towards her office. There would have been nothing gained by seething over the issue, anyway. Time was short and there were so many more preparations which had to be made for the terrible things that were coming to Stony Nook.

The heavy sound of her hooves woke Prideheart from his bout of momentary wonder, and a strange murmur wiggled up into his throat. He tightened his lips over his teeth while he considered second thoughts, but then he released himself, opened his mouth, and called after her.

"... Thank you, Doctor."

The unexpected gratitude stalled Home Remedy long enough for her to return him one of her nicest scowls before she moved on.

On both ends of town Stony Nook was in chaos, though of a surprisingly orderly fashion all things considered.

Resolved to their awful course, the townsponies had quickly broken apart into teams under the direction of Crumble Pie, and by her instructions they had started to piece together a defense. Already most of them were scrambling about along their new wall, from riverside to riverside, trying to make the best use of their limited time before they had to face the unfaceable. Prideheart had only just begun to help them when Home Remedy had pulled him aside for her ferocious round of medical practice.

Meanwhile, east across the long stone bridge which spanned the river, the lucky evacuees gathered. In number they were fewer than the defenders; just a scant few dozen ponies with an even smaller few number of wagons they had nearly finished loading. Their haste was even more urgent than anything going on across town, yet their results were slower for reasons of old, young, brokenhearted natures.

Only a rare few of those ponies were of the strong and stout type who would have otherwise been standing with the unfortunate but noble defenders if they had not be selected to have served as draftsponies for the wagons; like it or not, young and solid backs were needed to haul the heavy loads down to Mule's Head. Some of them wished to stay but otherwise obliged to the duty requested of them, and the rest were ponies who had asked specifically to be allowed to abandon Stony Nook. Those ponies surely had not wanted to be thought of as cowards, and they had been quite relieved when Crumble Pie had without question accepted just about any excuse from them, true of otherwise: family, infirmity, or simple fear.

So, working fast, the rare ponies had piled much into their wagon beds: some food, blankets, other simple supplies, as well as all of the town's most essential documents and records (all neatly sorted and packaged as a matter of everyday affairs thanks to Mayor Desk Job). What took the longest to load – what they were still trying to get aboard one at a time – was all those other ponies who were themselves departing also. Nearly half of those leaving were older ponies, from those with their first deep wrinkles crawling up their faces to those who were living prunes crowned with wiry manes white down to the roots. They left not only because they weren't fit enough in any way to fight but also because the wise years of experience they had accumulated made them fit enough to watch over the other half of the departing ponies: all of Stony Nook's fillies and colts.

Every foal in town was brought out and loaded into a wagon. The task of it was not so laborious in body as it was in mind, and certainly that was what delayed the departure the most. It was a deep well of heartbreak on that end of the bridge. Parents, some succeeding but many failing at containing their grief, said their final goodbyes to their own beloved foals before hoisting their little ponies up into the wagons and returning to town to join the defenders. A long string of ponies walked backwards over the bridge, heading west while facing east, unable to say an easy or fast goodbye to their love.

But despite the difficulty – despite shattered hearts in the parents; despite the loudest tearful cries of protest from the foals – all accepted it. All agreed: not one foal should be left behind where the fire could reach them.

Certainly not even Bookworm.

Prideheart, weary leg freshly reinvigorated, wasted no time returning to the wall, and upon arriving he found the cherished filly being dragged down off of it by her father.

Crumble Pie, atop the wall and rushing out orders upon pony after pony, was bidding Bookworm a lamentably fast farewell in between all the pandemonium. The filly was going to be the last pony to join with those who were to escape, and she had in fact only been spared immediate placement in a wagon because the gray mare had recognized the fountain of knowledge she was. Crumble Pie had asked that the filly be briefly held aside, and for the last few hurried minutes she had been extracting everything she could have about heckhounds from the well-read foal. Already anything of use that had come out of the filly was being incorporated into the defensive planning.

But now with the reprieve over Bookworm was being hauled away, and she was loathe to go. Scrolldozer's magic could direct a hundred stones simultaneously in an orchestrated performance of immaculate grace, but pulling his one little pony along to somewhere she didn't want to go almost resembled an ant struggling to push around a misshapen pebble. The tender touch of his magic tugged and tugged at her while he pleaded for her cooperation, but she only ever wriggled and kicked while barking in despair at Crumble Pie who had no more time to listen.

'Old quarry' this, and 'heckhounds' that, she shouted. Whatever it was precisely that the filly wanted to share with the gray mare, she was quite desperate to do so. Her screaming had her nearly at the point of frustrated tears.

When finally Bookworm accepted that Crumble Pie's overworked attention was beyond reach she was left with no choice but to take the battle directly to her father.

"Dad, stop!" she commanded. And when he didn't she twitched harder against his magic, flinging about indignant grunts with each kick.

"Honey, please! You have to join the others now."

"No! Dad! The heckhounds-! Dad! If we don't-!"

"Baby, I'm so sorry but it's time for you to go. Please, just-"

"Dad, they have a fire that-! Their inner fire-! Dad, stop it! We can't save Stony Nook if we don't-!"

"You don't worry about Stony Nook, baby. W-We're-... we're going to do just fine here, alright? You know Crumble Pie will m-make sure that-... that w-we're all going to be o-okay. But to be sure, you have to get away from here a-and... be safe."

"But we gotta-! Dad! Daaad!"

Each denial added only more pressure until, tremendous and volcanic, she erupted in an enormously hateful cry:

"Dad, you're not listening!"

Scrolldozer stopped as if he had swiftly smashed into a brick wall, and his magic flickered with weakness as it gently let his daughter go. But it wasn't his intention to free her, and with a shaky hoof he reached out and guided her face to his. Down he lowered himself, bending his legs so steep the he was nearly brought to the ground, and he met her eye-to-eye. Though she was the callow and upset filly it was he who seemed far more anxious and disheartened, in his own adult way. His fatherly veneer was intact but underneath it everything crumbled quickly in the worst sort of way.

"Bookworm," he teetered on the edge of control, "I'm so, so sorry, honey. I am listening. Really I am. But there's no time. Mrs. Totaler and the others really have to leave right now, and you've got to go with them."

But his speech was all too familiar to the filly; the words may have been new but the hypocritical parental authority was still the same. And her method of fighting back against it was unchanged: outright denial. Her dead silence screamed. Her passive stillness wrestled against it. She refused in every way to cooperate. She didn't even allow herself the respect to look at him, violently squirming her chin away from his hoof.

And her little weapons eviscerated Scrolldozer. Down to the core it cut him; that this was the way his last goodbye to his daughter was going to turn out.

"Y-You're going to go with all your school friends on a little adventure away from Stony Nook, okay?" he brought up a broken smile, trying so very hard to find the words and strength which might nudge her forward. "And once you're in Mule's Head you'll get to take a train, all by yourself! W-Without-... without me... And listen: y-you take it straight to Canterlot, alright? You're going to see Mom! Won't that be nice to see her, and s-stay with her for a l-long while?"

A freezing shiver climbed into his voice, and slowly it slipped a stuffiness up his nose. He scarcely had the coherence to try and hide the slurp of snot being pulled back up, but the way he scrunched his muzzle did help to hold the tears in.

"... A-And when you see her you give her a big hug for me, and-... a-and you t-tell her how m-much I love her, okay? W-Will you super promise me that you'll do that? Tell her t-that I love her so very, v-very much?"

The disagreeable filly said nothing, declining to betray her policy of disobedience. She didn't even offer up a defiant grunt.

"And I love you too, B-Bookworm. I'll a-always love y-you, baby. Please know that."

Scrolldozer tried to get a hoof around to embrace her, bringing himself up so that he could endow his last kiss upon the top of her head.

But again she wriggled in resistance, this time whining harshly. And in her struggle she at last spied her cloaked hero standing a short distance away observing the whole ordeal.

"Mister!"

The little filly tore away from her father, escaping his final show of affection, and she raced to the safety of Prideheart.

Scrolldozer, panicked by his daughter flying out of his very grasp, started to follow her, but he went only a few failing steps before he noticed whom she was escaping to and with how much eager desperation she fled. His numb flanks couldn't lift his legs through another further step and he was only able to stand back and wait, watching her interact with her mysterious friend through the corners of his lowered, misty eyes.

Bookworm reared up as she crashed into Prideheart, and she pawed at his chest with her forehooves. She was somewhere between the frenzied excitement of yapping puppy and the dismayed devastation of a heartbroken foal needing comfort. Certainly those two extremes tugging on her was what caused her blathering of fast and broken pleas to emerge without any clarity.

"For what is all this trouble, young Bookworm?" Prideheart nudged a calm into her with the gentleness of both his hoof and his question. On his face was a smile so simple that it revealed in every open way the love and delight he felt for her pure acceptance of him.

She bit down on her lips to hold back her rambling until she had the right words, but meanwhile she pushed herself closer into him. Her knees folded and her chin rested up against him, and she gazed up at him like he was a tower of hope; a foal's embrace of a figure beloved; clinging to him, her salvation from the tyranny of her father.

"Nopony is trying to stop the heckhounds!" she finally complained, certain that her hero would understand.

Prideheart tweaked his good eye at her, saying, "Here before you many are preparing to make their stand against the wicked brutes."

"No, mister! Not that! The quarry! There's still a crack in the quarry! If we don't do anything to seal it then the heckhounds will just come back after they're beaten!"

Ah. So that was what drove her agitation.

The cloaked stallion let no jolly amusement show on his face, but his heart chuckled. Stony Nook's circumstances were dire – an unfair evil visited unjustly upon them by cruel fate – but the filly's imagination was directing her to the wrong sources of worry. Yet again her young inexperience was butting heads with her mature knowledge and causing her trouble. At least this time her mistake had no chance to pull her into any real danger.

Again her priorities matched those of a fictional hero. She saw only the broad and triumphant strokes of the tale: heckhounds being vanquished completely by ponies empowered with unstoppably good hearts; evil being put back in its place by the forces of justice. There was much Prideheart admired in that, but there was an obvious truth the filly missed. Had her mind been older and sounder, and her priorities more mature, then swiftly she would have realized what all the adults of Stony Nook, and particularly all the parents, had already come to accept: there was a greater, more immediate victory that had to be won, above all else.

Or rather, a greater, longer defeat that had to be prepared for.

The crack to Tartarus was of no concern to anypony since the defenders' foremost goal was to hold the line for as long as their lives lasted. That duty superseded all others. They were to spend their lives purchasing their most precious loved ones the best possible chance of escape to Mule's Head. Only if—whether through a lucky miracle or some unanticipated eruption of heroic willpower—only if they were able to succeed in driving the heckhounds out of Stony Nook then the need to seal the quarry crack would become a legitimate concern.

If.

Otherwise...

... a last stand needed no follow-up plan.

But all that besides, the filly was still full of a charming foolishness which wasted her worries on things so inconsequential. For even supposing that the battle did find unexpected success, well then there would have hardly been trouble in sealing the crack regardless. Quenched heckhounds were harmless, and naught but a single fast pony would have been needed to chase after them to the quarry. One agent with a blasting charge could bury the red fissure without trouble or interference after the cowardly monsters had descended to the fiery bowels under Equestria to recharge.

Yet Prideheart hardly expected Bookworm to have grasped all those considerations; not her, so prone as she was to fables and fantasies. One day her sound mind would be capable of incredible tactical thinking. One day she would be a pony of astounding heart and soul. He believed those things in full faith. She was already well on her way, after all. But such growth would only come after she had matured enough to soften her overly devoted love of heroes, their fictional conflicts, and their imagined ability to defy impossible odds solely through narrative power.

Unfortunately there was no time left in Stony Nook for her to grow. No time even for the cloaked stallion to give one last lesson to show her the errors she had made.

With her father he was in agreement: she had to depart.

Prideheart draped an affectionate leg over her. The fabric of his new knee brace rested with confidence upon her shoulder.

"Wise filly, worry not," he instructed her. "These matters will be handled as best they can. Your role is not to be here to see them through."

Bookworm took a blow from his failure to immediately validate her fears. It was like a small white spark suddenly popping into a thick pane of glass.

"Mister, the heckhounds; that crack is their weakness, remember?"

"Yes. That lesson you taught me well. And your teachings on these monsters will be of immeasurable help when the battle comes."

From above his face hovered over her, caring and kindly despite the wretched repugnance of his dragon-wound. But as he nearly touched his nose to hers he leveled the tender guidance of a parent upon her.

"However, it is not the time for cracks and quarries, but the time for some to stay and some to go. And you, dear young Bookworm, must go. Away, with the others. This time you will not come back for me."

Very gently he brought his hugging leg off of her and used it to touch one of her hooves, still on his chest.

"Fear not for me, for I am not so foolish now as to enter this fight alone. All here will stand together. But... do I have your true promise that you will go? A promise sought now not for control over you, like before... but to give my trust belief in you. Hm?"

The filly looked at his big hoof over hers, and all the scuffs and scratches upon it. The terrible weathering was the legacy of his many recent days of hardship, up and down over mountains and far over dusty and rocky ranges, but in her young mind they were only the scars from the battle he had fought yesterday to protect her. And now today he would fight again in a battle, this time to protect all of Stony Nook. Fight, as heroes ever did.

Her head stayed down and her only answer was a worried whine.

The stallion took her hesitance in warm stride, saying, "Are you unable to grant that promise after all our agony on the river? Ah, no trouble there is in it; I have an alternate promise which might suit your good character better. Many heroes are needed here for the great defense..."

With an affectionate touch he lured her face eastwards towards the bridge.

"... but those defenseless who must flee will need a hero with them as well, for their own safekeeping."

Again Prideheart touched her with his hoof, this time lightly upon her heart. His touch was soft as a feather cushion even for how rugged his hard, old hoof was.

"A hero such as you, young Bookworm. On my deepest sincere request, can you promise to me that you will ensure they arrive at their destination in safety? To you I entrust them."

It was a request expertly built to appeal precisely to the little filly, and quite so it draped a smile over her still-present fears.

Yet she was hollow of any agreement. She gave no word and sealed no promise. An unseen wall still sat in the way, keeping her from crossing the threshold.

Grinning, Prideheart gave her one final, goodhearted nudge, "Nothing there is to worry over for us who hold here. Surely you know this. More fell challenges have I faced in wrestling bull weevils than from any tender pups of Tartarus; this day is no more than a holiday."

Her smile expanded, in size and sadness.

"... I promise, mister."

For a fraction of a moment Prideheart's gaze lifted up towards Scrolldozer, leering darkly.

"A super promise, then?" he returned to very specifically ask Bookworm.

"... I super promise that they'll be safe."

"Good. It is committed to you in confidence."

He lowered himself around her, hugging firm, and she only had slight reserve before she gave back in kind.

"Go. Wait not to depart," the stallion then instructed. An older eye of his looked at her. "You I will not allow to be lost."

"... See you later, mister," the filly hoped. She reluctantly began to return to her father.

Prideheart delayed in thought before he answered.

"... Verily."

Unsatisfied but nevertheless resolved, the filly went back towards her father who threw open his legs, ready to accept her with a vast and anxious hug of his own. Only she declined to take it, paying his offer a mean frown as she turned past him to shuffle down the road.

It was another stab into the father's heart, and it took him a great effort to stop his bleeding, pick himself up, and follow her. There was still enough intact loving parent in him to see his daughter's departure through.

To watch the wagons pull away with her in tow; to look out through his tears as she shrunk into a safe speck rolling down the eastbound road... That should have at least made it just a little bit easier to die.

Now that Bookworm's future was secure, Prideheart turned his focus fully upon the town's defense.

Swiftly he made his way to where the wall intersected the road and he climbed the crude stairway there. Up top frantic ponies dashed and flew about every which way, making their preparations. But more importantly, there was Crumble Pie. The gray mare was lecturing to a collection of attentive ponies which included Hailstone and Desk Job, and though the cloaked stallion's arrival interrupted their session it wasn't in any unwanted way.

"Oh, good, you're here," Crumble Pie greeted, and she grinned slyly at him, "and no worse for the wear after going a bout with our good doctor, I see! Please forgive her if she was a little, uh, zealous. I hope Doc Remedy didn't hurt you too badly?"

Being amongst so unfamiliar a crowd still kept Prideheart silent, but he did raise and wobble his leg to show off his new brace; the 'wound' from his latest heroic battle against an implacable enemy.

"So," Crumble Pie quickly swallowed her amusement and moved to bring the stallion up to speed, "keeping in mind what the wiggler told us, here's what we got (and I sure hope it'll do something to keep those things back): we're lining the wall with buckets full of river water. Someponies will be on top to throw them, other ponies'll have the job of racing back to the river to refill them. Water is our only real way to hurt'em; those dogs are worse than cats when it comes to the stuff. More importantly, every hound we tag that way is out of the fight for good. If we can just hold up on the wall and rain down water on them then maybe we can last for a good long while."

She heard her own words and a cloud of dismal uncertainty came over her. Over to her other ponies she looked.

"Hailstone... there's absolutely no way that the pegasi can get a rainstorm together? Even a small one would make this so much easier."

"Stony Nook doesn't have a proper weather crew, and we don't have the materials."

It felt like it wasn't the first time that Hailstone had explained it, though in actual fact all the rushing about had prevented any full account from earlier being given.

"We can't make any fresh clouds, and way out here there's only so few up there to begin with. Not enough for a storm of any sort, that's for sure. And anyway it wouldn't matter. Even if we took one of'em and dunked it in the river it wouldn't hold much water, and what it did hold it wouldn't rain out very evenly. You need some actual rainwater in the mix to bind a cloud together so that it'll stay saturated and pour properly. That's what makes it into a raincloud, instead of just some ordinary, everyday cloud. You know, that's why Cloudsdale has a whole factory just for pumping out rainwater and rainclouds. We can't do it, Crumble Pie. Nice idea, but it's no good."

"I understand. Just fishing for advantages wherever we can find them."

Hailstone's excuses left Prideheart unimpressed, and vainly so. Pleased with it, he grunted too loudly, "It is right that no magical weather would give saving cover."

As expected the comment was not popular with anypony, and Crumble Pie in particular showed his irrelevant remark a disappointed frown.

"I'm not throwing out anything that can help save these ponies' lives," she said.

It was her direct words more than any unfriendly stare from the others that brought a downcast glance of shame to the cloaked stallion.

"Anyway," Crumble Pie didn't wait to carry on, "that's the core of the plan: wall and water. You got any immediate suggestions to harden things up a bit, sir?"

Prideheart shook off his ignominy and searched the area, spying every pony hurrying about and every sloshing bucket they were depositing. The long wall spanned across the entire west and south sides of Stony Nook, a mirror to the great riverbend itself. Quickly a numbers game kicked off in the stallion's head.

"We must be careful to have the wall entire stationed with ponies," he warned the gray mare. "The hounds' thirty gives them numbers enough to stretch their attack wide across much of the face of it, which they will try." He remembered the heckhounds bottlenecking on the quarry ramps, snapping and snarling at each other with a distaste for togetherness or teamwork.

"There's only twenty-four of'em or so, not thirty," Hailstone chastised the stallion, more to be combative than to be helpful.

Came Prideheart's cold reply, "Trust better eyes, feathered poltroon."

"Oh yeah, I bet you see pretty well with that slimeball you got there."

"Scoundrel, there are ants I've witnessed hold their hill with more valor than you."

"Enough!" Crumble Pie shouted, aghast, frustrated, and disdainful that she had to come between them yet again. "We've got to cobble together a defense here and we don't have time for bickering from a pony I know is more professional than that and from a pony old enough that he should have left his colthood behind years ago! Now take those chips off your shoulders and shake those rocks out of your brains!"

And though she was exasperated, the gray mare refused to let the pointless aside of foalhood-level nonsense draw momentum away from their planning. Leaving no space for the scolded ponies to even respond she pressed forward immediately, acknowledging Prideheart's suggestion of coverage, "Right, so we'll space out the ponies we got as best we can to get the whole wall. But we can't spare everypony for that. We'll need our fastest few ponies on bucket refilling duty."

The cloaked pony quietly secured him shame and became professional once more.

"That is sound."

"Good. Okay then. Now, anything else you recommend?"

"... The center of the wall is the furthest run from the river. Of water, the largest stockpiles should be there-"

"Because it takes the longest to get fresh buckets to. Check," the gray mare acknowledged instantly. She launched a confirming stare at the others to make sure that they understood too.

Impressed, Prideheart continued with his next observation, "In a defense such as this our whole line must hold. Not but one breach would be needed for the hounds to take victory. Any of their rotten kind who stole inside could disrupt other defenders from behind, snapping our ranks and scattering us quickly."

"I get where you're going," Crumble Pie nodded, then grinned, "and we're already ahead of you. Mayor?"

Desk Job's brightened horn raised up a simple bell with a wooden handle. It was an unremarkable one much like a parent might use: stretching it out the window in evening and shaking it to ring a trail their playing foals could follow all the way home to supper. Stony Nook had always had a few lying around for similar purposes; signaling other workers at the quarry, calling town meetings, and so on. The Mayor twiddled her magic to sound the bell, and its sprightly tingle was unusually jolly for such a grim morning.

"We distributed all the bells we have," Desk Job explained. "Not everypony has one of course, but enough do that if any heckhounds make it over the wall then somepony should see it and give the warning signal."

Crumble Pie frowned, "So everypony will know if our line is cracked. Trouble is, though, there isn't any plan yet for what exactly we do when that happens. I just don't know the best way to deal with it."

"Any penetrating invaders must be repealed without delay, and holes in our line restored with all speed," Prideheart determinately advised. "A tear grows longer in time, and hounds will spill through if we are not fast to re-sew it."

"Right; throw'em out right away if we can," the gray mare winced, "but... suppose we can't?"

"To the end of our lives, we must hold," he granted no quarter.

Crumble Pie gave her head an incredulous shake, but lest she show enough silence to permit Hailstone a chance to spit more anger she quickly insisted, "No, no, no. We're fighting to the end if we have to, yes, but we're also trying to save lives here. That means we need to have an actual plan of what we're going to do if the wall doesn't hold. And 'die' isn't good enough!"

But she still had no alternative herself. For the life of her she couldn't figure out a sensible failsafe strategy. But like in her many days quarrying good rock from the earth, she knew how to work with others to achieve results which she couldn't alone. It had in fact been her very purpose in inviting Prideheart into their fold.

She looked hard at the cloaked pony, and she questioned him again, making sure to press her strong honesty.

"So, the heckhounds get over and we can't push'em back... What do we do then that saves everypony we can?"

The quiet stallion spoke nothing as his eye rested on Crumble Pie, then moved steadily over some of the others. Even in their dislike of the outsider, they all looked to him for an answer. And as his gaze moved on down the wall to the many further ponies who were carrying buckets or discussing with their neighbors nervously about their own short futures, he slowly silenced his own breathing until, in the quiet halls of old Canterlot military classes, he found the answer they sought.

He turned east.

"A retreat to the bridge," he said. "Our narrowest chokepoint."

"Without the wall for an advantage we wouldn't last long tussling hoof-to-paw with these monsters, even on a narrow bridge like that," Crumble Pie mused with a grim edge. But immediately she started to awaken to the stallion's intended strategy, and she brightened, "... But we wouldn't have to hold them all that long; only long enough to get everypony over the bridge. Then... we break it!"

Prideheart nodded at her perfect pick up of his thoughts.

But Desk Job turned up a confused eyebrow at the plan.

"I thought you said that destroying the bridge was too big a risk?"

"No, no," the gray mare energetically latched onto the emergency strategy, and she explained, "It would have been too much of a risk if it was the only thing that we did. We don't know how quick the heckhounds will be to figure out a way to cross the river. But as a final measure when we back out? What is there to lose after our lines are already broken? We'll save all the lives we can while delaying the hounds as much as possible, however much or little that is." However she eased into an unpleasant seriousness and reluctantly cautioned her friends, "And... if it does turn out that they're fast in getting across, well then we're down nothing anyway. We'll still be between them and our ponyfolk on the road so that we can fight to the last to stall them anyhow."

She mulled silently on the dreadful potential for a moment, but then she nodded in appreciation at Prideheart for his solid strategy. The stallion in turn accepted her showing with a humble and loyal bow.

"Mayor," Crumble Pie then asked, "how many blasting charges do we have here in town?"

"Only eight. You keep most of them up at the new quarry," she answered with flawless memory.

"Eight'll be enough to demolish the bridge pretty good. We can bust them out and set them up later. We need to make sure the wall is absolutely ready first."

The gray mare let out a weary but ready sigh.

"Right then. Can I trust you all to spread the word about our strategy and make sure everypony is in on it? They'll need to know preicsely when to ring the bells, and what to do if they hear those bells start rocking. Mayor, you know our numbers; you're in charge of spacing out ponies and buckets. Remember: ponies spread even, but more buckets go near the center."

And while the others acknowledged and began to break apart, she turned to Prideheart and invited, "The wiggler had a bit to say about how the hounds fight; biting and slashing and spitting fire, and the like. And I guess we can expect them to be able to leap right up the wall, too. You've seen some of that up close, right?"

"Verily."

"Well... think you can tour around with me and give some very quick lectures to everypony about how to best deal with it? Sort of fast budget-budget self-defense classes. We don't have time for more."

His deferential bow asked her to lead the way.

Chapter 12: The Course of True Love

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"I think we got it all well in hoof now," Crumble Pie assured Prideheart. "You dig in."

After their lightning tour of teaching on the wall, where Prideheart had given the fastest combat advice he had ever shared to crowds as large as they could have gathered, the gray mare had carted him off the wall and aside. The rest of the town was still swept up in arranging their defense, though there was precious little more to do. Mainly they double-checked and triple-checked all they could over and over again, reassuring each other as best as they were able that they were ready, though there was nothing that ever would have made them feel truly ready enough for their fate. Many quiet, grim conversations when back and forth between ponies who were once neighbors in homes but now were neighbors on the wall of their last defense.

Sometime yesterday, on the short stretch of road between town and wall, a long row of tables had been set up. As the townsponies had gotten to work on their wall other ponies had covered the tables with plates of dried fruits, fresh vegetables, some hastily sliced breads, and even a bowl of oat dip; whatever could have been grabbed in a pinch: food for peckish workers, if hardly a feast. Plenty had been left behind after the prior day's marathon wall-building session, but once the terrible truth had come out this morning Crumble Pie had ordered the tables' stock refreshed. From all her years of leading quarry work, it was a firm belief of the gray mare's that:

"I know a pony can't labor right on an empty stomach. I suppose the same is probably true of fighting. So go on, sir. Eat up."

It would have been the mightiest lie for Prideheart to have denied his raving stomach, but he still held himself up like a soldier and shook his head.

"So long as more preparations are to be made, I will not-"

"Oh, nonsense," Crumble Pie tenderly rebuffed him. "We can handle what's left, don't worry. You pack something away; I thought it was an avalanche when your tummy started growling!"

Said stomach took the opportunity to loudly agree with her.

The cloaked stallion opened his mouth to protest again but Crumble Pie needed only her leaderly stare to shut him down. He swallowed his veto.

"... Very well. But on first sight of-"

"Trust me, you'll hear when they're coming. Get your last nibbles in now while you can, cause if they drag you down to Tartarus then I don't expect you'll be tasting much more than brimstone for the rest of your days."

The gray mare capped her humor with a small smile and then bowed to Prideheart. She made a half-turn about, ready to return to her duties, but she paused to add, "And... thank you, sir. See you up on that wall in a little."

"You are fair of heart, sound of mind, and strong of will, Madame Pie," he said, holding back some awe but otherwise truly humbled.

"Aw, now you're just flirting!"

It was little moment made just right, and her spirits buoyed. She only took a few paces away from the tableside before she loudly called out for Hailstone.

"Yeah, Crumble Pie?" the pegasus whizzed into place before the gray mare, only briefly looking past her to show the cloaked stallion some masked disdain.

"You get those blasting charges out yet?"

"I got'em. Left'em by the bridge for you."

"Good. Let's set them up now then. Eight charges, so I figure we'll set two up by-"

"Oh," a minor hiccup came to Hailstone and she informed her boss loosely, "there were only seven charges. Guess the mayor miscounted or something."

However Crumble Pie immediately found the discrepancy a bit more troubling.

"You could find a diamond in a slag heap more easily than she gets her stocks wrong," the mare said.

Prideheart, busy behind them with a carrot in his mouth, overheard their exchange and released a smug grunt. It pleased him to not end that the pegasus had again shown her poor ability at tallying things, be they heckhounds or explosives.

"Nopony asked you!" Hailstone snipped at him.

"Ah, let him eat," Crumble Pie quickly made peace, and she invited her winged friend along, "Come on. Somepony probably picked it up and moved it on accident somehow. It must be here. I'll help you look for it."

The mares didn't tarry and were gone in moments, leaving the stallion alone to his battle of hunger.

Prideheart found it frustrating how he had to actively to restrain himself from overeating, lest his final defeat come from a stomachache. Every bite of food he tackled only encouraged his long-starving stomach to demand more of him.

You can fit bigger portions into that muzzle!, it ordered.

Try a whole loaf of cornbread!, it begged.

Stop chewing so slowly!, it snarled.

Scoop some of those figs off that plate; no, not two—two dozen!

He had never in his life felt more subservient to the ordinary whims of his body. But at the same time he felt he had never indulged in such a royal feast despite its simplicity, for to the weary a full belly was always a triumphant banquet. Only his valiant fortitude saved him from choking on whole platefuls of food scarfed down too quickly. He instead paced himself by happily sampling across the buffet of flavors, some of which he hadn't tasted in decades.

The variety were simple pleasures, and they so distracted him that he didn't immediately notice the approach of somepony who was coming to join him. Crumbs dribbled onto his cloak like a spritzing waterfall, and it was in a pause to shake himself clean that he finally spotted Scrolldozer nearing the tables. A heavy and nervous weight was pulling on the father.

Doubtless, Prideheart assumed, the pony wasn't coming for the food.

The cloaked stallion did his best to ignore Scrolldozer and continue eating, though he rapidly adopted some less ravenous-looking behaviors, nibbling much more calmly and quietly. There was little he wanted to do with the father, though the coldness he showed wasn't a complete reflection of disdain. It was also, in part, out of lonely expedience: Crumble Pie had fully accepted the disfigured pony, but all of the other townponies had still been avoiding any interactions with him unless absolutely necessary.

Surely Scrolldozer felt the same, Prideheart imagined, and likely the father himself was lamenting that he had some reason to speak with the unwanted stallion. If anything the father's feelings might have been the most furious of all. Of the few things Scrolldozer could have even wanted to have discussed, Prideheart could only think of one.

And he refused to waste words with such an insufficient parent.

Upon arrival at the tables no initial greeting came from Scrolldozer. He placed himself an awkward distance from Prideheart where he inspected several of the food plates with only the flimsiest pretense of interest. Again and again he turned to look towards the other stallion, trying to solicit a conversation without having to actually say anything to open it. Over time he wiggled himself closer, pretending to jump from plate to plate down the tables, and he sat down just out of leg's reach from the cloaked pony. But he still didn't speak, hoping vainly that the other pony might begin the exchange himself, even with something as rudimentary as a foul-tempered 'What?'.

But still Prideheart gave nothing except his cold, silent feasting. With no choice left, Scrolldozer gathered together the will to entomb his reluctance, summoning it bit by bit like dropping pebbles of weak confidence into a tiny pile. When at last he brought out his voice it was very submissive and laced with more than a dash of regret.

"I... feel I should apologize. For before, I mean. When I... sort of... erupted on you in the street."

Prideheart couldn't believe his ears. There were many contempt-worthy failures he laid at the father's hooves with respect to Bookworm, but having been indignant over what had essentially been his daughter's foalnapping was not one of those grievances.

"No wrath of yours was undeserved," the cloaked pony plainly stated, though he would not grant Scrolldozer a direct stare. Only the ruined half of his face he kept visible to the other pony. "My mistake I will claim freely: to make wagers with the life of another's foal in such stupidity is a crime despicable."

"I'm not disagreeing with that or anything," Scrolldozer said. "But that doesn't mean going off on you was the right thing to do. Especially because Bookworm had already come back safe. And also because—I mean, if everything she said about what happened out there really is true—then because you-... you stood between her and those things. You saved her."

Prideheart's jaw tightened, not from any of the food he had just swallowed. He ground his teeth in frustration, but quite explicitly the anger wasn't aimed at the father.

"Only from a danger made by my own designs," he moaned.

Scrolldozer ignored every opening he was being given to attack, and he instead spoke mildly, "That doesn't matter now. All that matters is that she's on her way to Mule's Head and she's safe."

Though the father looked down the road to the east, there was nothing to see. Over the bridge and behind the bending landscape the caravan had disappeared many minutes ago. The sight of the empty road made him smile, and cry.

"Her mother will have to take care of her now," he shook his head. "I hope Mercy is at last ready to take on Bookworm. I-... I hope I did enough."

Prideheart finally looked straight at the father, but only to shoot a sour leer.

"Your filly has chafed under your ill-handled authority."

But again the cloaked stallion was surprised by the other pony who raised no resistance nor protested even one word. The father's spirit crumpled along with his head, shouldering the accusation readily and without a threadlike shred of disagreement.

"I know..."

Scrolldozer wiped some tears from his eyes, though he only wound up smearing them over his snout. He gave up and let the mess be, caring little about the unkempt state of his muzzle. Already he was too beaten down by shame to feel any further disgrace.

Away from the tables there was still the light commotions of ponies scrambling here and there, but near them was an nigh-absolute silence that only grew more uncomfortable as the moments passed. The only noises were coming from Scrolldozer but they weren't any words at all; merely quiet drops of grief. Prideheart started to grow suspicious of himself.

It was that sound. That familiar sound.

Of a wounded father.

Suddenly the cloaked pony straightened himself up. His chin he held high, sure with experience, and he shrunk his old eye with a squint of aged wisdom. Like a master he tried to instruct the father.

"Guidance is the sustenance of growth, and all foals seek it instinctively. When away, she has craved your presence so that she might have such guidance; so she said to me. But she has also in time learned to indulge the freedoms she has found away from you, and with some speed for her age she has found her own voice. Now upon your many returns she, like a foal, has still felt that need to call to you, but she has found herself lost still because you have not heeded her older spirit. In trying to control her path as if her body and her soul were the same – in failing to respect that freedom which she has been taught by your slackness, whether through action or inaction – she now resents your chains."

"I know...," the father admitted again, buried by the sheer weight of the other pony's words. He took them as implicit truth, without question. "It's so hard, to be a good parent. Every day I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Bookworm's so much more than me; I hardly know how to handle it. I try to make the right decisions. I try to do everything right for her. I try to be what she needs from a father. I've-... I-..."

He reconsidered his current position and corrected himself.

"I tried to be a good parent."

"What good is it to throw your head down and wallow in your laments?" scolded the cloaked pony, though again there was far less edge in his attack than expected. More and more he was becoming uncertain of himself. "If you are not enough then become more. Whatever the darkness, stand before it and resist it! Save nothing for yourself. Everything she is owed by you, for she is yours. Will you understand? She—is—yours."

There still came no hard volume to Prideheart. He only mumbled grimly, his words never finding a distinct target between him and the father.

"... And she is lonely; your daughter. She... knows only parents who have abandoned her."

"A-A-Abandoned?! I-Is that w-what she said about-...?"

Again and again Scrolldozer believed every awful accusation which came his way, not even trying to block them. No, he waited for them with an open embrace. Even those monstrous allegations that he had never in his life pondered over. Even those failures he never would have thought anypony could have been guilty of. Even the ones against which he had been assured his better qualities overcame, soundly guaranteed to him by the ponies he trusted the most.

Somewhere unrecognized by reality he had already long ago found all of the personal evils that existed swirling in the darkness, and he had claimed every one of them for himself.

But even at that most horrible bottom; even at his very worst...

"... I never-... I never would-..."

All his many swelling tears and overrunning gasps got in his way, and his statement went unfinished.

Especially compared to the breaking Scrolldozer, Prideheart seemed stoic, but regardless the older pony questioned which of them was more fractured and marred.

It was that sound again. The intimate sounds of the father, slipping through Prideheart's every crack. Small and suffering, each noise seemed to hit the outwardly unresponsive stallion and echo twice as silently from him.

Prideheart's supposed 'advice' had been of the same spirit as what he had so passionately delivered to Bookworm yesterday, but now already there was such an emptiness to it. Now, they hadn't seemed like his own words at all. Lashing with his ferocious whip against the absent and accused father had been so easy before, but it was exceptionally different to stand before him and do the same now.

Holding up his shining shield against threats awful and unimaginable had been so easy in words, but it had been exceptionally different to have stood before a dragon and done the same.

This was not how things should have turned out.

"... To each foal is given two parents," Prideheart spoke up, driven to words by the unbearable sound of Scrolldozer's sadness, though the cloaked pony was himself treading somewhere ill at ease, "yet here... the filly feels she has none. A father often far, buried under rocks. And... a mother, farther still, hunting uses for her miserable magic."

He tried to snarl. He tried to get angry.

But he only asked in honest sadness, "... How came it so?"

Scrolldozer blinked and rubbed his eyes hard enough to really rip out the thick mess of tears caught there. The daze of surprise was even strong enough to bring back his steady breathing.

He had genuinely not anticipated to have been asked such a thing. It wasn't that his marriage was some secret, or some treasure so personal that no others could have been allowed a glimpse of it. Many times in fact he had gone over the details of his life with other ponies, especially when he had first moved to Stony Nook. But the need for such retellings of his history had faded over the years in that small and intimate town, such that for somepony to again desire to hear it was like the rush of an old memory waking up after so many dormant years, triggered by an incidental sight or sound. It was doubly perplexing that the somepony who wanted to hear it was this odd outsider and that the time he chose for it was the last hour of Stony Nook.

But the tale was still solid in Scrolldozer's bones after all those years of quiet rest.

"That's-... well, you see, her mother and I-... Hm... Sir, it's-... it's actually a little bit of a story to understand it all. Or maybe I just don't think it would sound right if I gave you the short version of it..."

The father went silent and his gaze drifted towards the great wall. From beyond it came the exaggerated, burning roars of the heckhounds thundering over, snarling with fire. At least, if only in his terrified imagination.

Only after he had become a father had he discovered one of the simplest sources of calm in his worrisome life: sitting besides the bed of his daughter and reading stories to set her to sleep.

He had never before thought of himself as a gifted storyteller (in fact, he still did not!) but in swift time he had come to treasure the ordinary act of it. Not just for how soothing the softness of it was, but for the absolute joy of watching a beloved face go slowly from a bright smile to beautiful sleep. Not just for how charitable it was in giving away something that only needed a true heart to do, but for how that gift had always been received as if he had given over a whole kingdom. And most of all, not just for his love of his daughter...

But for those moments in the early night with her on her bed and him with a book besides her...

... They had been the moments where Bookworm had loved him the most.

Now she was gone; departed forever down the road away from Stony Nook for her own safety. There hadn't been any time to have told his daughter one last story; no time for one last exchange of love to have calmed him.

But maybe – with the last few minutes he had left before the horrors of his imagination tore free from fantasy and became excruciatingly real – he could tell just one more story to this outsider trusted by Bookworm. One more story so that in the coming final moments his heart might hold steady. One more story to reexperience the good things that had found a home in his soul.

"Alright..."

Scrolldozer's resigned sigh was warm; pleasant and sad like one of summer's last sunsets.

"Let me start way, way back..."

“I was born out in Sacremello. It's a city with a little bit of everything, so I was pretty quick to figure out what my special talent was. Even as a pint-sized colt I was spending time in the quarries just outside of town, feeling through the earth with my magic and yanking out boulders five times my size. From that, well, I pretty much grew straight up into working there once I came of age.

It was a real simple existence back then, but you wouldn't have heard me complain; not once. I was perfectly happy with my life of getting up at dawn, working away on those stones, and dropping into some good sleep at nightfall. I wanted to spend the rest of my days exactly like that. I mean, to make the most of their cutie mark: what more could anypony ask for, right?

But I was a young idiot. You see, sir, there's a difference between being happy and being content. I hadn't known it, but I wasn't happy; I was only content with my life. Now, content folk will always tell you that they're happy, but that's because they don't know any better. They in honest fact can't know any better. And... being content isn't a bad thing at all; don't begrudge ponies of that.

But if it's real happiness you're after then you have to have the lesson knocked into your head: you're only content, and you need to get out there and chase that happiness.

So, the first time I ever got a hint of that lesson was the day I first saw her in town.”

No terrors impeded the stallion. No waking dreams of fiery heckhounds shook him out of his story. He was somewhere else entirely.

Before his very eyes he saw again everything exactly as he had written down in his memory, detail for painstakingly-recorded detail: an angel had appeared suddenly from out of some impossible place built of pure beauty, her very ponyhood a wealthy inheritance of breathtaking perfection siphoned from whatever paradise realm she had formerly belonged to.

"Mercy Mild...," he had so much reverence for the name that he would have laid down his life just for another chance to have said it again. "Of course I didn't know her name at the time. I only saw her passing through town... but oh! As soon as I did...!"

“Sir... you have to understand: everypony sometimes looks at another pony and calls them beautiful, or gets flustered and nervous and shaky at just how pretty they are, or even sometimes gets a warm feeling in their chest that they're beyond certain is love. But... until you've actually felt love at first sight for real, oh not even a thousand of those other little moments all piled together could compare! They're a candle to the sun!

It comes as a single instant that lasts forever, where the world can't be real anymore but somehow it is! And in that blink of infinity everything vanishes except that other pony, and for years your heart screams at you through its every beat. It says that you need to find the biggest possible mountain and rip it out of the ground for them, because only that is a sizable enough gesture to show how badly you want to lay on the ground before them and kiss their hooves!

Your heart also tells you – if you listen really closely – that you're going to tear that mountain up out of the earth, because nothing that small could stand in the way of your big feelings.

I don't even remember where the rest of that day went. I was a slack-jawed mess for all of lunch and the guys had to haul me away back to the quarry, but I couldn't lift another stone for the rest of my shift. For the first time in my life there wasn't a rock on my mind. Every second was spent picturing her again, and feeling the agony of not having been bold enough to have run right back into town and talked to her.

But my shyness won out. Or maybe I just wasn't thinking about time because she made everything feel so timeless. I waited two whole days before I genuinely started to look around town for her.

... And I couldn't find her.

I discovered why pretty quickly: she wasn't from Sacremello. She had just been visiting and had already left.

I had blown my chance.

The next day I went back to work, dragging my nose on the ground. Everypony knew something was up, and they all started ribbing me because they thought I was just having some silly crush. I fought with them of course; denying it and everything. 'I was an adult!' 'I would have known if I was in love!' Really though, I was at that young age where, with your fresh adult responsibilities, you think that you have real maturity and wisdom but actually you couldn't be further from the truth. I eventually tried to tell myself that they were right; that I had just had a dumb crush on some girl I had seen only once.”

Despite how the story seemed to be sliding towards a somber end, Scrolldozer smiled. He smiled large.

“But my little phase of lying to myself didn't last. I suppose there's some value in being young and stupid enough to believe in impossible things.

I declared to the others that she was my one true love, forever and ever, yadda-yadda; the same true but empty words all young fools use. And everypony laughed...

... until I sold or gave away everything I couldn't take with me and bought a one-way train ticket to Canterlot. That's where she had come from, and that's where I was going! I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life content! I was going to chase happiness!

Without a second thought I left rocks and stones behind and rode that train, and for the very first time I saw what the world looked like outside my little bubble of Sacremello. It really put me in a place that made me feel very lost, and small, and confused.

I mean, I had no plan. I didn't know how I was going to survive in Canterlot. I didn't know how I was going to find her. I only knew that I had to find Mercy and tell her that she was the most beautiful creature to have ever caught the attention of the sun and moon, for surely they rose and set every day just for the sake of seeing her.”

Almost idly as he continued telling his tale Scrolldozer's magic began to rearrange some of the items on table, making it into a puppet show of sorts. The biggest loaf became a mountainous castle. Houses of parsnips, sweet potatoes, and turnips lined the streets. Cauliflowers sprung up as trees and gardens only here and there. And crowds of shriveled fruits flooded the busy streets of Canterlot while going about their daily business. It was all overwhelming to the fresh-eyed dried apricot from out of town who was seeing it for the first time.

Some of the same sensation of being frightened and overwhelmed came back to Scrolldozer, and the sense of wonder in his tale began to be slowly squeezed out by all the pressures he had faced.

“I had never seen anything like Canterlot before. So many ponies in one place! Right there at the train station all my doubts caught up to me, chastising me for what I had done, and I thought about immediately buying a ticket to run back home. What a fool I had been to have gone out there!

But if I had been a fool to go then I would have been twice a fool to have given up and left! Or so I told myself in order to find the courage to step into the city.

Thanks to everything I had sold back home I had a chunk of bits with me; hardly wealthy, but enough to get going. I rented the cheapest apartment I could find in the city. (Not an easy feat in Canterlot. There, 'cheap' is relative.) After that I set out right away, looking for Mercy.

I'm not really a detective though; not at all. I mean, stone is the only thing I really know and am any good at. It didn't help me at all either that I still didn't know her name, only what she looked like. I got nowhere in picking up her trail.

A hard reality started to set it: the rate my search was going wasn't outpacing how fast that rent and some food was eating through my funds. It wouldn't have been long before I ran dry. And as poorly as I was doing trying to find her, certainly a homeless, starving pony would only have done worse. So, I started exchanging 'looking for her' with 'looking for work.'

That didn't go so well, either. I said it before: I know stone, and that's about it. But they don't quarry much stone out in Canterlot. They import. As a fallback I can do some construction, but again I only do well with natural rock. That's not the major style out there; it's all blocks and bricks, and artisan wood, and-... well, the point is there wasn't a labor shortage so nopony was going to hire me for those jobs over the plenty of better professionals available.

So what did I find? I wound washing dishes at night for some seedy dive. It was enough to get me by... if you count the second job I took making deliveries during the day. Sometimes I even did the quick odd job to make up the bits for any remaining expenses. Altogether they paid a pittance, but they were the best work I could do.

And so, weary from constantly working jobs I was honestly pretty terrible at, I kept up my search for Mercy wherever I could. I looked while running around making deliveries; I took different routes home every night from washing dishes, just in case I might have stumbled upon a clue. For weeks I hardly found the time to sleep while I searched high and low for her.

And then in a stroke of blind luck – good or bad; take your pick – I finally found my first big lead. A devastating lead:

She wasn't in Canterlot. She hadn't been for a long, long while.”

The plot twist had the father laughing, though only in that drab way which sees the tragedies of the past as the sad comedies of the present.

“You see, I found out that she worked for a group called The Red Crossbreed. They were founded I don't know how many years back, and their stated mission is to selflessly care for the injured, infirmed, and chronically ill. They were named for some unknown pony who tended to those who were hurt after a crisis against a monster named Tirek long, long ago. The mysterious pony had never spoken her name; she simply provided healing and comfort to those that had needed it and then disappeared without ever having sought a word of thanks for her noble deed.

That's the spirit The Red Crossbreed has adopted. They're a volunteer-run charity, taking care of ill ponies wherever they can with whatever donated time and resources they've got. Mercy follows that spirit too, but... she can't do it halfway. She's one of their few full-time dedicated healers. Now, they don't have the funds to give her much. All they really can do is pay for her train tickets, set her up in cramped little places in each town, and feed her scraps with the leftover budget. But she takes it. She takes it for that chance to provide comfort to hurt ponies who need it.

I only loved her more, hearing about all that.

Anyway, that explained my problem. The headquarters for The Red Crossbreed is in Canterlot, but as a healer Mercy of course spent so little time there. She was always out traveling all over Equestria to help other ponies with her healing magic; curing where she can, but most often she just provides the best relief she's able to for ponies who have terrible, painful, incurable conditions. That's how their operation ran: she'd ride into town, stay two or three or four days to do her duty, and then move on to the next town. That was her life. That was why she was in Sacremello so briefly. That was why it was so hard to find her in Canterlot: she was always out on long tours; nopony there really knew her that well.

And, I learned, she wasn't due back for several more weeks. In fact in a whole year she barely stays in Canterlot for more than a few dozen days total. In other words, my whole effort to set myself up there and look for her had been a colossal waste of time.

That very night I sat wrapped in a shredded blanket in my cold apartment (you wouldn't believe how the price jumps if you want something as nice as a hearth or a tiny furnace) and I seriously thought of throwing in the towel. I was miserable, the goal posts were moving farther away, and it was still all for a mare that I had never even talked to and had only seen once! I thought it over, hard. If I quit my jobs and dumped everything then I would have had enough bits for a single train ticket. One. One to get me back to Sacremello. Back to a content life.

The next morning came and I packed all my nothing, sold the rest, and went to the train station. I had just enough for one ticket, which I bought.

To Fillydelphia.

I had learned three things from The Red Crossbreed: how Mercy lived her life, the schedule of her tour, and her name. Sometime in the next few days she was going to arrive in Fillydelphia. Repeating her name to myself, I got on that train. I again threw myself out into the wild unknown to chase after happiness.

You see, sitting in that cold apartment I had realized it: Mercy was just like me, working hard and earning little, living an austere life. I did that because I was after happiness, but she did it because... she was like I had been in Sacremello: content.

And that meant my goal wasn't impossible! If I could only show her that there was something more than being content... If I could get that one chance to speak to her about happiness.”

Canterlot cleared from the table.

“I arrived in Fillydelphia. For two days I stayed right there in the train station, living off the water of the public fountain, as I watched ponies depart from every last train that rolled in.

And then suddenly... there she was again!

It all happened in a moment! She stepped out onto the station platform, just as magnificent and beautiful as I had remembered; no!—even more so! The world stopped spinning, the clouds stopped rolling through the sky, every mountain bowed down before her, and every river parted to let her pass! All the hardships I had faced became so small in an instant! Absolutely everything I had suffered, and more, had been worth getting to that moment of finding her! Of seeing her again!

She wandered through the crowd from the train. She politely staggered off the station platform. And she went out into the city.

All without me saying a darn thing to her.

I don't know; I couldn't have! I had probably thought for weeks of what I had wanted to say, but anything that had been perfect yesterday was garbage today! I couldn't have just gone up there and introduced myself! She would have thought I was crazy! I looked like a mess; some bitless vagrant; which was technically true; and that's not the pony you want to hear has chased you all the way to Fillydelphia because they saw you once in Sacremello!

She wouldn't have accepted such an introduction from me! She was content already! She thought she was happy! And seeing the wretch I was wasn't going to change her mind and get her to chase me; get her to want true happiness.

Disheartened, I quietly followed her into town at a distant. I watched her do her work. I saw how much she cared about those she healed as she gave them a modicum of comfort in their painful lives. And as I watched I started to think that her magic was only half the solace she gave to them. Her endless love – her ability to care about them so completely – brought them a kind of peace they couldn't find elsewhere.

I was so inspired. I resolved not to give up. I determined that I would keep following her.

So that was how a down-to-earth little pony like me, who only knows stones, stumbled my way into becoming a world traveler. From town to town, village to village, city to city, I went after her. Sometimes even riding in the same train she was! Though of course I kept myself hidden and never spoke to her.

It wasn't exactly an easy life. If I thought surviving in Canterlot had been rough... hoo boy! Let me tell you, sir: three or four days in a town is not a lot of time to find any kind of decent work, even in places that have it! I did anything I had to do just to scrounge up a few bits to catch the next train and keep up with her; to get food so I wouldn't pass out from hunger; to have places to sleep that weren't puddles in the road. Some days meant no food. Some nights meant covering over with a newspaper and sleeping in the wind. And, I'm ashamed to admit, sometimes getting to the next town in time meant sneaking aboard a train without paying.”

Scrolldozer's magic wandered the lonely apricot about, taking it from plate to plate, tray to tray, corner to corner, all in pursuit of the only other moving fruit which kept just a step ahead: fittingly enough, a bright red date.

“The first time I at last contacted her was the third city in. I wasn't ready to speak with her face-to-face; I was so sure that she would have thought I had rocks for brains. So I came up with a different plan.

I worked up a few extra bits and bought a huge bouquet of flowers, tagging it with a little note that didn't have my name but just said that she was the most beautiful pony in any corner of Equestria. A gift. Maybe, I thought, if I get her to dream of wanting something a little more than just being content... then I could approach her. I left the bouquet in secret at the place she was staying at.

I gnawed my hooves off worrying over the move. But when she got to her place that night and found it...! Oh! I had yet to see her smile like that! Why did the world need rainbows, and waterfalls, and sunsets when it had her smile? Again everything I had gone through became so small; so worth it.

I was so relieved, not to mention encouraged! Much later on, after all of this, Mercy told me that she really had been deeply flattered by the surprise gesture because she had never in her life had somepony try to romance her; I couldn't believe it!

Motivated all over again, I spent on flowers, or chocolates, or other silly little gifts whenever I could over the next few towns. Every time, I left them somewhere she would find them, with a note attached about how if Princess Celestia learned to spin all the galaxies in heaven at once it still wouldn't have been as mesmerizingly beautiful as her. I still didn't tag them with my name, though. I don't know why; it's not like she knew who I was. Anyway, at first it all worked like I had hoped. Every delivery that I saw her pick up, she seemed so thrilled to think about how somepony adored her.

But it all changed pretty quickly. It didn't take her long to piece together that all these unsigned gifts were coming from just one pony, and yet she was getting them town after town after town. In my own love-riddled head I'm sure I thought I was worming my way closer to her, and that blinded me to the fact that she was really beginning to think that something... um... quite different was going on.”

Scrolldozer paused. He set aside the apricot and the date. The things left to be said were too important to be spoken of with dried fruits. The rest he would deliver looking Prideheart straight in the eye.

The cloaked stallion had through all the story made no interrupting remarks. Indeed, he had seemed both enraptured and inattentive, showing little in the way of any reactions. Clandestine thoughts had caused short glances aside, but little more. Sometimes his long and slow breathing had been disturbed by held breaths, but little more. Once or twice he had rubbed his thigh or his shoulder uncomfortably, but little more.

Yet he had always been listening. His ears had never folded or wavered.

“My gifts became more desperately grand. I worked harder and more furiously to pull in the extra bits needed to get larger bouquets and bigger boxes of chocolate. All in a panicked effort to reverse that change I was seeing her in.

But then, before I ever expected it, it happened.

She confronted me.

Like usual I had snuck to her lodging's door to leave behind my secret gift, but when I went to place it she ambushed me. She had been waiting for me, and not to tell me anything I had wanted to hear.

Oh, she was so angry, sir. 'Who was I?' 'What did I want?' 'Why was I following her around?' You know: the questions I should have been expecting her to have asked. Chasing after her – spying on her like the creepy villain I had been – I had only ever seen the sweetest and most caring mare. But could she ever burn when she was upset, oh. Hearing her tear into me like that, and seeing the distrustful leer in her eyes; all as part of my first face-to-face meeting with her—and she didn't even know my name!—it really ripped me apart.

Yet behind all that anger there was a measure of calm. She had control no matter how strong and furious she was, like a roaring river surging but always keeping its course. And in reply to her demanding questions I meekly introduced myself and told her the truth: I had been following her and leaving the gifts because she was the most beautiful mare in all the world and I was in love with her.

As I'm sure you can imagine, she... didn't quite believe me. I saw it in her face. Much later, after we had come together, I once asked her about what she felt that night and she told me the same thing: that of all the excuses she had imagined I might have given, that hadn't been one of them.

Thinking about it... maybe it wasn't that she didn't believe me, but that she couldn't have believed me. She was content, after all. But there had been a moment there where her stern composure had slipped and she scrambled to put it back together again; a cloudy moment where for an instant the happy sun had peeked through.

Still angry, but absolutely fair, she told me that she was very flattered but not interested, and to go away and leave her alone.

Needless to say, it broke my heart. I held myself together only long enough to drag myself out of her sight. And once I was alone I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until I could have turned a quarry into a lake.”

The shattered spirit of his story-self wasn't reflected at all in the Scrolldozer who recounted the events. He was awfully serious, but fully courageous. It was an appearance quite foreign for the frightened father.

“Again I was at a crossroads. I could either obey the mare I said I loved, or I could ignore her feelings and pursue her more. Not that I had ever had her permission to have pursued her to begin with...

She left on a train to her next destination, but this time I lingered behind. There I was again with my tired bones aching, this time from sorrow as well as exhaustion, and just enough bits in my pocket for one train ticket. I thought very hard about riding my way back to Sacremello. I had chased happiness, and in the end had learned why smarter ponies settle themselves with being content.

So I'm either a very, very stupid pony, or I'm just hopeful enough to latch onto impossible things. I had seen a tiny little light in her! I was so afraid of how blind it was to Mercy's feelings but I resolved to myself: one last chance. If I failed then, I really would declare happiness a dead cause and resign my life to cold stone. I slipped onto the next train after her.

Once at the next town I worked my butt until my tail was milled down to a nub, pulling together all the bits I could. I got another bouquet, just a tiny little bundle of red flowers this time, and I wrote another note. But instead of an overblown attempt at poetry or a messy stew of romantic words I just wrote that I was giving it one more try. I asked her for just one honest chance. I asked that, if she was willing, would she please meet in the evening at the place I was staying at so that I could take her out to dinner. Just once. I even signed my name.

Maybe it would have been more respectful and courteous to have stood before her and asked her, but I was just so afraid after that last confrontation. At least this way what it came down to was that she would either show up or she wouldn't, and if she didn't that I would just head home.

So, after her day's work, Mercy came back to her lodging and found my little bouquet and letter.

Yeah. Yeah, she was not happy.

She did come to my door, and no it wasn't for dinner. She marched there like a whirling tornado, ripping through barns and bridges. I hadn't listened when she had been polite, so she came to tell me off once and for all!

Except when she opened the door to the place I was staying at, she basically found me living in a closet. I couldn't have afforded anything bigger.

There I was, sitting on the bare wooden floor, shivering in my tiny, cold, unheated room. No furnishings; literally the only thing there was a coat hook on the inside of the door which held a crumpled suit I had rented for the evening. On the ground in front of me was a little flower on a clip for her mane that I planned to present to her, and a pile of bits I had been obsessively counting again and again and again and again, praying so hard that they were enough to afford a dinner at one of the nicer places in town.

I was pretty mortified when she showed up before the time I had set, and worse that she was snorting steam.

But she didn't chew me out. She didn't.

In that very moment when she had opened the door, something changed.

For a long, long while after that day I had always liked to believe that when she had seen me there – cramped in a frozen closet, no possessions, gaunt and sickly with my ribs showing under my skin because I hadn't eaten in days, how I had absolutely nothing because I had been spending every last bit on her – when she saw that she finally understood me. She finally understood how I truly felt and she had changed her mind.

But years later I asked her: why? She had come blazing over to rip me apart. Why hadn't she done so?

Why, after opening that door, had she turned around and suddenly said, 'yes'?”

And the stallion started to cry, just a little bit, in complete joy.

"'No,' she told me. 'It wasn't because I had a change of heart after seeing you like that.' She said that once she saw how pathetic I was she—heh—she thought that maybe I was suffering from some strain of the Lovethorn Curse and, you know, she needed to observe me 'a little more closely' so that she could make a proper diagnosis."

Scrolldozer remembered when she had explained all this to him, years after their first date. The face she had worn hadn't been her surer, stronger one. Her shimmering eyes had been shyly diverted away, and her little smile had been barely polite enough to have contained all her overflowing happiness. A hot, red strip of untruth had been painted over her nose.

What a wonderful lie she had told herself. What a silly, triumphant, wonderful lie to have made it all possible.

What an amazing mare, who had also been young and stupid enough to have believed in impossible things.

“And so... she let me take her to dinner.

It wasn't all that much. Just picture it: one of those eateries where they want so badly to be upscale, with their faux-fancy decor built from cheap woods painted to mimic polish, and their vases on the tables filled with plastic flowers covered in dime store perfume. Despite that veneer, the waitstaff and food are all of the same type you would find in a grease bin. There was me on one side of the table in my wrinkly, rented suit; she on the other side in nothing at all since she didn't have a piece of clothing to her name. And all through dinner? Lots of awkward attempts at conversation that never really went anywhere.

In fact, there's only one exchange we had that I really remember well:

I had thought I was blowing the whole thing. I mean, nothing had been going as my romantic dreams had always imagined! I was a mess, rivers of sweat were just seeping into my suit, the restaurant really was such a disappointment, one of the orders came out wrong... ugh... So... I apologized to her if the dinner wasn't meeting her expectations, and I sort of sadly explained that... I had never actually taken another pony on a date before.

"It's fine," she said. Because, you see, sir...

Heh...

... She had never been on a date before either!

After dinner was over I was too nervous to ask her if she had enjoyed it, and certainly I was too afraid to ask if she'd let me see her again. So it was just a very long and awkward moment where we were both standing outside the restaurant, waiting for something to happen.

Finally she spoke up first, and she told me that she had to move on to the next town tomorrow... but...

"... Maybe I'll see you there," she said.

Oh, sir, I was high all night! I didn't get a wink of sleep! Before the sun even came up I was out again, flinging the suit down on the doorstep of the rental place and looking everywhere I could for enough bits to make the next train!

And that? That was the day happiness started.”

In every way Scrolldozer reflected his own words. Nopony who searched would have ever found the thousands of wearisome miles buried in his hooves; the thousands of hours of exhausting labor worn into his body; the many icy nights in the wind which had weathered his bones; the continuous twisted hunger of poverty that had scarred his stomach. All those burdens were dust drifting low in the wind, masked by bright sunshine.

There were smiles he made, and breaths he took, and shivers he released, and tears he shed; all joyous and in appreciation of all the world; strange displays that had long ago grown foreign to Prideheart. The cloaked stallion recognized them only like a muddled face from far in the past.

“Oh, sir! I'm almost frightened that by trying to describe them I'll damage the memories! There is nothing I could say which could reveal how wonderful things were! I'm so sorry! But every moment—! Every—moment! Every moment of those few years was bliss! Every moment proved that being truly happy for that one second was more golden than a hundred lifetimes of being content! Nothing – nothing! – can touch those feelings! Those feelings of the impossible made real!

I love her. And she loves me. That's more magical than all of Equestria.

From town to town I followed her still, working for pitiful bags of bits to keep up the poor life that had brought us together. The days were hers, for her duty of healing hurts, but the evenings were ours. Small dinners, meager outings, sharing warm drinks at coffeehouses open late, quiet hours of speaking to each other softly while sitting together in the cold...; the kinds of unbelievable glories not even queens and kings get to know.

Then eventually she decided that it was silly we took separate trains or traveled apart, so we started getting our tickets together, riding every train holding hooves. Then, again, she eventually decided that it was such a waste we had separate places to stay in every town. So though The Red Crossbreed understandably could not give any extra money for larger places to accommodate hosting me, we just made due by using the extra bits I was always earning while Mercy worked, and we spent every night from then on in each other's warmth. And then, again, she eventually decided that-... that-...

... that it was senseless that we weren't completely sharing our lives together. We tied that up at a small chapel during our next brief stop in Canterlot.

...

I'm sorry, sir... Please pardon me these few happy tears! I just-...

...

Ah. Alright. And so our perfect life, poor in bits but rich in love, went on day after day and town after town, more fantastic than any dream. It had been so long since I had thought about stones, but I didn't care. Mercy was following the call of her cutie mark, and that I got to share every moment of it with her was more than enough for me.

Love rose above all our problems. There wasn't a thing we had to complain about; not one. We could've spent the rest of our days exactly like that, in a pristine happiness forever...”

To the sky he gazed quietly; proud, hopeful, happy, and free. Until, it seemed, the sky turned away from him. He shut his eyes.

He pulled in a deep, deep breath, and as he slowly exhaled Prideheart saw him change. Piece by piece his shape twisted.

All the vibrant youth ready to take on the impossible bled away. All the shining romance dimmed. All the vigorous fire and dramatic energy cooled. He grew old. His features fell and hardened, developing a rigid crust of permanent worry and melancholy. His transformation took him out of the past and he became again exactly the same tired, meek pony Prideheart had first seen trudge into the tavern the night before last.

"... And then Bookworm came along...," the father said.

“When Mercy first told me that she was pregnant I was ecstatic. Not that I had ever thought once about being a father, no no. Just... that's how things are supposed to go, right? You fall in love, it grows deeper, and then eventually you start a family, right? I thought our love was moving forward; none of the ramifications were on my mind.

But right away I could tell something was wrong for Mercy. She didn't share my joy. Even her reveal of it was so guarded and careful. And – well, she's always been a bit of a withdrawn and personal individual, but – this was something she really needed time to build up the strength to talk about.

Most of all I knew because... she cried. She cried every night, until she fell asleep. And even then in her dreams she cried.

Finally, late one night as I held her, she opened up.

She cried again. She cried into me the most desperate bout of tears I have ever seen. She cried as she told me... how scared she was of being a mother.

How unready.

How unfit.

She cried. And there was no love I had that could ease it.

Sir... Mercy had grown up how we lived: austere, in poverty, and always traveling from place to place without settling. Her parents had been devoted to owning no possessions and wandering the world; reaching every end of it, over mountain and beyond forest. And they hadn't stopped their life just because they had come upon a daughter. She was raised in that.

That's a big reason Mercy became what she did. She had seen as a filly all those ponies around the world who had pains; insufferable, unfixable pains. And she felt for them, since she had come to know an unbearable pain herself. She had been alone; always alone; crippled and cold and alone; never somewhere long enough to grow; to develop; to get close to another pony. So alone that the only fool she had ever allowed near enough to know her was the one who had been so crazy as to have followed her around the world so that he could have known her. The only comforts she had found in her life were me, and providing relief to ponies who felt lasting pains like she did.

She knew from experience that the wandering life wasn't right for a foal. That a foal needed a home. And she-... she-...

... she wept and shredded herself over how she couldn't turn away from that life. How she couldn't abandon her cutie mark. How she couldn't forsake all those injured and ill ponies, even for her own foal.

And 'What kind of mother doesn't love their foal enough to give up her own life?' she sobbed into me. Her foal wasn't born yet and already she was 'the most awful mother who had ever lived.'

Those tears did not stop. I didn't have the words, sir, to plug them up. I didn't have anything. She wailed and she trembled and she grieved until it took everything from her and she fell into nightmares and sleep, still weeping.

But I didn't sleep. I couldn't. I lay awake, feeling her trembling slumber while I thought through all her suffering with my blank mind. And through the dark hours, come morning, I made a decision. A decision not knowing if I was doing the right thing, or the best thing. I decided to do the only thing I could do for her—for-... for them.

I offered to raise the foal by myself.

To go away somewhere that I could find good-paying work I could do well at: stones. Somewhere with work that was stable and would last. Somewhere a foal could grow up around ponies she knew everyday.

I would bear the foal and let Mercy continue uninterrupted the life that she needed.

And that was how a few years ago I found myself crossing that bridge into Stony Nook which you see way over there, a small saddlebag of bits and goods on my side, and basket on my back with a sleeping baby filly.”

Scrolldozer started to fix the spread of food he had disturbed for his performance. One at a time his magic moved items back into their organized places, working slow from a fatigue born not just out of the last terrible twenty-four hours but from all the anxious days of fatherhood that had come before.

No happiness seemed there in him. Nor did he appear content. Only alive.

“I wasn't sure about being so far out in the frontier, but I had heard some pretty serious talk about a booming quarry this way. A good quarry lasts plenty of years, so that would fit the bill for steady and lasting work. I was even less sure when I got here and learned that the quarry was so far outside town. How would I raise Bookworm? This was in the heyday of the old quarry; the one you went to yesterday.

All my fears were put away when I met Crumble Pie. Right away she was understanding, and committed, and helpful. So long as her workponies are dedicated she'd do anything to help them in return. I've... never known a better friend. I chose to set my roots down here and give it a shot.

Not that things have been great. Early on I was able to take Bookworm with me to the quarry, and everypony was very understanding about how much time I spent in the bunkhouse caring for her and not working. But as she got older I couldn't have her wandering an active quarry, and so I had to start leaving her in town with sitters; thank goodness for all the nice folk in Stony Nook; Mrs. Totaler and the others are such a blessing. But that was less time I had to do what I had promised: to raise her myself.

And she grew so fast! Alone with Mercy the days had lasted forever, but with Bookworm... How old was she when she started picking out some of the words on signs? Two? Three? She definitely had gone through her first foal's book when she was three, and they quickly got thicker after that. She has an appetite so much bigger than Stony Nook. She's so much more than me!

You said it, sir. About how... I've given her so much space, and she's found her own freedom; her own voice. That I-... I haven't always been listening to. I've thought many, many times about picking up and going someplace else; somewhere I could be closer to her. But... Crumble Pie, and all the others... they're such good influences for her, and such a help to me with her. Things are already so hard... I'm scared to lose those friends who keep me standing. I didn't make the deliberate choice for her foalhood to be exactly like this; I'd read to her every hour of every day if it would put food in her belly.

She loves those stories so much. You should see her smile when-... Ah. Well...

It hasn't been perfect for Mercy, either. She does what little she can to stay close to Bookworm; making sure we know when she's going to have a week's stay in Canterlot so we can visit, and whenever she's there she spends so much time in the library building lists of books to reserve so they can be mailed to our hungry little reader. It's wonderful to see Mercy, even for so short of a trip... sometimes twice a year if we're lucky. But when we're in Canterlot... after Bookworm has been put to bed... Mercy still cries. Between every visit she sees just how much Bookworm grows, and how much she's missing... and she cries.

She dreams every night about being with Bookworm more. But she can't. She still can't turn away from those hurt ponies. Every time she sees their suffering; every time she sees how much the little bit of relief she gives means to them... She can't abandon them. Even if they are strangers and Bookworm is her daughter.

At least now... she'll get that chance. To be closer to Bookworm. To hold and love her daughter. To see her everyday. Maybe all that freedom I wound up giving Bookworm might work out. Maybe Bookworm is ready to travel the world with her mother...

I hope I-...

I hope I did good enough as a father. For them. I know I didn't do well. But... good enough. Please...”

He finished setting the last plate back in order.

"Anyway, sir," Scrolldozer shook his head, cleaned his eyes, and put away his subdued sorrow for something simpler, "now you know the whole story about how Bookworm got saddled with parents like Mercy and I. I'm sorry if I got a little somber at the end there; I know I shouldn't complain. I had real happiness for a short, glorious sprint, and that's far far more than any content pony touches. All that was asked of me in return was that I sacrifice a little to raise a... beautiful, smart, difficult, incredible, amazing, frightening, lovable filly. And... I tried."

A few echoes of his sadness pounded there way back and he couldn't quite clear them away.

"I tried with everything I had. But my little pony just isn't the same easy thing as being cold and starving while running from town to town."

Prideheart sat still and silent. Here and there the cloaked stallion's mismatched eyes floated to different meaningless targets. And he listened to all the sounds of the father composing himself again; putting his ramshackle bones back into place piece by piece until they just barely held, the same as they always had for years.

Finally, bringing the full weight of his gaze down on the father, with less certainty than ever before, and more for mere confirmation than anything else, Prideheart asked, "... But in spite of any insufficient guardianship to Bookworm... and all the anxiety it has brought to your heart... and all the miles it has pulled you from your fantasia of happiness... you... would not wholly abandon her?"

Immediately Scrolldozer came up in shock, breaking apart all over again. All the charges parental ineptness and evil he accepted without opposition...

... except that single one.

"N-No! N-Never!" he desperately cried. He looked around, not as if his presence among the damned of Stony Nook was some proof of his dedication but to be certain that Bookworm still wasn't there somehow; that she was far gone, and safe. "I would never, ever want her taken away! Not even for all those days with Mercy back!"

It really was fast becoming pointless for him to have wiped his eyes so often, though his tear-soaked foreleg might now have been an able weapon against the heckhounds.

"Please...," he begged again to be believed.

Both of Prideheart's eyes looked into the father, no visible judgment proceeding from his poisonous smog or heroic fire. Everything he saw was inside himself.

Finally the cloaked stallion turned away, looking off to the west. Far over the wall, and beyond. Up the distant Pearl Peaks. And beyond.

"Then...," he said softly but plainly, "... you are not the worst father."

Scrolldozer, for yet another time, brought himself better under control. He scrutinized the other pony's aged profile cut slim over a great many years, and his thinning mane losing its shine to time, and the drab, dirtied cloak hanging low on his slowly-sunken shoulders; and the father puzzled over the remark.

"... Do... you have foals, sir?" he very gently asked.

"... Two."

Prideheart never broke from the mountains.

"... The younger – my son – is at his home. Already he is his own pony, beyond my direct sway. He is strong, and capable yet. I fear the dark about him, but his path may in time turn to light."

A long cold fell before the cloaked stallion's next words, and he couldn't even bear to look at the great peaks anymore. His gaze went to nowhere.

"... The older... my daughter... I-... I know nothing of where she is... I have not-... I have not known..."

Scrolldozer found any utterable 'I'm sorry' to be too crass, no matter how sincere; too ungainly for such a horrible pain, no matter how little of it Prideheart chose to display openly.

"... I'm... sure she's making a difference for somepony... if she took anything from you," was all he eventually said.

Movement and sound came from up on the great wall, and it rapidly spread. Ponies bolted about raising an ever more urgent clamor.

"This is it! Get ready, everypony!" the stallions heard Mayor Desk Job cry.

Crumble Pie came dashing down the road, commanding though also nervous and exasperated, with Hailstone tailing aloft behind her, both returning to the wall.

"Keep it together! Eyes open! Remember your positions; remember to listen!" called the gray mare towards the wall. To the flying pony she more dismally growled, "I can't believe it; who could have taken the eighth charge? Hailstone, there's no more time; just grab the seven and line the bridge as best you can to dust as much of it as possible!"

"Roger!" Hailstone saluted and soared off.

Crumble Pie skid to an abrupt stop when she passed and spied the food tables.

"Sir!"

Past and future were put away in an instant. Prideheart whipped about and began to approach her in a soldierly march. Let him face fire again.

Reluctantly the gray mare turned and invited her dear friend, "Scrolldozer, this is it. Come on..."

He nodded, tried to vent whatever fears he could with a shudder and a sigh, and twisted away from the tables in a weak trot. At least Bookworm was safe.

"Scrolldozer!!"

The desperate scream pulled the whole group eastward down the road to meet the shouting pony madly racing towards them.

Crumble Pie gasped, "Mrs. Totaler, what're you doing back-"

"Scrolldozer!" the old mare wheezed a scream again. Her gallop hobbled and her breathless face was flushed with color from the thousands of strides taken too fast for her nearly five-dozen years. She almost collapsed in front of the others, but even so she stumbled her way right into the father and latched onto him.

"I'm sorry!" she panted hard. "I-I'm, phh, ah, so s-sorry!"

As he helped support her, Scrolldozer's mouth opened to question her. Yet nothing needed to come out. His heart sank, all the way to his hooves, out of him, and deep down into the earth.

After gobbling another rapid breath Mrs. Totaler heaved with indefensible guilt, "She just... vanished!"

Chapter 13: The Flesh is Weak

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There was so much Scrolldozer wanted to say—to ask, to beg, to scream—but he simply couldn't. His strength had bottomed out, and then it fell further. No more details from Mrs. Totaler were even needed; all the horrors of yesterday were already returned with an agony tenfold as powerful as before. The brief reprieve of Bookworm's safety had been a lie to heighten the sudden torment of the killing blow, and the absolute failure of his fatherhood pierced him to his core. He felt the slow and insufferable shutting of the iron maiden.

No death was more terrifying and evil.

"I'm so sorry!" Mrs. Totaler desperately apologized to him. She was herself broken in pieces because of her guilt. "I don't know what happened! Bookworm was there with us when we left; sure as sunshine she was! But-, but after we got some ways down the road I was doing a round to check on everypony and-, and-, and she-... she-..."

All the grief and sorrow in the world wouldn't have measured up to hers. It took her the longest moment to find her lost voice.

"Gone... She was just gone. I don't know how; nopony saw her go! I asked and asked and asked; everypony swore to me that they didn't even hear nothing!"

Prideheart's ears twitched. An echo from yesterday slithered uncomfortably into him:

"Quiet as we can now! Hoof flat, then down, right? Focus on your weight... one leg at a time... and always mind the cover. It's as much about not being seen as not being heard. Isn't that right, mister?"

From the great wall came a constant tide of intense and frightened cries, rising endlessly. Ponies scrambled about in the unmeetable hope of being ready for the waves of flames that were about to crash down upon them. Mayor Desk Job's hooves were frozen in place, but she frantically turned her head to and fro like it was being batted about by a menacing cat. A terrible look forward over the wall at the oncoming fire, back at the stiff and silent Crumble Pie down below, forward again, back again; her each shout to the gray mare was more urgent than the last as the final seconds continued to tick down.

But Crumble Pie couldn't respond, paralyzed by the last minute news of Bookworm. Her mouth hung open helplessly.

Again it had happened. Again! Again Scrolldozer and his daughter were an unfortunate, dreadful distraction in the face of Stony Nook's crisis. Again two ponies, through no unreasonable feelings of their own, demanded to be so much more beloved than everypony else. Again a father's love was a danger to the whole town.

Hailstone, not even begun on the task of rigging the bridge with explosives, had spotted the distressed Mrs. Totaler racing into town and had followed overhead. Nearly all of the blasting charges remained waiting by the bridge, and only one of them dangled from the pegasus by a strap as she landed besides the older mare.

"What's your best guess on how far out you were when you lost her?" she asked Mrs. Totaler. "Maybe I can-"

"We can't afford to give up anypony!" Crumble Pie objected. And finally, finally her sturdy walls began to give way and tumble. Pained, frustrated tears seeped from her. "The heckhounds are here! We need everypony!"

"But this is Dozer's filly we're talking about!" shouted Hailstone, hardly defiant in the face of her boss but nonetheless furious with desperation.

"I know that!" the gray mare cried. A loud crack broke into her voice, and all her uncommonly tough patience slipped out through it. "I love her! But I love everypony here also, and all those running to Mule's Head too, and we can't risk all of them just to look for Bookworm!"

And then she heaved and wept.

"Well-! Well-! Argh, Celestia scorch it!" the pegasus violently swore. In a bout of rage she whipped the explosive charge off her neck and smashed it into the ground. (Fortunately the charges were quite stable devices and would never go off without intention, even under the most brutal agitation.)

The loud plunk of the charge against the dirt called to Prideheart. He blinked his eye at the mistreated explosive, and more phantom echoes deviously snuck into his ears:

"I can't believe it; who could have taken the eighth charge?"

...

"Oh! You're going to use a blasting charge to bury it! ... Yeah, that'll definitely work!"

...

"Ms. Crumble Pie is awesome! ... She shows me all sorts of cool stuff! Like she taught me how to actually use a blasting charge to blow up rocks!"

The stallion gazed back towards the bridge, yet the horizon beyond appeared colorless and without meaning. Something small, something not really there, nipped him from behind and he swiveled about and looked westward instead; to wall, to fire, to road, to forest, and all that laid beyond.

A cold, frozen, silent worry came over him.

"Crumble Pie!!"

Desk Job's voice convulsed as if a seizure had a hold on her, strangling her with fear. The call barely rose above the growing chorus coming from the frightened ponies on the wall.

Crumble Pie felt their shouts. She turned to her friends and said, "Oh, Scrolldozer... ah, I'm sorry. I am, but we all have to get on that wall right now! Otherwise those ponies we sent running are never going to-"

She was caught off her guard by the way the father faced her with all the resolve of one willingly standing before death's door, resigned to whatever was on the other side. He also had tears in his eyes but his gaze pierced clearly through the mist. His heart hung out from his open chest, vulnerable and slaughtered, but as he walked up to her his pulse throbbed with thunder. Fear was a shadow over him but yet he outshone with decided purpose.

First came the light touch of his hoof against Crumble Pie's shoulder, but then suddenly he moved in and embraced her softly.

"I know you're only trying to do what everypony else needs you to do," the hopeless, determined words came, "but there's somepony who needs me to-... to-... What I-, I-... I-... I have to try and find Bookworm. This time-... this time, I have to."

And then he let her go and turned away from all his panic-stricken neighbors on the wall. He stared out east over the bridge.

But as he began to walk off while the others debated anxiously his choice, Prideheart stayed fixed to the west. More echoes haunted him, stitching themselves together into the truth piece by piece:

"Nopony is trying to stop the heckhounds! ... That crack is their weakness, remember?"

...

"Those defenseless who must flee will need a hero... Can you promise to me that you will ensure they arrive at their destination in safety?"

...

"... I super promise that they'll be safe."

...

"But it's like you said before: a hero has to do the right thing, no matter what else! ... I don't want to break promises but I'll break every promise I have to, especially bad promises, to do the right thing. Just like you said."

...

"You... are right, Bookworm. Once... long ago... I too gave my promise in reply to an order. But in the darkest moment I broke my promise; I violated my order... and I was right to have done so."

...

"... My little pony hero."

"She is not that way."

Prideheart's convinced assertion fell upon the others like a heavy stone. Their ongoing argument evaporated in an instant when they all went dumbstruck, and Scrolldozer especially was stopped by an icy silence before he slowly turned back around. Unmoving, the cloaked stallion still gazed solemnly westward, and whatever he saw was far, far off; through the wall, past stone, mortar, fangs, and fire; down great leagues of road, alongside forest and river, and right up to the end of the trail.

"Bookworm is making west," Prideheart said grimly, "returning to your quarry of old."

"What?!" Scrolldozer's voice shattered.

"It is she who has pilfered your missing explosive," Prideheart nodded towards Crumble Pie after he faced everypony again, "for her goal is to bury the rip in the earth that has spawned these heinous heckhounds. Our final sacrifice here was not a story so fitting to her world of heroes, villains, and fables—"

He looked directly at the distressed father, and the invisible fires which forever gnawed on his dragon-wound seared especially sharply as they spread down into his heart.

"—and so she has herself undertaken the task of writing us a victory."

The excruciating blow landed on Scrolldozer in perfect, horrified silence. His eyes pulled the rest of him towards the wide wall and he searched blindly for whatever it was the cloaked stallion had seen, looking for anything which might have made the awful revelation wrong or impossible.

Atop the wall the trembling townsponies still scurried about in near-hysteria, without a hope to rally around.

From his position below, the father couldn't see the incoming threat which tortured them; only their fearful reaction to it. He had to picture the scene: the road stretching out towards the mountain; clouds of dirt fleeing from the storm of burning paws tearing up the ground; the grass cowering as embers fell from hot fur and threatened to spark small fires; the frenzied, fanged snarls with boiling slobber flowing; death closing in with heartless speed.

And into that crisp vision of barbarous evil his mind suddenly added Bookworm.

Scrolldozer would have collapsed into an unsalvageable heap of despair if not for Prideheart who all but grabbed his face to ensnare his attention.

Into the father's face Prideheart pushed his own scarred image, closer than a hair. Already aged, his wrinkles deepened with remorse, spreading long across his blame-heavy grimace. Every light within him was dimmed or shut out completely by a shroud of regret; all except for the sick mist which filled his dead eye and the despondent poison glow hidden within the pustules growing on his shattered horn.

"This is my doing...," his whisper sounded like a hammer of guilt. From his clean eye came tears as clear as unstained crystals; from his cloudy eye, a bitter and viscous venom issued. "She has a voice. Her own. She has a voice and I did not listen to it. I did not listen. I did not speak to it. Carelessly I dismissed her voice and favored my own. Only my own voice; my own desires; my own flaws. I fed her voice my faults, heedless of consequence."

A wicked fire, fended off forty years ago.

Forty years ago he had saved countless ponies in Canterlot. Saved them, and then ruined them. Saved them so that he could have dragged them away from their world, spread his desolate infection into them, and subjugated them under a toxic shadow lord whose bloodthirsty rule had left them enthralled under backwards, misguided ideals.

And now Bookworm too. She was the next to be devoured by his insatiable, wounded shadow.

Just like the Dryponies. Just like the innocent foals abandoned.

Just like his own daughter.

"It is I," he absolved Scrolldozer. "I have ever been the worst danger to her. Here but two days, and I have brought this. There is no good forgiveness for me."

"Blame...," the father weakly picked up his voice, "... doesn't matter now. Only Bookworm matters. I have to at least try and get her back."

And he sidled past Prideheart, heading towards the wall.

Crumble Pie, more distraught than anypony had ever remembered seeing her before, quickly latched onto his tail and held him.

"No! If you go over that wall all alone then you will get killed! Besides, we need every last pony we have! Those folks on the road are counting on us!"

Scrolldozer, despite hard efforts, couldn't break free; his friend's physical strength far outclassed his own. He growled protests as he still dug his hooves fruitlessly along the road, until suddenly his whole body stopped. Inside he felt a shock; a sudden crash. He soared past some hideous threshold he had never crossed before, and there were new, awful, monstrous feelings.

A light jumped from his horn and grabbed the gray mare's face. It pried open her mouth and then shoved her back a step. The attack did more than catch her by surprise; she wobbled and teetered hard before she found her balance again.

Everypony there was stunned.

"I don't care if it gets me killed!" Scrolldozer furiously shouted. "I have to try and get her back!"

And again he went, this time storming away.

Crumble Pie rubbed her jaw. The wrenching had been forceful enough to have slammed a stiff soreness into, and she wondered briefly if only luck had kept it from being broken.

Briefly.

"Scrolldozer!"

She ignored the rough discomfort and suddenly jumped after him. Rather than seize him again she came alongside him, and she made clear through her positioning that she intended to block his path if he refused diplomacy.

"I sympathize! I do! I know how evil it is to make you stay! But I can't let you put Bookworm above Stony Nook! I can't! You're needed here! That horn of yours is probably the mightiest thing we got!"

The father came to a halt and right away his horn flared up, almost daring the mare to back up her threat. He hit some depth anger he had never found before, so boiling it spun his head in confusion.

"I-! I-! Just... get away!"

But of course she didn't. She went to move in front of him.

Never, ever, ever would he have wanted to have hated his best friend. But suddenly there is was, plain as day: an odious slime covering his every emotion as he looked at her, as if the years of friendship had meant nothing. He could feel the spell to toss her aside aching to fly out of his horn.

"Crumble Pie!!!"

The mayor's pent-up fright exploded out of her.

Hailstone revved up her wings.

"Whatever! I'm going! I can find her faster and safer from the air!" she cried in exasperation.

Her wings hardly worked through a single beat before Crumble Pie barked, "Don't you go buzzing off! We need everypony!"

"Yet still, some are more valuable than others," Prideheart unexpectedly interceded.

His stolid eyes at first briefly rested on Hailstone's awful wings. Wicked things, pony wings; with innate magic in them that orchestrated the air like a conductor. What good were they for, except a coward's retreat?

...

Or perhaps, they could serve to fleet over a battlefield delivering buckets of water faster than any water pump.

The stallion's sight turned next to Scrolldozer's despicable horn. Baleful thorns, pony horns; spiral conduits of magic that influenced the world in evil ways. What good were they for, except making suffering or telling lies of strength?

...

Or perhaps, they could make shields of boulders to protects others. Like the father had done yesterday when he had pinned the heckhound, or when he had dropped a safe cage of stones around Bookworm.

The very thought of those wings and horns fighting to save Stony Nook filled him with many nasty feelings: loathing, disgust, livid rage, and worse. What an abomination! Items whose very purposes were inextricably bound to the detestable power of magic, being asked to serve the noblest defense? False strength being used to gird the most sacred duty? The ether of betrayal being entrusted to safeguard the lives of the innocent?

...

But the stallion endured his deficiencies. Like the brace on his wounded knee, he quelled the screaming inside him until it was bearable. He put away his faults, hiding them with the rest of his body under his dusty cloak.

He gestured to his damaged knee, his shattered horn, and the grotesque scars upon his face.

"An old, broken fool has little value in this fight here," he told the others. "Nothing of me will be missed were I to pursue Bookworm."

"But-, but-," gasped Crumble Pie, "but you can't just... hop the wall and chase her! The heckhounds'll tear you up before you get a hoof down on the road!"

"So they would," Prideheart acknowledged coolly, "but that is irrelevant. Bookworm would not have taken that path."

The bizarre statement caused everypony to recoil then gape at the cloaked stallion. There was, after all, only one road to the old quarry.

"The filly is a wise fool for her tender age," Prideheart explained to them.

With just his nose he started to trace a long, invisible line through the air. He directed it first to the east, running it over the bridge out of town, but then he immediately spun it northwards. He hugged it along the far side of the river, moving against the current.

"By holding to the farther bank she would have dodged both us and the heckhounds. Thus, no risky passage through Stony Nook where we might have caught her and spoiled her heroics, and no crossed paths with the enemy she has sought to outwit. She knows the river will guide her to the quarry. Far enough out she will find a place to swim across."

That was her plan; the stallion had no a single speck of doubt. After all, Bookworm had been the one to have taught him about the heckhound's crippling weakness to water, so she knew that the farther side of the river was safe. And he had in turn taught her that the river was a fresh water source which she could rely on all throughout the journey. He, her "hero," had originally devised the plan to have blasted an avalanche over the crack to Tartarus, and now she had adopted it as her own and pooled it with her other knowledge so as to see it through.

She was mimicking him and his "heroics." Much as he had stupidly instructed her to do.

Scrolldozer trembled.

"She's-... she's not-...?" he glanced uncertainly at the wall.

"As of yet, under no risk. But what risk when she reaches the quarry? Suppose even a lone heckhound stands guard?" feared Prideheart.

She was copying him and his "heroics."

He had tangled with a lone heckhound and squelched the monster with his canteen. She had seen it, and later she had boldly and worthlessly tried to slap a hound with her homework.

She wouldn't abort her plan in the face of any danger.

That was what the father believed as well.

Fast he turned about and began to run towards the bridge, chasing after his daughter, but Prideheart stopped him before he got far. The old stallion moved before him and barred his path, but not like Crumble Pie had done earlier. Prideheart humbled himself low, bowing deep enough to kiss the earth and shaking from the pain it brought to his wounded knee.

"I will retrieve her," he swore to Scrolldozer.

For every pony he had saved in Canterlot only to have unsaved them by trapping them in his noxious shadow.

For every foal who had been abandoned to the unknown in his cursed name.

For every parent who had suffered a living death because they had to share a world with his pain, cowardice, hate, pride, foolishness, and ever-grieving faults.

"This wrong of mine I will undo. Thus so, or my death."

Nopony spoke a word. Some waited for something to be said by Scrolldozer, but there wasn't any thrust in the father's throat.

In his mind was the sacrosanct duty a father has; their responsibility to their foals. A responsibility immortal, having existed since the beginning of time and lived forever in the most unfathomed depths of the heart. A love woven by the universe itself, not in any place the eyes could see, or in any sound the ears could hear, but within the very beings of parents themselves. The love had first been born inside Scrolldozer the very day that Bookworm had herself been born, and that love had been birthed in him again and again repeatedly for every second of every day he had ever spent thinking about her.

If he had been a stronger pony, perhaps he would have had the voice. If wiser, perhaps he would have had the words.

But what he did have – what he found in Prideheart – was a trust. A trust that the older stallion knew, and felt, and understood that same immortal love. A trust that the older father held that love in the same holy place.

Scrolldozer cried softly, but he didn't speak.

Prideheart waited for nothing more. His oath was burned onto him like a brand of red iron, and he stood and charged towards the bridge. The hard pounding of his gallop awakened the wound in his knee and he relied wholly on his new brace to overcome its tormented screams. Without so much as a fragile stumble he roared over the bridge, turned, and sped along the riverbank.

The others, unsure of what to even think, looked to Crumble Pie for any sign of approval. For any sign of answers, or leadership.

But the weary mare's limitless strength was still overwhelmed. Her teeth chattered lightly. Her each breath was scant, not so panicked as to gasp but certainly not under firm control. She couldn't find a single spot to set her eyes and no focus returned to them. Under circumstances dreadful or mundane she had always been the confidence which had kept everypony afloat, but now in the same way her frigid despair was a giant anchor on them all.

Yet another call of her name came down from the wall. It wasn't only Mayor Desk Job; several others shouted for her desperately as well. They were besides themselves with uncertain terror, but no response came from the silent street below.

So it was an uplifting surprise to everypony in the street when Scrolldozer unexpectedly touched his hoof to his gray mare friend. The father was still riven by heartbreak and shuddering from all his cold fear, but nevertheless his touch was gentle and warm. When Crumble Pie looked up at him she saw his desire to speak something, but he didn't bother using his mouth for what his eyes said just fine.

She hugged him.

"Alright everypony," the mare sighed, picking up her strength again as easily as that, "let's get on that wall."

Right away her crew obeyed. Hailstone gave her boss a salute and zoomed off. Scrolldozer, meanwhile, nodded and expelled a frozen breath before he marched. On the way he often glanced north wherever he could, catching fast glimpses over the river of Prideheart galloping away.

Mrs. Totaler, puffing her red cheeks still, tried to follow as best as she could. Decades of serving drinks on her hooves had fortunately left her with legs younger than her face, and it only took her a moment to join the rest of her town.

However Crumble Pie was quick to cut in front of her.

"Come on, turn around now, Mrs. Totaler," she said, throwing a pleading flick of her head towards the bridge.

"No, no; I'm here now; might as well be a part of the end. Rather tussle with those hounds than do that run again," she wheezed, laughed, and sighed all together. "Besides, I told the others to just keep going without me; they'll be fine, Crumble Pie; they don't need no more encouragement than they already got."

"Okay, okay," the gray mare reluctantly relented. What difference did make, trying to toss out a single stone when the quarry was already flooding? The ponies went together towards the stairs up the wall.

Crumble Pie confessed to the elder mare, "I'd just hate to see anything happen to you, you know?"

"Well, keep your eyes closed then; don't worry about it; I promise I'll throw down any hound that tries to get you."

They emerged at the top of the steps, and Crumble Pie's very, very last minute appearance on the wall was just enough for the poor mayor to pull herself together. Mostly.

Desk Job terrified babbling was only partially-coherent. She threw her hooves out from the wall a lot, whenever she wasn't gnawing them off.

Stepping up to the parapet, right next to where Scrolldozer stood, Crumble Pie looked out.

There they were.

True to Hailstone's count, twenty-four heckhounds were charging at Stony Nook. They barreled down the road and over the grass, their numbers spread wide. Because of the gray mare's long delay they were already nearly upon the wall. The fearsome pack of fiery predators fanned out the closer they came, with many hounds splitting off to engage the southern portions of the wall while the rest came straight for the west face. As they rushed in they didn't slow, not in the slightest. They barked, they howled, they frothed; they smoldered with their dark intents. Behind their awful eyes a hungry fire flickered while they scanned the frightened ponies who lined the top of the long wall.

Crumble Pie punched out her voice, lobbing it high over the town.

"Buckets up! Get ready! Wash'em out first chance you get! Don't let even one over! Remember to listen for the bells!"

At her command the terrified townsponies steeled themselves and clutched tight their watery weapons.

The gray mare allowed herself a last, slow breath, and then she whispered quietly, "Here we go."

A soft, supportive tap came from Scrolldozer. He was at the worse ends of his nervousness, but even so there was still a braced glow which swirled around his ready horn.

"... We can't fall back until our friend returns with Bookworm," he murmured.

"... Then we'll hold until he's back," she answered simply.

Broken far apart at the very doorstep of the town, the many heckhounds searched for their own individual avenues of attack. The closest of them lunged straight at the wall, snarling with ferocious hunger, and suddenly he sprung high. The mighty leap wasn't enough to clear the full height of the wall but his heavy paws scratched with such power that he easily skittered up the remaining distance, climbing against the stone. His forelegs clamped over the low parapet. He emerged, pulling his face up and bringing all his savage growls to the ponies who stood before him.

And immediately he took a faceful of water.

Down the dog plunged, a long tail of billowing smoke chasing him, and he crashed against the ground where he gasped and wheezed and whimpered.

All the other heckhounds quite wisely took in the warning and held back from heedlessly launching themselves up the wall. They slowed and stalked about below, searching for vulnerable openings.

Bookworm had reached where the land north of the river began to rise sharply, the earth jumping up in sudden steps, forming an oversized stairway. Some of the rises were taller than the filly herself even when she stood on her hind legs, and some still were taller than an adult pony doing the same. But she had learned a lesson from her hero and his climb out of the quarry. At every rise she sought out the largest pile of stones to scale her way up.

The climbing was hard, slow work because of her small size and young strength, but she went at it relentlessly. Her efforts earned her a few dings and scratches every time she slipped or fell, but they weren't anything more than the usual for rambunctious foals. Certainly her small mistakes didn't dull her determination. But that wasn't to say the very slow pace of her climb didn't frustrate and tire her, especially with the blasting charge hanging from her by its strap like an anchor. It wasn't any schoolbag full of books, but having to constantly pull it along as she wormed up the rocks, where it so easily got snagged and pulled back on her now and then, didn't make for any sort of fun excursion.

Yet her noble goal was always clear in her mind and it gave her patience an unbending shape. Heroes, like her new friend, surmounted the tallest snowcapped peaks when they had to, and so she could scale a few piles of rocks when needed.

The filly held one hoof solid while she searched for a good hold with her other, and when she found it she pulled with everything she had. Very nearly she slipped and she began kicking, trying to paddle herself up like she were a boat.

In the midst of her straining and sweating she thought she heard a distinct noise coming from somewhere behind her. Something faint; a whistle on a far wind that was higher than the rush of the nearby river below.

But she couldn't spare the attention to look, and very little she even thought about it. Every last one of her little muscles were needed to haul herself up and the gritting of her teeth was a noisier grind than whatever the shallow whisper had been.

Once she was stable again she didn't waste any time and started scaling the next rock. Rock to rock she went until at last she made it to the top of the shelf. Only then did she pause to pant, bringing in heaps of fresh breaths, and she shook out the uncomfortable stiffness which kept trying to lock up her legs.

"Bookworm!"

The same sound as before rode up to her on the wind, louder this time; enough to tickle her attention. But she was still too determined on her task to give it much recognition. The tired, half-glance she quickly threw backwards wasn't enough to notice anything particular on the blur of landscape behind her. Shrugging the distraction off, she looked ahead at her next challenge.

The next shelf wasn't much different from any of the ones she had already passed over: another tiny stretch of ground running away from her for a short distance until it hit the next rise. The small plateau was dirty, with little vegetation to speak of; a flat and open arena not much longer than the bridge which spanned the river back at Stony Nook. Likewise the next step up didn't look any shorter than the one she had just scaled, but there were fewer mounds of stones available to climb.

Nevertheless, her plucky resolve was undeterred. She stamped her hooves once to pound some purpose into them and get her blood going, and then she started towards the largest rock pile she saw.

The strap around her body jerked her back before she got anywhere. Once again the explosive had gotten caught, this time on the previous ledge. Grumbling only lightly she turned about, reached down, and slipped it out from its loose trap.

"Bookworm!"

This time, with the filly already facing the stretch of land that led back to Stony Nook, the village itself a miniature model of a town in the lower distance, the call of her name finally shot right into one of her ears. She looked up.

Below, just a few shelves down, Prideheart was bounding up the same rock piles she had been climbing. He vaulted his way up with frighteningly more speed than she had managed, yet he seemed the worse for it; each time his braced knee bent he took a clear blow of pain. But he didn't let his pace ease and, if anything, he pressed himself faster now that he was so close.

The surprised filly dropped the explosive charge on the ground and leapt with joy, bringing out a grin so large that it was all the cloaked stallion saw. On the edge of her shelf she waited for him to catch up, restlessly bouncing her legs in excitement.

"Mister!" she cried happily as he came to the stack of stones just below her and without pause began to tear his way up. "You came!"

"I-," he gasped, but his broken breathing forced him to swallow every following word. He only wheezed as he continued to slash his way up the rocks.

When he finally crashed upon the top of the shelf he came to a careless, heavy stop in front of the filly. It was much like a train forgetting that the station was the end of the line. His relentless pursuit had left him a wreck.

"You really came!" Bookworm continued to bound in place. "Oh, I knew you would! Just like when I came back for you at the quarry!"

"Filly, such was not-"

Again the air rapidly plunging into his lungs cut him off.

"Do not equate-," he haltingly restarted, but he still lost to his laborious rasping.

"Come on, mister!" she quickly slipped the blasting charge's strap back over herself. "No time to catch our breath now! We got a long way to go!"

She ambled onwards with confidence, and Prideheart nearly collapsed when he tried to chase after her. Had it not been for his brace his wounded knee would have split apart like a soggy branch bending too far. He staggered, falling behind her gingerly pace.

"No!" he wheezed anxiously. "No! We are returning to Stony Nook."

The arrow he fired went right through her heart and pinned her where she was. Only with a wilted twist did she turn around and look straight at him.

"But mister... we're supposed to save Stony Nook."

"Little this course will serve that end!" the stallion scolded as he hobbled up to her.

At the sight of his fatherly sternness she was only pained, angered, and disappointed. All the joyful little lights were stolen from her.

"We're the heroes, mister!"

"Too young yet are you!" Prideheart lowered his scarred face right into hers, "and that title would never befit the execrable likes of myself!" The hard commander came out in him, "Now, to Stony Nook we return!"

It was not loyalty or submission which washed over Bookworm. Instead, a grim meanness slowly came into her, mixed well with a nasty and selfish disgust. Small dismays exploded into unspoken outrage.

Her constructed world had failed her. Her fantastic expectations had emerged into reality as so very dull, tarnished, and marred. The only weapons she had against spoiled imagination were her underdeveloped emotions.

She gave a huff; one wet enough that it didn't quite conceal the pouty beginnings of her angry tears. Then wordlessly she secured the blasting charge and turned away from Prideheart. Off she went, marching harshly on her way to finish the task on her own. She leaned into each of her stomps.

Quickly Prideheart limped in front of her, gritting with each spike of pain his steps drove into his worst knee. She said nothing and tried to maneuver around him, taking rather sulky turns and twists in her effortless attempts. Never did she look him in the eye. But for each grumpy evasion she made he continued to waddle into her way and block her.

The bitter coldness that had swept into her cast an awful regret upon the stallion. It hadn't been his intention to have taken so harsh a tone with her. After all, the trenchant anger which saturated him was reserved so completely for himself; she was merely acting on his mistakes. He had such love for her pure acceptance of him; him and all of his foolishness.

He forced the thoughts into his mind and held them there: she was a filly of capable vision, with strong wisdom and her own, unique, if sometimes misguided voice. That alone demanded respect, even if he had to plead with her through great sadness and grief.

"Young Bookworm! Your plan is valorous at heart, but it would not do the service you wish it to! Please... please hear my sorrow, and continue not this way!"

At that the little filly stopped and began to stamp her hooves in a fierce fury. She snapped at him, "The heckhounds are just going to come back if we don't bury the crack to Tartarus! Then Stony Nook will be in danger all over again!"

"You must see: there's no significance! The ponies of Stony Nook, fighting now, are not taking up a battle they think to win. They are the ones who are heroes!"

He bent his battered knee, dropping it to the ground. No matter how unsteady, it held his weight as he loomed low and close to her. The two halves of his face – bright but old, ruined but remembered – could not tell a more complete tale. They stared into her together.

"Those who love you are making the sacrifice of real heroes. You are bold enough yourself to make it, but too young yet. And I... I am too worthless and weak to live up to it."

"No! You're a real hero!" Bookworm insisted suddenly.

The glass of her eyes didn't hold any reflection of her father. No scenes of a dead-tired stallion sitting at his daughter's bedside while reading aloud through the night for as long as it took. No flashes of a face fraught with worry over her every sneeze or scrape, no matter how big or small, no matter how innocent or alarming. None of it was there.

"You're the only real hero who has ever to come to Stony Nook! Stop saying you aren't one! You saved me from the heckhounds at the quarry, just like a real hero would have! You stood up for everypony in Stony Nook as soon as they were in danger, just as brave and fearless as a real hero is! You even came from somewhere far away and amazing, just like all the real heroes do!"

In the back of his mind Prideheart heard once more the mocking whispers of the darkness which lived on the other side of the Pearl Peaks; the deranged taunts of his shadow doppelganger and its many torturous voices. This, though he was wide awake in the daylight.

"There is no wonder or security in that land I came from."

The stallion's admission was sore and ashamed. With every unhappy note he uttered he withdrew all the wishful praise of it he had given to the filly when he had first spoken to her of it at the tavern.

"I had many times told myself delusions of its freedoms, but what fulgent lies I had blinded myself with! No hero led a march to that place. It was an escape fled to by a wounded coward. But the forest there is a hungry hole, Bookworm; a pit devouring goodness greedily, engulfing noble sacrifices and vomiting back heartless malice. If heroism I ever had, it was wrested from me there when it consumed the innocence I had so willingly and so fatuously brought before it. Yet such bounty wasn't enough for it. Decades of my forlorn loyalty to feeding it did not satiate the monster, nor did it ever surrender to me the the cold, numb relief I had sought out from the very beginning. Ever-ravenous, and me enslaved, it cast me away to fish for more nourishment for its evil. It sent me to find you, Bookworm... so I might lure you close and toss you into its waiting maw. Like the others... Like her..."

The filly went still and quiet, showing confusion and sadness.

Prideheart pleaded, "I am sorry, Bookworm, that I brought my shadow over you. My valor is long-broken. Seek not to emulate it."

Bookworm found no solid place to stand. She was buffeted about, like one struggling to stay staunch under the battering of a heavy windstorm. Plainly she was fighting to understand this story of his; one that she had never read the likes of.

The stallion put some of his weight back onto his stronger leg so that he could stand again, but he took his weakened, trembling leg and touched it to filly's face. The tender rub caught her focus, and she looked up to see his lips take on a sad, amused grin.

"As much of a mistake as swallowing warm water when steps away sits a refreshing river to quaff from, know that the 'heroism' you saw in me is only the same. Use my error to better help remember the lessons taught to you by the good ponies of Stony Nook..."

"... Mister... I don't understand..."

"I did not save her, Bookworm. When I should have, I did not. And without you, I will fail again. Aid me. Please. Turn back to Stony Nook..."

A long, gentle silence followed.

The little filly couldn't even understand why she was crying. Looking up at the old stallion she could see in him a strange kind of sadness the likes of which she couldn't grasp at all, but somehow it still softly pulled the tears out of her.

And he wept as well, each of his eyes producing a different kind of tear. However, the sorrow leaking from him carried in it his inner darkness, drawing it away from him drop by drop. His weary face, though it stayed swollen with regret, took on an enduring strength that didn't resemble anything like the fierceness of warriors which Bookworm had time and time again eagerly read about. The streaks of sadness left on his cheeks shined, happy and hopeful.

It was familiar to the filly but she couldn't quite recognize it. He again had the shape of her father, though this time she couldn't consciously see it.

The blasting charge slipped off of her and slumped limp onto the ground when she lowered her head.

"Okay...," she accepted, downcast and faint, but thankfully not bitter. "... I'll go back..."

Her face was picked up by the sudden and affectionate touch of Prideheart rubbing his wet cheek against hers. The blackened skin near his dead eye, despite its sickly appearance and the greenish ooze that had smeared over it, had a warm and cushioned feel.

"Then me you save. My little pony hero..."

He encouraged her to turn about with harmless little pushes, which she did. First came a wary step or two, then a sluggish sigh, but after that she finally was on her way earnestly, making no shows of sour resistance and pitching no tiny protests. Even her disappointment was a shallow shell wrapped over a peaceful surrender. Only at the edge of the shelf did she come to a stop, and that was solely because she had to search for a safe path to climb down.

Prideheart stood behind her patiently, helping her search but not controlling her with any forceful suggestions. Quickly she found a suitable path and she started to drop a hoof down onto the first rock below when the old stallion's ears shivered from a sharp, fast tapping against the earth which came from behind them.

The scratching sounds moved rapidly. They soared towards the ponies, and with them came heavy thuds like the rumbles of racing thunderclouds. Then something else came with them; a noise high-pitched but broad in volume.

Like panting howls.

Prideheart spun about.

Upon the edge of the next rise suddenly appeared three bulky, menacing, red shadows. Their eyes burned like deep fires on a lightless night, and a glow emanated from behind their jaws which resembled the glowering of a black iron furnace hungry for more coal. The largest of the three shadows, dead in the center, stood out with its sharp, sinister pair of horns.

"Hello again," Kerby said in his smooth, formal, diabolical voice.

The fast first blood was an immense boost of encouragement to the timid townsponies; right away they saw that all of their desperate preparation actually had enabled them to fight back; at least, to some degree. What's more, the heckhounds recognized their overeager comrade's failure and chose to bide their time. Instead of a battle between a swift, raging fire and a trepid tide of water, Stony Nook's fate balanced on a slow and grim standoff. Hounds wandered below, glaring up and growling foul threats when not sometimes teasing attacks. Ponies waited above, tense and jumpy with buckets held close, whether by hoof or magic.

The trundling ordeal took an agonizing amount of patience to endure. It was a matter of which side could suffer waiting longer before crumpling under their respective fear or bloodlust.

One by one the heckhounds started to make feints. A lunge forward here, a dash towards the wall there; occasionally some of them even skipped up the stone face only to dive off early and retreat. Individual hounds tried their luck, daring the ponies to flinch while they tested just how far they could take their attacks, but altogether along the breadth of the wall their independent strikes felt almost viciously coordinated.

Often the ponies responded to the slightest threats by chucking down waves of water. Each time a single hound dashed at them only to suddenly veer aside, at least a few jumpy ponies fired away. Some of them turned out their buckets at the mere sound of snapping jaws, even if the taunting hound was miles out of reach. The longer it went on the more their uneasy panic flooded around them, their courage sinking, and their carelessness only got worse. The pegasi defenders had hooves constantly full of freshly-filled buckets to resupply the wall, their wings whipping hot while they shed feathers by the pound.

It all concerned Crumble Pie greatly.

The longer things were dragging on the more the townsponies' willpower was eroding, making them more frantic and sloppy, and the heckhounds were in turn becoming bolder. Their fire, doused a little by their early failure, was building back up into a roar. Sooner or later one of them wouldn't hold back in a feint but actually try to scale the whole wall to the top; a single spark that could ignite Stony Nook's end.

Making matters worse, the frightened townsponies were spending their buckets faster than they could be replenished. The terror driving their hapless defense had them emptying buckets like they were bailing out a sinking boat, and the pegasi who were making flights to the river for resupply simply couldn't keep up. There were still many extra, full buckets lined on the wall waiting to be used, but their number shrank quite a lot faster than it grew.

For the gray mare, watching them rapidly vanish was like eying a hissing fuse.

"Easy! Easy! Careful with your shots!"

Her warning didn't do much good. The ponies still poured waterfalls over their rampart, too afraid of what might come clawing up if they were to hesitate. And certainly they were much too terrified to think any further than five seconds into the future.

Crumble Pie cut her way to the center of the wall, where the heckhounds were the thickest and the buckets seemed to be disappearing the fastest. There, a constant stream of panic-stricken ponies, Mrs. Totaler included amongst them, were dumping water with such reckless speed that they were like a water wheel spinning out of control. Some ponies ran up to the edge and tossed their buckets out without even looking.

"Everypony take it slower! Easy!"

Yet not even that strong shout broke through their repetitive daze.

Next the gray mare bolted her hooves to the stone below. She pulled back on her lungs until they sank into her stomach. The weighty tone she belted out was little known and rarely heard, but this time it came down on the others like a crashing mountain.

"Ease it up!"

For good measure she threw herself into their mix where they couldn't possibly ignore her, jamming their gears. The ponies who stopped and stared in confusion still fidgeted from their bodies' desire to keep a feverish pace. The churning through defensive motions was the only thing holding them together.

"Take it steady! Wait for a good shot!" instructed Crumble Pie. "Throw when you really think you're going to hit! Otherwise you're just wasting water!"

Mrs. Totaler spoke up, "They're mighty fast, Crumble Pie; flash up like a grease fire! If we're too slow in keeping'em off-"

"If we're too quick then sure enough they'll get up anyway, right after we empty our last bucket!"

A few sloppy splashes sounded, coming from the ponies who hadn't been caught by the interruption. They were still scrambling about and lobbing water.

"Here, gimme that," Crumble Pie slammed herself into one of the manic townsponies and snatched their full bucket from them.

She set it upon the parapet, keeping one hoof clasped to its side and her mouth near the bail handle, ready at any point to fling water where it needed to go. Quiet and still, she kept a stern watch on the hounds stirring below, and likewise the stunned ponies behind her watched while awed by her stony calm and unprovoked focus.

One heckhound dashed in to make another false attack run. He shot forward then curved, coming at the wall from an angle. His high leap cleared the moat of mud all the townsponies' misses had created, but instead of climbing he kicked sideways along the wall before pushing off. Landing safely past the mud, he slowed and gave a crackling chortle.

But immediately he was baffled to hear no splashes crashing down behind him. He stopped abruptly and gazed back at the section of wall he had bounced off of, and he spied only a lone gray mare standing there. All the other defenders had, apparently, fled. And this last one was too scared to even move! The look she held on him was pristinely unflinching; probably dead cold with fear, the hound assumed.

A cocksure wisp of smoke twirled up out of his nostrils and he took off in a fresh charge straight at the stone face of the wall.

And with perfect patience Crumble Pie let him come. She let him fly over the mud; let him slam onto the wall; let him rake his paws to scramble up the stone. And then she merely spilled the bucket over him just before he could clear the top.

The hound, bleeding plumes of dark smoke, tumbled and plopped onto the wet ground.

"There," Crumble Pie set the bucket down and turned about to address the others, "you see? It's not all that hard to wait for a good-"

A burning snarl from behind her blew a wave of blisteringly hot air over the back of her neck. Everypony standing before her had their jaws hanging, their eyes shrunken in fear, and the color fading from their frozen faces. Peeking from the corner of her eye, the gray mare saw a heckhound perched upon the parapet and looming over her backside; a second beast which she hadn't noticed coming because of the intense focus she had given her target.

A hot light flickered. A ball of fire bubbled up in the sneaky heckhound's throat.

But a mesh of fat stones suddenly leapt into the way. They deflected and split the launched fireball into a dozen small, harmless streams of flame that quickly dissolved in the air.

The confounded heckhound gawked at the floating shield of stones that had spoiled his shot. His dumbstruck stare lingered on the mysterious weave of rocks right up until they unexpectedly pulled apart to reveal two gray hooves whipping straight at him.

Crumble Pie's hard buck landed square on the hound's nose, knocking him backwards. While his hind legs slipped, his forelegs managed to hook onto the wall and tenaciously refused to let go. The monster was a tempest of angry growls as he rapidly worked to pull himself back up, but then a shower of water poured down from above and cast him from his hold. He spun down the wall with smoking wounds and a sharp whine.

Scrolldozer magically set down the many stones in a fast, neat pile, and Hailstone landed while carefully laying down her heavy legload of fresh buckets, one of them now empty. Meanwhile the rest of the townsponies rushed back to the defense lest any more heckhounds spring up suddenly, and each of them tried to work some of Crumble Pie's rock solid resolve into themselves.

The father couldn't plug the gushing oil well of his nervous tension; his last-second intervention and that momentary flash of fire had given him quite an unpleasant surge of adrenaline. He nearly stumbled over the stones he had himself just set down when he tried check on his gray mare friend.

"A-Are you alright?"

"Not a scratch, thank you," Crumble Pie puffed a sigh of relief. Mostly it was true; there was only a bit of an echoing twinge in her legs from the heckhound's deceptively sturdy snout.

Hailstone said, "Maybe don't turn your back like that, boss. Keep the buckets flying instead."

"No, no, no!" the gray mare hollered. "Unless you've only been warming up your wings, we've got to play it more carefully! We're spending water too fast!"

Both of her friends noticed the dismal count of buckets for the first time. Hailstone, feeling a sudden sense of inadequate performance, popped into the air and raced her wings into a flurry.

"Oh geez!" she gasped.

"Crumble Pie, we can't run dry," pleaded Scrolldozer. Bookworm was in his eyes. "We can't... Not until they're back..."

"I know, I know," groaned the gray mare.

But she whirled her eyes up and down the long wall quickly, taking in the disappointing scene. Everywhere distraught and consternated ponies were throwing water with reckless haste and disregard. Even the townsponies she had moments ago chastised for it, though improved, were defending themselves more wildly than rationally. Rallying the troops would be no small task, if even possible at all.

Just to vent some of her frustration she threw her head up and spat skywards a blistery moan, almost sulfurous like a volcano's eruption. Everything in the sky far and wide was a crystal blue; an infinite expanse almost empty save for the rare streaks of white.

"Agh, I wish we just had a rainstorm!" she said.

"Well wish harder cause, like I said, we're not getting one," Hailstone grumbled. And then she carelessly tossed about an insincere glance and muttered loudly, "Unless you've got some actual rainwater you keep stashed away on a shelf..."

"'Scuse me."

Mrs. Totaler's interruption was as tender and professional as her regular service, despite the unusual moment for it. Dropping in and out of tavern chatter was one of her very honed skills.

They all turned to her in surprise while she set her bucket down.

"Rainwater, you say?" she asked. "As in, Cloudsdale Rainwater Mead? As in, the caseful of the stuff I bought a few days back from that traveling merchant; the poor, wise soul smart enough to be out of this place in time? The caseful still sitting behind my bar? That kind of rainwater, you mean?"

The battle continued on about them, sizzling here and there where it was not roaring. But they were silent a moment.

"... Hailstone...," Crumble Pie slowly began to ask, "... would-... would that-"

"You're...," the pegasus' answer coalesced gradually, "... not going to get any rainstorm... but..."

Her eyes took over her face, glowing bright with excited realization, and her whipping wings blew off any weight of doubt.

"... it's probably enough to bind together one raincloud strong enough to hold a downpour of river water!"

"Go," commanded Crumble Pie immediately.

Perhaps because of the chaos going on about them, or maybe because of the incredible speed of the sudden raincloud revelation, or maybe even because of how ordinarily simple her order had been; it didn't pierce. She tried again, much louder.

"Go on! Hurry!" she shooed Hailstone and Mrs. Totaler like they were birds bothering a picnic.

The pegasus blasted like a lightning bolt into the sky to gather together whatever tatters of cloud she could. Meanwhile the older mare, still finding a deep well of energy within her body, galloped down the wall's steps and off towards her tavern.

Scrolldozer looked at Crumble Pie, and she looked back at him. The father's nerves were still too shaky to cling any tighter onto whatever hope there was. He let an involuntary shudder pass, washed his throat to clear the dryness, checked that his horn still worked, and then returned to duty at his friend's instruction.

The gray mare tightened every loose knot she found in her body and resumed shouting directions and encouragements at the townsponies, stronger and steadier than ever. She had to really thunder to overcome some of the increasingly tremendous barking, splashing, scratching, shouting, and snarling which was invading Stony Nook.

Chapter 14: The Last Full Measure [Part 1]

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Prideheart stretched his profile over Bookworm to hide her from the three terrible heckhounds looming atop the next terrace.

The beast standing in the center was the largest of them. Protruding from his head were two forward-facing, long, pinpoint-sharp horns, and above his ferocious grin was a pair of uneven eyes. One glowed brightly like a blazing coal, the same as all heckhounds. But the other eye was recognizably bruised, swollen, and dimmed.

"Stand down, pup!" Prideheart commanded Kerby. Unlike their last standoff at the quarry, where the stallion had used every deceit and delay at his disposal, this time there were no games to play.

"Oh, no no no," Kerby hissed. He hardly bothered to affect his false civility, and he couldn't even begin to savor how delicious and evil his fortune was. "I'm not one to look a gift pony in the mouth! We were just on our way to have some fun with the village, and you—oh-ho-ho, you—I was hoping I would find you there and get the chance to treat you to something special. But now—!"

The large heckhound snorted an order at his lesser cohorts, and both leapt down from the ledge. Each began staking out positions around the ponies, stalking slowly and growling menacingly.

"—now," Kerby said, "this is like having dessert before the main course!"

Once they were in place, the other two heckhounds stopped and stood ready. All they needed was the order to pounce.

Prideheart bent and shifted every which way in response to the hounds on either side of him, always ensuring that Bookworm was completely shielded from them. But no matter how stout and stalwart he appeared on the outside, on the inside he was already on fire. Time was so desperately little, and solutions were so preciously lacking. With every spare moment, he frantically searched for an escape for the filly.

Suddenly Bookworm yelled at the heckhounds. Her head poked out from behind the stallion's cloak despite his efforts. Amazingly she was more mystified and offended by the hounds' presence than outright frightened.

She accused them, "You can't be on this side of the river!"

"'Can't?' Bahahaha!" scoffed Kerby.

"You can't swim through the water!" she shouted.

The large heckhound sneered, "No. But we ripped up some of those blasted cart tracks and built a bridge to cross over!"

"Oh!" gasped Bookworm. "I don't remember Star Swirl writing that they could do stuff like that."

Fearfully Prideheart shuffled about, trying to keep the eager, ignorant filly back, and it brought a wicked grin to Kerby's snout. The monster's huge paws gripped the terrace edge so that he could lean far over it, and small wisps of fire shot from his nostrils.

"Putting together that crude bridge was a little tedious," he poked at Prideheart with a devilish sort of delight, "but so very worth it! You have only yourself to blame for this, you know! Your lucky escape yesterday made me rethink my plan. Those pathetic little ponies in the village would be more ready for us because of your warning, so I thought we might keep the element of surprise by lighting a fire on their tails instead!"

In his chest, Prideheart's heart sank.

Hailstone hadn't been wrong in her count of the attackers, as he had first thought. Heckhounds had been missing because that large force was the diversion. The real threat was this smaller strike team which he and Bookworm had bumped into purely on accident. A surprise attack on Stony Nook from behind by these few but critical heckhounds would easily be a brutal, breaking blow to the whole defense.

Likewise, Crumble Pie had been right to have feared the hounds' ingenuity: they had quickly found a way to have crossed the river. Her sole mistake had been in assuming that the heckhounds would have done so only as part of a chase, and not as part of a fiendish play to outmatch the town's ill-equipped defenders.

Really, the only pony in all of this who had been truly, awfully wrong had been Prideheart himself.

Kerby had invented this diabolical scheme to bypass Stony Nook's defense only because of Prideheart's actions; only because he had made that stupid, futile effort to have stopped them at the quarry; only because he hadn't acted soundly and snuck a safe warning back to Stony Nook like he should have done; because he had been an self-deluding ideologue instead of a selfless protector.

The village, and every last pony who lived there, would have been better off had he never intruded upon their innocent home with his worthless, cursed self.

Bookworm especially so.

"Ooo, we gotta stop'em, mister!" the filly squeaked from behind Prideheart.

The stallion shivered.

"Come on!" she said. "This time there's only three of them!"

"Ha ha ha!!" Kerby was nearly defeated by a fitful of hard chortles. He savored his own sarcasm, "Yes! Only three of us! Your odds are so much better this time!"

The massive heckhound stretched his neck; his spine gave a thick crack at the very end of each twist. He pulled his shoulders, rolling them, and he lowered his head to inspect the deadly sharpness of his horns.

Below, his minions prepared themselves as well, scratching their claws ready against the dirt.

Prideheart dug his hooves in.

He said to Bookworm, "I will stand and fight. You must flee. Bring warning back to Stony Nook."

"No, mister!" the filly was again disgusted and distraught by his outright dismissal of her. Especially so after she had helped him at the quarry and all they had spoken about while floating down the river.

"You cannot stay!" Prideheart despaired.

He knew full well how hopeless retreat was. Even if he fought his very hardest and somehow managed to hold all three heckhounds at bay until he had not the faintest twitch of life left in him, it would never have given Bookworm enough of a lead to escape safely. There wasn't any way for such a little filly to outrun those enormous, agile monsters.

Angrily Bookworm pouted at him, still as grumpy and childish as if she were being denied an afterschool treat, "No! We gotta stop'em! We're the heroes!"

"Bahaha haha!!"

Again Kerby wailed with laughter so uncontrollable that his convulsions nearly tumbled him off the terrace. Eventually he settled into a chuckle of pure, sadistic joy.

"So," the brutish heckhound taunted Prideheart, "what do you do now, 'hero?' There's no sheds for you to duck out of! No trestles to dive through! No rocks to climb! No carts to roll off in! No boats to float away on."

His final threat he hissed with exceptional enmity, spitting his hatred for water.

But the words perked Prideheart's ears up. They turned away from the heckhound... and towards the loud gushing of the river coming from below the nearby cliff.

"Bookworm!" Prideheart urgently murmured to the filly. "Escape into the river! Dive! Dive and swim to Stony Nook!"

Well done, old fool.

From this risky height, toss down a filly young and tender? Crash her into running rapids? Let a hungry current swallow her and see if she survives?

Such is the best hope to be found for her?

'Hero' indeed!

Cursed! Despicable! Villainous!

What sickening jealousy! All these dangers he had dragged her into, and only so that he could have indulged in her adoring company! How ironic that she, a real hero when compared to him, might now die for the pitiful sake of his own damned comfort!

"... Go," he softly pleaded with her.

"But mister-!"

"Go!"

Prideheart started to push backwards, shoving the filly towards the cliff while still keeping between her and the heckhounds.

Kerby, usually one very pleased to play with his food before a meal, didn't have the patience to tolerate another screwup. He snorted at his minions, cutting their leashes.

Bookworm was squirming and protesting against Prideheart's pushes when, very suddenly, she felt him stop. All she saw were streaks black as ash and blurs bright as fire plunge into him, howling as they came. Their wind stumbled her.

In front of her unfolded a dizzying tangle of action, too wild to catch clearly. Cloak beat about; dust kicked up; flashes sparked; red splashed. The filly heard more than she saw: a rip; a crack; a slam; a slice.

Meanwhile, Kerby casually descended from the ledge, walking down a pile of stones as if he were out for a pleasant afternoon stroll. He hummed a tune as he ambled, though not loudly. The melody was borrowed; something he had many times overheard the eternally suffering prisoners of Tartarus sing to ease their endless labors in the fire; an elegy the condemned used to soften their sorrows. Yet Kerby brought the tune up several steps, humming it as a joyful ode to agony, far too jaunty for the violent clash just a few paces away from him.

The ridiculous sight of such a happy-go-lucky monster was out-of-place enough that Bookworm threw a confused glance his way.

He gave her back a neighborly smile: large, merry, and spread very wide to show off the full breadth of his fangs.

Another hard crack echoed through the air.

Bookworm looked back to see both of the other heckhounds on the ground, thrown down, though they weren't wounded in any way. Quickly they leapt back to their paws, no less vicious with their snarls.

Prideheart, by contrast, looked worse than before. Charred marks were mottled across his cloak, and a long tear now ran down the garment near his tail. Along the pony's neck was a fresh red line; not a cut deep enough to be spraying blood, but against his white fur the mark glowed as a crust of ooze formed over it. Prideheart staggered while balancing himself.

"Mister–!" the filly called.

"The river!"

The stallion very nearly bowled Bookworm over as he once again shoved her, almost ready to seize her and throw her from the cliff himself.

If only the uninterrupted chance had been there.

Howling again, the two heckhounds charged.

Prideheart surprised them by suddenly pivoting and blitzing them first. Yet even with that advantage, the heavy heckhound he rammed into wasn't taken down. The beast caught the blow dead on and staggered back two steps only to rebound immediately and repay the favor to Prideheart, hurtling the pony towards the other hound.

Fast swipes followed. Jaws snapped. Fires flashed.

Driven between the two aggressive heckhounds, the only saving grace for Prideheart was the inefficiency of their teamwork. Each monster tried individually to snare him, and so they often crowded each other out. In their frustration they occasionally pressed, tugged, pushed, and nipped between themselves.

Bit by bit the chaotic whirlwind of a battle spun nearer to the cliff edge and the river below.

And nearer to Bookworm, who still hadn't retreated.

The swinging door pounded against the building's stone face. The shop bell rang sharply, like a glass pane being shattered by a pitched stone.

Out rushed Mrs. Totaler, balancing on her back the case of Cloudsdale Rainwater Mead. She skid to a stop in the middle of the street, her sense of direction momentarily wheeling like an aimless spinner from all the adrenaline, but she found her way quickly and bolted down a nearby alley. Her gallop jangled the bottles on her back, playing the choppy melody of a wind chime in a storm.

She emerged next to the riverbank. Hailstone was there trying to tie together a single cloud from the few shreds of fluffy moisture she had scraped out of the starving blue sky. She wasn't having much success.

All the wispy threads looked more like a ball of badly frayed yarn. The bundle of raggedy cotton was scarcely any larger than the pegasus herself, even when inflated by gusts of air. Hailstone darted everywhere, tying crude knots between cloud whiffs until she was crosseyed, and hammering scrawny puffs into place with smashes of her hooves, but the torn and mutilated cloud showed little hope that it wouldn't just burst apart the very instant that it was splashed with a drop of water.

"Right then," Mrs. Totaler announced herself, throwing down the case of mead and ripping open the top, "how do we do this?"

"Just start pouring!" Hailstone instructed, knee-deep in her angry work.

"How many?"

"All of'em!"

The bartender grabbed the first bottle. She popped and spit the cork with her teeth, and she plugged the open bottle right into the top of the weedy cloud.

"Then what?" she asked.

"Pray it soaks in enough to make it a raincloud," answered Hailstone.

No matter how frantically the pegasus worked, progress never seemed to move forward. Every knot tied tight only pulled loose a thread somewhere else. Every forceful stomp only knocked free a puff of cloud elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the shimmering mead drizzled through the loose cloud, running down the white branches of fluff. Here and there the mead managed to soak in, leaving behind uneven dark splotches. Slowly they spread, beginning the cloud's transformation.

But then a leak sprung from the bottom of the cloud. Then several more. Golden streams of mead spilled onto the earth below, and the cloud's color-change halted. It stayed a messy mix of pure, snowy white spotted here and there by ugly gray.

"It ain't holding much," warned Mrs. Totaler.

"Are you sure that's rainwater?"

"Well that's what it says in the name!"

"That's great!"

Hailstone beat her sarcastic frustration into the cloud, trying to plug some extra puffiness into the infinite holes which the mead was filtering through.

Elsewhere, Crumble Pie hadn't been able to slow down the townponies' wasteful panic. She couldn't have held them back any better than she could have dammed a waterfall all by herself. Bucketful after squandered bucketful was launched over the wall, every shot a miss. The heckhounds below danced through the falling tide as easily as a frog's dry ballet over lily pads. Whenever the gray mare actually brought a shaky calm to some ponies, chaos erupted again the very instant that she left.

Every stretch of the wall was in crisis, but there was only one of her to prevent any given portion from buckling.

And then the inevitable finally happened.

The first crack.

Frightful shouts came from near the wall's center, where it sat over the road. The ponies there stood about in utter confusion and despair, searching through their sea of empty buckets, but they had at last drained them all. In the sky, the overworked pegasi were going to be too little, too late with a fresh delivery.

The townsponies' cries of alarm were delicious dinner bells to the heckhounds below. No sooner had the first hopeless shout gone up did one of the monsters appear on the parapet, licking his lips at the free feast before him. He let out a howl, calling for every one of his hungry comrades to come join him.

Mayor Desk Job just happened to be the designated bell-pony on that section of wall. It was her job to ring a bell to signal everypony else that there had been a breach.

Her eyes went wide at the fearsome sight of the heckhound ready to pounce. His howl pierced her ears and threw them down in fright. She nearly slipped and fell onto the street as she backed away in terror.

But despite her petrification, she stayed true to her duty. Her magic hoisted her bell, preparing to ring it for all that she was worth.

It would be a knell of defeat. A knell for defenses to be flung down and for everypony to fly for their lives. A knell to abandon Stony Nook.

Crumble Pie knew that a unified retreat was everypony's best chance to survive now that the line had been broken. If heckhounds flooded in then they'd only surround any poor pony left behind to defend.

But standing next to the gray mare was Scrolldozer.

As the mayor lifted the bell up, Crumble Pie saw Scrolldozer's heart sink down. He was pulled low, almost to the stone floor of the wall, by a lodestone of despondence which chained itself to his very soul. In his weeping eyes, behind the hopelessness and powerlessness, beyond his living death, the gray mare saw into his dark imagination: a vivid, horrible scene of his forlorn daughter returning to a Stony Nook empty and burning... if the heckhounds didn't sniff her out and devour her first.

To save the townsponies was to forsake Bookworm.

It infuriated Crumble Pie.

No; not her dear friend, who again had imperiled the whole town because of his love for his daughter.

No; not the heckhounds, not even as heinous, and cruel, and deserving of hatred as they had been.

No; not her own beloved townsponies, who hadn't been able to pace themselves under intense and fearful pressure.

She was outraged that there was even a choice to be made at all! She loved everypony! She loved them all! Who was she to choose between them?

Who was she to choose who gets thrown to the hounds?

Choose!

"Grab the bell," she suddenly ordered Scrolldozer. When he flinched in surprise, she only repeated more forcefully, "Grab the bell! Don't let her ring it!"

Though worried, he didn't question.

Desk Job shut her eyes and waved her magic as hard she could, but there came no shrieking dings or bellowing dongs. She popped her eyes open to see the bell floating free of her control, glowing instead the color of Scrolldozer's mightier magic.

Ponies screamed and scattered as the heckhound came down from the parapet. The monster set his sights upon the mayor who, paralyzed by terror, continued to vainly swing her empty magic.

The beast snarled and charged.

And he caught the full brunt of Crumble Pie's attack.

The gray mare drilled herself into his shoulder, plowing through him and spinning him into the air; saving the mayor in the same way as Crumble Pie herself had been saved by Prideheart yesterday.

The heckhound picked himself up quickly from the hit. He barked and roared, savage as ever, but all his ferocity did him little good when Crumble Pie fearlessly cracked the bell over his skull.

Down below at the base of the wall, the gathering crowd of heckhounds leapt back as the first hound crashed into the ground in front of them. Dancing through his eyes was a masquerade of stars, swinging and swaying to the chimes which echoed through his head, and on the top of his noggin was a very nasty lump. The broken bell followed him down, striking the lump with a dull ping.

"Crumble Pie!" Desk Job gasped.

The gray mare grimaced as she stepped down from the parapet and stretched her crunched spine. She had tossed some very big rocks before, but lobbing that heckhound had been a backbreaking effort.

"Just run," she told the mayor.

"But Crumble Pie-!"

"Run, or go help somewhere else, or-, or-... I'll hold it here. I'm not going to let anypony get hurt. I choose me."

Trepidatiously Desk Job backed off, and she shared a worried look with Scrolldozer. But they pulled back and left the gray mare as the last pony on that portion of the wall.

Crumble Pie staggered a step or two away from the parapet, still bending and twisting her back to restore it to fighting shape. Her eyes focused intensely on the new paws clawing and clasping their way over the lip.

"No you don't," she ground her teeth at the coming heckhounds. "Not my family. Not while I'm alive."

Bookworm politely shuffled aside so that the whirling melee could pass her by, dragging along with her the explosive charge still slung around her.

The battle was a symphony of exciting action; each epic crescendo sent a thrilling shiver through her. When a hit struck, she squealed. When the titans clashed and the earth shook, she bounced into the air. And whenever a fighter thrown down rose back up again to keep the story going, she cheered. She didn't flee; she couldn't have! Just the opposite: she tried to keep herself as close to the action as possible.

This was, after all, the electrifying climax of the story!

Though something was odd. An incongruity bothered her just under the surface of her awareness.

Sometimes, between all the blurs and the drama, she caught clean glimpses of Prideheart's face, and the contortions of pain which twisted it.

She remembered the same feeling from the night before, when she had seen Prideheart deliriously stumble out of the boat. The troubling scenes were something quite unlike the invincible heroes of her beloved storybooks.

One of Prideheart's better-timed bucks managed to stagger a heckhound straight into his sibling, and both monsters stumbled. The sibling underneath angrily shoved the first heckhound off, who snarled and snapped back in retaliation, and then suddenly both hounds took to aggressively roughhousing with each other instead of preying on the weary stallion.

Prideheart sagged, depleted. He was out of breath and clutching at his wounded knee, the injury awoken and complaining boldly even under the comfort of the knee brace. A second long rip had appeared down the side of his cloak, and likewise a new red mark across his cheek as well. Some of the hairs on his mane and tail had been crisped, bleeding thin trails of smoke like a charred candle wick. Facing two heckhounds was already a dangerous proposition, but his third enemy was his own debilitating pain and exhaustion, growing stronger as the battle wore on.

There came a blistering bark from the sidelines – Kerby still watched the fight insidiously – and his harsh command immediately whipped the two bickering heckhounds to attention. They swooped towards Prideheart, though again each competed to get ahead of the other.

Bookworm at last decided to play her part.

Clamping her teeth down on the strap of the explosive charge, she rushed the nearest heckhound and lashed it at his thigh. It was again mimicry of her hero, and the way he had swung his canteen about as a weapon.

Her hard swing bopped the charge against the hound's leg harmlessly; a pillow more than a club.

Regardless, the hound halted, dumbfounded by the filly's blind courage.

The charge struck him again (a soft pat on the cheek), and this time his response wasn't quite so nonplussed. His fangs flashed, hot slobber sprayed out from his growl, and his jaws opened before Bookworm's face.

From Kerby came a single, sharp, dominating snarl. It interrupted the lesser heckhound and turned him cold. Ears down, neck low, and short tail tucked into his butt, the cowering hound looked shamefully to his master for what he had done wrong.

The alpha pointed at Prideheart, the pony very busy battling the other heckhound one-on-one. To make sure his worthless little cur got the point, Kerby made a nasty and threatening gesture with his horns.

Browbeaten and afraid, the lesser heckhound slunk away from the filly, leaving her unharmed.

Bookworm blinked at Kerby, yet again so confused by him.

And again he answered with a smile, friendly in its own delectably evil way.

Prideheart scarcely evaded the heckhound's relentless swings. A darting duck, a swift step, a last-moment turn; each of his dodges had less speed than the one before, inching him closer to catching a brutal blow.

Yet the stallion had quickly noticed that his assailant was now alone. At the right moment, the pony stepped back and dressed himself in an exaggerated smile of relief.

"Ah, this is well," he needled the heckhound he was engaged with. Each word he greased with excessive pity. "I am left to deal with the easy one. I see your brother quite thinks you need the practice."

Though there had been no buck or kick, the heckhound flinched.

Then, perfectly timed, he was knocked roughly aside as his sibling came barreling through to attack Prideheart.

The sibling didn't get so much as a swing or chomp in before he was thrust off balance by his now-riled brother. The brother then angled himself to attack Prideheart instead, only to be likewise pushed aside in turn. Brother nipped at sibling's shins; sibling pressed a paw onto brother's face. Each heckhound wanted to hold back the other and get the first bite, until finally they stopped caring about Prideheart altogether. Like naughty puppies fighting over a quickly forgotten treat, they rolled over each other, growling selfishly while ripping fur.

Kerby again tried to command them back to attention, but this time one bossy snarl wasn't enough. The humongous heckhound reached deeper and let out a truly terrifying yowl.

The punch of it triggered a long-ingrained reflex in both hounds and they immediately ceased their bickering, cowering where they stood...

... which was right at the cliff edge.

Ideal placement for Prideheart's shoulder charge.

The heckhound he struck wobbled backwards and lost his hind legs over the precipice. His front paws fleetingly scratched at the rocks before he tumbled over the rest of the way.

Sploosh!

The hungry river swallowed the heckhound with a bubbling sizzle before belching out a satisfied cloud of dark smoke.

The other heckhound, showing no concern over his defeated sibling, snapped at Prideheart and snatched the pony's cloak just shy of the neck. Scrunching the folds of sturdy cloth between his fangs, he thrashed violently this way and that way, every one of his sudden whips an effort to throw the stallion to the ground.

Kerby also didn't seem terribly concerned with the watery fate of his disposable minion. There wasn't one crease of a frown or even one winking glance of displeasure from him.

But it did signal to him that the time to stand aside and enjoy the show had passed.

His thick neck weaved through a slow, hard circle. Shoulders and hips pops as he rolled them. Each individual toe on his paws he stretched until the claw sprung out, and then he inspected their sharpness. Satisfied, he licked the corners of his slavering mouth and waltzed happily towards the tug-of-war between his hound and Prideheart.

Bookworm rushed to intercept him.

Still adopting the methods of her hero, she plowed her shoulder into the huge beast's foreleg and bounced right off like a tiny rubber ball. Undeterred, she took up her improvised club and batted the explosive charge at him, slapping him with the same tender breeze of a paper fan.

For his part, Kerby didn't even look down at her. He slowed just enough to slide a gentle paw under her chin and toss her lightly onto her back, and then he walked on.

Prideheart's balance barely held. The heavy thrashing of the heckhound was almost unendurable thanks to the pony's wounded knee. It had no strength left with which to brace, and being down one leg left Prideheart jealously guarding what little solid footing he had, leaving him no space to mount a counterattack.

All the furious wrenching had also created a fresh tear in the cloak, and each savage pull widened it more, one snapping thread at a time. It worried the stallion. If the cloak sheared completely, the resulting whiplash would certainly be far worse for him in his haggard condition than for the vigorous hound.

But Prideheart, his face so close to the monster's own, keenly took note of the heckhound's gradual descent into raw canine instincts.

Out of the hound's nostrils spewed jets of crisp smoke, chugging like a train charging full-speed down its unbending track. Power seeped from the whips left and right; more and more he poured everything into a hammer which slammed straight backwards. In the hound's mind, the fight had stopped being about wrestling a pony down and had turned into a tugging contest over a prize bone.

Suddenly Prideheart changed. He abandoned completely his defense and instead matched the competitive aggression of the heckhound, snatching the collar of his cloak in his teeth and giving a fierce growl. He fought for his garment.

But unlike the hound, he deliberately pulled at a slight angle.

The heckhound obeyed his age-old instincts and moved reciprocally, always correcting himself into a straight line with the pony.

And so, inch by inch, the fighters spun in place. They turned like a slow wheel until Prideheart abruptly braked and straightened himself out.

At the same moment, he seemed to lose his energy. His growls faded. His hooves began to slip. Folds of fraying cloak jumped free from his teeth, one at a time.

It fed the heckhound's hunger for victory. The monster flew into a greater frenzy.

He pulled hard, stepping backwards and winning ground.

He pulled hard, stepping backwards and tearing the cloak.

He pulled hard, stepping backwards and dragging Prideheart with him.

And he pulled hard, blindly stepping backwards right over the edge of the cliff.

The hound and cloak acted like an anchor chained to Prideheart's neck; he nearly spilled over the cliff as well. Gravity snapped the cloak taut, and finally it was too much weight for the wounded garment. There was a fast, straight, clothy scream, and a fat strip which ran neck to hoof peeled free. Still caught in the heckhound's jaws, the strip of cloak waved and flapped like a victory streamer as it plunged towards the river with its winner.

Splish! Sizzle!

Prideheart had to allow the world some time to stop tilting before he was able to take steady steps away from the cliff. The moment to breathe gave him a chance to check himself out, and when he looked down at his damaged cloak he was struck by passing melancholy.

There was a sad sort of amusement to seeing the irreparable end his cloak had come to after forty long years of use and dedicated maintenance. He had first worn shortly after he had been burned by the dragon. The winds of the long road away from Canterlot had been blocked by it; the weather and snow of the Pearl Peaks had been sloughed off by it; the crystalline glow of Dryearth Forest had been kept back by it, always providing him a personal darkness to hide in. Anywhere the sun had shone its terrible light, the cloak had been his shadow.

But no more. Now, through the many cuts and tears and holes which the heckhounds had made in the cloak, splotches of Prideheart's white fur had been revealed, almost shimmering in the sunlight. In front, the newest and largest tear left his whole leg standing open in the light. Skin bruised by the difficult mountain trail, with a shape swollen from fatigue, and bones riddled by age, and a form slouched with despair; yet still the muscles were hard with heroic strength.

All the distracting thoughts, Prideheart threw away. Bookworm was still under threat! There was one last heckhound.

He quickly whirled around.

And immediately the tip of his snout bumped into Kerby's burning, wet nose. The tremendous heckhound wore the most sinister grin.

Before the pony could blink, a monstrous paw caught the side of the his face and cast him to ground.

Kerby needed nothing more than his one enormous paw to keep the pony pinned, like a tiger holding a mouse trapped by the tail. He crushed his weight upon Prideheart's cheek, absorbing the stallion's struggling kicks with relaxing ease.

"Hey!"

Bookworm threw herself at Kerby another time, ramming his leg ineffectually. She tried to pull it off Prideheart; to push it; to twist it. She wailed her hooves against it, grunting and huffing. All to no effect whatsoever.

Kerby didn't need to raise his paw from the stallion. With just a simple shake to jar the filly loose and a single step sideways, he punched his great bulk into her, swatting her away.

It took him by sudden surprise when Prideheart came back with inexplicable power. His immense paw was knocked off by a startling hoof smash, and the pony was instantly upright before the heckhound could even finish stumbling.

Angered, but with a snort that was still more dismissive than anything, Kerby lashed out with his other paw.

Prideheart didn't even dodge the swipe. He didn't shift or flinch. His own thinner, scrawny leg came up and deflected the blow, bouncing the flying paw back.

The complete ineffectiveness of his attack left Kerby stunned. He stayed agape with disbelief long enough to be speared in the chest by the pony. The hit to his ribs had him groaning, but halfway through it morphed into a furious growl. He wedged a leg between himself and the stallion dug into his chest, and he shoved the pony back.

He hissed, "Tiresome, diseased, old—OUFH!"

Again and without hesitation, Prideheart had plunged himself into the monster.

Kerby went to once more pry the pony off, more enraged and forceful than before, yet this time it was like trying to pull the tangles out of tar-soaked fur. No matter how strongly he pushed, his pitifully smaller enemy stayed stuck to him, and eventually the pony even managed to drive his paw to the ground and lock it there. Infuriated, Kerby forwent tossing the pony away and instead brought a snarl so close to Prideheart's face that the pony's head sat between the monster's jutting horns.

Pressed snout-to-snout, they locked eyes.

An eye of fiery coal against an eye of shimmering gold.

An eye squinted and swollen against an eye poisoned and rotten.

From within Kerby's vicious scowl, back in the depths of his throat, came a crackling light. Pops of flame started to spritz through the foam oozing over his teeth.

It was a shame for the outraged beast that he was the second heckhound to try and belch a fireball directly into Prideheart's face.

The pony dodged low, well ahead of Kerby's attack.

For a brief moment the large hound thought he had perhaps scorched Prideheart clear out of existence. However, from below he suddenly found his weight being twisted before it was dropped, and he slammed into the earth on his shoulder and back. A hoof stabbed into the soft center of his throat and held it closed, turning growls into gasps and licks of fire into sputtering embers. The light of his unhurt eye began to gutter when he felt the core of his throat rub against his spine.

His fallen weight had trapped one of his paws, but with his other paw he clasped Prideheart's leg. He clamped it right over the pony's knee brace, piercing his claw-tips through the fabric and into Prideheart's skin, and he went to rip away the leg squeezing his throat.

Only he was again left utterly thunderstruck by how his raging brute strength still wasn't enough to overwhelm the pony's old bones. He pulled, and he tore, and he wrenched, but the pony's leg held.

Splashed with grit, dashed in blood, with his cloak torn and ripped, Prideheart nonetheless towered heroically above the defeated villain.

"Stand down, pup!"

"Yahoo!" Bookworm cheered and bounced and hooted and frolicked. She couldn't have imagined a more stupendous climax to such an epic story! "You did it, mister! That was amazing! You're the best hero!"

The hero raised his good eye up at her.

There stood the beautiful filly. Unharmed, perfect, and pristine save for a smattering of dust on her. Not a scratch.

She had the brightest smile he had ever remembered, and he returned it in kind.

For once – for once, after all these long years – he really did feel like a hero.

He looked back at the subdued heckhound.

Kerby was no longer struggling. All his fight had fled; even his gasping and sputtering. Besides the thin wheezes which passed through his nose, he was unnervingly cold and silent.

But a smirk crept up his lips.

Prideheart was too late to notice that the monster had been leering so fixedly on the pony's obvious knee brace.

The motion was like that of a nail being driven fully into a board with one solid blow.

Hammered directly on his kneecap, Prideheart's wounded knee folded in a way it wasn't supposed to. The pony screamed as he collapsed.

The devastating pain ripped through his shoulder and spread itself across him, prickling and fierce even to the furthest ends of his body, but his injured leg itself didn't feel to be there anymore. When he looked, he saw it dangling limp from him, now configured in some confusing shape he couldn't recognize.

Kerby stood, taking in a full and coarse breath before he exhaled a gout of fresh flame. The sight of the pony, crumpled and broken, hit him with a pleasure so deliciously malicious that he shivered right down to his wagging tail.

He took a step forward.

Quickly Prideheart turned up and pressed all his strength into his legs, trying to stand. But before his wounded leg even touched the ground – when it so much as twinged – he let out another cry of pain and fell back down.

Kerby stopped.

"Good," he said to the immobilized stallion.

And then he began to turn aside. Away.

Towards Bookworm.

"Stay right there and watch."

Chapter 14: The Last Full Measure [Part 2]

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It was quite a stunning sight: huge and hefty heckhounds hurled again and again over the parapet. Certainly none were more stunned by it than the heckhounds themselves, who couldn't believe that such a measly little pony could fling them off time and time again.

But Crumble Pie did. Hound after hound she tossed or kicked away, picturing them as nothing more than bothersome boulders which needed to be removed from the worksite. Their claws didn't concern her in the least, and nor did their fire. If shredded skin and a torched tail were the cost of doing business then she wouldn't hesitate to pay.

She bucked another heckhound square in the snout and then took advantage of his momentary imbalance, rushing him over the wall's edge. There wasn't the time for her to shake the dust from her hooves before two more hounds came vaulting over the parapet onto the wall. One of them she blasted off right away with another powerful buck, but the other entered into a short brawl with her. Like all the heckhounds, he expected fear to do most of his work for him and so he swung at the pony with flagrant but aimless aggression. His carelessness left him entirely unready for her hard skull, which she not-so-cordially introduced to his jaw.

Squeezing herself under the whining, blubbering heckhound, she hoisted him up, faced the edge, and waited a moment. Like clockwork another hound appeared on the parapet. What followed was an avalanche of heckhounds as the pony launched one into the other and the two fell down upon several more who had been on their way up.

Crumble Pie, hoping that her lucky attack had earned her a few safe seconds, stretched her aching neck about while taking stock of Stony Nook.

On the wall to the south, Mayor Desk Job had chosen to stay and defend. Her close brush with fire earlier had finally taught her the value of water conservation, and she was doing her utmost to pass the lesson onto other townsponies. Buckets were being spent more carefully everywhere the mayor went.

Elsewhere, at the riverbank, Scrolldozer was trying to aid the overworked pegasi. There were too many empty buckets for them to refill, and so while they wore buckets like suits of plate armor and streaked through the river to fill them, Scrolldozer used his magic to dip as many extra buckets as he could into the running water. He tried to float the full buckets up onto the wall also but, for a pony of his particular special talent, levitating a wooden bucket of sloshing water wasn't quite the same simple thing as floating a solid and backbreakingly heavy stone. The buckets meandered and wobbled, splashing and spilling now and again.

His distraction didn't help matters. Every time he plunged a bucket into the water, he looked anxiously to the far side of the river, eyes open for any sign.

Lastly, Crumble Pie noted that pressure had eased across the entire wall. Fewer heckhounds were attacking other portions of it; probably because more of them were attacking her position, she reasoned. The slight reprieve had given some courage to the other townsponies.

By strange coincidence, the small shift in resources had brought the battle to a sort of careful equilibrium. More buckets, more bravery, and less heckhounds meant that a stalemate had formed along the whole wall.

Except for at the gray mare's linchpin position.

The stalemate would last only for as long as she could stay on her hooves.

Or until – and if – the raincloud came together.

Before her, more sharp scratches started to climb the wall. Growls and howls accompanied them.

Crumble Pie took a step back, popped the last few cracks out of her neck, and flexed some fresh bucks into her hips.

Down by the riverside, behind the long row of Stony Nook buildings, the raincloud was most certainly not coming together.

No amount of percussive love or cantankerous verbal encouragement by Hailstone had beat it into working shape. To the point of breathless exasperation she had pounded and hollered at it, and still the countless leaks underneath hadn't stopped dribbling mead. The cloud stayed a pure white mesh of fraying fuzz with occasional dark splotches; something like an anemic cow who was constantly draining themselves through their incontinent udder.

Mrs. Totaler shook the final bottle of mead, peppering its last few drops over the top of the cloud. Then, ever a calm professional even in such a crisis, she slid the empty bottle back properly into the case it had come from.

"Ain't looking too murky; I hesitate to say it's soaking in," she worried aloud. It looked like the drenched earth beneath the cloud had drunken more mead than the lightweight puffball itself had.

"It just needs to hold"—Hailstone clobbered the cloud some more—"enough to be a stable raincloud. Then"—the abuse went on—"it'll take on plain river water!"

"I've talked to a lot of pegasi over the years; never actually learned from'em anything about clouds and rain and so forth," said Mrs. Totaler. Fearing the answer, she asked, "So... is this one stable?"

After one last elbow drop to the cloud's plushy top, Hailstone floated back and looked over her pathetic, sickly handiwork.

"Only one way to find out," she moaned.

She snatched one of the cloud's many flimsy edges and dragged it out over the river. Gently she pushed the cloud down into the water, though even the lazy current threatened to run away with such a loose and weak patchwork of cloud-threads. When the very top of the cloud began to take on a dim, promising gray, the pegasus yanked it back up.

The whole of the cloud had turned dark and stormy.

But immediately from the bottom began to gush a torrent of water.

It wasn't any proper rainfall, but a waterfall. Shivers ran rampant across the cloud as it harshly vomited out the river water it had taken on. Little cloudy goosebumps covered it, and on each stood up a little hair of fluff. The healthy, thundery color drained away fast, vanishing entirely as the last streams of regurgitated water quickly petered out. It became again a pale and sickly cloud, save for all the original dark splotches where genuine rainwater had already soaked in.

"No, come on!" Hailstone screamed, and she shoved it back into the river.

This time she stomped on it; she angrily swished it about; she tried to drown it. Some puffs of cloud tore free and floated away, drifting until they swiftly dissolved into the water.

But again, once removed from the river the cloud hardly gagged before it spewed out its load and returned to its ugly, slapdash self.

"Come on, for the love of Celestia!"

Once more the cloud was thrown into the river, and once more it came out and spilled everything.

Hailstone lifted the cloud higher and swooped beneath it, heedless of the runoff which slapped her face and wings, and she started to thump some frustrated adjustments into the cloud's underbelly.

"Please, please, please!"

Mrs. Totaler nibbled a nervous hoof as she watched the pegasus work, and her ears tracked closely all the other sounds she heard from across town: growls, splashes, snaps of fire, heavy thuds. Somewhere, Crumble Pie gave a painful shout. Then there was the crack of a hard buck.

For another time Prideheart collapsed. He could not stand himself up even with a conscious effort to keep weight off of his ruined leg. All he had were his screams, which he directed at Kerby—challenging the hound, begging him, daring him, bargaining him—anything to draw the monster away from Bookworm.

But Kerby didn't tarry, not by one toe. All the vengeance against Prideheart he had ever lusted after lay not in hurting the stallion himself.

The wonderful cruelty had the evil hound licking his chops.

Bookworm scrambled to locate her improvised club; the explosive charge had been dropped somewhere in the prior scuffle. She unfortunately spotted it laying on the ground on the other side of Kerby, unreachable.

Going without, the filly puffed herself up and fearlessly charged the heckhound, and she was deflected by a paw which raked her cheek hard.

Prideheart rose, took one step, and crumpled again from the agony.

Bookworm got to her hooves, wobbling and dizzy. The soreness coming from her cheek wasn't a surprise because of the forceful slap, but the feverish throbbing was a sensation new to her. She patted the cheek with her hoof and was disturbed by the unfamiliar warmth. When she pulled her hoof away she saw the sole was stained sticky and red.

A silent shock hit her in the chest. From her eyes the imaginative glitter twinkled away, like turning a page and finding the story interrupted by some loose and unrelated parchment which had been inserted where it didn't belong. Like music broken by a deceitful change in tempo; like a moment broken by a sudden hiccup; like clarity broken by a world of new confusion. She had many times cried over bumps and bruises like any young foal, but never in her life had she taken a cut so deep that there wasn't even any pain.

A low chortle of fiendish delight came from Kerby. He shook his claws to throw off some of the droplets they had caught. There was plenty more blood to spill.

He advanced a step.

And Bookworm, in automatic response, quiet and shivering, immediately teetered a frightened step back.

Fear so tantalizing was the perfect appetizer for the salivating hound. He moaned in hungry pleasure. There were no more delays for theatrics. He prowled closer.

Falling beneath the blackest horizon of desperation, Prideheart again stood up. He managed three steps before tumbling in pain, learning just that much more about his new infirmity.

Encroached upon by the newly-terrifying heckhound, Bookworm stumbled backwards, too afraid to turn away. Her clunky hoofs clacked together as she sidled left and right only to be outmaneuvered by the larger, swifter hound. Everywhere she tried to stagger, he was in the way first, surrounding her in a cage of his fearsome fangs.

Kerby used his presence to push her up against the cliff over the river just to see if she would try to jump, confident in his ability to catch her falling tail. Her immobilizing fear left him only a little disappointed; a spice of broken hopes really brought out the best in a meal. He swung a paw to try to encourage a leap out of her.

Only through a lucky flinch did she stumble out of the way, and she shrieked as the whipping claws came within hairs of tearing off her braided mane. Staying low, whimpering, and holding her hooves to her eyes, it was the first time in her life that she had ever wanted to a close a book before the story had ended.

She wouldn't jump, though. Kerby accepted it. He took one large step back and peeked at his horns, adoring the satisfying glint coming from their sharp tips. Then he stiffened his neck, aimed, and thrusted.

One horn impaled Prideheart, who in a broken gallop leapt into the way.

The wind picked up his ravaged cloak, and the horn pierced deep into the center of the hero's cutie mark: a golden shield, heart-shaped and daylight-sparkling. It took the attack for the little filly.

The stallion's ceaseless interference infuriated Kerby all over again; such impudence he would never have tolerated from any of his heckhound inferiors, let alone a little pony. His ravenous vengeance happily forgot all about Bookworm.

Pushing with a paw, he angrily ripped his horn from the pony's bleeding flank. He went instead to bore it into something Prideheart might more sorely miss: his good eye.

But the stallion, even with one leg unresponsive and a hip now frozen by pain, managed to throw himself high above the strike. He came down atop the thrusting horn, driving Kerby's head towards the ground.

Angled so oddly and caught under Prideheart's weight, the horn crashed against the hard earth.

There was a loud, crisp snap.

The abrupt noise was so remarkable that Kerby immediately threw off and disregarded the pony. The hound backed away, and frantically he twisted his head about, trying to peer up at his poor horn.

Its smooth shaft still had plenty of Prideheart's blood streaked across it, but that proof of ruthlessness held no savory luster once Kerby saw the horn's blunted tip. It was cracked and jagged, missing an inch or two. Something lightly bumped the heckhound's toe, and he looked down to see that the broken-off horn tip had rolled into him.

The fire in his eyes flashed like an ignited plume of sawdust. His growl rumbled like quaking earth ready to swallow a city. His fangs glistened like the speartips of a battle-ready battalion marching in the rain.

There wasn't anything the enfeebled Prideheart could have done to have stopped the heckhound's jaws from clamping over his neck and flailing him about like a ragged chew toy. The monster violently beat the pony against the earth in retaliation, smashing him on his every side: head, tail, wounded flank, busted leg, and all.

After far too many slams and slices, Kerby finally became clearheaded enough to have a thought even a little more nuanced than blind rage. He spit out the limp, savaged pony and looked about for Bookworm, and he spotted her fleeing away from the cliff edge.

Quickly Kerby scanned the brutalized Prideheart: wounds upon wounds, now coated in dirt; crippled by pain; soaked in red-tinged sweat. To kill the defenseless pony outright would have been oh-so-satisfying, but the heckhound still had a desire vengefully wicked enough to let the pony live, for a few more minutes at least.

He turned about and followed Bookworm.

"Where are you going?" the monster called in his kinder, crueler voice. "Come back and defeat me, little hero!"

Bookworm stumbled to a stop, though not because of the hound's taunt. She snatched from the ground the explosive charge she had earlier dropped, but her plan didn't extend beyond retrieving it. In panic and dread she merely faced the heckhound and hugged the bomb.

Kerby walked towards her in no great haste, recognizing that she was quivering too badly to run away again. His each step closer worsened her shudders and she clutched the explosive ever tighter. The heckhound, in his head, busied himself deciding which part of her tiny little pony body would be the most scrumptiously evil to devour first in front of Prideheart.

The filly, practically hiding herself behind the small bomb, began to fondle it nervously, and she shouted, "M-Miss Crumble Pie taught me how to use t-these! I'll-... I'll blow us both up!"

"Oh ho ho ho!" came Kerby's most pleased, sadistic smile. This was even better than the cliff edge. He didn't slow. "Go right ahead! I'm waiting!"

Bookworm's hooves fiddled and fumbled, slipping constantly, but slowly she stripped the many safeties from the controls, just as she had been taught.

"I-... I-... I'll do it... I will..."

"Mhmm. Come on then. Let's see that fire, my little pony."

Paw by paw, he neared.

A trembling hoof at last tickled the tiny switch which, once flicked, would arm the charge. Bookworm desperately squeezed the bomb.

"I-, I mean it! D-Don't come any closer..."

He came closer.

And the filly, closing her eyes and swallowing her breath, let the bomb go.

It plopped harmlessly down onto the ground, still inactive.

"Well... don't feel too badly about it," Kerby said softly to the frightened, crying filly. It was almost genuine enough to comfort her in her deathly fright, being cruel with its overt sympathy. "After all," he said, and suddenly his voice turned, "there's nothing wrong with eating your meat raw!"

He lunged, jaws open.

And he was seized, stopped short from digging his fangs into the filly by no more than one stride.

The abrupt catch jerked the heckhound; the unusually strong grip had snared one of his hind legs, and he felt a pull on it, trying to draw him back. Right away he knew who had interrupted him and he was more intensely incensed than he had ever remembered being in all his insufferable years in Tartarus.

But when he leered ferociously back at his leg, he surprisingly found that he was not being held back by any set of hooves. Prideheart wasn't anywhere near him.

Instead, shackled around his lifted leg was a shimmering aura of sickly gold; a glittering illumination whose every shine was infected by a wash of pale green.

The same diseased glow was pouring out of Prideheart's shattered horn.

Back at the cliff edge, exactly where Kerby had left him smashed and battered, Prideheart was barely standing again. His ruined leg dangled, curled against his body, and his damaged hip tremored wildly from trying to hold some of his weight. Moreover, he was racked by wave upon wave of unending, excruciating pain. It flattened his lungs in his chest, sealing out air, and it tensed all the muscles in his body until they were ready to snap his bones from the tightness. The constricting agony squeezed streams of sweat from every one of his pores and crushed the pupil of his good eye into a pinprick.

It was the same as it had been for forty years, ever since he had been poisoned by black dragon fire: every second of using his cursed magic was like bearing a massive load a thousand miles with a broken back.

But he ignored the pain of his body, he cast away his disdain of magic, and he held onto the huge heckhound's leg.

Anything to protect Bookworm.

Kerby screamed furiously as he tore into the earth with his paws, trying to claw his way to the filly and snapping at her with his jaws. All of his outrageous might pulled against against the magical hold on his leg.

Prideheart held through the thunder of pain which smeared his vision. He held through the dying of his ears as the hound's enraged bellowing turned from volcanic eruptions into water-muffled murmurs. He held as the inferno of his dragon-wound raged through his body and ripped at his insides, threatening to tear him in half.

Atop his glowing horn-stump the grotesque pustules flared with ugly light. They shined from within with an awful green that flashed brighter for every painful throb they pulsed with. One suddenly popped, and the sallow slime which spilled out of it had streaks of red. The bloody pus oozed down the cracks of his horn, along the rim of his dead eye, and down his clenched snout.

But still he held, and still he pulled.

And against the enormous heckhound's incredible strength, he managed to drag the monster back a single step.

Kerby's anger was earsplitting. It soared over the Pearl Peaks.

No more revenge by proxy!

No more slow, delectable vengeance!

No more mercy for the sake of suffering!

The heckhound whipped around – easy enough to do since the magic was pulling him in that direction – and he faced all of his immeasurable ire at the stallion.

Prideheart let go of his magical grip. Through it thankfully stopped the infinite booms of pain, the powerful echoes lingered like always. He was still all but blind and deaf, ready to be knocked down by stiff breeze.

Kerby, blistering with so much rage that even his dimmed eye burned white hot, slammed down his paws and readied a charge.

"I'LL BURY YOUR CHARRED BONES IN THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE UNDERWORLD!!"

Prideheart, drunkenly wobbling left and right, only vaguely able to squint in the direction of the heckhound, and wheezing from the tiny gulps of air his burning lungs could handle, responded in kind.

"Stand... down... pup!"

In an instant the huge monster leapt to his top speed, blazing a beam straight for Prideheart. Jets of fiery steam shot from his nose. Columns of dust trailed behind him. His screaming howls piled on top of each other, flowing ferociously before him like an avalanche.

The pony heard and saw little of it. A dull ringing, some warbled grunting; perhaps growing louder? His fogged sight showed him only an insane mix of worldly colors spilled on top of each other, with no distinction whatsoever between them.

Then an unclear shape in red appeared, front and center.

He fixed all of his strained attention on it.

It grew.

The stuffy churning in his ears thickened, like a boneless noise flowing towards him.

He primed his one good foreleg.

And, guessing the moment entirely, he did exactly as he had done twice before while battling other heckhounds.

He stood up on his hind legs and let Kerby crash into him, and then he rolled and bucked with every little push of strength he could find tucked away in his devastated body.

He saw nothing clearly, but he felt the tackle dead to his center twist his already ruined leg, infuriating its pain.

He heard nothing sharply, but felt the awful pop in his wounded hip as his buck connected with something solid.

And as his roll followed through, this time he didn't even bother to try and stick a landing. His inert form flopped onto the hard earth with a dead thud, landing on his side.

The only part of himself he lifted was one ear.

...

Splash! Fizzle!

A sound distorted, but distinct enough to understand.

Prideheart let even that little bit of strength drain from his ear, and it folded down limp.

There was darkness for a time; somehow he couldn't measure how long. But it was the first night in his mind where he wasn't tortured by a shadow lord. The silence was sweet and cold.

A new sensation appeared. Just faintly he felt it on top of the pain which still echoed widely through his body.

Something was pushing on his ribs.

His ears twitched and tuned to the sound.

"Mister! Mister, get up!"

"Bookworm..."

Prideheart opened his eyes, but there was nothing to see. His dead eye was facing skywards and his good eye was to the ground, and what's more, his vision was withered anyway.

The little hooves still shook him desperately.

"Get up, mister! Please!"

"You must go, Bookworm... Return to Stony Nook..."

"Okay! We'll go back! But first you have to get up!"

Even through the cotton stuffing his ears he could hear her voice breaking with tears.

"Your father... Go...," he said.

"Not without you! A hero doesn't-! A hero-! Just... please get up!"

The upset pushes actually grew strong and frantic enough to agitate Prideheart's many wounds.

He made no complaints. Rather, he tightened his belly in preparation and then groaned horsely as he worked to slide his two good legs under himself. He lifted his neck, but almost immediately a terrible stiffness took hold of his spine and left him quavering uncontrollably.

Bookworm skirted quickly around him and helped push him up. She was rather careless because of her dismay, forcing yet more pain into the stallion's wounds, but again he was perfectly placid about it. When at last he had risen to his hooves, she cautiously stepped out from under him and watched, ready to catch him if needs be.

He swayed, feeling out a balance between his strengthless legs. Eventually after several moments he came to a slow stop and stood idle.

"There. I stand," he said. "Now, Bookworm... Go."

"Al-Alright. L-Let's go."

The filly waited for him to move first.

"Bookworm," Prideheart sighed.

He tried to find her in his vision, flopping and spinning his neck awkwardly until he saw a splotch which was colored differently from the ground. He lowered his head, too far and too fast, and accidentally knocked his nose against her temple; he turned and rested his cheek upon her head instead. Below, he felt her willingly hold him up in that fashion despite the film of sticky blood and gross sweat his cheek was smearing upon her. It brought a small smile to his weak lips.

"There can be no waiting for me," he said. "You must go ahead."

"But mister-!"

Heaving, he interrupted, "Twenty-four infernal hounds at Stony Nook; three here; and therefore three of which we have no account. Another way behind Stony Nook they could be seeking. A fast warning to them you must bring, before it becomes too late."

"B-But-! But-!"

"A hero is needed for this, courageous Bookworm, and too slow am I. Will you go?"

This time however, his sugary-sweet appeal to her beloved weakness fell on completely deaf ears. He simply felt the shaking of her head as she sobbed.

Riding her sorrow through his cheek for a few moments, Prideheart quietly and somberly thought.

At last, quite sure and in a wholesome voice, he said, "Go now ahead, and behind I will follow as fast I can. I promise I will meet you there."

She sniffled.

"... You promise?"

"Yes."

"... O-Okay..."

Slowly she disengaged; he nearly folded over once her support was gone, but managed to lift his head and steady himself again.

"... I'll see you back at Stony Nook?" she wanted to make absolutely sure.

"Verily." After a moment's hesitation, he added, "It is a super promise."

It was just enough for the scared, reluctant filly. She turned away and, one eye always behind her, she honestly tried to get a trot going but couldn't find the speed.

When she reached the big step to the next terrace, Prideheart called after her again one final time.

"Bookworm... Your father... Be more forgiving..."

"...?"

"Of a father's mistakes, be forgiving. Many stories you love; he loves but one. It is only a happy ending he wants."

"O-Okay, mister. I'll try," she promised him again.

"... Thank you..."

With that, Prideheart started to chase her with speed so gentle that a tortoise would complain. The aching slowness of his pace was broken only by the sudden bounce of his body every time he skipped using his ruined leg.

Bookworm looked back and forth between his limping hobble and the rocky descent before her until finally she bit her tongue and climbed down. Easily she sprung along the rocks, hoping that her friend would have just as easy a time without her help. At the bottom she raced away from the rise just so that she could see over it and spot him again.

He was still there. And he was still shambling, interrupted only by sudden, regular dips.

But Prideheart wasn't focusing on his legs. He gave all his stamina to his good eye. Intently he focused on the blurry dot which was shrinking to the distorted sound of fading clops. Every now and again the dot disappeared for a moment before just as suddenly reappearing; another terrace descended. He kept his legs working minimally, inching his way forward, since no doubt the filly was galloping with her head turned back to watch him.

But once the dot seemed so far distant that he was confident she didn't have a clear look at him, he only falsely bounced body now and again as if he were still walking.

He ceased moving forward.

The faraway clops vanished. The tiny dot blended into the messy, blotted landscape. Soon enough there weren't any shifting colors which his bleary vision could make out to indicate movement, and he stopped his pathetic simulation of walking.

He waited as many extra minutes as his weakness could allow before he killed all the strength he was loaning his legs and he again fell over onto his side, this time with his good eye up.

It broke his heart.

To have knowingly sent Bookworm away with a promise that was already broken before he had made it, it broke his heart.

But he loved her so much more than he loved any promise to her.

And though her heart would surely also be broken once the truth caught up with her, maybe the painful mistake would be enough to help her always remember the lessons she had learned.

No darkness came this time even though Prideheart closed his eyes.

All his hurts had grown indistinct from one another, resting on top of him like a heavy blanket of pain. Eventually his nerves got tired of screaming and everything dulled. Other tiny sensations came back. In particular, a distracting tickle danced upon his eyelid; a playful warmth.

He opened his eye and the vast blue of the unbroken sky filled it, but in the far corner of his vision was the shimmering sparkle of the sun.

Prideheart could scarcely tell if what he heard was his actual voice dribbling weakly into the dirt or if it was his clouded mind calling out to the quietly shining star.

All these many years past, but still I know not if I have forgiveness for you...

So many lives risked in Canterlot, because of vanity!

Yet...

More I understand now.

When the moment for leadership came upon me, desired or not, I was not without graver mistakes of my own.

Did you forget us...? Is that why you never followed...?

Or...

As I cowered and ran from my errors, so did you...?

Hear this, please, if you can:

The Dryponies... I lost them far in darkness, but they can yet be found.

If ever they go beyond the pale...; if any harm more they bring to others...

Blame them not...

I will bear all the fault for their misdirected evils...

I will take responsibility...

I will shield them.

The prayer, spoken aloud or not, echoed in his head as time dissolved and darkness came again.

Until, quite clearly even to his dulled ears, there was a howl.

Then two more.

Opening his eyes, the hero got his legs under himself and this time, with tremendously painful effort, he managed to stand again on his own.

Teetering and swaying, he turned to face the direction the sounds were coming from.

Scrolldozer filled bucket after bucket like they were the beating of his frantic heart. It was all he could do to keep himself from breaking down in absolute panic. Downriver he could see Hailstone continuing to fight with the uncooperative cloud, and on the wall he could hear constant ferocious snarls mixed with Crumble Pie's evermore strained and frequent cries.

The terrified monotony was almost enough to render him deaf to the voice which came over the river but, once he heard it, it was like a brilliant sunbeam breaking clearly through a storm.

"Dad! Dad!"

"Bookworm!!"

Buckets dropped and splashed into the current or spilled onto the ground. The father almost blindly charged into the river in an ill-considered thought to streak across it, stopping himself just before tumbling into the water.

The frantic filly was galloping eastwards, heading along the far side of the river towards the bridge. All the while she continued to desperately call for her father, shaking the tears from her eyes.

At first Scrolldozer followed her in parallel, galloping along his side of the river. He was singleminded enough to nearly crash into Mrs. Totaler, and when he at last turned aside so that he could race to the bridge he almost ripped a building straight out of the ground rather than go around it. Out onto the main road he spilled, and his fast hooves fumbled him all the way to bridge just as Bookworm came running over.

He caught her in his embrace, and she caught his unending shower of kisses. He kissed her head again and again until all the smooches and tears were ruffling and matting her mane.

"Dad!"

"I love you, Bookworm! I love you, I love you—!"

"Dad, please!"

"—I was so afraid, baby—!"

"Dad!"

"—You're safe now, you're safe—!"

"Dad, stop!"

"—Please never leave again! Please!"

Bookworm's voice alone gave the father a sudden kick in the chest.

"Dad, you're not listening!"

Right away he released his grip, set her down, rested his hooves on her shoulders, and looked his wet eyes right into hers.

"I'm listening," he gasped. "I am. I'm listening. What is it, Bookworm? What is it?"

The filly glared, wanting to judge his sincerity as always, but before long she was too upset to care. She threw her face back into his chest and started to sob, and her rambling scarcely navigated the sniffles and pants which attacked her.

"T-There were some h-heckhounds, and m-my f-friend, he-, he-, he-... And-, and-, and the heckhounds, they-, they-!"

Scrolldozer, earnestly paying attention, at last noticed the cuts and blood on his daughter's cheek. Right away he looked about and saw that there was no sign of the cloaked pony who had gone to find her. Together with her disjointed story, it troubled him deeply.

He gently stroked her cheek to see how bad her injury was (though Home Remedy would know better), and meanwhile he asked her, "... There were other hounds out there?"

"Y-Yeah," Bookworm sniffed. "They-, they-... I'm supposed to w-warn you that s-some heckhounds might be c-coming and-... I m-mean, I heard some h-howling behind me j-just a bit ago and, and-!"

Surprising her, the father roped her with his leg and practically carried her with him. They ran up along the river until they could see past the northern row of the buildings.

Three heckhounds came blazing by, tearing around the wide river bend, making straight for the stone bridge.

Scrolldozer quickly scanned up the river.

Hailstone still was angrily fussing with her cloud, though it appeared noticeably darker than before. In the air a few pegasi could be seen scrambling about with buckets, ignorant of the incoming hounds. Crumble Pie shouted again, in pain.

Everypony was too preoccupied.

He looked back at the bridge. The explosive charges Crumble Pie had meant to rig the bridge with sat in a pile, unarmed; the job had been forgotten in the panic before the battle, and now there was no time.

Bookworm shuddered in her father's hold.

"Wait here," Scrolldozer said suddenly.

The filly blinked at the heretofore unknown brand authority his voice had gained. It wasn't the voice of the pleading father who had scolded her many times before.

The three heckhounds charged up together onto the big stone bridge but came to a short stop when they saw, to their surprise, that the other end of the bridge had a lone pony barring the way.

Scrolldozer's hooves bounced nervously against the stone, but he stood his ground. He cleared his throat.

"Excuse me, sirs!" he called to the hounds. "I have to warn you against crossing the bridge! It's in dire need of repairs!"

The odd demand had the hounds exchanging confused glances. Not only was it the politest 'halt!' they had ever heard, but even beasts from the tortured underworld of Tartarus had an easy time seeing the sturdy, immaculate condition the bridge was in. An army of rampaging heckhounds wouldn't have collapsed it with all their thundering weight.

Together the three hounds turned back towards the pony. They brought forward their ears, and their hungry growls, and their glistening, bared teeth. Shoulder-to-shoulder, they started to stalk across the bridge.

"Well," Scrolldozer shrugged as they reached the center, "can't say I didn't warn you."

Muscular light surged from the father's horn. Great arms of color enveloped the whole bridge. From end to end the stones shook, and the more the pony ground his teeth, the heavier the quake which filtered into the bridge. Pebbles broke free and plopped into the river below.

The alarmed heckhounds stopped, then slowly started to back up.

But it was too late. Scrolldozer's powerful magic began to rip whole stones out of the mortar, shredding the bridge. The whole of the center collapsed apart. Down showered the heavy stones and sprays of crumbling mortar, and the three whining heckhounds fell amidst it all. Water splashed up as the river licked its lips, and it burped three plumes of smoke.

Stepping back from the broken bridge-end, Scrolldozer let out his fright through an exhausted sigh, and he wiped the lake of sweat from his forehead. That may have been the largest mass of stones he had ever handled in his whole life.

When he turned around he found Bookworm standing at the base of the destroyed bridge, her still-teary eyes agog at him. He couldn't tell for certain what she was seeing which made her stare like that, himself hardly recognizing the fact that he had just stood alone against three heckhounds to protect her.

The brave hero came down from the bridge, embraced her, and kissed her again.

Just one kiss, this time.

In the middle of their hug, from afar came a puny clap of thunder. Distinctly Hailstone shouted something energetic and triumphant. The father and daughter looked up to see the pegasus pushing into the sky a dark and stormy raincloud.

Beneath it water was pouring steadily in a normal, rainbow-inscribed sun shower.

The first heckhound didn't see it coming; the sudden bombardment fell over him and he started to smoke like a snuffed campfire. In his terror he scrambled backwards and tripped right over the edge of the wall. The other heckhounds heard his distinctive yelping as raindrops pierced him like falling knives, and the particular horribleness of his cry was something truly unique to listen to; they all instantly recognized it. Tails folded, frothing dried up like arid lakebeds, and some of the heckhounds simply chose not to wait around for such a terrible fate; they turned and fled right away. Of the ones who froze in fear, some caught bucketfuls of water from opportunist townsponies. Others threw themselves from the wall when they saw the menacing raincloud flying their way.

After driving every heckhound from the wall, Hailstone gave chase to the fleeing pack. She caught as many of them in the rain as she could while scaring them down the road.

Crumble Pie, locked in battle with a fierce heckhound in one instant, but then in the next suddenly standing alone with her scrapes and burns soothingly wet (with a hint of mead?), walked up to the parapet and looked out.

Every last heckhound was on the run. Some were shriveled and shrunken, others not, but every one of them scampered away like puppies hiding from a window-shaking thunderstorm.

"We did it..."

"Crumble Pie...?" Mayor Desk Job came up near to her. "Are you alright?"

"We did it!"

The strong, suffocating hug was a sure surprise for the mayor. The two kisses to the cheek were also.

"We did it, we did it, we did it!" Crumble Pie only laughed and wept at the same time, repeating herself over and over again. She swung the mayor about in her hug until finally she spun too hard and landed on the floor, taking the mayor down with her.

All across the wall, the happy townsponies started to cheer.

Scrolldozer squeezed.

"I love you, Bookworm."

"Dad... My friend-... T-The heckhounds, they-... He-, he was supposed to be following me, and-..."

"... I'll go look for him," the father decided. It was the least he could do. However, he put his hooves on his daughters cheeks and looked her so close that his fresh tears mingled with hers. "But I need you to stay here. Please."

"But-"

"Please, Bookworm!" He kissed her again. "Please, please, please promise me you'll stay here where it's safe."

The filly had her default answer ready to go – the same grumpy and defiant answer she'd often used against him before – but this time, for some reason, it just wouldn't come out of her.

"... Okay," she replied at last, honest, open, and still tearful. "I promise-"

Her breathed halted. She looked down. When she came back up, she changed her words.

"I'll stay here, Dad. I will," she said, sadly but sincerely.

Again Scrolldozer kissed her, and he repeated, "I love you, Bookworm."

"I love you, Dad."

Hailstone flew in small circles, signaling her find to the others like a vulture. Scrolldozer and Dr. Remedy tracked her from a distance, galloping along the river and eventually climbing terrace after terrace. The pegasus landed near them when they at last caught up.

There before them laid Prideheart.

His cloak had been ripped off, nearly torn in two, and that was besides all the extra rips it had found. It rested in a folded crumple at his side. Broken bits of the clasp which had kept it anchored about his neck were spread everywhere. The crystal leaf had been turned into a sparkling powder and spread into the wind.

The pony himself, naked, had all his wounds visible. The new heckhounds who had stormed through had been plenty generous with their burns, cuts, and bites. The earth under the pony's stiff body had taken on a reddened hue.

Dr. Remedy responded to the sight immediately and exactly as any professional of her caliber would have. Before the others could blink she was at his side.

Scrolldozer and Hailstone waited quietly as the doctor tended to the fallen pony with her hooves first, then with her stethoscope. The pegasus had a watchful eye out for any other diabolical heckhounds which might have been looking to ambush them, but Scrolldozer trusted his daughter's count enough to feel completely safe. He noticed instead the abandoned explosive charge which sat on the ground a short distance away.

"Hailstone," he tapped his friend and gestured towards the bomb. "Maybe you should take that charge to the old quarry. Bookworm said there was some kind of crack there that all these things came from; she was on her way there to bury it."

"You think that'll work to stop them from coming back?" Hailstone asked.

"I don't know. Maybe at least it'll hold them until whatever help Princess Celestia sends gets here and does something more permanent."

The pegasus hummed and then agreed. She scooted over, recovered the charge, and draped it over herself.

"Be careful, Hailstone," Scrolldozer said. "Bookworm said they're not dangerous once they're wet but-"

"Hey, they can't fly, right?" the confidant pegasus smirked. "I'll be down-boom-back before you know it!"

She took off, flocking west.

Scrolldozer turned back to watch Dr. Remedy work, but he couldn't pay much attention to her. His eyes wouldn't leave alone Prideheart's innumerable frightening wounds.

That could have been Bookworm.

"Doctor," he called, and he glanced back at the many terraces he had just climbed, "I know you're better qualified to judge this than I am, but maybe we shouldn't risk moving him over such rough terrain? He looks really banged up, and we don't want to make it worse. I don't know if we could safely carry—"

"Scrolldozer."

"—him down all those rocks. I mean, maybe I shouldn't have sent Hailstone off. I can run back and get some pegasi—"

"Scrolldozer."

"—to fly him to Stony Nook. Don't you think that would be better for-"

"Scrolldozer!"

Home Remedy finally succeeded in nabbing the father's attention.

Slowly and without a word, the doctor stepped over to the mangled cloak and picked it up in her teeth. Returning to Prideheart, she cast the cloak into the air like a bedsheet. Because of its torn shape it drifted down with some twists and turns, but it landed and largely covered the fallen pony in his entirety, from his resting face to his curled tail.

The doctor lowered and shook her head.

Epilogue

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"Right this way, Princess," the mayor opened the door to her small office before leading Princess Celestia in. "And allow me to say again what a profound honor it is to have you here in Stony Nook!"

Accepting such a noble visitor unprepared had the mayor a little flustered, and her magic went to fast work sprucing up her office. The glow spread to every corner and the room came to life, organizing itself from a lived-in workspace to a professional reception area, cleaned as fast as a hundred invisible servants could do it. On the bookshelf, all the lazy books who leaned on one another or were taking naps suddenly stood at rigid attention and packed together tightly before coming under the heavy watch of bookend sentinels. The decorative knickknacks and doodads on the topmost shelf danced into a more presentable formation. A window in the back of the office popped open and discreetly the waste basket (recently filled with an odorous, half-eaten lunch) disappeared out of it. Atop the mayor's desk, busy chaos quickly came to pristine order as all the loose papers whizzed into folders, and then all the folders flew into cabinet drawers which rapidly piped open and closed like a trombone band at a rock concert.

The finishing touch was a little nudge to the nameplate on the desk, sliding it into the exact perfect position. Not too arrogantly forward. Not too far back as to seem completely unimportant. Just the right place to be visible and casually read.

Mayor Notary Public

"Please, Mayor Public," Princess Celestia gently excused, "it's my absolute pleasure to visit."

The mayor bent so low that she would need to be peeled off the carpet.

"In all our centuries on this little river, Stony Nook has never been anything more than a simple quarry town! We've done nothing to earn your royal presence!"

Tenderly the princess leaned down and motioned for the mayor to rise. Not that she wasn't appreciative of the humility, but after a thousand years she had gotten very used to the overflowing, needless, endearing, and commendably infinite graciousness of her beloved subjects.

"That's not true at all," she said. "Every one of my little ponies are special to me, and it pains me that I can't be perfect in giving all of them each the attention that they deserve. I'm very sorry that I have not visited your lovely town for too many years now. And in fact..."

Something mysterious slipped under the princess's words. It didn't draw away from her apology at all, but rather fed it in some unspoken, oblique way.

"... in the future I'm going to make it an annual habit to visit Stony Nook."

Mayor Public cleared her throat awkwardly. Her professional instincts were having a rowdy cabinet meeting, shouting over each other about how to respond to such an important pony. Eventually she sided with her duty of promotion.

"Well, Princess, you couldn't have picked a better time to have come! Tomorrow starts our Stone Victory Festival! It's our annual celebration of everything Stony Nook! The whole town'll come together and toast to the greatness of our stone and everything across Equestria that's been built with it! We'll commend all our hardworking quarryponies who work day in and day out to provide for our livelihoods, and honor the ones who came before us, all the way back to ponies such as Crumbaloo Samantha Pie whose first quarries practically gave Stony Nook its name!"

"As I recall," Princess Celestia said, and again with something thoughtful and mournful behind her words, "the festival first began in order to commemorate a specific event, yes?"

"Ah, yes," the mayor had to really reach into her history lessons. "Some near tragedy in our town's infancy almost four hundred years ago. There were some vile creatures or another who threatened Stony Nook but we drove them off. That event is still, um, celebrated of course, along with all of our history. Though to be perfectly honest, Princess, I don't believe many ponies tell that particular story anymore. Ancient history and all."

Princess Celestia hummed. Again there was something hidden.

After a moment, the sun princess turned bright.

"History is in fact what spurred this visit. (And again, I'm sorry that it took even that much to remind me to come.)" She bowed. "I have to thank you for the recent gift your town sent."

"Gift...?" Mayor Public was genuinely confused.

"The book," Princess Celestia reminded her courteously.

"Oh! That wasn't a gift-... Well, I mean, I'm quite happy that you're pleased, but..."

Mayor Public wandered over to the most forgotten corner of her office.

Squeezed between the wall and the bookshelf was a short display case. Nothing fancy, built of polished wood with accents of smooth stone (locally quarried, of course). The items on display were all eccentric; the kind of things whose sentimental value had grown so old that there was more duty than sentiment to hold onto them.

There were bits of rock whose plaques didn't nearly describe their supposed importance in enough detail. Framed there was a brown and faded photo of some quarryponies gathered around an absolutely massive stone, and no two pony's faces could be told apart because of how fuzzy the photo had grown through all the years. Mounted high near the top was a folded town flag of a design that had been retired before the lifetime of any of Stony Nook's current residents.

But the most conspicuous piece of all was a little stone bookstand, empty of any book. There was thriving city of dust inside the display case, but around the bookstand the dust had recently been cleared.

"... we've had that book in our care for a long, long time," the mayor explained, pushing her nose near the glass. "We've always done our best to keep it in pristine condition of course, but our last pony who knew anything about caring for artifacts like that moved away some time ago. After all these years, I simply thought it was time to turn it over to the Canterlot Library to take care of. Only copy in existence, you know?"

"Yes," Princess Celestia nodded. "I never knew Bookworm had written a volume on the founding and early history of Stony Nook."

"Ah!" Mayor Public's promotional side sparked back to life. "There's another one of our valuable citizens! Who would have thought that the most famous scholar of Equestrian lore to have ever lived would have been raised in our humble little town, hm? I assure you, Princess, that if you had ever met her then you wouldn't have guessed at her simple origins!"

"Oh, I had the good fortune to meet her on several occasions over the course of her life," the princess said thankfully. "She was always adamant about the value of our nation's history, and she worked tirelessly to promote and spread it. It surprised me to discover that there was something she wrote which she never shared for mass publication."

"Well, 'you can take the pony out of Stony Nook, but you can't take Stony Nook out of the pony,' we always say. I suppose she undertook this book as more of a personal matter."

"Hmm... Personal, yes," the princess mused.

She likewise approached the glass and closely examined the empty bookstand. The small plaque on it, rather than explain anything about the book which had so long stood there until recently, read in a dulled font:

For my two dedicated parents
The biggest heroes in my life
I love you both
Always and forever

"I'm so glad that you decided to turn it over to the archivists in Canterlot," Princess Celestia said, still peering in deep thought at the bookstand. "It gave me the fortunate chance to read it, and I... learned some things from it which I think I never would have discovered otherwise. I feel that more copies should be made. More ponies should know about what happened here."

"That's... quite the praise!" said the mayor. It overpowered her publicity-minded senses enough to squeeze out a bit of honesty, "I don't really know that all too many ponies would be that interested in learning about the old minutia of some little, out-of-the-way town they've never heard of."

"There are some who will be, I guarantee it. Actually, I expect that quite soon you'll be getting some interested visitors from over the Pearl Peaks."

The very specific, and even almost eerie, suggestion tripped something in Mayor Public's memory.

"Oh? Does this have anything to do with our new neighbors over the mountains? The ones our fellows at Hamestown stumbled upon a little while ago? The-... the... Dryponies, I want to say they call themselves?"

"'New neighbors?'" the princess smiled. She offered the alternative, "Old friends. And yes, I think many of them will be quite anxious to visit Stony Nook soon. Maybe even in time for the festival tomorrow."

"W-Well, we'd be happy to have them, of course!" the mayor insisted, as if there were any other answer she could have given the royal sun princess. "They'd be our welcomed guests, j-just as much as you! If you're at all worried about our hospitality, would you perhaps like to personally inspect the festival preparations? I can assure you they will meet your highest expectations!"

"I have plenty of faith that your festival will be a wonderful celebration for all comers, Mayor Public, though I certainly would enjoy the chance to meet some of Stony Nook's many, many talented ponies before things get terribly busy tomorrow. I'm still so greatly ashamed I haven't visited more often."

Eager to please, the mayor again used her magic to prop open her office door, only this time to invite the princess out.

"Everypony is working hard to prepare, setting up just on the other side of town! We could go right now!"

"That would be lovely," Princess Celestia stepped out the door. "However, if you don't mind, I would first like to take some time for myself and... go for a stroll. It's been too many years since I last had the chance to walk through Stony Nook, after all."

"In that case, I could-"

"Without a guided tour, please, Mayor Public. Thank you."

A short moment later the two ponies exited the small building which had served as Stony Nook's town hall since the village's founding centuries ago. They emerged onto the same main road trotted upon by all those citizens who had come before, still unpaved and made of beaten dust.

Not much had changed for Stony Nook over the hundreds of years. Everything was still stocky buildings which stood sturdy thanks to the solid strength of Stony Nook stone, clustered against the large and gentle riverbend everflowing. Perhaps the only real difference was that the town had grown larger. One road no more, there were new side streets which split off from the main road; little teeth that jutted and dead-ended to the south. Newer structures done up in the same classic style had flocked to either side of them, a mesh of homes and businesses which had cropped up to serve the slowly, slowly, slowly growing population. The town likewise had extended further to the west as well, having become over twice as wide as it had been in the days of yore.

And dead in the middle of it all, the main road pushed through what was once, a long time ago, a huge stone wall. Besides for what had been knocked down to allow the road and side streets passage, all of the wall remained standing. Unsurprisingly to any pony in all of Equestria who knew something proper about Stony Nook stone, the leftover wall was as firm and durable as the day it had been built, with not one elderly crack or one blemish of removed stone to be found along the entire face of it. It had, though, become quite sunbleached over the years. Only new residents tended to wonder why the northeast corner of town was tucked away behind an old stone wall, but for everypony else it was just one of those normal, senseless-to-question things.

Princess Celestia had to politely and pleasantly refuse the mayor several times over before her wishes were finally clear. Mayor Public at last went on ahead, leaving the princess behind and trotting westward along the main road. Down the way, past the gap in the great wall, beyond the very final buildings of town, there was a celebratory banner raised across the road which announced the Stony Victory Festival. In open lots on either side of the road, whole gaggles of townsponies were busy setting up for their triumphant celebration.

The road inside town was left unusually lonely, especially for so near midday. The only ponies there were Princess Celestia and her retinue: four pegasus members of the Royal Guard, two standing free and two still harnessed to the sky chariot which had flown the princess to Stony Nook. Their bright, golden armor offered proud shimmers from the noon sun.

All the guards reflexively stood at attention and gave salutes with their wings the instant that Princess Celestia walked up to them. She in turn gratefully bowed her head to them, and then she reached her magic into the chariot.

Out floated an elegant bag, no bigger than an ordinary tote but certainly far more refined, specifically of whatever fashion was all the rage in Canterlot those days. Something inside was hard and rounded on its tall face, defining the bag's shape.

Princess Celestia started down the main road, the bag drifting through the air beside her. The two unharnessed guards needed no explicit orders; they followed behind her immediately. While the princess had told the mayor that she would go for a stroll about town, she didn't head in that direction. She walked with a pensive determination to the east.

They crossed the bridge over the river, rebuilt only once in all of its history, and the second time in a fashion identical to the first. True to Stony Nook construction, it had been invincible to generation after generation of hoofclops.

On the far side of the bridge were also a few buildings new to Stony Nook. At some point in the intervening years the town's borders had at long last been brought past the natural line of the river itself: a small trading post, a home or three, a new post office, The Riverside Saloon (still not successfully competing with the longstanding Old Totaler's Tavern), and yes, the long-awaited train station to save on trips to Mule's Head.

None of those are what Princess Celestia had wished to see, however. She turned her small entourage north, heading up a thin dirt pathway which had been decorated deliberately with many fragrant flowers. They gave the long, winding path a strong scent of comfort from grief.

At its end the pathway came to a wide parcel of land surrounded by a low stone fence. The only entrance was an open archway without a gate. There were no signs, or words, or inscriptions to identify the location save for on the arch's prominent keystone, which bore a well-known symbol: three ponies in repose, all of different tribes yet all with angelic wings.

As Princess Celestia passed under the arch, she solemnly ordered her two royal guards, "Wait here."

Excellent and faithful solders which they were, they without a word immediately took up posts outside the archway.

The large tract of land inside the fence had unnaturally tight groves of trees scattered about. The normally independent trees had been planted that way to offer occasional shade to guests, for those unhappy days when crowds had to come to that place. Other than the trees, everything belonged to the forever-yellow grass which carpeted the smooth and shallow contours of the ground.

And also to, of course, all the gravestones which stood in ordered rows.

Generations of Stony Nook ponies had been laid to rest there. Since the beginning it had been the local burial ground. Like most folks, the townsponies had chosen to set their grief somewhere not too near and not too far.

Every headstone plainly belonged to Stony Nook. The same locally quarried stone which had been used to make the doorposts of their homes had also had been used to fashion the tombstones of their graves. Looking across the cemetery, the style of the headstones had aged little throughout history: thin, with rounded tops, largely unadorned except for little pommels on their peaks, and around their bases were croppings of small stones.

Fresh bouquets were a common sight close to the cemetery's entrance, laid reverently on top of the rocks circling the headstones with the most recent dates. The further from the entrance, the fewer flowers there were, and the older the dates became.

Princess Celestia kept a respectful distance from the graves and followed the trail of aging dates back in time. Her journey into the past brought her closer and closer to the back of the cemetery.

She read the names on every headstone she passed. Many of them she recognized, though she often couldn't be sure that they were the same ponies whom those names evoked in her; too many lifetimes and too many repeated names. Rarely some names did foist a burden of certainty onto her, bringing heavy memories into her hooves. Regardless of how known or unknown the buried pony, she bowed her head respectfully to each and every headstone.

Again she accepted her shame and exuded sorrow. If there were ponies laid there which she should have known – should have held eternally in the bosom of her heart – but couldn't now recognize because she had forgotten them or what had made them unique, then that was only more clear evidence of how inadequate a single pony like her could be.

Only more evidence of the painful lesson.

More evidence of the need for faith and trust.

All the headstones were well maintained, even towards the very back of the cemetery. Cracks existed only as repaired scars, scrubbed-away moss had left behind only slight discoloration, and the engraved words had been kept sharp and readable. Maintenance done completely out of love and respect for the stones themselves of course, if not also for the ponies buried before them.

When the dates on the headstones began to reach within a few decades of Stony Nook's founding, the princess greatly slowed. She took the time to very carefully read each and every word inscribed. She searched, sparing nothing, until at last she found the grave she had been looking for.

The one she hadn't known had long been here, until recently.

The one she had been looking for far, far longer a time than just today.

Nothing much distinguished the headstone from any of the others in the cemetery. It was a Stony Nook grave, same as the rest, welcomed among them. Like a few of the other headstones, there was no known date of birth; only a date of death. But unlike all of the others, this one did not have any name written upon it. Only an epitaph.

It read:

OUR UNKNOWN HERO
Every stone comes from the earth
And again in time is buried
But few give love such lasting birth
They blossom new just like a seed
You will never be a stranger to our hearts
Thank you
REST IN FRIENDSHIP

The silent princess stood for a long time at the foot of the grave, resting her sorry eyes on the headstone's engraving. Eventually she lowered her tail to the grass, sitting slowly, and softly she floated her bag down onto the ground beside her. Then, following a chilly silence which lasted even longer than the first, she folded her forelegs under herself and sat completely.

She said nothing.

Her large mane, flying like a flag and glowing with all the rainbow colors of light, reached out towards the headstone. It floated above the grave. The very ends of her hair came so close to brushing the stone, wiggling for it like fingers straining to touch something they could never reach.

Still she said nothing.

Reunited at last.

The last she had ever seen of him had been his angry backside as he had stormed out of the throne room in a fury, having moments before thrown a medal she had awarded him back at her face.

Reunited at last.

And four centuries had not been enough time to prepare something to say, even to just this stone memorial.

There were too many boisterous emotions to give any one of them a meaningful voice.

The holes regret had punched into her heart, still bleeding.

The shameful pressure of cowardice on her back, heavy and hurting.

The aching, empty sorrow which so desperately desired to be filled by repentance and absolution, an echoing void.

But also a relief, and a wonder for the painful irony and strange serendipity which both saved and stung her.

Her wretched, four hundred year old mistake had at long last been recently corrected by Twilight Sparkle, who had restored Harmony with the wayward Dryponies. But that joyous event had come with a brutal and heartbreaking crash of hopes: the Dryponies had no answers for her about Prideheart. Now suddenly, a short time later, by wholly independent coincidence, those missing answers had been delivered to her very home in the form of a simple book.

Was it fate? Had her deserved punishment been long ago decided by whatever powers existed above and judged the hearts of ponies, and only now had she been allowed free?

Or had it all been of her own weak choices?

Every single day after Prideheart had left in self-exile, she had prayed. She had prayed to herself that one day – one day – she would make things right with him. But always terror and tears had chained her and drowned her, and always by the end her prayer had become: tomorrow – tomorrow – she would find the strength.

Until finally one day did come, but not the day she had wanted.

A day came when, out of the blue sky, like her sun appearing in the dead of night, her broken heart realized that she had waited too long.

Her craven fear had hastened time itself, and too many years had breezed by.

Prideheart, wherever he had gone, whatever he had done, whoever he had become, was no more.

She had not needed to see it to know it.

He had – however, wherever, whenever – joined all of her innumerable beloved little ponies who had gone to final rest.

A pony as long-lived as her knew that such was the nature of time and life, even if she would have sometimes liked to have forgotten.

The day she had realized that she had lost the chance for direct atonement had been one the rare days that the sun never rose.

In the years since then, all she had left for the hero had been her prayers that the exiles who had gone with him would one day find Harmony again, and the lesson in faith and trust he and his sacrifice had forever seared onto her heart; the lesson she had so determinately practiced ever since.

But, sitting before his grave, she said nothing.

Her heart could cry out all it wanted. Her rational side knew that any words, whether pain or pride or mourning or apology, would have only been heard by the worms in the dirt and the birds whistling in the trees.

Sadly she sighed.

A ray of sunlight surrounded her horn, and her magic reached into the bag she had brought.

Out of it came a golden helmet, very similar to the ones which her royal guards wore but not of the same exact design. It was something older, not only in style but very much so physically. The shine had faded away, worn off not by any amount of use but by sheer time. The crest on top had been eaten down to the now-empty holder. Most noticeable of all was the old damage on it: burns, from black dragon fire, around where a unicorn's horn would have poked through.

She set the helmet down next to the headstone.

The helmet had been most of the bag's skeleton. Once removed, the bag had folded over flat.

But it was not empty.

Again Princess Celestia's magic reached in, and this time it withdraw a medal on a ribbon. The ribbon was new but the medal, like the helmet, was old. It was bent, too. On the backside a date had been stamped, the text now warped by the fold in the metal.

It was the very same Medal of the Valorous Heart she had tried to honor Prideheart with four hundred years ago. The very same which he had flung back at her in outrage and disgust. She had for centuries kept it safe in a box in her royal bedchamber.

The date on the back was the day Prideheart had selflessly taken wounds to save the lives of everypony in Canterlot.

And now she offered the medal to him again.

Her magic draped the ribbon over the little pommel on top of the headstone, and the medal hung down in front.

Then the princess reached into her bag a final time and took out another Medal of the Valorous Heart.

This one had been freshly stamped, perfect and new. Yet incongruously, the date on the back was very old. Three hundred and sixty years ago, to be precise.

The date on the back was the day Prideheart had selflessly taken wounds to save the life of one filly.

Princess Celestia draped that medal so that it hung next to the first.

There was nothing more she had come to accomplish.

With Prideheart honored, she at last took several minutes to let out her quiet, proper grief, sprinkling the grass at the foot of the grave.

Even in mourning and in tears, there was comforting closure to understand that at the very end, despite everything, Prideheart had still been the same hero.

When she finished, Princess Celestia picked up her empty bag and stood. Prideheart's mementos she left behind. She made her way towards the cemetery entrance.

There was to be a beautiful festival tomorrow! A bevy of fun and joy, light and life, togetherness and love! An event rich with the wonderfulness of the lives that ponies share with one another!

She was so happy and excited to join.

So many of her little ponies to meet, and enjoy, and love.

A precious, powerful, and worthwhile goodness which she thanked him for having protected.

END

Pride Goeth

by Zurock

Prologue

Chapter 1: A Joy Shared

Chapter 2: Not Prisoners of Fate

Chapter 3: Courage is Fire

Chapter 4: The Best Defense

Chapter 5: To Light a Candle

Chapter 6: Cast the First Stone

Chapter 7: For the Hardest Victory

Chapter 8: He Who Fights

Chapter 9: From Out That Shadow

Chapter 10: Heroes May Not Be Braver

Chapter 11: Preparing to Fail

Chapter 12: The Course of True Love

Chapter 13: The Flesh is Weak

Chapter 14: The Last Full Measure [Part 1]

Chapter 14: The Last Full Measure [Part 2]

Epilogue